settling in

so i haven't written much here lately because i've been on the move every day for the last few weeks. now that i've finally settled into my new place, i finally have some time to reflect a little on everything so far.

i've been writing in the other blog, kinda keeping it more as a bulletin board for my daily life here, but i want to keep the more random things here.

i just started my first day of school. i've kinda been waiting for this before really trying out my mandarin in the field i guess. a lot of places i can get by on english, but that's not really in the spirit of what i'm trying to do here. i know how to tell a cabdriver my address now and i know how to write down the name of the street in chinese. still can't order any food on a menu except to point at it or name it by the number if it's a set meal.

i've spent the whole year planning to arrive here and the hardest part seems to have been wrapping up all the loose ends back home before coming here. i'm sort of flying by the seat of my pants now. it hasn't really hit me that my home is on the other side of the world.

the thing that i am sort of concerned about at the moment is how long my funds will last. in just the last few weeks, i've spent half the money i came here with on tuition and on moving into my apartment. i knew i'd have to wire more money eventually and pick up a job, but it seems a little more urgent now than i was expecting. anyway, after seeing the expenses for the first month, not counting all the big stuff, i'll have a better idea of what my daily budget will be.

i think about my family and friends back home often. i hope they're all doing well. i'm keeping in contact with them, but it's just not the same as when you can see them face to face.

anyway, it's late and it's time for me to do my homework :)

change

before i begin...

blogging is such a strange thing. i try to write these things as though i were having a conversation with myself. i try not to think that anyone else is reading this for fear of getting the writing equivalent of stage fright while at the same time trying to write in a way that someone reading might derive some entertainment from all of this.

i was surprised to find out that a couple friends of mine have been reading this without me having to twist their arm. who knows how many others? in any case, this has been an interesting project for me that i hope will continue to grow and be as enjoyable for anyone passing by as it has been for me to do it.

...

it seems as though i've been meeting with all of my friends before i leave since the summer started. this last weekend though has started to feel more final. maybe the last time i had a feeling like this was at the end of high school and i suppose there are several parallels between now and then. there's the idea of a big move to a new place away from all of the friends you've been used to being around. there's the idea of having finished a phase in life and getting ready to start on a new one. there's the idea of everyone else you know seeming as though they are about to do the same thing and that when next you meet, everyone will have changed so much.

this weekend started with a going away lunch with my friend and old colleague. when i met him, i was 22 and he had hired me onto my first professional job out of college. i worked for him for the next four years. he was a great mentor and example to me in both my professional and personal life. one of the last topics we talked about at lunch was what he was planning for after retirement. he told me a piece of advice that his father-in-law had told him. his father-in-law said something like:

"plan for the next thirty years. i retired twenty years ago and i had no idea i would live this long. don't let the years pass by just because you've stopped working."

although we're at different stages in life, it seems we're both at a point where we're facing the next big unknown.

after lunch, i met up with my other friends and set out to beaumont for the weekend. i've been hanging out with this group of friends all summer and we all seem to be surprised at how close we've become to each other in a very short time. seeing as how we usually get together as a group, it's been a little difficult trying to talk to everyone one on one. it took all summer, but i've finally managed to talk to everyone in private at least once. i have a lot of good memories with them. i started the year thinking i would be unemployed and waiting to leave for taiwan. i had no idea that i would meet such good friends before i even left.

i find that each of them is also facing some sort of major change in the near future. one is planning on going overseas to study. one is planning on settling down. two of them are more than superficially unhappy with their work. i think we all feel pretty fortunate that in the midst of all of this, we were able to get together this year.

the thing i've learned about friends is that although you're not always around them, the good ones seem to keep reappearing. i have the feeling we'll all be seeing each other again.

water

to combat the heat these days, i'm drinking beer and eating ice cream. my room is emptied to the point where one last trip to the storage place should be it. i'm pretty bored at the moment, just waiting for the day to come when i leave.

