Super Amy

Happy Thanksgiving, guys! I made a list this evening of everything I could think of that I have to be thankful for, and it was ridiculously long. By the time I quit, I didn’t feel anywhere close to the end. It’s humbling to think of all the things that I take for granted — I have so many wonderful things to be thankful for that I can’t even list them all. I hope all of you are with family and friends, and also remembering how much you have to appreciate and thank God for.

My grandmother passed away last Wednesday morning. She was ready to be with her Lord, and also with her husband, my Papa, who died in August. I will miss having her here, because she had one of the most generous and loving spirits I’ve ever known anyone to have, and she was so much fun to spend time with — both of them were. I have a hard time not wondering what I might have learned from them if I’d have taken more time to. My grandfather had an incredible green thumb, and grew some of the most beautiful orchids in the world. My grandmother had family stories I still haven’t heard, and probably never will. For me, at least, one of the hardest parts is dealing with the missed opportunities. That being said, though, I am very blessed to have had the time I had with both of them, and while I’ll miss them both, they both knew the Lord and are with Him now, which is wonderful.

It’s only been a half-week at work because of the holiday, and it’s strange because everybody sort of has that Friday-attitude on Tuesday (lots of them took today off), making it very difficult to stay focused on work. My task this week has been exporting hundreds of database tables, and it’s an extremely tedious one — not hard, but repetitive, while still requiring full concentration. Things like that make me mentally and physically tense, and on several occasions today I found that I had to make a conscious effort not to stop breathing. I left work around five today, feeling somewhat dizzy and light-headed. When I close my eyes for a second, I see access tables scrolling up across my eyelids. My job can be so funny that way.

Tota is home! After a healthy stint in Bolivia with Peace Corps, she’s finally returned to us, and I couldn’t be happier. She brought her new puppy and tons of stories, I’m sure, and I can’t wait to catch up with her. So please, if you know Tota (or even if you don’t; as she’s surprisingly stranger-friendly), leave her a comment or an email to welcome her back to the country.

I played with inventing some muffin recipes the other night: A citrus almond-toffee muffin, and a curry-spiced persimmon muffin. For my first attempt at inventing muffin recipes from scratch, I was pretty pleased with the results — they could use some work for sure, but they weren’t inedible, and I know what to do to improve on them. It’s an exciting process, I’ve found, and something that really relaxes me. The more I think about it, the more I think that I could see myself doing something like baking for a living somewhere down the road.

Another perk to spending a couple of hours in the kitchen: perfect opportunity to listen to new music. Apparently, people have known about these things called “podcasts” for a long time. Technically savvy though I may be, I’d not until recently caught on to the usefulness of such a thing. It’s highly likely that most of you, while reading my pitiful whining in my last post about not knowing where to go to discover new music, were thinking “has she never heard of podcasts? What’s wrong with her?” And you have every right to be concerned. Anyway, the point is that I think podcasts are a fun thing to listen to while baking, and I’m particularly fond of NPR’s podcasts — all of my favorite radio programs are there, and I’m loving it. It’s an easy way to find good new songs without trying. The internet has quite nearly redeemed itself.

I was sifting through old notes in my planner today, looking for any major projects I might’ve forgotten to list as goals, and found this: aliciabock.etsy.com. Her photographs are beautiful, particularly the viewfinder photos with warmer tones, and I’m trying to justify buying a couple of her prints. So far, it hasn’t been working, but mostly because I can’t think of anywhere to put them, especially after the painting I bought in Athens.

I finally talked Mandy into taking a trip to Athens with me. Day trips to Athens are sort of a guilty pleasure for me, since it’s a town filled with lots of little things I love: downtown shops with handmade, fair-trade / imported things.. vintage clothing, books. There’s Wuxtry Records and OK Coffee (mm), the botanical gardens, dozens of good music venues if I’m there at night, and the cream of the crop: Agora. It’s a tiny little junk / antique shop, which apparently has dozens of vendors working there sort of like consignment. Anyway, it’s about the most exciting place to poke around, and I always find sunglasses or coffee mugs or something to take home. Friday, I found a painting. It has no signature, and it’s a pretty crudely sketched and painted beach scene — either by a very amateur painter, or somebody who wanted it to look that way. The colors are beautiful, and I’m really fond of the technique.. there are big brown flowers lining the sand. It was $10. I find a weird sort of comfort in not knowing who to attribute the painting to. I wish there were places I could go to stumble upon art like this more often.

