A philistine on the sidewalk

9/11: Later

2011-09-11T11:17:00.024+02:00

It's unimportant where I was or who I was with on the morning of September 11th, 2001. I remember and that's good enough. I feel like it's kind of bizarre for people to tell that story to each other. It was a Tuesday morning, most of us were doing incredibly mundane things that have no need to be rehashed.

Here's the thing about 9/11: there is an immense disconnect for me.

I am not a patriotic American. I have had citizenship since I was 18 and as of yet, my American passport has not served any other function than being my only proof of citizenship. All of my travels have been done on my Canadian passport.

I do not know anyone who lost anyone on 9/11. A friend of mine had a parent working in the Pentagon who was fine. That's as worrisome as it got in my world.

I do not know anyone who has lost someone in the resulting wars overseas. A guy I know from high school served a couple of tours in Afghanistan. That's the extent of how much the wars have influenced my life.

I despise the Patriot Act, but I have every option to go home if I want. I can pack up and move whenever I decide I want to do that.

I literally have no personal connection to any of it. It's just a terrible, tragic event that happened. And whatever sadness I'm supposed to feel over it (or so I'm told) would only be disingenuous. So I am not sad. I am the same as I am every other day.

If I listen to everyone today, that makes me a monster. But a friend of mine I knew in Prague posted the following as his Facebook update and I think it's accurate: "Cue the shallow and insincere patriotic remarks."

It's not that I don't care that it happened, it's just that I won't put on a sad face just so I can pretend that I'm doing the suitable amount of grieving (or any grieving at all).

I am going to go to a Ukrainian Festival and eat potato pancakes, drink some Ukrainian beer, watch some folk dancing, find me some very pretty men with their sharp Slavic features, hear some increasingly drunken Ukrainian conversation, and make friends with the little old ladies from the old world who make the cool painted eggs. Because that's what I do on random Sundays.

When it's lost: The aftermath in photographs.

2011-06-16T20:53:00.000+02:00

The defining moment for me of the 2006 World Cup was Beckham leaving the pitch with his head down in the middle of the second half of the match against Portugal. Of Euro 2008, it was one of the Czech defenders walking past Petr Cech and patting his head in consolation. Of the Stanley Cup finals this year, it is Ryan Kesler kneeling on the ice with tears in his eyes.

I am not a Canucks fan. I never have been and I never will be. But for the duration of the playoffs, they were who I got behind because some people I love love the Canucks. And because they were the only Canadian team left standing. So when they lost game 7 last night, I was slightly disappointed. Until the camera cut to Ryan Kesler and then my heart just broke.

Here's this guy who, in the course of 15 months has lost the two hockey things he's wanted most, the Olympic gold medal and Lord Stanley's Cup, on his home rink. I have never felt so bad for an athlete as I did for Kesler last night.

Spying on another life: Kundera.

2011-03-22T01:02:00.009+01:00

A lot of times, reading Kundera fees like I'm spying on someone else's memories. Like they somehow don't belong to me, even when they do. Like everything that mattered to me at the time is someone else's.

Some of them don't matter -- walking home from Strahov after a football match and the time that Betka ran over that little kid during a rugby exhibition at the Australia-New Zealand festival and all those breakfasts at Bohemian Bagel and all the worthless nothing that pop into my head for no reason at random -- and I don't know why I remember them.

And, like I feel is the case with Kundera sometimes (even if it's not true). Some of the memories lie to me. Jamie had already left the night Lew and I danced in the foyer of that place on Parizska, but the memory tells me he was there. He wasn't. Nick was there. Nick, the blue eyed Spurs fan from London who had replaced Jamie -- the way Jamie had replaced Sai -- and who I hadn't bothered to know because I was leaving soon too. And because he wasn't Jamie.

But some of it is so very real. The music -- the accidental concert we heard, lying on the couch with The Aussie just to absorb the adagietto from Mahler's 5th. Euro 2008. Even the nothing moments...sitting on my balcony watching the piano lessons in the clock tower, the first warm day of spring when everyone was out lying in the parks, watching football in Czech, the last days of summer.

Some of it mattered so much. And some of it didn't so much, but I feel like I remember all of it.

I can wrap myself in the city I love so much because he loves it so much. When I read him, I remember things I had previously forgotten because he remembers. He is gone and I am gone, but he can bring it to life enough for me to lose myself in those memories for 250 pages. And I appreciate that more than I can ever express in writing. I have also walked those streets. I have also left a part of myself in that city.

Arrogant as it may be, at some very base level, I truly understand Kundera.

The Magical Fairyland Kingdom: What is lost.

2011-03-01T07:56:00.002+01:00

When we left it, L.R. described Prague as "a magical fairyland kingdom the likes of which we will never see again." And I knew then that that was true. But I didn't realize how much I would long for it once I'd left. I was ready to go when I left. And even though there were tears shed on the flight from Prague to Belfast, I knew what I was doing was right.

But the years pass and you hold on to things. When Beks came to visit me in Belfast in May, it was obvious; I was not the only one. Her heart, like mine, was still in Prague.

I struggle with this a lot. I want to make better things of the places I am. I wanted Belfast to be better than Prague and, while I made amazing friends whom I'll carry through my life, it wasn't. I want Baltimore to be better, but it isn't. My heart is still in Prague and while this has been an ongoing theme since I left, I'm beginning to fear that it always will be.

L.R. was right. It was a perfect storm of people, time and place. My group of friends were people who liked to have a good time, who loved football and who didn't expect me to be someone I wasn't.

Now that I'm back where I started, as it were, I am finding this more and more difficult. Because my friends are the friends I had ten years ago. They are the friends who knew me when I was 20 before I was daring enough to leave the country on a whim and before I completely lost myself in a time and place.

It's harder being back than I had expected it would be. I didn't know I was going to be an alien in my own world. I didn't know that I was going to be unable to break linguistic habits picked up over three years that make my friends resentful. I didn't know that I was going to hold so dear to the memories I made while I was gone.

Most days I can live with it, the wanting to be back there. But there are some nights when I feel like I'm suffocating, like my chest is going to cave in on itself.

The removal of Wagner: My favourite Prague story.

2011-02-25T06:09:00.014+01:00

I've been listening to a lot of Mendelssohn lately. I swear this has nothing to do with my weekly brunch/canasta game with my friends; I'm obsessed with his Hebrides Overture. It's just SO good.

All of this leads me, three years after I first learned it, to verify my favourite piece of random Prague information.

My very favourite Prague story is a tidbit I picked up from one of my students. We'd been talking either about classical music in general or Prague's symphony hall, the Rudolfinum, specifically, as we were out wandering around that general vicinity one spring afternoon. We spent a good number of our lessons wandering around different parts of the city, which was fantastic (probably more for me than for him).

The roof of the Rudolfinum is lined with the busts of famous composers and during the second World War Hitler ordered the bust of Felix Mendelssohn removed. Because Mendelssohn was a Jew. The problem here is that none of the busts are labelled and the Czechs had no idea which one was Mendelssohn, so they decided to remove the bust with the most prominent nose. Which turned out to be Hitler's favourite, Richard Wagner.*

I find that story hilarious.

*In general, I love Wagner. He wrote one of my favourite pieces of music of all time (Siegfried's Funeral March) among many other excellent pieces of music.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out: Dismissing 2010.

2010-12-31T17:27:00.004+01:00

I've gone to New York City with Fraggle to spend some time with our friend Sam, who just graduated his internship at a microbrewery and is now officially a brewmaster, which is awesome.

I'm so ready for this year to be over. I've been checked out for six months.

2011 has to be better.

How to spend the Christmas cheque: Channelling my teenaged self.

2010-12-28T06:29:00.001+01:00

I secretly, and sometimes not-so-secretly, love the TV show 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' even though I only ever watched the series sporadically after I graduated high school. But I will often sit down and watch a few episodes just because it's on. My brother mocks me at length for this -- I think because I am one of the least girly girls he knows and Buffy is easily on the "girly" end of the TV spectrum. I like to pretend it's just some Joss Whedon appreciation (I literally could not love Joss Whedon more than I do), which on some level is true, but I think that really what it is is that I grew up, as it were, with Buffy.

When I was 17, I fell in love for the first time. And so did Buffy. And while my relationship was significantly less angsty (and vampirish) than Buffy and Angel's, I kind of liked, at 17, that it was more complicated than mine was. Because mine was average and sometimes I really kind of wished I had a brooding boyfriend who was dark and mysterious.