on a note related to the last post, i had a dream the other day where i was walking down a major street in ankle deep water. i walked this way for a block or so and turned the corner to find myself looking at giant hole in the road. immediately i was in water up to my waist and was being swept along by the current of water rushing into this giant hole. panicked, i struggled against the water and made it to an elevated spot beside the road where others were watching as pedestrians and traffic with worse luck than me were swept toward oblivion.

looking beyond this abyss, i saw a bayou filled to the top also emptying into this hole. i was set on getting to the other side of this bayou and was about to cross on top of a broken pipe when tejano music started playing on a loudspeaker i hadn't noticed and all these valves on the pipe i was going to walk on opened up. the valves were sending compressed air out which somehow pushed the water back so that it was trickling into the abyss instead of raging towards it. everyone who was caught in the current was able to easily escape and nobody actually fell into the hole. and then i woke up.

if the internet is any kind of reliable source, muddy water and an abyss suggest some danger. in the i-ching, the chapter "the abyss" talks about water in a dangerous ravine and how water escapes danger by moving quickly and finding the easiest exit. what i like best though is that it says water is unafraid to fall a thousand feet because nothing can make it lose its essential nature.

packing tips

not only am i preparing for my trip, i am also moving out of my house. in order to figure out what i need to put into storage, i started packing my suitcase yesterday. whatever doesn't fit into it will go into storage over the next couple of weeks.

i decided to check out some tips online for how best to pack a suitcase. i found an interesting video on youtube on how to pack a suitcase "butler style". one great tip i learned was to stuff your socks into your shoes. all this time, i had been using tissue paper to keep my shoes' shape. what a waste! i also learned an interesting tip on how to minimize wrinkles. pack pants and shirts at the bottom with the legs and sleeves sticking out. pack smaller things on top and then alternate folding the sleeves and legs in. this keeps the clothes from being creased onto themselves and seems to take less room.

i'm going to live out of my suitcase until i leave and this will give me an idea if i've left out anything important. my room is going to start looking pretty empty next week.

first signs of anxiety

so after having committed to this big adventure back in march, i've been relatively at ease about the whole thing with most of my worries being focused on managing to survive until august without a job and having enough money to finance my studies. here i am in pretty good shape but it seems some little bit of anxiety is setting in.

i had a dream this morning where i was at a post office trying to collect my mail. the clerk was speaking to me in chinese asking me to pay some money to get my mail. i didn't understand the amount so i pulled out bills at random, looking at the clerk's reaction to figure out if i had given enough. i was trying to understand this foreign language, trying to figure out how to ask "how much does it cost?" on the spot, trying to figure out what each bill was worth (i don't remember what the currency looks like), and then trying to convert the amount in my head to usd to see if i was getting ripped off, all while feeling the eyes of the impatient people in line boring into the back of my head.

of course, there are several problems with this dream. it probably doesn't cost any money to collect mail. the clerks probably speak a little english. people waiting in line are probably very patient. i never had any trouble when handling business while i was in china and at that time i didn't understand a single word in chinese. still, i was sort of unsettled when i woke up this morning.

i spent the morning plotting out my calendar for the next half year. it turns out my visitor visa will expire midway through my first quarter at school. i've marked out visa extension deadlines, registration dates, scholarship application deadlines, health insurance deadlines.... lots of deadlines on into march of next year.

and then there's the matter of handling all my business at home before i leave. well, i'll save that topic for another day. in any case, i'll try to keep reminding myself that this is supposed to be fun.

checkup

i've spent most of the last week watching tv shows. not on tv, which spared me the mind numbing commercial breaks, but on hulu and on dvd. this is pretty much what i was doing in colorado while waiting to move out. at this moment, i'm having the same sort of questions i was having then:

am i getting stupid and numb or am i just relaxing a bit in preparation for something else?
am i forgetting something important?

it's not my usual habit to be so passively entertained so i suppose to make up for it, i'm diverting my active energy to self inspection. what have i accomplished since january? what do i want to do in taiwan? what do i want to do after taiwan? in the process of self inspection, i second guess myself from time to time, but not nearly as often as i might have done in the past. in a sense, that's some kind of accomplishment.