I’m going to work on the design some more — I have more ideas I meant to use, but I guess I got a little overzealous the other night. It’s been really nice having time to work on things like this — it reminds me that I don’t, in fact, hate design, I just hate feeling forced to sit at a computer for too long. So this is good. And it feels good to write here again.

listening to: Loney, Dear — Airport Surroundings (I’m excited about this cd…)

October is perhaps the most exciting month of the year for me. Last night, Greenwood experienced a low temperature of 37 degrees, and my car was frosty when I left for work this morning. I’ve been feeling pretty great lately anyway, but changes in weather just make me unprecedentedly happy. It always feels like a fresh start for something.

It’s nice not having homework — that’s one super-positive thing I can say about not being in school right now. I actually have time. My main concern when I graduated was that, without the academic pressure, I wouldn’t so much pursue the non-programming-related endeavors I branched out into while at Lander. It’s one good thing I can say about the American higher-education system — as much as people complain about being forced to take “general education” classes, there’s something to be said for variety, and in my case at least, it consistently drives an appreciation for the way things all tie together in the end. (For instance, I loved being able to relate examples from an economics class with something I was studying in an information systems class.) I miss that feeling of having my brain pulled in several directions at once, and jumping from logical thinking to creative thinking and back again in the same day. But in the same vein, I feel a peculiar freedom with art now. When I took art classes at Lander, the thought of creating art without any sort of guidance — where I was free to pick subject, mediums, size, process, absolutely everything — was both thrilling and daunting. While it seemed like something to aspire to, I had no idea where I would begin. I was never really driven to create art “projects” before going to Lander, but I think now I can see why a lot of Lander’s art students, accustomed to that sort of freedom before taking classes, get so frustrated with the subjective limits put on their work. I think it’s useful regardless — anything you decide to do professionally / for a living is most likely going to impose its limits in order to pay the bills. I’m just saying that in retrospect, I think I came out alright in the end, suddenly finding myself with a little extra time, a million possibilities, and no pressure to pay my rent with a paintbrush. Add that to the list of awesome things about my job.

I bought a spiffy new macbook, by the way. My laptop drank a bit too much water a few weeks ago — almost an entire glass in fact — and is as far as I can tell, dead forever. Tired of buying used laptops that last for a few months and don’t do everything I need them to, and enchanted by Apple’s new line of MacBooks, I took the plunge and bought a brand new 13″ MacBook (2.4Ghz; 4G Memory). Let me just say: It is so. pretty. I am going to try some tricks tonight to recover my files from my old laptop, and hopefully from my old Linux box which died some time last summer. And do you want to know the truth? 90% of the reason I decided to buy a new computer at all is because for years, I have had this dream of having all of my music in one place. Not having had a decent computer in a very long time, and having had my old computer (with the oh-so-important and forgotten music from my high school days) die on me, it feels like, technology-wise, I’ve always been up against a brick wall. My last laptop didn’t have USB, so putting files on it was next to impossible, and even if I got them on my computer, I couldn’t get them on my ipod. So. Finally, I can have all of my files on my computer and my ipod, and my obsessive-compulsive dream will come true! And in all honesty, if it weren’t for this idea, I could have gone another year, at least, without splurging on a computer. Sad? yes. But honest.

Other news? We have a house. Most of you probably already know this, but for archival consistency, there it is. We spent the summer looking for the perfect place, and finally found it, so now I have three spiffy new roommates: My best Mexican, my best barista, and my best Mexican barista! There’s nothing quite like being able to have huevos con chorizo and double tall lattes all day long. Now that’s what I call living. It’s a nice size and a nice location, in my opinion, and has old hardwood floors, which make me especially happy on days when the low autumn sun comes through the windows. I’m currently on a mission to cover the walls in art (they are currently ALL glossy off-white), so if any of you artists out there want to make donations, I’m accepting what I can get.