Time, of course, has taught me that the guy I had at 17 was wonderful and the relationship was wonderfully uncomplicated, that dark and mysterious is not always a good thing. I have learned that my most uncomplicated relationships have been the best ones.

But there is still a 17-year-old buried somewhere deep in my psyche who is drawn to the dark, mysterious, brooding boys, who will *always* love Angel -- and Spike, though I'll always love Angel best.

Which leads me to...I finally caved in to my own 17-year-old self and used the money my grandmother sent for Christmas to buy the entire series of Buffy on DVD.

Outwardly, I'm a little bit ashamed, but inside, my 17-year-old self is positively giddy.

And I'm okay with it.

The oldest of friends: Thanksgiving.

2010-12-04T06:27:00.001+01:00

I went to Atlanta on a whim to spend Thanksgiving with M.M., who is my oldest friend. I adore him and always have. On Monday, I had no plans. On Tuesday, I was scrambling to get laundry done and fill the car in order to drive to Atlanta on Wednesday.

In reality, I had planned to spend the holiday here in Baltimore, hiding from the world. I've been having a rough go of resettling here. I've discovered that the last eight years of actively avoiding making friends with people who have a lot of drama in their lives is in conflict with the life I lived when I lived here 10 years ago. As a result, I have grown intolerant of the drama, but my friends here have not...

I desperately needed to get out of town.

So when M.M., whom I've been friends with since I was 13 and have always *loved* , suggested offhand that I ought to join him, his brother and a few friends in Atlanta for the holiday, I jumped. A road trip, my oldest friend and a carefree holiday? I'm on board!

And I had the best time! M.M., his old roommate and I, sharing a room, were like the kids at camp who refuse to go to sleep and kept everyone else awake with our excessive giggling. We read ridiculous kids books to each other and made sexual jokes and just goofed around and it was awesome!

I love spending time with M.M., and I needed an excuse to get out of town, so this was perfect. I'm SO glad I went down...it's always easy to be around him, I get on well with his mates and I know his brother, so it was all effortless. And much needed.

Single serving: Passing encounters with strangers.

2010-10-07T08:40:00.002+02:00

I'm moving back to Baltimore this weekend, which is relevant only insofar as I have movers.

I find it incredibly validating as a human being when you meet someone and can connect with them even if it's just for a few hours. The guy who came to move me is Israeli and, as such, has that aura of impossible cool that all the young men in Israel seem to have. We got on well to begin with...he's a funny guy and we shared a bit about our lives...but when he found out that I'd spent a holiday in Israel, that was it for our "friendship." He got to talk to someone who had been there about his homeland and his experience growing up there and I got to learn some new things from a really interesting guy and express my appreciation for Israel as a tourist destination to someone who was interested to hear it.

He will not be the one to drop my stuff off when I move in down there, so the likelihood of ever crossing paths with him again is very slim. But for a few hours today, we each had an interesting new friend.

Honestly, experiences like this, the ability to connect so well with a complete stranger with no ulterior motives, are what, to me, make life most worth living. And that little bit of philosophy explains how I ended up moving to Texas on a dare and how The Aussie came to stay and how a near stranger with whom I'd shared lunch almost four months earlier ended up coming on holiday to Hungary with me, Beks and a couple of her friends.

Unposted: Before Sunrise.

2010-09-24T09:28:00.008+02:00

I wrote this post in February and for some reason never posted it. I should have (and I'm clearing out my massive number of unposted drafts -- some written under the influence, some never finished, some inexplicably forgotten) so you get it now.

Do we continue to exist, do you think, for specific moments in time, because of certain memories?

I'm suffering through my quarterly bout of insomnia, which is making me more nuts this time than it usually does. Maybe because usually I have a life to get on with. Not having school or anything specific to do is making me feel like a zombie. I don't love it. I've got a lot of time on my hands, time that I would love to use to get through War and Peace or one of the other two books I'm currently reading, but my brain is so fried that I can't process the words. I end up reading the same page six times and never processing it. I can't even practice the piano all that well because my fingers refuse to work the way I want them to. The muscle memory may exist, but the synapses aren't firing as fast as they should so I stumble too often on passages that normally give me no problems, and on pieces I know incredibly well, and get frustrated by it.

So I watch the Olympics. And movies I've been meaning to see. And get caught up on TV shows I haven't watched for three seasons because I have nothing better to do.

Well, I finally got around to finishing Before Sunrise. And watching Before Sunset. I hate romance movies. I liked these. For three reasons. First, because I believed it. It was awkward at times and uncomfortable and tense and totally natural. Organic is the word I expect douchey critics would use. Secondly, I don't think they're inherently romantic. I think they're hopeful more than anything else. There's an attitude of "it's okay to fuck up...the adventure is what's important" that I can get on board with. It's validation for following a boy I barely knew to Vienna to go see the opera. And for the adrenaline rush of finding myself in the middle of a football riot. And for going on a road trip with four near strangers. Thirdly, I think maybe because there's a part of me that understands what it's like to meet someone in some European city, purely by accident, and truly connect.

But on the other hand, I feel like the sequel was...I don't know the right word...unsettling? Like here are these two characters who have held on so much to something that happened in the past that it has truly fucked them up. But we do that, don't we? We occupy this reality where memory almost becomes more important than what we have now. And that worries me. But to some extent, we can't escape it. It shapes who we become later. It exists in the music that occupied the same space and time. It is what makes our lives tolerable when it becomes, however temporarily, intolerable. It is why we have pictures on walls and friends scattered across the globe. Because at one time, we shared something that mattered. And it doesn't have to be some random perfect romance. It just has to be some random perfect something.

Our friendship: Eleven years later.

2010-08-19T21:20:00.000+02:00

My best friend and I went to a funeral yesterday. Between that situation and the four years it's been since we last saw each other, we really lived up the 36 hours we got to spend together. It was the usual beer and chilling out and making fun of each other. And it was everything I needed. As nice as it's been to see some old friends since I came back, given the choice of all my friends, I would almost always choose to spend the day with him. Because he gets me and I get him and it's comfortable and easy.

We keep growing up (sort of) and leading more and more disparate lives. And even though I know that he'll always know me, sometimes right before I see him I worry that I'm going to show up and our relationship won't be what it has always been. Yesterday, he told me something that made me realize that the dynamics of our friendship will always be the way they've always been.

Yesterday, my best friend told me which story in our long history he tells people who don't know me when he's explaining our friendship. I use the exact same story.

13 August: Life and death and the stories in between

2010-08-13T23:45:00.012+02:00

I've been very neglectful. I have nothing to write, these days. I don't feel, these days. I just am. Nothing to do, nothing to feel, just existing.

But not today.

Today, an old friend celebrated her 30th birthday. And my grandfather celebrated his 88th.

This morning the mother of a very good friend of mine lost her battle with cancer.

This afternoon the sister of a friend gave birth.

Today, my best friend called me home.*

Today, I miss my Belgian brother (Nicolas) so much that my heart hurts.**

I always miss Prague so much that my heart hurts.

Today, everything I've lived, all the stories I have about the places I've been, the loves I've had, my friends in all of their myriad countries and cultures and skin colours, my family, everything and everywhere and everyone who have shaped who I am, seem incredibly important.

*I will see him next week. I can't wait. But I still feel an immense amount of guilt over having missed his wedding last summer.

**In fairness this is in part because last night I found his pictures from our semester together that I had totally forgotten that I had and had never really gone through -- in which I found some fantastic pictures of our time together that made me laugh -- and then by happenstance woke up to a fantastic email from him.

Home: My life at 30.

2010-06-26T08:00:00.000+02:00

Home is a word that doesn't really mean anything to me. Since I turned 18, I have lived in 11 places in three countries. Home, to me, is usually wherever I happen to be.

As a result, I can feel at home in a lot of places. Reykjavik was beyond brilliant*, Boston was as awesome as I remember. Even S.P's neighbourhood in NYC was somewhere I could feel at home given a month or two. And really, what it comes down to, is how a city feels. I've visited cities I could live in and cities I couldn't. I've *lived* in cities I could live in and cities I couldn't.

I'm beginning to realize that while I have nothing to show for my 30 years like some of my friends, I have things that are far more intangible that I think make me richer. I may not have one home, but I have travelled more than most of my peers; I have friends in 22 countries and 26 states on 5 continents who I would visit without a second thought given half a chance. What many of them have in a house or a Lexus or an iPhone or whatever, I have in memories and passport stamps and photographs and the amount of quality beer I've consumed. And if we're being honest, I think that I would always choose those intangibles over what they have. They chose to have something they can touch, I chose to have something I will always have. In 20 years, will I care that today I can't afford an iPhone? No. Because instead of buying an iPhone, I went to Jordan and slept in the red desert.

