online JOURNAL

30 September 03
I have just put down a deposit for a trip to the Farallon Islands in November to go diving with Great White Sharks!

I am excited!! This is something I've wanted to do for years!

There are more spots available. The price is reasonable. And you do not have to be a certified diver to go. Who else wants in?

29 September 03
Yay, I'm all moved! The movers came on Saturday morning and migrated all of my crap^H^H^H^Hbelongings from my apartment to Frederick's house. Things went smoothly, and the great Unpacking and Merging of Stuff has begun. I'm sure it will take a month or two for the proverbial dust to settle and to find a place for everything, but I think I'm off to a good start.

I have two words for anyone with a lot of furniture/stuff who attempts to move house: HIRE MOVERS. It's the best few hundred dollars you'll ever spend. Other people carry your heavy and unwieldy items up and down many flights of stairs while you sit around eating bon-bons. It makes moving about as painless as it gets.

Before I close this chapter of my life I have one last thing to do, and that's to clean my apartment. The "cleaning" part is no big deal - just some scrubbing, dusting and vaccuming. However, when I moved there, I wanted to sleep under a "night sky", so I painted the ceiling in my bedroom black and covered it with glow-in-the-dark stars (yes, they were arranged in accurate Northern Hemisphere constellations). Now I need to try and remove those stars as I'm assuming they will still be visible if I simply paint over them, and attempt to cover up the black paint with Generic Apartment Off-White. My kitchen and living rooms I painted with actual colors, and I'm just going to leave them as-is, since they look really good.

Life is good.

22 September 03
So much going on in my head that I want to write about, but so little time. In the past several weeks I've been working, going to school, doing homework, attempting to get enough sleep, packing my apartment, clearing out some space in the house, and preparing for my upcoming vacation. Sadly, I haven't had any time to spend with friends or to be social, and it looks as that will be the case for at least the next few weeks.

There was too much to do in too little time, so this weekend I did something I had never done before - I dropped a class. Granted, it was only a one day non-required class, but dropping it gave me about nine hours of time just when I needed it most. Instead of going to class all day Saturday, I used that time to catch up on sleep and to box up more of my belongings.

I've been in my little apartment for 7.5 years (mmm, rent control), and it's always a little weird moving out of a place you've lived in for so long. Leaving is not a bad thing, but there is some degree of mental comfort that's lost as you transition to the next stage - I'd say it's somewhat like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon - things are better, but different. As I'm packing everything up, two thoughts keep going through my head, 1) how'd I fit this much crap into this tiny apartment? and, 2) where'd all this dirt come from? I kept this place clean!

On a more fun note, I went diving yesterday for the first time in a year and a half! I stopped because I came down with allergies for the first time in my life, and they left my head too stuffy to go scuba diving. Then I began dating Frederick, inertia set in, and all of a sudden the time flew by as it is wont to do. Anyhow, my allergies seem to have calmed down a bit, so when Dan asked if I was up for a trip to Monterey, I said, "Sure!" The conditions were beautiful - a pleasant, sunny day with no waves and few divers at a normally crowded beach. Visibility was typical for summer, which means it wasn't that great - just 5' to 20'. I had some issues with my gear on the outset of the first dive, but was able to get things fixed quickly and get back into the water.

It felt really good to be back in the ocean. After toting 70 pounds of gear up and down the beach whilst wearing a 7mm neoprene wetsuit (which would have been only slightly easier if I were in shape), struggling to fix my B.C., and then swimming for 75-100 yards along the surface until we got into deep enough water, I was pleasantly surprised at how at ease I felt once I was back underwater. Once I'm there, everything is okay.

All this has me looking forward to next month, when I travel to Belize! Tropical oceans, scuba diving on the world's second largest barrier reef, climbing Mayan pyramids, and meandering through Central American jungles. Mmmmmm.

16 September 03
Is 9:30 too early to go to bed? I'm tired.

10 September 03
I've been back from the desert for over a week, and sadly it's now only a fading memory. Each of my five trips to Burning Man has been different - my personal focus, my participation, my campmates, my camp location and most of all, what I've gotten out of it. This year, the focus was on Frederick and me.

I still had a bit of a bad taste in my mouth from last years' event. I was unemployed and broke, yet tried my best to organize a large-scale theme camp. We had 25+ people in our camp, yet only a few of them contributed time and/or money towards creating the camp, and I was stuck paying for most of it. It wasn't until just a week or two before the event that I realized I was carrying around so much baggage from the previous year, and as soon as I did realize it, I attempted to leave it behind. But maybe because of that inner commotion, this was the first year where I didn't really participate. In fact, even though we had planned to attend all along, we made no actual arrangements until a couple of weeks before we were scheduled to leave.