I have been baking muffins and cookies and watching The Office compulsively. I’ve been spending lots of time with my awesome grandmother, and she’s been teaching me tricks: how to make laundry super-soft, how to make a perfect bed, how to pick a loaf of bread (you squish it to see if it’s soft). I’ve started dabbling in printmaking classes, and I’ve recently been inspired to start taking more photos again (something I haven’t really done much of since Mexico).

So I’m hoping, perhaps, that this newfound burst of creativity, coupled with a fancy new computer and software package* might inspire a (much, much needed) superamy.com overhaul. It’s good for me to write, and I want to make a habit of it, so that I can write more than just “what’s-new-with-me” notes (which I would imagine aren’t so exciting to read). Design is something that can be fun for me if there isn’t any pressure in it, and I’m not ready to let that rust up just yet, so… we’ll see what happens.

* New Adobe CS4 — Acrobat 9 Pro; Contribute CS4; Dreamweaver CS4; Flash CS4 Professional; Fireworks CS4; Illustrator CS4; Photoshop CS4 Extended; Soundbooth CS4. It doesn’t ship until December, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be just as excited then, too.

listening to: Bon Iver – Skinny Love

Are most of us at least somewhat familiar with the plot of that most famous of the first wave of reality tv shows, “Survivor?” People are put in seemingly difficult “survival” situations in apparently exotic foreign locations, and are then put through increasingly challenging ordeals as they “battle the elements” of nature. I actually only watched about half of the first season of this show, which has been back seven or so years ago, I think. Anyway, I’m pretty sure the challenges get harder, as one by one they eliminate contestants, until only the winner is left.

So work started off great — pretty much just like what I’ve been doing for over a year as an on-and-off temp, except that now, with 40+ hours a week and no school to interfere, I can actually focus on what I’m doing, and so I feel more productive and accomplished at the end of most days. The lack of serious multitasking means I’m sleeping more, and usually more alert, so it hasn’t been nearly as bad as I expected. Until this week.

So the new plant manager has been doing some pretty cool things. I was in England when he first came into the Greenwood plant, but when I came back, there were beautiful multi-colored patches of flowers in front of the building, and a real place to eat lunch outside, some indoor sprucing and new floors and whatnot, signs in the front office clearly identifying sections of the building — that sort of thing. Being such a visual person, I’m somewhat of a sucker for things like flowers and sunlight, and things looking nice, so I’ve been 100% for all of these changes. Until this week.

Next up on the renovations list: the cafeteria. There’s nothing exactly wrong with the cafeteria — I have a rather fond acceptance of it, if for no other reason than it brings back familiar memories of my elementary school cafeteria (which was only slightly outdated back in the early nineties). Yes, I guess it’s a touch cramped, a little hard to navigate, and certainly not of the appearance of a twenty-first century cafeteria, or perhaps even a later twentieth-century cafeteria, but here’s the most important point: the cafeteria serves coffee. Between some terribly early hour of the morning and one o’clock in the afternoon, the cafeteria serves loads and loads of watery-tasting coffee-flavored swill. Luckily, the desperate aren’t picky. And boy am I desperate. What do I do?

As a department, we’ve hashed and re-hashed the issue. I’m by far the only avid coffee drinker of the bunch, and so all of us had suggestions and ideas of how to compensate for the lack of coffee (we aren’t allowed to put coffee makers in our cubicles for various reasons), and some of them are being considered, so I’m pretty sure it will find resolution before too long, but let’s look at this honestly for a minute: without coffee, I don’t have very long left in this world. Mandy, I’m leaving you all my stuff.

Any suggestions?