I am okay. I don't need a house; I needed Hungary.

*I loved Reykjavik and while it's true I was there during the midnight sun, it's a city I think I could live in. Unlike a lot of the other visitors I met (honeymooners, students who were there for two months, random other strangers), I had no problem with the constant daylight. I suspect this is because of my natural schedule where it's often getting light before I go to bed. I really, really enjoyed Iceland. It's a gorgeous country and the people were some of the best I've ever met. Icelanders are incredibly friendly, warm people and being that I was travelling alone, that was really awesome!

Happy Birthday: The bittersweet.

2010-05-20T05:09:00.015+02:00

Today is the Ex-Fiance's 30th birthday. I never know how to feel about his birthday when it rolls around, but I always feel the same way. We haven't spoken since I moved to Prague and I don't ask and our mutual friends don't tell. This is probably for the best.

I started writing a novel after we started dating the second time around. Some of it was true, some of it was not, some of it was true in the sense that it happened, but not in the sense that it didn't happen to me. But the ending of it was the ending that had always been, in some way or another, with all of my boyfriends. Or rather what the ending would have been if I'd loved them a little more. Or if they'd loved me a little more. It hurts me now to see the ending I wrote for my characters because there's a lot of it that ended up being somewhat accurate. I'll spare you the understated dialogue, but here's the paragraph at at the end...

From the manuscript:

If it had been a movie, there would have been a lingering kiss, the kind reserved for lovers in the purest sense of the word, but this was not a movie where the audience feels some deep sympathetic sorrow for the characters who, under different circumstances, could have spent all eternity together. Brennen and I were never those characters. So there would be no heartbroken sigh from the woman in the third row while we exchanged last looks or worse, last kisses over an agonizingly long period of time, no backwards glances over the shoulder or turning and running through the terminal to catch each other. We said our goodbyes as best we could and that was it. That really was the last time I saw Brennen. We kept in touch for a year or so and then everything changed again. I moved to Prague and he got married and that was that.

That all makes more sense if you can read it in context, I promise, but some things aren't meant for other people to read. Even if they're just fiction. But the basic premise remains. The Ex-Fiance (whose name is not Brennen) and I had a similar final split. The details aren't exactly the same, obviously, but what you read above is.

I didn't know, then, that in the end we would split up, that we would want lives so completely different that they couldn't be reconciled. There was a period of time that I really did think we'd spend forever together. I didn't know, then, that I would move to Prague, it was just somewhere that I'd always wanted to go. Weirdly, we did keep in touch for a while and I did move to Prague and then we stopped communicating. We stopped having more than passing things in common and that's okay.

I sincerely hope he's happy, wherever he is.

I hope that he got everything he wanted.

The bucket list: Revisited and revised.

2010-05-13T20:57:00.003+02:00

As my life changes, so too does my bucket list. Things get crossed off because they are no longer important. Things get added because new ideas present themselves.

(I promise I'll post about Israel and Jordan soon...the trip was great!)

So here's the list revised...

1. Get my doctorate
2. See the Northern Lights
3. Hike a glacier
4. Live in a fishing village
5. See the Midnight Sun game
6. Touch the Stanley Cup

7. Take my dad, grandfather and brother to a Leafs game
8. Have a paper published in a reputable journal
~~9. Have a book published in my field of study~~

10. Celebrate St. Patrick's Day in Ireland -- 17 March 2009, 2010

11. Road trip across Canada
12. See as much of the world as I can including, but not limited to: Serbia, Croatia, Iceland -- 3 - 8 June 2010, Greece, Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, Thailand, Israel -- 24 - 27 April, 2 - 8 May 2010, Jordan -- 27 April - 2 May 2010, New Zealand, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Sweden -- 28 April - 5 May 2009, Norway, Hungary -- 31 December 2009 - 7 January 2010, Russia, Ireland -- 22 - 26 April 2009 the first time, the Maldives, the Seychelles, India, Cuba, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Monaco, Australia, Bolivia and Costa Rica
13. See all 50 US states (I'm at 42 at the moment)
14. See all 13 Canadian provinces and territories (I've got something like half here, which is embarrassingly low)

15. Live on an island -- 3 September 2008 - 3 June 2010
16. Learn to ballroom dance
17. Play the cymbals in a performance of the prelude of Bizet's 'Carmen'
18. Drive a zamboni
19. Walk barefoot on the grass at Camden Yards
20. See every AA ballpark in one summer
21. See every AAA ballpark in one summer
22. See every major league ballpark in one summer
23. Take my kids to watch the ships pass through the locks on the Welland Canal
24. Have kids
25. Make the perfect batch of pecan puffs
26. Run a half marathon before I turn 32
~~27. Teach college students that history isn't at all what they learned in high school~~
28. Have a romantic relationship where there isn't an imbalance of power (I've had nothing but...sometimes I have the power and sometimes he does)
29. Complete a triathlon
30. Learn Russian to a point where I can carry on a conversation in the language and not feel completely overwhelmed

31. Visit my grandfather's home town in BC
32. Bungee jump
33. Sky dive
34. Go to a World Cup match (ideally with someone who likes football as much as I do)
35. See England play at Wembley
36. See Spurs play at White Hart Lane (with a little better luck, I'd have gotten this one done last weekend)
37. Host a dinner party -- Thanksgiving, 2007, 18 December 2008
38. Have a room in my house, the sole purpose of which is to serve as a library
39. Read all of the "classics"
40. Have a Newfoundland (the dog, not the province)
41. Stay overnight in a lighthouse
42. Spend an entire week away from the computer
43. Learn to identify ten constellations not called Orion, Casseopeia and the Big Dipper -- in progress
44. Reconcile history with my faith and establish exactly what it is that I believe -- Winter 2010
45. Hike the Grand Canyon
46. Spend a Christmas drinking on the beach in an exotic location

47. Drive the Autobahn
48. Sleep under the stars
49. Bike across the US (or the UK)
50. Ride an elephant (though I would settle for a camel)
51. See a peacock in the wild
52. Ride the Trans-Siberian Railroad

53. Surf (if my mum can do it, I can too!)
54. Scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef (so cliche, but there must be a reason everyone wants to do it)
55. Go to Burning Man
56. Attend a sporting event as a VIP -- 13 August 2008 Sparta Praha v. Panathinaikos Athens
57. Coach a swim team

58. See a shuttle launch
59. Watch the sun come up on the Charles Bridge -- 19 August 2008
60. Share a road trip with someone -- Ireland, Easter Break 2009
61. Learn to shoot a gun
62. Live for at least a month in a flat/house with a view of the ocean
63. Live on a houseboat for a week
64. Test drive a car I will most definitely never be able to afford
65. Fast for three days to better appreciate the fact that some people regularly don't eat for three days at a time because they don't have anything to eat
66. Hitchhike

67. Go to Wimbledon
68. Ride on a Ducati (I don't necessarily have to be driving...in fact, ideally, there would be a very hot man with a very sexy accent driving)
69. Photograph a demonstration -- 10 January 2009

70. Get through Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' before I turn 35
71. Learn to rollerblade in a way that doesn't resemble a toddler taking her first steps
72. Learn to properly throw a frisbee (because I *totally* suck at it)
~~73. Become the premier historian in my field~~

74. Retire to a fishing village in Nova Scotia
75. Have season tickets to the symphony, opera and/or ballet
76. Learn to play the guitar
77. Compete in a masters swimming event
78. Dance without being so self conscious -- 29 August 2008 spontaneously in the foyer of a random building in Old Town with Lew

79. Brew beer -- November 2008
80. Learn to play chess

81. Buy a house
82. Have a real bathtub (read: one with feet)
83. Learn to cook a really great dish by heart
84. Learn one poem by heart
85. Go to an ice bar (as in a bar made from ice)
86. Visit a fully functioning commune
87. Attend an opening at an art gallery

88. Stay overnight in a treehouse (belonging to my kids or in an exotic location...doesn't really matter)
89. Teach my kids to score a baseball game
90. Show up at the airport with just a book, my camera and my passport and hop the next available international flight, no matter where it is headed
91. Crash a kickass party -- 20 September 2008, 7 May 2010
92. Spend a rainy day at home listening to classical music and/or opera on vinyl records
93. Spend a night sleeping on the beach (preferably not passed out from too many Christmas cocktails)
94. Master liquid eyeliner -- January 2009
95. Go to a bonfire party on the beach -- 7 May 2010, Tel Aviv, Israel
96. Try as many new foods as possible -- ongoing
97. Sit in on a rally for something I vehemently oppose
98. Go on a wine tasting tour -- 5 May 2010
99. Go a week without buying anything at all
100. Go to a professional football match with R. (because I think secretly, he'd love it)
101. Own a 1968 manual transmission SS Camaro convertible

102. Solve a Rubik's Cube -- 2 April 2009
103. Participate in a polar bear swim
104. Run a 5k

105. See Roman ruins -- April 2010

106. Learn to appreciate scotch

107. Submit a photograph to a competition

108. Master an accent

109. See the midnight sun -- June 2010

The future: A cautious optimism.