one thing i've accomplished during my time off from work has been becoming a decent swimmer. when i first started my regular workout, i could barely make it from one end of a pool to the other. this week i intend to swim a straight mile. that will be a pretty good milestone for me.

my main goal in taiwan is to learn how to speak and read mandarin. i'd like to be proficient to the point where i can live my daily life without having to speak or read a word of english. i would also like to learn how to write. being able to creatively and concisely express yourself in writing is the highest art of language. this one is a long-term goal. i'm not even sure what i will do with such a skill. it's just something i want to do.

and after taiwan? this one i have no clue about. i'm still reassessing my ideas about family and career and whatever is supposed to be a socially acceptable milestone along the path into middle age. i'm not convinced that anybody really figures this out, but i don't want to arrive in middle age without having tried to chart a course there. i'm out of books. i'm out of tv shows. i guess i can entertain myself with this problem for a while.

pizza and ice cream

i woke up this morning and watched the first rain we've had in a very long time. it was really a nice and soothing way to start the day. the whole day has been pretty peaceful overall. the beer at lunch was a nice addition too.

this evening i had dinner with some friends from high school that i haven't seen in years. we all talked for a long time, catching up and telling a few stories about what we've been up to. actually, tonight i did more listening than story telling which was just fine because there was no shortage of stories from everyone else. what was interesting to me was how we all had sort of the same stories. not the same outcomes, not the same characters, but basically the same root struggles. the same quest for self discovery. the same conflicts with parents. the same realization of our own limitations. it's not that i never share these sort of stories with the friends i see often these days, but somehow catching up with friends i haven't seen for a while and finding out how similar our experiences have been has been really liberating.

i feel incredibly human today.

almost there

july is finally here. this is sort of the home stretch of my adventure in being unemployed, but the prelude to my adventure overseas. honestly, i've been more concerned about being able to survive here without income than i have been about starting in taiwan. it seems every month there's a new tax i have to contend with, but that's a different matter. i'm pretty well packed up. what i have left in my room is just the essentials. it can be packed up in a day or two.

i have a vague idea of what i have to do when i get to taiwan. fortunately i have some friends who have generously offered to help me out when i arrive. i'm looking at taiwan as a new start. i was reading the other day and i found this great quote from bertrand russell: "in all affairs, it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."

since i've been out of work, i've really had to rethink the way i spend. i've been trying, although not usually successfully, to stick to a budget and it's finally hit home that little extras here and there every month really add up. since i've been out of work, my monthly spending has dropped significantly, but honestly my standard of living hasn't gone down much. i found out i was torturing my wallet with the death of a thousand cuts. it's a lesson i won't forget.

i'm also looking forward to going back to school. i never thought i would say that, having had six years of engineering, but i'm pretty excited about the chinese program. it looks challenging and intense. it turns out that when i do want to do something, that's kind of the way i like it. i guess the thing to keep in mind is not to burn myself out. self-restraint has always been something i've had to work on.

how to waste your time and effort

i played my first mmorpg last friday and i have to admit i was hooked. i've been playing every day, wasting an embarrassing number of hours, until this morning when i found that i couldn't log into the server. since i couldn't play, i took some time to browse through the player forums. after half an hour of reading, it's very easy for me to say that i will never waste time on another game like this again.

i had avoided games like world of warcraft precisely because they're an incredible waste of time. i tried this one just because it was advertised as free. i found out it's free to start, but if you want to get anywhere, you have to shell out some real money. after reading through the forums, i also found out that the game has no point. it never ends. you never achieve anything. it ends when you are fed up with wasting your life on it.

i also found out that there are people in the world who have more passion for game play experience than i have passion for just about anything. not to say that i'm not a passionate person, but i was amazed at how serious people were taking this game. anyway, i can safely say that i've tried it and although it was fun at the start, it's probably better that i didn't waste any more time on it.