All that being said, I had a good time :) F & I camped with DMose and a friend of his. Due to the aforementioned non-planning, we were stuck camping out in the 'burbs. But that in itself taught us a valuable lesson: one of the best things you can experience at Burning Man is the sense of community and camaraderie, and one of the best ways to get that is to camp with a group of friends. There were many times during our stay where we wished we had been able to hang out in our camp, with our friends, but they were instead scattered around the playa. "Next year..."

Saturday night, the night the Man burned, was Frederick's and my one-year anniversary. We spent the evening reveling in one another's company, had a nice walk out on the playa, and in the wee hours, returned home to share a small bottle of champagne in celebration. That evening, Frederick also asked me to come live with him. This is something we had been talking about during the past months, but the time wasn't yet right. Recently, it had become the right time, and F decided to wait until our anniversary night to let me know. What a wonderful present!

Now I am in the middle of a whirlwind of activity - work, school, homework, moving things around F's place to accomodate my stuff, packing and cleaning my apartment, hiring movers and taking care of all of the moving foo. It's exciting, but a little scary, too. Although this will not be the first time I've lived with someone, this will be the first time I've actually *thought* about it instead of simply acting impulsively because it "seemed like a good idea". This is a really big deal for both of us, but it's a really a good thing, too.

28 August 03
Okay, how much have I accomplished?

Homework - all caught up
New tires on car - check
Dirty dishes - eliminated
Downstairs bathroom - it can wait
Messy kitchen table - mostly straightened up
Clothes and food packed - yup
Plane tickets to Belize - oh yeah
Stargate SG-1 - watched 1.5 episodes
Email & journal writing - caught up

I have a few last minute errands to do and then I'm off. It's been Way Too Long (exactly one year) since I've had any sort of vacation or time off, so the next five days will be bliss.

(Ever notice how quiet the Interweb becomes during the week of Burning Man?)

25 August 03
Around the time of the Solstice, it got dark here about 9:15 - 9:30. My body was used to this, and on work nights it knew to start preparing for bed about an hour after that time. Well, now it's dark by eight and I find that by 8:30 or 9, I'm thinking it's bedtime. But it's not and then I have to find something else to occupy my time.

My body likes to look to natural cues for its daily schedule. This is the reason I don't suffer jet lag (travelling within similar latitudes), yet Daylight Savings Time throws me for a loop. But I suppose that also explains why I often get a second wind at this time in the evening.

Tonight, I will direct that second wind towards reading. I picked up two great books over the weekend which nicely illustrate the morbid streak that lies within me: "Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia", a fine pictographical tour of their gallery of medicine and medical abnormalities, and Mary Roach's "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers", which is as incredibly funny as it is interesting. So far, the only thing in the latter book which made me cringe was a particular description of decomposition of the human body - did you know you can hear the maggots chewing away inside a corpse? (Of course, this is coming from the girl who used to eat while watching operations on TV; it's no wonder I want to go into surgical nursing.)

On that cheerful note, goodnight!

24 August 03
Boyfriend has just left for Burning Man. Due to school and work obligations, I will not be joining him until late Thursday night. While I will miss him over the next several days I am not sad that he's gone; rather, I feel it's a Good Thing. We have spent vitually every night together for the past three-plus months as we each get used to this serious long-term relationship thing, and a breather now and again is healthy. It allows one to enjoy being by themself and to reflect upon the relationship and upon life without another possibly affecting that, either positively or negatively. Plus, I get to stretch out across the whole bed, woo-hoo!

My plan for these few days of newfound freedom? Accomplishments! First up: tackle all my school work for the next couple of weeks. I know I won't get anything done while out on the playa, and I don't want to fall behind three weeks into the semester, so today and tomorrow are all about homework. My car is in the shop as I speak (type?) getting some new tires, so I'll need to retrieve it in a couple of hours. Then I'll take on the sink full of dishes, the downstairs bathroom, the mess on the kitchen table, packing for BMan, travel plans, watching an episode or two of Stargate SG-1, catching up on email and journal writing, and, of course, classes on Tuesday and Wednesday, and work.

Off I go to read Chapter One in my Sociology text.

18 August 03
I have so many things currently "in progress" - I've got Burning Man plans and preparation. I'm taking two classes in school (which starts this week); only another year or so of knocking out prerequisites before I actually start going to school to learn my future career. I have a potential tropical vacation in the works (nevermind that I have neither the time nor the money to run off, but the opportunities for nice holidays are scarce so I'd like to take advantage of this if at all possible). My new employee probation period at work is up at the end of the month which then opens the door to getting another job, if I can find something better. And of course there's my living situation. I need to stop waiting for the end results, and learn to enjoy the process.

If you keep waiting for the next thing to happen, you'll miss out on life.