2010-04-17T10:01:00.000+02:00

1. There's some potential on the job front. I found out some promising things about a job I want very, very much.

2. Even if the job doesn't work out and I've still got nothing when I go home, my old roommate, S., offered me the spare room at her house in North Carolina for a couple months while I get myself figured out, which is an infinitely better option than going back to my parents' place in New York where it will be all but impossible to find even a waiting job.

3. Dear Iceland volcano, please sort yourself out by this time next week. I'm sure you will, but I'm gonna be some pissed if I have to spend my birthday in Belfast instead of exploring Petra with my friends.

4. I'm really ready to move on to whatever's next even though I'm more uncertain than usual about what that is. I don't know where I'll be or what I'll be doing, but I get the sense it'll be okay. It always is.

5. The Austin Marathon...I promised Travis that if he started training for the Austin Marathon next February, I would train for a half...and if I'm in Texas, run it. I need to get my ass in gear. Not just because of this half...I've put back on all the weight I lost in Prague, which is making me really uncomfortable in my own skin. It's not awesome.

Leaving Europe: The pros and cons.

2010-04-11T09:14:00.000+02:00

After two years and eight months of living in Europe, I will be returning to North America at the end of May. Part of me is relieved. Part of me is dreading it.

The pros:

1. A car. I will have one again. This makes me insanely happy.

2. Sun. There will be sun. And warmth. And a proper summer.

3. My mental health. Will be much improved.

4. The cost of living. Will be numerically the same as it is here, but without the exchange rate of 1.6 - 1.8 dollars to the pound (depending on the day).

5. Traffic. Will be on the proper side of the road.

6. Living alone again. I love my housemates; they are all really awesome people who I love being around. But I *really* miss living alone. Here, when I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I have to get dressed; when I live alone, this is not the case.

7. Anchor Steam. Will no longer be $3.50/bottle.

8. Reykjavik. It turns out that not only was Iceland Air the cheapest option from London to Boston for the return, but they have a tourism program where because you have a layover in Reykjavik, you have the option of going and spending a few days or a week or whatever in Iceland before you complete your journey...at no extra charge. I'll be spending five days there on the way home.

The cons:

1. Airfare. It will not be $70 to fly to Paris on a whim anymore. New Year's trips to Hungary and birthday trips to Israel will no longer be an option.

2. The Mini-UN reunion 2010 in Amsterdam. I will miss it. This is my biggest regret of the year.

3. The World Cup. Will now be showing at some ridiculous time of the morning for me.

4. Beer. There's damn good beer in Europe. There's also damn good beer in the US, it's just harder to find on tap. Also, I imagine that bottles of my favourite beer will no longer be affordable in large quantities.

5. Jobs. I still don't have one. It is starting to stress me out.*

6. Readjustment. I imagine there will be one, though I doubt it will be as severe as my acclimation was to Belfast after leaving Prague.

*Is it wrong that this is number five on this list after travel, my friends, a football tournament and beer even though it's probably the most important one as far as being able to afford all of the other things?

History, context and the Irish Catholic church.

2010-04-05T05:26:00.000+02:00

There's been a whole thing over here with the archbishop/Cardinal of a diocese nearby who in 1975, as a junior priest, was witness to the signing of a document forcing children who had been abused by a senior priest to remain silent. This all came to light a few weeks back and people are very upset about it.

Let me make this abundantly clear; I do not, in any way, condone the principle of silence that the Church (any church because they all do it, but the Catholics seem to be the most visible) has adopted, nor do I think that sexual abuse is anything other than deplorable.

I do not, however, believe that all the blame should fall on this priest just because he's the only one who is still alive. I think it's awful that that's the way the Church has dealt with things over the course of its history, but I don't think that any of us, living at that time, in that position, would have done anything other than what Sean Brady did. And for us to sit here 35 years later and say we wouldn't is incredibly self-righteous.

Do I think it was right? Of course not. Would I have done the same thing? Weighing the options, absolutely. If I'm a junior priest in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, you can bet your ass that I'm keeping my mouth shut and my head down.

So I have a really hard time with the way it's all being treated by the media, both here and over in the states. I think it's a very dangerous thing to pass judgment on history using modern mentalities. By doing that, we brush away the realities of the society in which the events took place and to some extent that makes it too easy to dismiss that society all together. Can we all agree that it was wrong? Certainly. But to condemn it with the self-righteousness of modernity and in the light of countless other exposed similar agreements and payouts is useless.

Things like this will continue to be exposed and people like Sean Brady will continue to be the scapegoat for a much, much bigger problem. The problem isn't the Sean Bradys. They are merely a symptom. The problem is the Church policy. Addressing the symptom with modern flair accomplishes nothing. Until an international, high-powered group of someone are willing to stand up and fight the problem itself at its root in Rome, the problem doesn't go away. I feel like this is common sense, but there are so many people who are happy to berate the symptom.

Progress, of a sort: Jobs, moves, trips and books.

2010-03-28T17:33:00.000+02:00

I used to be so good at keeping up this blog. I used to have things to say. And now I feel like the only time I use it is to exorcise the demons, as it were. Which is all very emo of me. Anyway, a few developments that are mostly non-emo.

1. The trip to Israel and Jordan for my birthday is coming together nicely. As luck would have it, not only are two of my Goucher friends in Jerusalem and Amman, the French member of the Mini-UN just moved to Jerusalem for a six-month project. I'm pretty excited about this trip!

2. I applied for my dream job last weekend, so cross your fingers. It's a job I'm really well qualified for and a job where I have an in. The only "downside" is that it's back in Texas. It's not that I didn't like Texas, I just didn't like the Texas-y hyper-conservative, Jesus-y politics. I don't do well with hyper-conservative, theocratic politics. But I have good people in Texas (even if they're all spread out now. R.A. has moved back and is in San Antonio, Q. is in Houston, Travis is in Austin, Jaime's in Fort Worth, Daniel's in Lubbock and V. is still in Canyon) and I loved the weather and the scenery, so it really wouldn't be bad news.

3. As for when I return from my extended stay in Europe, it looks like it'll be two months sooner than planned. And two months from now. I'm most looking forward to getting in the car and going on a LONG drive. Like 16 hours. And cheese nips. Seriously. I just hope I can find a job by then.

4. I have accepted that I am not going to finish reading 'War and Peace' before my 30th birthday. I just can't get into it. Someday I'll get through it. But it's not going to be in the next five weeks.

St. Paddy's week: Beckham, Firefly, the races and one half of the Swedes.

2010-03-20T00:30:00.001+01:00

1. One half of my Swedish contingent of friends, Rickard and Caroline, were in from Sweden for four days to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in Ireland. I was *so* happy to see them. I'm closer with Rickard than I am with Caroline and because I talk to him probably 3 of the 4 times I talk to them, I had forgotten how much I really enjoy her company. But anyway, it was so much fun to have them here. Four days of drinking and general carousing were much needed; I've really missed having people around who really know me. And they got on really well with my housemates, which was unsurprising, but really great. As it happened, Club Manager Housemate left the city for the week to avoid the rioting that went on in our neighbourhood on St. Paddy's Day last year and generously offered up his room. We bought him two cases of beer as a thank you.

2. I am disproportionately upset by Beckham's achilles injury. I know he's nowhere near as fast as he used to be and he's always been a liability, but everything he has ever said and done has proved that he truly loves the game. And for this to happen this close to the World Cup is really sad. I'd have liked to have seen him go out on his own terms. Such a cruel twist, this.