In other news, I’ve decided that the best way to spend a lunch break is to pick up some coffee and a sandwich or something at a drive-thru, and then spend thirty minutes driving around in your car, making as many funny faces as you can come up with. Try it sometime. You’ll be surprised at how exercised your face will feel for the second half of the day, not to mention all those happy drugs smiling puts into your system. Just. Keep your eyes open and mostly on the road, guys. No matter how good the squinty eyes feel.

I’m trying to start a desktop garden — every time I have a plant and think I can keep it alive, I somehow manage pretty much to totally destroy it, through some sort of poor caring technique. Of course, it’s much easier to blame this on the plants themselves — had I picked better plants, they’d be thriving. So if you have any suggestions for reasonably small and reasonably available plants that grow well at room temperature and with minimal (weekend) sunlight, but mostly flourescent, I’m up for trying anything.

listening to: still the Old 97’s. I’m getting predictable in my old age.

So I’m sort of aimlessly driving around Greenwood some time around four this afternoon, desperately hoping to stumble upon a “For Rent” sign on a delightful little house which I have not yet seen (they’re growing few and far between, believe me), when I stumble upon something else which has found itself rather sparse lately — a lemonade stand! Four little chairs and four little people, cups and ice and lemonade, and a multicolored and well-illustrated sign advertising “Lemonade — 50c.” Suspicious that perhaps my eyes were deceiving me, I pulled over to the side of the road, only to have two kids run up to my open car window* to run through my options, which included a small, medium, or large lemonade or iced tea. Interestingly, all items were the same price, regardless of size. I went with the large lemonade, and my afternoon was much cheerier afterwards.

Any of you who have read Mandy’s blog recently should be made aware that her obsessive organizational capacity isn’t nearly so innocent as it may seem. She is, in fact, compelled to push upon others her addiction to scheduling. So after consulting her and getting my planning system all set up, I actually think I’m getting more done, and I always know when my schedule is or isn’t free. It’s nice, in some ways, and now I’m just as obsessive as she is. Thanks, sis.

Work has been nice — really, it has — but I needed a break from last week. I got up super-early yesterday morning, and took a road trip to Athens, Georgia. I spent Friday night meticulously writing down directions to and from Athens (I always mess it up), and between all of my scheduled stops. I guess it’d be helpful to buy one of those handy little GPS devices, or at the very least, to buy some of those handy ink refill cartridges so that I can print my directions. But anyway, turns out that even with driving time, you can pack a lot into a morning trip to Georgia. I bought flowers and blueberries at the farmer’s market, saw the state botanical garden, and the Georgia Art Museum at the university. I also saw the tree that owns itself, which is a pretty exciting thing, when you consider the other legalities it introduces. Anyway, photos of my trip, as well as some other newish but pretty overdue photos, can be found over at my picasa page.

I had more to say, I think, but I also have some spaghetti on the stove, and it’s nearing pasta time… so off I go. I should do this weekend thing more often.

listening to: The Old 97’s – Too Far to Care (the album, on loop, three times a day… mmm)

* so a week or so ago, I took some of my saved-up first paycheck money and splurged on a new gadget for my spiffy little Dodge Neon — an air compressor! Mine quit on me some time in the dead of winter — I remember this because I was collecting icicles as I stood in the cold, watching the smoke from burnt belts pouring out from under the hood of my car as it sat, dead and fuming late one night in the middle of a four-way intersection near Lander. So after getting the belts replaced and me on the road again, I decided I’d take my spring tax refund money and buy a new air compressor before the heat of summer. And we all know what happens with tax refund money — not at all what is supposed to happen. So anyway, I spent the summer so far rolling down windows and sweating it out, up until last weekend, when along with other repairs, I told my awesome mechanic Ted to replace the air compressor, which he did. The part I didn’t anticipate is this: every time I get in the car, I forget about the air conditioning. I roll down my windows and hope for a breeze. Sometimes, once I get to the point of being all soaked and drippy, a passing thought of “wow, it’s a little warm” will pass through my brain, and occasionally it triggers the fond memory of air conditioning. This, though, was not one of those more enlightened moments.