I *am* enjoying the process of school. I love learning, and the academic mental gymnastics help to blow out some of the employment-induced cobwebs in my head. Right now though, thinking about what I've just written, I realize that I do really need a holiday. I haven't had more than a long weekend off from work since last Burning Man, one year ago, and it seems to be taking its toll.

There are yummy beers in the fridge. Maybe it's time to have there be one less yummy beer in the fridge.

12 August 03
I came home thinking I'd be in another one of my productive moods where I did a bunch of cleaning, reorganizing and cooking, but now that I'm here I don't feel like doing anything. I think I shall go downstairs, plop on the couch with the cat, and watch some Stargate SG-1.

11 August 03
Summer appears to have arrived in San Francisco! For the past ~1.5 weeks, the skies have been clear, blue and sunshiney while the wind and fog have made themselves scarce. Nevermind that we're closer to the Vernal Equinox than the Summer Solstice, but hey, SF has always been about doing things just a little differently than everyone else.

We had a very pleasant weekend with a nice combination of doing stuff around the house, and going out to be social and spend time with friends. Yesterday afternoon F and I spent a few hours geeking out - he got my formerly-lifeless VA Linux box up and running for a project he has in mind, while I did battle with TMDA. I've got a QMail server running on FreeBSD, I installed the latest version of Python, I doubled-checked the installation, I even RTFM, but it just doesn't work. Hrmpf. I need something to eliminate spam on my old notagoth domain as I'm not ready to shut it down just yet, and for this particular server, I prefer TMDA's methods to something like Spam Assassin.

As I was going through my web logs I noticed last week there had been a huge spike in the number of hits I normally get. A little bit of research turned up this Fark page (that's me with my hair in my face, a few screens down). But for the life of me I cannot figure out why that photo is there, or how the poster found it. Oh well, beats the time I ended up on Something Awful's Cliff Yablonski Hates You pages.

I need to spend more time doing web stuff. A couple of weeks ago I moved my website over from notagoth.com to g-na.org and there is a lot of fine-tuning and such that I'd like to do. Ooh, and maybe I can finally imbed my LiveJournal entries into my personal journal, so that way I don't have to post everything twice.

8 August 03
While at work I often think of things I'd like to write about, but I never really have a chance to write while there. And often when I get home from work I start doing silly things, like cooking, cleaning or running errands, and I never get to write as much as I'd like.

I have one more week of partial freedom before school starts up again. Right now I'm registered for two classes, Sociology and Women's Health, two nights a week. All sections of Anatomy, which I was really looking forward to, were already filled by the time my registration date rolled around. But I will go to the first class meeting in case I may be able to add it on, in which case I'll drop Women's Health and I'll then have class three nights a week. Either way, after next week I will again officially have No Life tm.

My good news is that I figured out what was causing my insomnia and some of my mental uneasiness - it was that I was both physically and mentally uncomfortable. Physically because Frederick's bed was not comfortable to me, and I would literally wake up in pain. My back was achy and I began to somewhat fear going to bed because I knew it would only result in suffering. And my mental discomfort came about because I was spending all of my time separated from most of my belongings. That doesn't sound like a big deal, but imagine staying at a friend's house for months on end and not having any of your own things around to hearten and entertain you. It becomes stressful. So we did a couple of things to correct those problems - last Monday our new bed was delivered! It is wonderful! Nice and firm and supporting, and I am already sleeping so much better (and painlessly!). I also brought over Chimera, my lovely OS X box. It makes a big difference to me to have my own computer here.

Little by little my stuff is migrating from my apartment to Frederick's house. One of these days we will decide it's the right time to move it all over, and then we can eliminate what essentially is a Very Expensive Storage Space.

29 July 03
A few more interview questions, this time from Uke.

1. I discovered recently that you were married before we met. How would you describe that experience?
It is probably best described as an excellent learning experience. I was a very different person back then, one who did not know herself or what she wanted, deserved or was capable of. My marriage was not the union of two people experiencing a mutual passion for one another (which is ideally what a marriage should be), but rather, two people with common interests who got along reasonably well and fell into those roles because it seemed the "thing to do". From that, it helped me learn what sorts of things I wanted and did not want in the future, and it made me realize that marriage itself does not equal happiness.

2. What is the best thing that music has ever done for you?
In a way, music was able to draw me out of my shell and let me become the person I wanted to be. I was terribly shy and insecure in my younger years, with few friends to act as role models. But at the same time I had a passion for music which drove me to become involved a host of different activities - working at a top college radio station, DJing on the radio and in clubs, interviewing bands, photographing concerts, writing for music magazines. Without music pushing me forward, I may have never been able to accomplish those things. And once my role in the scene had become established, I felt strong enough to both change my physical appearance so that I looked the way I wanted to look, and to begin living a life which allowed and encouraged the personal growth I so desperately needed.