3. The Vet had a friend over from Belgium last weekend, so she and Lawyer Housemate invited me along to go to the races. A lot of the people racing horses were clients of The Vet (whose practice is in equine medicine), so we got to be up close with the horses and everything. It was really fun. My first ever horse races. I put my first and only ever bet on a horse...I had a bit of inside info, to be fair, but I put a fiver on the horse of one of The Vet's clients in the last race of the day and won 15 quid. And promptly retired from betting the horses. Nowhere to go from there but down. Anyway, it was a great day. The weather was beautiful (which if you read on a regular basis, you know never happens) and I got out of the city (which if you read on a regular basis, you know never happens) and we got down to the beach before we headed out to the peninsula and it was so needed and SO much fun.

4. The job hunt is going. I've applied to a LOT of jobs and gotten few responses from any of them. I'm getting a little desperate. I do *not* want to move back to my parents' place in back ass nowhere...even though neither of them actually live there anymore. I'm a smart girl with a great education and a good level of experience, why can't I find a job? And it doesn't help that I've been watching a lot of Firefly lately and all I can think is "why don't I live in a time when space travel is the norm?" I have met a lot of people in my time abroad who are like me...who would jump at the chance to do what they do in space.The idea of seeing a vast expanse of unknown is fantastic to me and it's unfortunate that I never will. I just wish I could figure my life out.

5. As for The Graphic Designer, it is unfortunate that our relationship has grown since we left Hungary. If only in the sense that he's in one country and I'm in another and about to move across an ocean. This is not ideal. The more we get to know each other, the more I like him and the more I'm aware that it's impossible. As a friend though, he's stunning and challenging and I love it.

Gold: Why this game means everything.

2010-03-01T06:59:00.004+01:00

My country won a record number of gold medals in Vancouver. And good for them! That's a pretty amazing accomplishment. 14 gold medals. But before the gold medal hockey game, I would gladly have traded 13 of them to ensure that 14th and I couldn't have asked for a better game to get it.

R.A. and I were just talking about how in the US, what matters is the medal. Doesn't matter which one, it's the count. In Canada, it's about the men's hockey gold. Nothing else matters. It's great that we got 26 medals (a record haul for Canada overall), but if were were to ask the average Canadian on the street going into the game, 95% of them would have sold off the 13 other golds and whatever rounds out the count for a hockey gold because that's the one that *really* matters.

R.A. "I'll take being better at everything else over being better at hockey, any day."

Me: "Funny, I'll take being better at hockey over being better at pretty much everything else."

What it comes down to is this: in ten years, no one is going to remember who won gold or silver or bronze in the cross country skiing. I will not remember in four years who won the biathlon or the aerial skiing. (I don't remember that now and it was last week, so...) But in 20 years, if you ask the average Canadian on the street how today's hockey game went down, they'll be able to tell you. We were up 2-0, the US came back and tied it with 24 seconds to play and then Sid scored in overtime to win it for us. In 15 years, an entire generation of hockey players will be saying, "I spent my childhood on the pond pretending to be Sidney Crosby scoring the winning goal for Canada in overtime at the Olympics." I promise you that.

If this game was everything that I love and is good about hockey (apart from the heart attack I was sure was coming when the US tied it), this win was the future of Hockey Canada.

This game will be the one that I talk about when I'm 90. It was a fight. And we won. Victory has never, and possibly will never again taste this sweet. A hard fought gold medal on home ice with an overtime goal from the biggest superstar Canada has seen since Wayne Gretzky.

If you were born to the maple leaf, it was perfect.

Space, the final frontier: Life outside the world.

2010-02-27T09:37:00.001+01:00

I don't like most science fiction, to be honest; I have a hard time with it because a lot of it is totally absurd. But TV shows like 'Firefly' and books like 'Ender's Game', both of which rank in the top ten of on my list of favourite TV shows/books, and my addiction to the road and going new places and seeing new things make me realize that if space were an option for the everyday individual without an advanced degree in physics and/or engineering, I'd take it without a second thought. If I thought I could ply my trade in space, I would do it. I am made for that sort of life.

I envy fictional people; the people of Firefly and Ender's Game and Star Trek. I envy that they get to go beyond what is known and see things that I will never, ever know. I envy that they get to travel through this massive unknown to meet an even bigger unknown. I would *love* that life. I was made for that life.

I can't be the only one. I can't be the only person who would give up her earth life for the unknown beyond it. Astronauts aside, I mean.

I want something beyond what I can have, I think. And I think that is my fatal flaw.

I was born too early.

In another life, I would be a historian on some spaceship.

What is WRONG with you?: A look into sexual baggage.

2010-02-17T10:10:00.001+01:00

The boys I have loved, truly loved, have been a different breed of man entirely from the guys I have just aimlessly slept with for want of a penis, or physical contact or just someone to call me pretty. The boys I have loved have been smart and caring and adventurous and that is why I loved them. The guys I have just slept with have been varying degrees of failures, personally, professionally, emotionally or some combination of the three.

I am not faultless, of course. Sometimes the baggage can't help but creep in.

------------------------------------------

I slept with a man once who had somehow convinced himself he gave stunning head. I say convinced himself because I am certain that no woman ever said those words to him.

He vastly overestimated my pleasure and then later told me that I had had an orgasm. At the time, I found it confusing. "No," I told him, "if I had cum, you'd have known." But he had talked himself into it and there was no going back for him. In his mind, I had had an earthshaking orgasm. In my mind, I was just waiting for him to get bored down there and get to not giving me an orgasm in a more traditional way.

Years later, I find this particularly funny. If he thought that was an orgasm, girls have been lying to him his entire sexual life.

Which is less funny, really, than it is sad.

------------------------------------------

"No," it turns out, is not the correct response to the mid-coitus question, "are you happy." Then again, that question should never, ever, ever, ever be asked mid-coitus, so I'm not entirely to blame.

A guy I once kind of cared about asked me that the (not surprisingly) only time we ever slept together. It was not the right answer. The right answer was, yes. It was, however, the truthful answer.

------------------------------------------

A boy I once loved whispered into my ear the last time we finished, "in another life, we could have had an amazing life together." We had reached the end we had known was coming.

It messed me up. The thought of that idyllic life did not ease the hurt that followed; it made it worse. He had imagined a life for us that could never exist and he had planted it in my head and I resented him for it.

------------------------------------------

"If I thought you'd say yes, I'd ask you to marry me," a guy I was dating once told me before I went away for 10 days.

Who says that to a girl he barely knows? A girl who he knows has only recently come out of an engagement?

------------------------------------------

I left in the middle of the night after he confessed he had also been sleeping with the girl upstairs. He was mad at me for it, said it made him feel like I was a just a fuck toy.

I suggested that his sleeping with the girl upstairs made me just a fuck toy.

We never spoke again.

------------------------------------------

A man much too good looking for me kissed his way up from between my legs and said "my girlfriend is coming for a long weekend." I asked when. "In two days."

I could have ended the charade when he had the balls to introduce us to each other two days later and said only, "we work together." I could have told the truth. But there was nothing to be gained except an unhappiness I didn't wish on him.

Had I been less vain, I'd have ended the affair well before he left the state. Had I been less vain, the affair would never have begun in the first place.

------------------------------------------

"Come home with me and I'll fuck you good." I got that in a text once in a bar while I was out with a bunch of people. From a fuck buddy who was sitting right next to me when he sent it. I declined the invitation.

I didn't particularly like that guy once he opened his mouth. But he had the right parts and I had no better prospects and I was still pretty damaged over the ex-fiance.

------------------------------------------

"Oh yeah? I'm a Leafs fan too!" a guy tells me when he finds out I bleed blue. He thinks this will impress me, that I will go to bed with him because of it.

I do, but not because he's a Leafs fan.

Weeks later, while I'm prattling on about line shake-ups and possession in the neutral zone, I realize he has no idea what I'm talking about. I throw in something utterly ridiculous that he should catch. He doesn't; he continues to agree with me.

I use this as a sexual weapon. For no other reason than because I can. And because it's stupid that any guy should have to lie to a girl about what sports he follows.

------------------------------------------

It hasn't all been like that.

There have been boys who have said the right things and been the good guys and fought with me on principle rather than for the fight itself, but because of that, they don't get mentioned. And even the one who didn't say the right thing who did make it into this dubious post did so with the best of intentions, which is more than can be said for most of the other guys here.

And again, I am not blameless. I have almost certainly said the wrong things and responded the wrong way and picked fights for the fight, not for the principle.

So this is the new year: A change of direction.

2010-02-06T03:59:00.000+01:00

I made an executive decision when I got back from Hungary. I decided to drop out of school. Maybe forever, maybe not. But I need to not be in school for a while. I am not happy in this program and given that I don't want to teach and right now, I hate academia, withdrawing seemed like the best thing for me to do at this point.

