Saturday, December 23, 2000
Mom's looking at an ariel photo of their farm with a microscope (i mean magnifying glass...boy i must have been tired) while i try to keep my eyes open to type this. I guess she can tell which horses are which on it. I'm ready to fall asleep. We ate and ate and ate today. It seemed more like christmas than my birthday, but maybe because we did all the things we usually do on christmas today, like eat beef fondue and apple pie and open presents around the tree. I got lots of candles. My hotel rooms will smell lovely next tour! Ugh, i'm sleepy. There's too much going on around me to think straight. I'm going to try to see some friends in seattle tomorrow. Maybe i'll just wander around by myself for a while too. I miss the Seattle that i moved away from. Unfortunately, that's not the Seattle that exists now. Traffic as i've seen it recently has become as bad in the seattle area as in the los angeles area. Anyway, folks are still talking, but i need to sleep.~w
wendi's 3:38 AM ravings
Friday, December 22, 2000
It's my birthday! Happy Birthday to me...
I arrived without too many glitches in the great northwest yesterday. I managed to drag myself out of bed make coffee and finish packing before heading out the airport. I was 4th in line or so to check in, but by the time the last person finally showed up to work and they started checking people in, there was a line out the door. A couple people on my flight ended up running to catch the plane because they arrived at 6am (about when the counter finally opened) for a 6:30am flight in a small airport and couldn't make it through check in fast enough. The late lady (who checked me in) seemed very grumpy about being there at all. I said good morning and i think she nearly growled at me, but she really was trying to be pleasant. Got to Charlotte no problem and switched planes, but i guess there were 15 people who ended up hanging out in Charlotte longer than expected. They overbooked the flight by 15 and had to offer folks a flight out 9 hours later with a round trip ticket to anywhere in the continental us as an incentive. I decided to get on the plane, since i've been to most places in the continental us and had no desire to sit around Charlotte airport for 9 hours. I could have slept in and driven to charlotte if i'd wanted to do that. They must have gotten it figured out though, cuz we left close to on time and actually arrived in Seattle early. The french toast on the plane was even tasty (although i wouldn't recommend the sausage patties).
My dad and sister met me at the airport and spent the rest of the day running errands and napping (my step-mom has a new VW beetle that is zippy and fun to drive around). Traffic in the Seattle area is even worse than i remember it. At 2pm there was a traffic jam in downtown issaquah. Dad says it's basically constant these day. Last night we went out for dinner (for my birthday! i got a GPS tracker -- very cool!). By the time we waited for an hour and a half for a table, ate, went home and opened cyndi's christmas presents i was a total mush brain who'd been up 22 hours and was ready for bed.
But, now i'm well rested, and it's my birthday (did i mention that already?), I'm ready to face the world again!~w
wendi's 11:25 AM ravings
Thursday, December 21, 2000
If i went to sleep right now i could get 3 hours in before i have to call my ride to the airport to wake her up. I can't decide...stay awake/take a nap. I'll probably be much better if i can get a nap. I'll decide in a couple of minutes.
I woke up to cold water today. Well, not precisely, but there was no hot water in the house. I ended up boiling up several pots full of water and dumping them into the bathtub so that i could get clean. By this evening there was hot water again. I guess the hot water pipe coming out of the heater must have froze. It's still frozen here, but i think it may have gotten as warm as 36F at one point today. ooooh...bbbrrr. I'm looking forward to being a bit warmer in seattle tomorrow. But, bags are basically packed, presents are wrapped, bills are mostly paid, friends have been visited, so i guess i'm ready to go in a few hours.
I think that all that's left is a nap. I'll do that now.~w
wendi's 1:38 AM ravings
Wednesday, December 20, 2000
I'm having one of those days/nights. First of all, or should i say last, i just spent too much time trying to recover some trace of the blog i had just copied for saving when i overloaded the memory and crashed. But, to no avail! Ack, it's dead and gone. Rule number 2 for saving yourself frustration by saving your words, don't try to have 6 applications open and running and messing with things while your precious words have not been properly saved (rule number 1 is save frequently). So, anyway, that blog is gone. It was juicy, full of info about my first real boyfriend. I have to go back and write about old romance these days cuz it's been a few years since there was any in my life. Before that it was a case of winter blues gettin me down. Before that it was trying to find a crazy early bird who can take me to the airport at 5am on thursday. Before that it was trying to run errands in the brief "thaw" we had today. Before that it was staying in bed until 2pm cuz, well, it was snowing outside and since i could work from bed i had not reason for moving. Now i'm actually sleepy, so i guess the juicy stuff will just have to wait until morning. Hopefully i'll remember what i tried to write then.~w
wendi's 4:05 AM ravings
Tuesday, December 19, 2000
I was writing to my friend Andy (who's new site design is pretty darn swanky, and seems to include quite a few more of his amazing poems) and realized that i'd completely forgotten to mention that last night i heard the "Klezmer Nutcracker" (Actually i guess it's called Naftule's Dream/Search for the Golden Dreydl, but you couldn't tell by the way they were announcing it) on NPR. It's some (or maybe all) of Tschaikovsky's Nutcracker played by a Klezmer band while a lady tells the story of a beautiful golden dreydl that turns into a girl after it is thrown through the TV set. I don't know quite how to describe it, but i think i liked it. It was certainly much better than "Cinderelmo."