now let's see if i can start sleeping like a normal human being again.

strange dreams

i've been having a lot of strange dreams lately with the common theme being running away or escaping.

in one i was in some futuristic outlaw motorcycle gang where i needed to escape both the police and the gang i double crossed by getting off an island. i woke up as i was approaching a rising drawbridge at full speed in an attempt to jump over it.

in another, i was again in a futuristic outlaw motorcycle gang where i needed to escape some island, but this time by jumping off the end of a pier onto the departing ferry. i seem to remember that all the passengers on this ferry were women standing outside on the deck waiting to see if i made it or drowned.

in the most recent one, i was out on an errand to a grocery store on halloween night. i had forgotten what day it was and was wondering why the grocery store was so empty and dark. it just so happened that the store was turned into a haunted house for the night with all kinds of scary surprises. i woke up just as i was running away from two people with scary masks on.

too many sunday afternoon b-movies you say? maybe, although i'm not in the habit of watching much tv these days. i have had one or two mixed in that have had nothing to do with running away or escaping. i had one this morning where i was eating dinner and all of a sudden the setting i was in turned either into a karaoke bar or a musical. well, i did happen to catch a few minutes of moulin rouge the other day...

will power

at this very moment, i'm having a contest of will power with my brother. i hear the doorbell ringing rapidly. it must be my mom out front. it must be that my brother locked the front door on the way in. i hear him in his room playing guitar and i know he can hear the doorbell too. if i stay quiet, i can pretend i'm asleep and he'll naturally have to stop what he's doing and open the door.

...

score one point for me.

---

it is crazy hot outside which means there's no point in going out unless i intend to drive my car somewhere. if you wait until the evening to go out walking, you get mauled by mosquitoes. i've spent the last few days hiding from all of this in my room and when i haven't been napping or reading or otherwise neglecting some matter of importance, i've been digging up my old pictures and making digital copies of them so that i'll be able to see them when i'm in taiwan. i don't have a scanner so i've resorted to using my digital camera to take pictures of the prints with some interesting results.

the original pictures were taken with a cheap disposable film camera and printed on the cheapest photo paper. there are few pictures where anything is in focus and where any colors look remotely natural. taking a picture of the prints didn't do much to help the focus or tint, but the pictures came out with a nice flat quality reminding me of old posters or 1950s ads. it was a tedious process, but at least i have some copies of my old photos.

i got a call from one of my recruiters this week about a job in the bay area for which i'm not even remotely qualified for. i gave it a try though just to so i could say with a clear conscience that i haven't been dodging responsible work on purpose and got a rejection letter within two days. all in all, i've been contacted for three jobs in 2009 which have come to naught. i haven't been looking myself, but i figure if the professional job hunters can't find any job leads for me, then it's a safe conclusion that jobs are just hard to come by this year.

while packing, i've also dug out a bunch of textbooks that have been sitting in boxes since i've been moving so much this year. i was even able to sell one within a week on amazon. my first income since february! hopefully i can sell a few more before i leave.

can't sleep

i'm having some trouble sleeping these days. at first i thought it was because the heat these days makes me feel like staying home and napping all day, but today i had a very nice swim and still i'm having a hard time sleeping. the remaining explanation is that i have a lot of new things on my mind.

having finally told everyone about my plan to leave has set in motion a whole bunch of other activity that i was hoping against all reasonable hope that i wouldn't have to handle as well, but there it is. so in the next few months, not only am i preparing to leave the country, but i'm also helping my family to sell our house. fortunately i don't have to handle this all by myself, but for the time being it still weighs on me.

the decision to sell the house has been a poignant reminder of how fleeting everything is. given that, it's also been a reminder of how important it is to be self sufficient. in all my life, i'm the only one who'll be there from start to finish. everyone and everything else comes and goes and there's nothing else but to accept that.