I spend all my time around people who like to stand around and talk about how smart they are, who are condescending and who guard knowledge like it's gold. And that's not the way it should be. Knowledge should be shared. But it seems to me that until you have a job as a professor, knowledge gets hoarded and people get intentionally misdirected in order to preserve the secrecy of it. I hate that.

So I withdrew all of my applications to the schools in Canada where I'd been looking and started considering my options as someone with an MA, but not a PhD in History, who doesn't want to teach. They are not many. But they exist.

It turns out that my dream job exists. The job that I would have applied for years ago if I'd known it existed. And there's a job opening in Halifax that closes a week from today. Keep your fingers crossed; I am perfect for it and it is perfect for me. It's a proofreader/editor job for a sportswire, so it's all the things I *loved* about my job in Texas and none of the entitled second-rate athletes. So, with exactly the kind of experience they want and two former bosses (Q. and before him, Zach) who are more than willing to give me stellar recommendations, I think I stand a good chance. Keep your fingers crossed.

I've also applied for a couple of technical editor/proofreader positions in various places. A couple in Baltimore, but several in Albuquerque. I think I'd like Albuquerque. It's big enough to have a good cultural base and it's growing, it's small enough that it's only a short drive to get out of town and into the wide open nothing, the Rio Grande runs through it, the Sandia Mountains are right there and the sun shines. A lot. I know I've said I miss the sun, but I don't think any of you really know how much I mean that. I think I'd be very happy in Albuquerque.

I spent the last couple of days applying to the National Parks Service and Parks Canada. Turns out they have jobs for historians. Which, technically, -- and, more importantly, according to the government's definition -- I am. I've also applied to long term park guide posts. If I don't get a historian job, I'll take the park guide job if it's offered...it's a foot in the door at a job I think I would enjoy; it's an environment where knowledge is meant to be shared. The beauty of the NPS jobs is that you're not tied to one place for too long a time. No more than four years before you can leave if you choose to. Which is good for someone like me who gets restless. Or who ultimately might want to end up in Albuquerque.

I feel like a giant weight has been lifted. Partly because I'm not being dragged down by academia and partly because I know that my time in the Land Without Sun is coming to an end sooner than later. Even though I don't know exactly where I'll be in six months, I know it will be different and that I'll finally be getting my life going.

Maybe 30 won't be so bad after all.

My love: Hockey.

2010-01-30T20:17:00.001+01:00

This picture is everything I love about hockey.

I have an actual real people post pending about my future and stuff, but I was just reading about the US Pond Hockey Championships, the finals of which are being played today out on some lake in Minnesota. That makes me giddy...hockey the way it's meant to be played. And I've got a doubleheader of Canadian goodness on Hockey Night in Canada tonight starting with the Leafs (oh, how I suffer still bleeding blue) and Canucks and ending with the Flames/Oilers.

I will have a few beers and cheer loudly while my housemates are away to various places for the weekend and stay up way too late to swear at the Leafs' terrible defence and hope that Iginla breaks his goalless streak (and the Flames break their really bad losing skid) and drink a few more beers.

And for a few hours, even if the Leafs and Flames lose, my life will be perfect.

Years later: What sticks with you.

2010-01-29T09:17:00.001+01:00

I can't believe I never wrote about this because it was such a vivid experience...

Sometime between Christmas and New Year's the year I was in Prague, Donnie and I were coming back from Tulip quite late -- probably 2 or 3 in the morning. He had come back for Christmas and was staying with Mai and her flatmates and I was going to get the tram, so we were both going the same way. Two doors down from Mai's flat was a pub that was pretty typical of Prague pubs. Anyway, we're walking back, both of us fairly sober, and we see this guy absolutely berating this girl outside the pub, standing so that she couldn't go anywhere and hitting her every few sentences. I don't remember anything being said, but maybe there was...my adrenaline was pumping like crazy.

We go over there and Donnie says something in Czech to the guy and in that time that he's distracted, I step between him and the girl* and between us we pulled a divide and conquer. I walk the girl to the end of the street trying my best to communicate because I don't speak Czech and she doesn't speak any of my languages while Donnie deals with the guy in what limited Czech he has. Anyway, by the time the girl refuses a taxi and walks off around the corner, Donnie has finished up business with the guy.

So there we were, standing on the corner assessing the situation. Was I all right? Was he all right? I had scared him. He had worried me. Was I able to get anything out of the girl? Was she okay? Was he able to get anything out of the guy? Where was he now? And as we're standing there, the guy comes down and starts what I assume was an apology and an explanation because it started with pleading and ended with him in tears on his knees hugging Donnie around the waist.

He ended up sauntering off towards the theatre (the opposite direction from the one his girlfriend had taken) and Donnie wanted to take me to the tram and wait with me because the tram was in the same direction as he'd gone, but I was having none of it. Instead, I wandered down the bank of the river and over the Charles Bridge in an attempt to process what had happened and get some of the adrenaline out of my system and then caught a tram home in Mala Strana.

That was the last time I saw Donnie.

*I found out later that had kind of panicked Donnie because he thought the guy was going to throw a punch at me, which is funny because I was worried he'd do the same to Donnie as soon as my back was turned -- he did, but was drunk enough that he missed and hit Donnie weakly in the shoulder.

Old friends: Our lives have gotten away from us.

2010-01-23T04:25:00.000+01:00

In the last two weeks, I've had two dreams involving the same person. He's someone I love very, very much and who I haven't talked to in almost six months. Because our lives have gotten away from us. I don't like the distance.

In the first dream he decided he no longer wanted to be my friend. I can't remember what the situation was, but it came down to my not being around. And it's true. I'm not. But I woke up in a mild panic about it. That's not something I could recover from easily; we have a long history, he and I.

I should have called him that day, but it was the middle of the week and his schedule is busy.

Last night I dreamt that we met up somewhere and it was good and we were "us" the way we always were. And then I had to go and we hugged, but I didn't want to let go of him because I was afraid of what would happen if I did.

I should have called him tonight, but it's Friday and he has a life.

I will call him tomorrow. Because he's my friend and he means the world to me and I miss him very much. And I just want to tell him that before our lives get so far away from us that we don't remember "us" the way we always were.

I don't like the distance.

New Year's 2010: Hungary.

2010-01-14T06:58:00.000+01:00

We had an absolute blast! It was one of the more fun holidays I've ever taken. I think it lends credence to the "it depends who you travel with" theory.

What I'll remember:

-New Year's champagne at midnight on the Chain Bridge

-Unicum Night (Well, we don't really remember Unicum Night.)

-The uni-cum-down the following day -- it's not a physical symptoms hangover, it's a complete mental hangover...our thought/speech processes were struggling until we got a lot of water and some food in us.

-PomBars and the associated top trumps

-Discussions on the artistic merit of war and combat photography

-Chris' wraparound dick (I'm not even going to try to explain that.)

-The opera (we saw Strauss 'Die Fledermaus sung in German and spoken in Hungarian...we had only a basic understanding of what was happening, but it was still one of the best productions I've ever seen.)

-Wading in the Danube

-The hostel and its amazingly patient staff (and how on my last night I was quite literally the only person there. The hostel owners told me,"just lock up when you leave.")

-The Eastern European obsession with mummified hands

-Walking through Liberty Square in the snow (it made me miss The Aussie.)

-Everything I learned about diabetes (one of my travel companions is a Type I diabetic so I asked him about a gazillion questions about it, which he was awesome enough to answer.)

-The Hungarians at that shady, shady pub

-How my cleavage saved my earring

-The company...I had excellent company

-Trendy Square (it's actually called Liszt Square)

-The Hungarian game show with the crazy gay guys and how they got so excited about getting an answer right at one point, one of them tied the host's shoe (Chris and I thought that was the best part because it was SO random.)

-The snowball fight in front of the opera house

-My snow angel and the kids having snowball fights and building snowmen in the square in front of St. Stephen's Basilica

-The very late night buying of cheese. (I have a bit of that on video, actually.)

-Hungarian Dan and his local bar (Hungarian Dan was really, really good to us...a real quality guy!)

Hungary: Emotionally.

2010-01-10T02:51:00.004+01:00

I tell him I'm stressing out about thirty. It is cocky, but I don't disagree with him when he informs me, with great passion, "we are the minority. We reject the system and study and do what interests us, not what society tells us to. We are the people who make adventures and read science to feel small and have stories to tell that about that time in Marrakesh. We, not our children or our jobs or our cars, are our stories. We don't understand the majority, but that's okay; it is more important that we understand each other."