So I’ve been sitting around tonight, sort of hoping that my dear Hannah will call and be free for the evening, as we’ve been playing phone tag all day. And I realized that somehow, in my return trip from Mexico, I lost her comment on my most recent post down there, where she let me in on the fact that she is indeed blogging again, right over at themagicofrichardharris.blogspot.com, and I hope she doesn’t mind the advert. I just don’t think anyone should be deprived of her lovely voice (although I must say that, no matter how eloquently she writes, nothing beats the starkly and undeniably Jewish tone she assumes when leaving messages on my voicemail).

So what’s been going on in the past month in which I haven’t updated anybody (nor have I managed to read everyone else’s updates — sorry, guys!)? Well, it turns out that all sorts of exciting events have been taking place! Feet have been washing ashore in Canada at alarming rates! I started work three weeks ago, full-time and officially, that is, and it has been keeping me entertained for 8+ hours a day, which is quite a feat. I’m really enjoying the work I get to do, I enjoy the people I get to work with, and I honestly just can’t complain. Well, I can, and I pretty much always do. I think I am cursed to want to do and be a million different things at the same time, and it just hasn’t happened yet.

The past few days have found me remembering more often than usual the poetry class I took last semester at Winchester. I remember enjoying it a lot, even though poetry is a very scary thing for me to share, and I think I want to get back into writing more, because rusty doesn’t even begin to describe the state of my poetic prowess. Anyway, the class required both reading and writing of poetry, and focused primarily on British poets, for obvious reasons, which was nice because I wasn’t so much familiar with them. One of the poets we read is Geoff Hattersley, a fairly modern poet who quickly assumed a place amongst my top few writers.

Desert

We were out in the desert, just sort of
fooling around, dreaming up names for some
loud, long-haired rock band we’d be sure to form
the minute we got back home. I liked most

Doctor Straight Neck and his Toothpick Killers.
That was when Heidi started laughing and
couldn’t stop — as much the drink and heat as
the wit, I guess. But it was good, hearing

her laugh like that, after all she’d been through.
The desert could do that. Such stillness there,
as if the earth was taking breath, as if
history was yet to be invented.

I look after cacti in the house now.
They don’t take much of that. I never did
keep in touch with any of those people,
though I heard Heidi died in Berlin, smack.

——–

A Terrible Song

was just starting. I switched it off
and went to buy a loaf. I had the usual
small worries, sleeplessness
and being at the mercy of dentists,
fourteen hundred tons of job
and the chance I might drop dead
before crawling out from under it,
the possibility of reincarnation
as a business man’s fat cigar,
forever puffed on, unlit in mean lips.
Like someone trying to escape through a porthole
getting their backside stuck, that’s how
I felt, and that’s not all, there was
a fresh bunch of flowers
tied to the bus stop down the street
again, a fresh bunch of flowers
is tied to the bus stop every Sunday.
I don’t know why, I don’t know
if I want to know. I don’t know much
these days, but I do at least know
a terrible song when I hear one.

I like his attitude and his mood and his wit. He can switch from dry humor to a heartbreaking twist instantly, or sometimes there’s no plot at all, but I like not knowing what to expect. “Back of Beyond” is the Hattersley book those are from, for anyone interested. “Spider” is another great poem, but a bit too long to be blogging, but if you’re interested, email me and I’ll send it along.

I’m going to see Tom Waits, in all his glory, on stage at the Fox in Atlanta on July 5th. Yes, apparently some of us are blessed enough to see him twice in one lifetime. It’s pretty much the most exciting thing going on right now.

I’m still getting used to this whole work schedule. It’s a totally different kind of budgeting — I’m budgeting hours, instead of dollars. Just now, I went to Starbucks with Hannah (yes, in between these two paragraphs in fact), and already it’s almost an hour past my bedtime. A slight miscalculation for which I will pay, and I definitely can’t afford to snooze through work these days, so I need a better game plan. Any suggestions?

listening to: Tears for Fears – Everybody Wants to Rule the World (you know you love it)

I’ve put up another thirty-something pictures, which can be found here, if you’re looking.