all that aside, last week seems to have been a pretty productive week at handling these things. this week is a little less urgent and with more momentum. hopefully i can put my mind at ease and start to sleep well again.

gecko

wow, is may really almost over? i'm not quite sure where it all went but i know i spent a whole bunch of money, with a substantial amount of it going towards boring semi-practical things like insurance. insurance companies must spend a good deal of money to hire a marketing team that makes you feel happy and responsible for buying insurance against all manner of calamities because i have to admit that at the moment of purchase, i did feel responsible, if not happy. at this moment though, i begrudge living in a country where a trip to the hospital can bankrupt you.

i've begun to pack in earnest and to consider how i'm going to store my things until i come back. it looks like i'll be giving what little furniture i have away again, keeping only my books and music. i'm also parting with my old drumset. i haven't played it in some time but i have such good memories of dragging it around to shows and practices that i can't help but wonder how i ever found myself in a position to have to sell them and buy things like insurance instead.

on a happier note, i've already begun making some plans to see some sites in taiwan while i'm there. high up on the list is to check out the east coast and learn to surf. i've also learned that taiwan has some excellent places to go paragliding. i have no clue how much that hobby will cost but it'd be something i'd love to try.

round round get around

yesterday was an awesome day. i got a call around 10am to meet a bunch of friends by 11am to head to the beach. i'm always late, so i said i couldn't make 11 but i could make 11:30 which of course turned into 11:50. no problem because this set of friends is always late too. i packed up some clothes, my camera, and my beloved kite and frisbee and headed out the door.

apparently everyone else in houston was invited to the beach too because there was a lot of traffic headed to galveston. finally we made it and went to east beach. i had never been to east beach before because as it turns out you have to pay $8 to park there, which is something my parents would never have done if there was a free beach nearby. however, the two main reasons you pay $8 are:

1. so you can bring alcohol to the beach.
2. so you can go to a less crowded beach.

so i got to see east beach for the first time yesterday, and it was pretty nice as far as galveston beaches go. nice sand, not too many rocks or shells, decent looking water. we swam a ridiculous way out into the surf. the only people farther out than us were two guys on inflatable boats with fishing rods.

besides swimming, we had a lot of fun on the beach. bobby flew the kite out to the end of the string after i had told him i had done it before. we played frisbee with kyle's dog elsie who would run down any throws we didn't manage to catch. i ate a lot of junk food snacks and enjoyed a mixed drink of sailor jerry rum with sierra mist which tasted like cream soda.

afterwards, we had dinner on the seawall with a great view of the sun setting on the gulf. but, everything has it's price. i was the only one who escaped without sunburn, but i am kinda limping around on a bruised knee after being dominated in a chicken fight with nancy. to my credit, kyle cheated because he grabbed my arm and yanked me into the water while luis did his best to support me by holding on to my legs as i fell in, which is no doubt how i sustained my injury.

a little alcohol, a good beach, great friends, and battle scars. you get what you pay for.

scratch city

summer in the swampy bayou city is beginning to show its ugly face again. earlier last week two days of good rain rendered many parts of the city impassable with some roads under water for two or three days. i went out to my backyard this afternoon and was immediately set upon by an army of mosquitoes, each one leaving a bump the size of my thumbnail. it's really starting to warm up outside to the point that i wake up, have a little lunch, and siesta all afternoon until the sun goes down which leaves me wide awake at 4am. heat, humidity, and mosquitoes. i wish i was in san francisco right now.

i'm wavering between putting most or all of my things in storage, or selling everything to raise some extra cash for my trip. on one hand, it seems too hard to part with all the little things i've accumulated through the years, most especially my music and book collection. on the other hand, do i really need to keep all this stuff? am i going to carry it around for the rest of my life?

i sold a whole bunch of cd's once before and even though what i sold i wouldn't listen to that often now, i still regret it. the cash i made selling them has long since been spent but from time to time, i'll hear a song and say to myself, "i wish i still had that cd somewhere." so...crap. it seems i'm going to put my things in storage after all.