I met a guy in Hungary who I would date in a heartbeat. Date, not fuck. Actually date, effort and all. I like him because he gets me. We had a conversation about Schrodinger's Cat and Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty (in which I was neither totally out of my element because I was surrounded by physicists nor had to explain the concepts to those who, like me, gave up physics as soon as they passed their finals) and a conversation about music and one about football and he's travelled and he reads a lot and he used the word "akimbo" in general conversation and we had a snowball fight and he's basically me, only with a penis. He has a passion for knowledge beyond just what falls in the narrow scope of his field and he seeks out new information and new experiences. He thinks about things beyond what he's told and loves certain things deeply in the same way I do. He can alternately go with the flow or make a decision and follow it through.

For the first time in a long time, I'm truly interested.

He lives a couple hundred miles away. He's still in love with his ex. His ex is a close friend of a close friend of mine.

FAIL.

The existential spiral: How dance suddenly represents my failure.

2009-12-17T21:02:00.009+01:00

I am not coping well with the prospect of turning 30 at all.

There's this little voice in my head lately that won't shut up. It whispers, "you are a failure." It's annoying as hell and it's wearing me down and more and more I'm starting to believe it. I am headed toward the bottom of an existential spiral.

Let me back up and show you how ridiculous this all is, okay?*

Here's what set me off: a dancer.

I have never in my life been inclined towards dance. Ever. I don't do it very often because I'm fairly certain I look like a seizing goat when I do. In fairness, it's not like I was at the club and saw someone dancing and immediately ended up in an abyss of self-pity. Really, he's been wearing me down for weeks. If you don't watch 'So You Think You Can Dance' then you won't know who I'm talking about, but if you do, then I really, really don't have to tell you. This season, there was this powerful little ball of amazing named Jakob who moves in ways that most people couldn't even dream of. I have never said this about anything in my life, so believe that I mean it when I say that he is so beautiful when he dances that it hurts. He is breathtaking and, at 19, is more skilled and talented at dance than I will ever be at anything, ever.

And I know, I know that most people are not given that gift, that most people are average, but I don't want to be average. I want to be better than I am.

I haven't done anything with my life.

Let me stop you again because I know where you're going; I know that I've done some interesting things and been to some interesting places, but I have nothing to show for it. While all my friends have settled into marriages and steady jobs and houses and ambition, I've been bouncing from place to place trying my hand at this and that in an attempt to figure out what I want to do with my life and I am no closer to figuring that out now than I was 10 years ago. The only thing I have to show for my life is a bunch of pictures of places I used to be and people I used to know.

Back to the dancer, I realize that comparing myself to someone who a. I have never met and b. was blessed with an incredible gift is really freaking stupid, but I watch him dance and I'm blown away that one person can be so brilliant.

I want what Jakob has. I want to be as great at something as he is at dance and I never will be. I'm not even particularly good at anything.

This wasn't where I was supposed to be at 30. I was supposed to be great at something.

*So that you know that I know that it's stupid and I shouldn't be comparing myself to someone with a skill set I have never wanted or attempted.

Perspective: A shard of light.

2009-12-16T19:28:00.000+01:00

I was talking to E.B. today about moving home next summer and the potential that exists for not finishing my doctorate. It's stressing me out more and more and with the whole 30 thing being around the corner, it's not a good combination.

The problem with living your life is that you lack perspective on it a lot of the time. And that's why you have friends.

"Do you think that maybe the reason you're not thriving in Belfast is because you're understimulated?"

He gathers in five minutes something that I have not picked up on in a whole year.

Learning: Resolution 2010.

2009-12-14T02:20:00.001+01:00

Some of you will already know this, but for those of you who don't...

I decided that for 2010, I want to learn something new every day and make note of it somewhere.

So I decided to start a blog chronicling the things I learn. The goal is every day, but that's unrealistic given my travel schedule over the next six months. I decided to get a head start on the year so that hopefully by the time the new year rolls around it'll already be a habit.

If you're interested, you can find the stuff I learn at:

And Everything In Between

The first two posts are up. Learn about weather terminology for ships and Lenin's syphilis.

On a whim: Spain and Portugal.

2009-12-08T18:19:00.004+01:00

Friday night, Urban Planner Housemate and I were hanging out at the house and decided to watch a movie in Spanish because he's just come back from living in Colombia for five months and wanted to see how much he understood. When it ended, I said "I'd really like to go to Spain, I've never been. I have a friend in Madrid I should really go and see."

Fast forward to Saturday afternoon and after checking out the cost of airfare, I've booked a two week trip to Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona at the beginning of February. Because the airfare was 105 pounds all told and I've got an impending departure from the cheap intra-Europe fares.

This brings the countries for my 2010 travel plans to seven: Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Israel, Jordan, the Netherlands and Belgium.

The end of an era: High frequency sound.

2009-12-05T02:44:00.002+01:00

I had a good run, I really did. I surpassed what the experts say is the average age of losing it. I shouldn't be upset; I got those extra years. Some of my peers were not so lucky.

Today, I learned that at some time in the last two years, I lost the ability to hear the mosquito sound.

It's a horrible sound (for those of you who have had the fortune never to hear it), but most people over the age of about 25 can't hear it. Two years ago, James put it on in the press box and nearly shattered my sanity in the course of about 10 seconds while the "adults" in the press box just watched me flail about. I was 27, I was doing well. But I tried it again tonight with Urban Planner Housemate and he could hear it and I couldn't.

*sigh*

P.S. Loving the new Blogger features.

A change of plans: Moving on.

2009-11-30T08:25:00.000+01:00

Two weeks ago, I withdrew from my classes and gave my supervisor notice that I will be leaving the country at the end of the summer.

The decision had been coming. It was primarily motivated by money, or more specifically, a lack thereof. I receive no funding from the university or the UK government and despite this, all my applications for funding to go to London and Dublin to do research in the archives have been denied. I can't afford this education and honestly, at the level I'm working and the benefit it will be to the university when I have completed my work, I shouldn't have to pay what I do. I am borrowing the maximum $20,000 from the US government in student loans this year. That covers my tuition and my rent. The fact that I was denied funding -- again -- that I desperately need to complete my research pushed me over the edge. If the university isn't willing to work with me, then I'll go somewhere that is.

I am pretty zen about this. I don't love Belfast. I don't hate it, but I've never loved it. And, without my friends, it just sort of is. There's nothing keeping me here except the fact that I *love* the house I live in, but that's not enough. If this were Prague, I'd fight it...I'd find a way to stay. But it isn't, so I won't. The downside of giving up Europe is that all these crazy trips I've been taking will have to stop. No more cheap flights to random countries. And it looks like I'll exit never having made it to Poland or the Balkans. Then again, it leaves places for me to visit later.

I've been researching schools. Halifax, Toronto and Vancouver are front runners. C. is (obviously) pulling for Toronto and I love T.O. and I'm comfortable there and I have a friend base there that would make the transition so easy. But the part of me that lives for what's new wants to go to Halifax or St. John's or Calgary or...

The post-Thanksgiving food coma: 10 true facts and a few other things.

2009-11-27T14:06:00.001+01:00

Despite the fact that it was American (not Canadian) Thanksgiving last night, my housemates and I sat down to a meal of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, maple glazed carrots, asparagus, cranberry sauce and three different kinds of dessert -- sadly, none of them pumpkin pie. I was writing a paper for Canadian Thanksgiving, so this was a viable alternative.

Anyway, in the spirit of eating leftovers for the next week, T. tagged me in his post last week, so I'm recycling the post...

10 True Facts About Myself
1. I love spicy foods. Vindaloo, jerk chicken/pork, hot peppers, etc. You will never open my fridge to find it devoid of Louisiana hot sauce...even in Belfast.
2. If I had to rank the top 5 summers of my life, they would go: 2008 (Prague), 2002 (New Jersey), 2001 (Baltimore), 2007 (Texas) and 1996 (California). I love that every one of those has a completely different cast of characters, of whom I still talk to roughly 90%.
3. I own approximately 700 books. Most of them I've read. Some are part of my anti-library.
4. I have a fairly sizable collection of stolen pint glasses. I have no idea what I'm going to do with them all. No one needs 40 pint glasses.
5. I am one of the only people I know who actually drinks milk. It's a residual thing from when I was growing up...that was what we drank with dinner in my house (which is probably a residual thing from when my mother was growing up.)
6. My favourite article of clothing is my sunglasses; I cannot function without them.
7. My brother and I talk every week. It makes me happy that despite our differences and fights when we were younger, we are able to have the relationship we do as adults.
8. I *love* maps. I will stare at them for hours given half a chance.
9. I can only wink with my left eye.
10. I have a ridiculously good sense of direction. I can go somewhere once and get myself back there without directions six months later.