It’s still really hot outside, and I think I’m going to go make some coffee.

listening to: Joan as Police Woman – The Ride

Well, I wanted to wait to blog until I had a new batch of pictures up, but I managed to foil that process tonight, so expect them some time tomorrow. But I feel I’m overdue an update, most especially before I forget all the little details of the past week or so.

Most especially since Tuesday, we’ve been going more or less nonstop. Tuesday we went to Xilitla. Some of you may remember my exciting rant about this place last year when I came down, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to indulge in some redundancies. Xilitla is a charming city near Valles, up in the mountains. Its main attraction, for me at least, is Las Pozas. It’s a garden, or maybe an unintentional playground of sorts, designed buy Edward James. He was a surrealist, a contemporary of Dali and Magritte, but instead of painting, he carved his art into the stones and rainforest landscape of the mountains of Xilitla. He was perhaps a little crazy in my favorite kind of way, and I wish I could have met him. Wendy and her dad and I went, and we spent most of our time playing about in the river / waterfall, and all the carvings and pools that went along with it, but we explored the staircases and buildings some, too. We stumbled upon a film crew from Los Angeles, or so they told us, with all the cameras and fixings to create a film about Edward James. That was sort of nifty.

Wednesday, we drove to Tampico, to visit the beach. I like Tampico, because the sand is very soft, and the city is pretty exciting, and luckily, we managed to time things out to where we weren’t on the beach underneath a miserable Mexican afternoon sun. It was a somewhat unfortunate night for me, though, in that I lost my voice, and I’m only just now starting to sound like myself again. Wendy, at least, told me that she liked my scratchy sick-voice, and that made me feel a lot better.

Yesterday was even more swimming. Along with Wendy’s friend Ari, we went to “Las Cascadas” in Tamul, which as you might have guessed, is a large waterfall. We had to hike part of the way, and it was pretty hot, and the river was very low. But we had a nice picnic lunch, and the watefall was very beautiful, and the water felt really, really good.

Today, well today was just plain hot. It was almost 110 degrees when I woke up this morning, and it just kept getting hotter. Wendy and I went downtown this morning, so that I could do a little bit of shopping, and picked Michele up from school and got chongos (wooo!), and after lunch, Wendy’s whole family and I got ready to go to the water park. Sadly, they were not open late enough to accomodate us, so instead we went to a new place… a decision based only on the roadside-attraction sign provided. Even the little boy who charged us to get through the gate didn’t really seem to know what exactly we were paying to get to, but at least assured us that there was some water, which was good enough. So we swam in the river for a while to cool off, and then came home, and then ate tacos. And now, at least as far as I can tell without the aid of photos (yet), you are reasonably caught up.

I got stung by a yellow jacket while we were swimming at Tamul. It irritated me mostly because of timing. We had just decided to get out of the water and to call it a day, and as I grabbed a rock to pull myself up out of the river, it seems that I grabbed a yellow jacket, too, and he was understandably upset. I still haven’t gotten all of the stinger out, because I’m never very good at those things, but it didn’t really swell up much, and stopped hurting after a half hour or so, so I’d say I came out much better than the bug.

I am going to miss the fruit here very much when I leave. The litches and ciruelas, mostly, but also the prices on things like avacados, are things I’ve become accustomed to having around. I just don’t understand why they don’t import these things to the US. I noticed that amongst the two or three flavors of Pom-Wonderful teas they sell at Bi-lo and Walmart and maybe some other places, one is a Pomegranate / “Lychee” tea. It tastes a little bit like litche juice, I guess, and it’s the closest I’ve ever come in Greenwood to the wonderful fruit I never even knew existed before I went to Mexico. *shakes head* It just doesn’t make sense why they’d keep it from me, you know?

Anyway, it’s gotten late, and I’ve kept you long enough not to have any exciting photos. I’ll add a little note when I get them up, hopefully tomorrow afternoon, before the quincinera.