3. Describe the most adversarial interpersonal relationship you've ever had.
Hrm, that's tough. I tend to not get drawn into/stay in relationships where I don't get along with the other person. I've had some disagreements and fights with ended friendships, but I guess the most adversarial relationship would have had to be my marriage. At the end we just did not agree.

4. What would a perfect world be like?
There would be a lot fewer people, for starters. Probably no more than one billion, with some sort of population control put into place so that the numbers stayed stable. There would be enough technology to make life comfortable and interesting, but we wouldn't jeopardize the Earth with our ignorance. Along those lines, nature and the environment would be of the utmost importance and our lifestyles would have as little impact on the environment as possible. The people would, on average, be more intelligent, and they would *definitely* be more tolerant. Things like free thought, free will, creativity and knowledge would be highly encouraged. And San Francisco would get enough fog to be "charming", but still allow us to have a real summer.

5. What do you find the most unfathomable about yourself?
Why didn't I "do something with my life" at a much younger age? What made me the way I was back then?

28 July 03
See the lack of motivation! Hear the plaintive sighs! Taste the boredom in the air! Ugh, one and a half more hours until I can leave this place.

Yesterday, Angela dragged my lazy butt out of the house and we drove down to La Honda to photograph a rodeo. It was held on a ranch about 5 miles from the coast on Highway 84, in a beautiful wooded area of the southern peninsula. In some ways we were as much foreigners there as we were when we visited Poland, but we had a blast, nevertheless. We each shot a couple of rolls of film, photographing things like bull riding and the very cool blacksmith who demonstrated how he makes roses out of sticks of iron. I can't remember the last time I had been to a rodeo; it's easily been 20 years. I'll have my film developed this week, and if there are any noteworthy shots, I'll post them.

Also, Stargate-SG1 is way cool!

23 July 03
Aaaargh. I really want to sleep, but I can't. In fact, I cannot remember the last night I had a full night of pleasant, non-drug-induced sleep. I don't know what happened, but recently I have had trouble falling asleep, then I doze for a couple of hours and spend the rest of the night tossing and turning. Tonight I was feeling so frustrated with the situation that I decided to get up and try to distract myself until I eventually feel sleepy.

What's weird is that I've been sick these last few days (which frustrates me as well; I'm supposed to be immune to these things - I haven't been sick for over two years!) and I would really like to get a lot of sleep to help my body recover. But that apparently isn't going to be happening.

How does one deal with this? I don't want to take sleeping pills because I don't want my body to begin to rely on them. Yet this nightly battle for a few hours' shuteye is becoming intolerable. Grrr.

15 July 03
As of Thursday, I will have been working here for one year (but it seems like so much longer than that). I often complain about not liking my job, but at the same time, I know I'm not here forever. So that got me thinking, what have I accomplished in the past year?

In the last twelve months, I:

Met someone, fell madly in love, and plan on being with him for the rest of my life.
Did a lot of thinking and research, talked to several people, and finally arrived at a concrete career goal.
Enrolled in college and aced my first semester classes.
Did a bang-up job in my temporary position and was subsequently hired to a permanent position.
Made large strides in my personal growth, including learning to communicate better and realizing that some long-standing issues were really non-issues.
Generally feel more confident and happy in life.

When I look at it that way, things don't seem so bad :)

7 July 03
To all the whinging San Franciscans who complained about the warm summer weather we had a couple of weeks ago - Are you happy now? It's July, the temperature has barely reached 60F, but the 20-25 MPH windchill makes it feel as cold as winter. Literally. The average low temperature in San Francisco during January is 41.8F. (The record high temp here was 106F on 14 June 1961.) And in case you're wondering, the record high and low temps in Death Valley were 129F and 0F, respectively, in 1998. Hrm, I went to Death Valley in July or August of 1998. It was about 115F in the middle of the afternoon. The worst part was stopping to use an outdoor bathroom. Let's just say odors, extreme heat and enclosed cement block buildings DO NOT mix. Ack.

I will be going back to the (Nevada) desert in less than two months. <fingers crossed for nice, hot, dry weather.>

Our photography exhibition was a lot of fun! Everyone had such beautiful pictures, and it was great to see both the differences and similarities with various people shooting in the same location. Participating in the exhibit has given me a jolt of creative motivation, and now I am anxious to take out the camera more often and attempt to refine my eye. In addition, this motivation has stretched beyond the borders of film and into the home, and this past weekend I decided to renovate the large hall closet in Frederick's house. I removed the old, shallow shelves, painted the beige walls white, and installed new, deep hardwood shelves. Tonight the shelves get a second coat of stain, and then I'm done (until I think of another project). I'm not sure if F is happy that I'm busying myself with home improvements, or afraid that I won't stop ;)