After 7 hours in the office today, i managed to walk out having completed what i went in to do. I found myself caught though, i wanted to chat with all the neat people that kept wandering in to visit, but i also wanted the project done. I did get to visit with folks a bit after i was all done, but c'est la vie. I think i need some quiet time to myself anyway. I'm going to try and get some of that tomorrow before i go running off on errands again.
It's hard to type when my nose is all itchy with allergies, i'm noticing. I love my cat, but my nose objects. By the time my nose gets used to her i'll be off again though. I also had a double dose of dog tonight over at my friend Kate's place, so my nose is in a particular uproar at the moment.
We have an 80% chance of snow by dawn. Could be a very white christmas here. The temperature barely got above freezing today. A far cry from Louisiana weather. The worst thing about traveling at this time of year is that you can hit extremes like that very easily. Hot and muggy one day and freezing snow the next. With that i'm going to blow my nose and snuggle under my covers.~w
wendi's 2:01 AM ravings
Monday, December 18, 2000
The biggest frustration with being home again is that i can't just log on whenever i want. I have to share a phone line. Oh well. So, this is posted a little later than i wanted, but it's up nonetheless.
Apparently we just missed driving through a major tornado yesterday. We drove from Mobile, AL to Asheville, NC and saw nothing but some heavy rain once we'd left Atlanta. I guess we either drove around it or ahead it or something, since it torn a big chuck out of Alabama. I'm just glad we made it back with no trouble.
I have shopped for Christmas (and even stayed within my budget i think). There are a few loose ends, but they should be relatively simple to wrangle together (i hope). My friends Kate & Kari made candles together this year. I'm so jealous of having the free time to spread out a big mess of creativity like that and go to work making presents. There was one year i had enough time off to make hand-painted glassware, but that was a few years ago now. I'm just hoping i'll have the time and energy to properly wrap what i've gotten and get it packed up. I'm going to the office tomorrow (strange for me) to work on pulling together the bibliography for this year's shows. At least i'll be pouring through books of poetry for "work." My list of things to do that isn't related to work seems rather long though. I feel like even though i've written it all down it's all bouncing around my head like a bunch of those mini "super balls." You know, those hard little multi-colored balls you get for a quarter out of the machines in grocery stores or chinese buffets. I had this friend in college Greggarrr who used to keep a bunch in a big thermal mug. Whenever he got too stressed out (or thought the people around him were being stress mongers) and needed a break, he would fling the mug's contents at a wall and let the balls wreck havoc on the room (usually full of roommates and guests). Anyway, that's how my head feels, like Greggarr just emptied the super ball mug in my skull. On the road we are always busy, but time seems to be less constraining and the tasks seem streamlined. Everything has it's time and place. At home i feel like i'm being bombarded with stuff from many directions. I just need more quiet time alone to think and putter around in order to get all the silly stuff done (like sorting through over a month of mail and bills, ugggh!). What all seemed orderly in a little hotel room, suddenly becomes chaotic when exposed to the influence of a community. I'm in culture shock i guess with no time to adjust before i fly away again. Maybe if i could sleep that would help. I should give it a try...~w
wendi's 1:47 AM ravings
Sunday, December 17, 2000
Oops, didn't manage to log on last night, but here i am now. I am home! (for 5 whole nights whoo hoo, actually only 4 now) I got in last night and half unpacked, threw clothes in the wash, checked messages and...hey, someone left me a message! I have friends again! So i went out dancing last night. We were an odd motely bunch, but we had a lot of fun. I was exhausted when i got home though. Even though we weren't out that late i was asleep the moment my head touched the pillow.
Ever think about the space between people? It's something i'm fancinated by. I mean, for instance, there's all these people crowded on a dance floor, but most of them aren't actually touching each other. Sure a few couples are actually in physical contact, but that's it. Yet all the "magic" of dancing happens in that measured distance between one person and the people around them. That "empty" space that is carved and created and removed but always keeps a layer between people. Like a wall separating two rooms this space of air separates each person on the dance floor. But, since that space is neither you nor me, suddenly it becomes the compromise. That space is where the "we" exists. It is where the sound of our words cross in passing, the scent of our skin, the gaze of our eyes. It is the time between us. How long are we apart? When will we reach each other or lose site of each other completely? If you could map that space around the world, assign a thin gold line to that space between family, friends, lovers, aquaintances, etc beyond the 6 degrees of separation you'd have a web connecting the entire world looking like it had been constructed by some mad drunken spider leaving dense knots some places and big gaps in others. Hmm.
Not much else to say at the moment. Gotta go and start wrapping presents.~w
wendi's 12:35 PM ravings
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