i had to speak to my boss on friday to let her know that i am leaving in the fall to enter a ph.d program at the university of oregon. i have kind of been agonizing about the decision for a while. for two years actually. last fall i had decided to go, then changed my mind and deferred the admission until now. another year passed so quickly - last september it seemed like it would be forever. i feel so much ownership over my program, i wish i could stay a few more years, really, and keep developing things further. but if i don't go back to school now i know i never will. it is very difficult to leave a job that you don't want to leave. i have never done it before now.
Posted by ash at 11:20 PMjust trying the friday five out. don't think i can manage to do this every week.
yankiwi readers, more here.
When was the last time you...
1. ...sent a handwritten letter?
i send postcards fairly often, and i sent a few of those from los angeles last week. but a letter...hmm. i sent a fraser a card maybe a month ago, and it had a sort of letter written in it. i think i tucked a couple of his valentine's day cards in with it, if that tells you anything.
2. ...baked something from scratch or made something by hand?
i made chocolate chip cookies a couple of weeks ago. i made pizza a couple of weeks ago. i heated up leftover pizza in the over two nights ago.
3. ...camped in a tent?
summer of 2000. but i camped a lot. my back still hurts.
4. ...volunteered your time to church, school, or community?
i don't have any extra time to be giving away. i gave three dollars to the community projects fund at outback steakhouse last night. our waitress was cute.
5. ...helped a stranger?
i carried someone's bag to the gate at the airport in denver. then we joked that they would have to lie about the security question or else risk being searched. then we worried that we would be overheard planning to fraudulently answer security questions and be arrested for that. i worried that by helping a stranger i had inadvertently gotten in over my head. it all worked out fine, though.
which reminds me of something else. on sunday, as i checked into my flight at LAX, i was on the phone with mike and sat on a bench to root through my bag. "oo, I just found a wallet!" i said. i picked up a black billfold from the bench beside me and flipped it open. inside was a gold badge, a photo id, and the words FEDERAL AIR MARSHAL. i almost wet my pants. i looked around quickly to see if i was on one of those reader's digest things where they plant a wallet and see if people are honest enough to return it. then i got scared about having it. i wanted to just leave it there and run away but i was afraid that someone else would pick it up and somehow use it for evil. so i held it against my heart and walked away from the bench quickly. but where to go? i was thinking the security screening guys but all you hear about is how incompetent they are. did i really want to give it to them? besides, was i going to be in trouble for having it somehow? i don't know why i was so nervous about finding this thing. my idea then was to find an airport cop. how? just then a man got off the elevator with a lunchbox and a badge identifying him as a manager for the security dept. i asked him where the security office was. he brushed me off and told me to just go through the security gates. i said i needed to talk to someone. he seemed annoyed. "i found this," i said, and flashed the badge. he practically dragged me by the arm. it was just as i had feared! i felt as if i was in trouble. he made me walk over to where i found it. re-trace my steps. say how many minutes i'd had it. give my name, my phone number. better yet, i kept wondering if that guy was *my* air marshal, and now i was going to be flying without one.
Posted by ash at 02:21 PMfrom an email i wrote last wednesday:
When I got here today I took a walk down Ventura Boulevard and through some neighborhoods. Every yard was spotless, the scent of flowers was heavy in the air, strong flowers, lilies and lilac, roses. Houses mostly white, plastered, with red roofs. Palm trees lined the street, the sky was impossibly blue. As it always is. Los Angeles, and California, is always just as it appears on television, in the movies. Every place is familiar, every street - Mulholland Drive, Topanga Canyon, the 405, the Santa Monica Freeway. Beverly Hills. People sneer at L.A. for being fake, but I have found it to be just as it is portrayed. Every day is beautiful, people are relentlessly happy, people don't mind making an effort to have a gorgeous life. The earthquakes, the wildfires, the riots destroy their homes and neighborhoods - they build them again. Housing prices are outrageous - they pay them. Traffic is six lanes of parked cars, every day - they buy fabulous cars and make a lifestyle of it. This is one of the only places I go that I never hear people complaining.
you know how i used to say i hated L.A. all the time? (no, probably not unless you have been reading this for a long time. and that's only about one of you). i got back from L.A. yesterday morning. i have a tan. it never stopped being beautiful. i don't care what people say, that is the happiest place i have ever been. the valley is having some kind of secession bid though, they are voting to secede from los angeles. this would make L.A. approximately half as big. it would make the valley the 6th largest city in the U.S. wow, huh? i went to the la brea tar pit. it was still bubbling. and did i say how sunny and happy everyone was? man, i love L.A. how did i ever think i hated it there? i am never saying that again.