can you hear me now?

it has been a good long while since i wrote something here. if march was a month for lazily swimming, reading in starbucks, and hiding out from people in general, then april has been a month of reconnecting with the outside world.

today is a momentous day because i received my acceptance letter to study mandarin in taipei this fall. this year being what it's been so far, and with the new news of swine flu just across the border in mexico, i can't think of a better set of circumstances to just try my fortune elsewhere.

in the last few weeks, i've made some new friends, i've started playing music again, and i've done a little volunteering work at the museum. also, i've learned how to turn off the gas to the appliances so that i could fog my house without blowing it up. the fact that i applied a poisonous highly flammable product to my house and left it unattended for several hours speaks to the serious nature of the flea problem i've been having at home. fortunately, the problem seems to be subsiding.

i'm continuing to read a lot of chinese philosophy and now i'm slowly approaching kant's critique of pure reason. i'm being a little frugal and downloaded a free digital copy of it from project gutenberg. my immedate complaint is that there's no table of contents. yes, the book has had all formatting removed, so there are no page numbers to jump to, but a table of contents just listing the chapter names woud be nice. also, as soon as i looked at it, i spent about half an hour thinking of ways to text process the thing into a more readable format. in the end, i'll probably purchase a paper copy.

where has the month gone? i'm not quite sure. it's been fun but i hope may will be a better balance for me.

shaunosaurus rex

i am excited today. i just became a volunteer at the museum of natural science. what does this mean? this means i get to visit the museum for free, learn about whatever exhibits i want, and eventually be a tour guide. tomorrow is my first day to volunteer and i'll be tagging along with a group going through the genghis khan exhibition.

coming up next week i'll be following a group of hisd students and learning about the permanent exhibits. i've never been much of a public speaker and i'm hit or miss with kids. i think doing this will be a great way to learn some new skills and to give me a change of pace from working with technical people in front of a computer all day.

speaking of technical work, i had a call from my recruiter this morning and it seems the job market is starting to pick up again. i'm not really inclined to go back to work and he said he hasn't seen any jobs in my field yet, but it's always a good idea to keep your options open so i told him i'm still interested.

i spent the rest of the afternoon reading a little bit and then going out to a field to practice casting my new fishing rod. after about an hour of practice, i started to get the hang of the whole thing. can't wait to go to galveston.

monday

okay, so it's late and i've had several margaritas and several beers. i hope this doesn't do anything to reduce the sincerity of anything i write hereafter. i've had a wonderful day. today i went swimming and i have to concede that at the moment i'm an not a very good swimmer. afterwards, i was invited to dinner by my good friend luis. we met up at a mediterranean restaurant, but as nobody else had shown up, we took a nice little walk down westheimer to wings n' more to have some drinks and watch the astros play on opening day. within three innings they were down 3-0. way to go astros. it's nice to know some things never change. at least the happy hour beers were only $1.25. after we got a hold of everybody, we went back to the mediterranean restaurant only to find that it wasn't that good. instead, we had dinner at a pretty good mexican restaurant. more margaritas came and our conversation got out of hand as might be expected when margaritas are involved. our friend scott had to go home because he had work early in the morning, but luis, kyle, nancy, and i set out to shakespeare's pub, which is some hole in the wall on memorial drive. nobody knew what time it was and we arrived there at 8:30. the place was empty and we were the only excited ones there. after some darts, some pool, some drinks, some live music, everyone was in a pretty good mood but nevertheless it was time to call it a night. i wished kyle and nancy a good night, took luis back to his car, took some leftovers back home to my mom, and here i am. all in all, a pretty good day. i'm pretty fortunate to have such good friends and to have met such nice new friends so far. i've been invited to yoga, to a birthday party, and to a weekend floating down the frio river in july. wonderful. i don't know what i've done to be so fortunate. and it's still monday... who knows how tomorrow or the rest of the week will work out.