Oh, yeah, one last thing. For those of you expecting me Sunday, you can expect me on Tuesday now. Our plans changed, and I’ll not be leaving Mexico until Monday morning, at which point I’ll be available by phone again — wooo hoo! Barring no problems on Greyhound, I’ll be in Greenwood Tuesday night, well-rested and ready to get on with the next little bit of my life.

listening to: Paleo – Afterlife

My new favorite trick is putting tons of lime juice on everything. Produce is pretty cheap here, so it’s going to be an expensive habit to maintain when I get home, but then what habits aren’t expensive, really, when you think about it.

It’s been so pleasantly rainy for a couple of days, so it’s been pretty cool outside and we’ve been lazy. Wendy and I went to see Michele’s basketball game last night, and to get some tacos rojos and go grocery shopping. We rented some movies to keep us busy. It’s cleared up some today. We went to Wendy’s church this morning. Last year when I came down, we never made it to Wendy’s church, instead going to a bigger church downtown one Sunday, and the following Sunday to a church in Tampico, where we spent the weekend. So it was really nice to get to see the church where her father is working. I understood more of the service than I thought I would, which was a nice surprise, and I really liked how humble and down-to-earth everybody was. It felt like the way a church service should be. For the beginning, though, Wendy and I were in the kitchen with some of the other youth, preparing a meat cake for the Mother’s Day dinner they’re having tonight. I got to chop ham and bacon and things, and help mold the meat cakes, which was actually way more exciting than it sounds.

We still haven’t really gotten to go downtown here in Valles yet, because of the weather mostly. I’m glad it’s clearing up, even though it means terrible things for the heat and for my skin, but I don’t want to miss out on anything exciting just because of the weather. A week from now, I’ll be on the last stretch of my Greyhound bus home, and a week from then, I’ll be savoring my last few hours of pre-full time employment freedom, so I have to be sure to make the most of my time here.

I have a few photos up, mostly sort of self-explanatory but all of them are captioned anyway. You can see them here.

If you haven’t heard yet, my friend Anthony Gravley has a new blog now; an awesome blog which puts the rest of us to shame. You should seriously check it out, including the links to his music on myspace, especially if you’ve never heard it before. The blog is added on the link bar over there <---, albeit incorrectly, making everything all off-balanced. I'll get around to fixing it one day, maybe. But for future reference, there you have it.

listening to: John Prine – Angel from Montgomery

It was raining when we got to Victoria last night, and there was such a nice breeze. Texas was pretty hot, and the wind was hot, and I can’t stand driving through anyway, on account of it’s very flat and pretty much the ugliest state I’ve ever seen (not to offend any Texans). Once we passed through Reynosa, I started seeing mountains and hills, which makes me much more comfortable. I do love Mexico.

Wendy’s older sister’s family lives in Victoria, and we are staying with them for a little while. They’re very nice, and I love this city — it’s a nice size, laid out well, and has beautiful mountains off to one side. They took us out last night for tacos, and they were sooo good. By this time, it had stopped raining.

Wendy and I slept last night out on the roof, looking out at the lights across the mountains. The air was cool, with a nice breeze blowing through, and the faint sounds of music from a party nearby. I slept so well, until it started raining around 3, and we had to drag everything inside.

I’m concerned that maybe I caught something from all those bus stations and busses and the people on them. Either that, or I’m suffering a sinus or an ear infection. I’m taking vitamins and drinking lots of water, and hopefully I can get rid of it before it interferes with trip plans. I never get sick, so of course now is a great time to start.

I’m not really sure of today’s agenda, except that I definitely want to take a shower, and perhaps we’ll go see the mountains around the city (and more tacos? mmm). Thus far, most of my pictures involve myself and/or Wendy at some bus station or another, but once I get a good bunch of interesting photos, they’ll be uploaded and blogged, somehow or other.

I of course love emails, just like everybody else, so keep in touch! (Oh yeah — music recommendations are always welcome, too! I have to fill up this blasted iPod somehow..)

listening to: The Postal Service – Such Great Heights