Posted by ash at 01:01 AMRe: "what kind of mad person builds a fire in a forest during a ban?" apparently, an employee of the u.s. forest service. while patrolling the forest to enforce a fire ban, she decided to stop and BURN a letter from her estranged husband. oddly enough, in the very dry conditions it got out of control and caused a forest fire. who could have known that would happen?
Posted by ash at 11:29 PMhere's a stunning find: it's got a little something for everybody who reads this blog. who doesn't love the raw beauty of maine? the face of a lamb? naked women? and hell, everyone needs a calendar. best yet...a percentage of the proceeds go toward eliminating breast cancer. can i just say "my christmas shopping is done?"
Mark Twain said it thus: If you are the kind of person who likes this sort of thing, then you are going to love this! -stolen from the wearingwool.com ladies
have been in denver working all week. i don't have to tell you that the land south of the city is on fire. driving along the highways there, ash falls on your windshield like snowflakes. evacuated homeowners stand along high curves watching firelines. on my flight into denver from chicago i heard a man on his cellphone telling his mother that he hadn't made it home in time to get anything out of his house. it all made me wonder what kind of mad person builds a fire in a forest during a ban? is it a deliberately evil person, or just someone who thinks they are more important than the rules? someone who thinks they will be careful, and that the ban is really meant for those people who would let things get out of control? so much property destroyed. i was very sad.
on my flight home, though, i was just irritated. i flew ATA at the last minute, and i won't make that mistake again. on the way there, i thought it was bad enough that they were delayed on the chicago-denver leg by an hour. ha! the flight back to chicago from denver was delayed by 2 hours. when we got to chicago, we landed in concourse F and had to walk to A for the connecting flight, which was on the other side of the airport. no train or shuttle. after waiting at the gate in A for an hour or so, they announced a gate change. back to concourse F. the same gate that we had landed in, as a matter of fact. after a collective sigh, we all trudged back over. forty minutes or so after this plane should have taken off, the fellow at the gate said that the chicago-denver flight was even later than us and so they had to give them our plane. so they came over to our gate, and - guess? - we went back over to theirs...in concourse A. after the nine miles we had walked and the cumulative 4 hours in delays, you would think they would have kissed our asses when we got on the plane. you would be wrong. this was the most psycho bunch of flight attendents i have ever experienced. you know how on southwest flights the stewards sometimes made jokes out of the announcements and its funny? these were like the flight attendents that failed the southwest tryouts. when they were doing the safety demonstration and asked us to direct our attention to the front, after a few moments the girl snapped "for those of you still reading, please put your books down and direct your eyes to the front. if we crash you will be glad for this important information." i'm sorry, but i was under the impression that "crash" was a very bad word to use on the plane. kind of like BOMB. a few minutes later she came out with this gem: "i repeat, all cellphones and pagers should be off and stowed at this time. we WILL NOT take off until you comply with this direction. i'm serious." but the most ridiculous bitchy remark of the night was when we pulled up to the gate in philadelphia, and she gave the standard - "your only indication that it is ok to stand up is that the seatbelt light is no longer illuminated." as the plane reaches the gate and STOPS, everyone unclicks the belt and one man stands up. the flight attendent picks up the microphone and screams "SIT DOWN!" the moment the man sits, the seatbelt light goes off, and she says "ok, you can stand up now." there is a sort of gasp, and everyone files off the plane. we are all stunned as we leave the flight from hell.
Posted by ash at 09:24 PMthe daniel pearl video is online. mike won't watch it. i did. prohosters says they don't necessarily *support* people watching it, they just think people have the *right* to watch it. and that daniel pearl, as a reporter and ardent supporter of the first amendment, would have thought so, too. would daniel pearl want his own murder to be viewed by a bunch of voyeurs like me? somehow i am not so sure of that. still, the fbi contacted the original site that posted it and ordered them to take it down. that's no good. so maybe i actually agree with prohosters. watching it might be kind of a screwed up thing to do, but the fbi telling you that you can't, that's more screwed up.