beautiful days

this past weekend i've had some of the nicest days in houston that i can remember. starting on friday, i treated myself to a delicious sushi lunch and an afternoon in the park. this time, the piece of grass i drove a long way for was the park next door to the menil collection. it was mid afternoon when i arrived there so that the western edge of the park was shaded by trees while the open center was still brightly lit. i set myself down on the cool grass near the shade. there were plenty of other people in the park sitting on blankets having picnics, reading books, or playing with their dogs. i made a mental note that i should start carrying a big blanket in my car for occasions like this. i sat in the warm sun reading chuang tzu for a long time. after that, i stretched out on the grass and stared up at the sky and let my mind wander.

i had stayed out late with some friends friday night, so saturday i stayed in bed for a long while. i didn't really sleep but was somewhere between dozing and fully awake. again i let my mind wander and thoroughly enjoyed it. after i finally got out of bed, i made my way down to starbucks where, despite my best efforts, i'm now recognized as the guy who buys the smallest coffee, leaves the smallest tip, and wastes the most afternoons. well, i'm not sure about all those titles, but i've certainly been recognized as someone who comes in often enough to warrant recognizing. after some time there, i had a craving for some greasy chinese buffet food so i called my friend pablo and we met up for an early dinner. we had a pretty good conversation about how to approach life. our outlooks are vastly opposed. he likes to have a long term plan while i like to drift about. after this, we met up some more friends and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon and evening out on a patio sipping margaritas telling old stories.

finally, today i enjoyed the afternoon by taking a nice long walk around my neighborhood. i used to do this back in high school and would hardly see anyone else walking. today i'm happy to see that there are some trails put in and more people out enjoying the afternoon this way. it might sound like a small thing, but living in a sprawling yet sparse, hot, humid, swamp like houston makes walking not nearly as practical as it should be.

since coming back to houston, i've been meaning to write every day like i was doing when i started this in colorado. for most of the month i've been reading a lot and thinking but not really forming any ideas. i've also been relatively care free these days, not worrying about losing a job, finding a job, or where i'm going in life. finally i've started to be able to just enjoy each day as it happens. however, as orlando's biographer complained, "life...has nothing whatever to do with sitting still in a chair and thinking...therefore...there is nothing for it but to recite the calendar". not having so much on my mind, i haven't been writing much, but whenever my mind starts churning again, i suppose i'll start to air it out here again.

more travel notes

2/11

today we left for albuquerque. the weather the last few days was uncooperative and we were forced to wait for a better opportunity. while waiting, i spent the days reading the wall street journal and raiding james's fridge. we also did a little hiking warm up by taking a nice walk around his neighborhood in the foothills of the franklin mountains.

on the way to albuquerque we passed through white sands national monument. it was a cloudy day and late in the afternoon which made it kind of chilly. seeing white sands again was like seeing an old friend. the first time i saw it was on my first road trip out west and it's become part of the reason why i love the southwest so much.

after having a hot'n'ready pizza for dinner in james's van, we set off again. we took a dark road that passes about 50 miles north of the white sands missile range trinity site where the world's first atomic bomb was detonated. in the same area is the valley of the fires but we didn't have time or daylight to stop there. this long dark road was truly in the middle of nowhere. while white sands was cloudy, here the sky was crystal clear. without any nearby cities to bleed light into the sky, i saw the brightest stars i've ever seen in my life. you could see stars all the way to the horizon. we got out to take a longer look at the sky. i saw the milky way for the first time. it was this fuzzy collection of stars and dust that stretched from the east end of the sky to the west. truly a beautiful sight.

james is in the habit of roll starting his car to save gas. i'm not sure if this is effective but it's certainly fun. after looking at the stars, we opened the doors to the van and pushed the car until i could barely keep pace. we jumped into the car, james put it in first gear, let the clutch go, and we rocked forward a moment before the engine started.

a few hours later, we arrived in albuquerque to stay with our friends ted and natasha. we chatted a while getting caught up with each other and ate ted's delicious guacamole dip. all in all, a pretty good day.