Your most marked characteristic?
I have no idea. My stubbornness?

The quality you most like in a man?
Being a guy's guy...most guys are too soft in today's world. (I actually agree with T. on this)

The quality you most like in a woman?
An ability to follow sports. Fandom is an added bonus.

What do you most value in your friends?
Their fealty.

What is your principle defect?
I'm brash, I try to slide by on just being smart way more often than I should and I talk too much.

What is your favorite occupation?
Astronaut. Seriously. Those people get shot out into space and that is pretty freaking awesome!

What is your dream of happiness?
Fuck if I know. If I knew, I could get started on accomplishing it.

What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
To have no interest in seeing the world; I have never understood the people who grow up somewhere, go to college 20 minutes away and then go back there and settle down and take holidays two hours away. It's so limiting.

What would you like to be?
Worth the effort.

In what country would you like to live?
Of the countries I've lived in and visited, I'd really only eliminate the UK.

What is your favorite color?
Orange.

What is your favorite flower?
Daffodil.

What is your favorite bird?
I really like flamingos because they're so goofy looking...I like giraffes for the same reason.

Who is your favorite prose writer?
Over an entire body of work, Milan Kundera. But the author of my favourite book is Gregory Maguire (Wicked).

Who is your favorite poet?
Poetry is really not my thing.

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Andrei Androfski of Mila 18.

Who is your favorite heroine of fiction?
Elphaba of Wicked.

Who is your favorite composer?
Pick a Russian. I love the bombast in Russian Classical music. The composers of my favourite pieces, however, are Mussorgsky (The Great Gates of Kiev from Pictures at an Exhibition) and Wagner (Siegfried's Funeral March from Twilight of the Gods, the final part of 'The Ring Cycle').

Who is your favorite painter?
Georges Seurat. I love pointillism. (I would argue that Maurice Sendak is an illustrator a la Norman Rockwell, not a painter, T.)

Who is your hero in real life?
I don't have one. I never have.

Who is your favorite heroine of history?
Cleopatra...that woman had it figured out how to rule in a man's world.

What is your favorite name?
For what? Another person? A child I plan to have? A pet?

What is it you most dislike?
Stupidity.

What historical figure do you most despise?
I have no idea...I mean, a lot of people have fucked up in a lot of ways. There are the obvious big three (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot), but none of their actions had any impact on me in any way.

What gift do you most admire?
The ability to easily pick up foreign languages.

What natural gift would you most like to possess?
Charisma.

How would you like to die?
Suddenly and without knowledge of it.

What is your present state of mind?
Nostalgic...I miss my friends who are far away.

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
I drink too often, I'm more selfish than I would like and I tend to entertain my wild fancy way more often than I should.

What is your motto?
"Try everything once -- within reason."

November 23rd: An old friend and this day in history.

2009-11-23T12:53:00.006+01:00

It has been nine years since my friend Jake was shot and killed in a hunting accident. He was 20.

Some years, I'm caught up in my own life and the day goes by without my noticing it. Some years, something kicks me in the teeth. Today it was a bus ticket.

I feel stupid being this upset about it this many years later (especially in light of it being just a year since T. lost his mom and a couple of days since S. lost hers), but it's still unfair and I'm still mad at some higher entity about it. This is the one grudge I will carry forever, I imagine.

I can remember how his face lit up when he smiled and all the times we got yelled at for talking in math class and the one time we got threatened with being sent to the principal's office for goofing off and his weird love of the movie 'Newsies' and the time he snuck up behind me during a rehearsal and got so close to me that when I finally turned around, we literally touched noses (and it scared the bajeezus out of me, which brought him great glee). He had an infectious spirit and it's tragic that so many people will never have the pleasure of meeting him.

He was wonderful.

I was blessed.

RIP Jake, you will always be missed.

Music: To be elsewhere.

2009-11-20T15:04:00.004+01:00

The Mini-UN (plus Rickard and Caroline) had a debate one night right before we all split about whether we would rather go blind or deaf. The vote was 7-2 in favour of deafness. Paulien, an ethnomusicologist, and I were the only two who would choose blindness. I have seen a lot of places and things in my life. And despite E.B.'s apt point that I would never be able to drive again, I could cope with going blind.

I could never live without music.

I don't have to be somewhere to see it...the music can bring it back. I can hear a song and be somewhere else. I can be in the truck with Q. on our way to the bar, at a Goucher party, on the tram in Prague, driving the back roads of Texas in the middle of the night, with E.B. in Sweden, at Third Base in New Jersey, in Ireland with Nicolas.

There's a line in my favourite movie of all time that goes, "And if you ever get lonely, you just go to the record store and visit your friends." It's true; no matter where they are, my friends will always live in my music collection.

I need music. Far more, I think, than I need things to see.

The truth: A woman with needs.

2009-11-14T09:04:00.001+01:00

I need to go home; I can't live in the UK.

I need my life back...a group of guy friends in a world where baseball and hockey are on at normal times of the day and the ability to drive for days if I so desire.

A Snapshot of a Former Life.

2009-11-12T11:26:00.006+01:00

It is just after midnight when she puts her feet on the dashboard and sneaks a glance at him. His face is not his own, taut and intent, eerily tinted by the light from the speedometer.

He catches her looking and winks, his face softening instantly.

As the miles race silently on, he reaches over and caresses the nape of her neck as if to reassure her he's still there.

Years later, long after they have parted, she will remember the stretch of highway, the comfortable quiet and the warmth of his hand.

You ain't a beauty, but hey you're all right: The Boss.

2009-11-09T02:22:00.006+01:00

R.A. and I had a good two hour conversation about the music of Bruce Springsteen on Friday. You read that right, two hours. She put on the Springsteen channel on Sirius Radio and I decided I wanted to listen to some while I waited for the Leafs game to come on, so I loaded up my Springsteen library. R.A. is a New Jersey girl so I'm pretty sure it's her legal and moral responsibility to love The Boss. I like it for a reason that will surprise exactly no one.

Anyway, conclusions from the conversation:

1. Early Bruce is the best Bruce because he had an edge when he was first starting (I'd say up through 'Nebraska') that has disappeared as age has softened him. Early Bruce -- and to some extent very recent Bruce -- also liked to tell a full story in song in the Bob Dylan school and that's always been something I've liked. I hate it when artists go all impossibly metaphorical and make it impossible to understand what a song is about.

2. As a result, Early Bruce is my favourite. It amazes me that someone could write "so you're scared and you're thinkin' that maybe we ain't that young anymore" at the age of 24. I like the desperation of his early work...the need to get out, the restlessness, the fear of being stuck and consequently, the recurring imagery of the road.* (See, I told you it wouldn't surprise!) I like it less for its musicality, because let's face it, his really early stuff isn't all that musically challenging, than for how uncomfortable it makes me. It is 4 minute clips of everything I'm terrified of.

3. I think carnivals are fucking scary. I'm not even kidding. This actually has nothing to do with Bruce Springsteen, but we were talking about 'Wild Billy's Circus Story' and 'The Last Carnival'. I have never liked carnivals/circuses and then I read Bradbury's 'Something Wicked this Way Comes' and I liked them even less. *shudder* Also, I do not love clowns even a little bit.

4. The song 'County Fair' makes me claustrophobic. It literally makes me feel like I'm suffocating. I don't know why, but I have always associated county fairs with being trapped in a place and this traveling oddity being the only escape for the entire summer. I have been to a couple (once very much against my will...some high school friends dragged me one summer -- I'm talking to you L.M.O. and Carlos) and I have never been able to relax...it's like I'm just waiting for someone to come up to me and whisper "help me." I know a lot of people like them and a lot of people are happy living in Small Town America and county fairs are pretty much Americana defined, but they make me really uneasy.

5. R.A. has never heard this song, despite my prodding (she also thinks Bill is hotter than Eric on True Blood, so consider the source!), but The Killers' 'A Dustland Fairytale' is the closest I think any current band has come to capturing that sort of desperate, nostalgic, early Bruce feel. "He'd look just like you'd want him to, some kind of slick, chrome, American prince" and "we still fear what we don't know" about cover it.

*Thunder Road is one of my favourite songs of all time -- the stripped down acoustic version of it is, in my opinion, one of the greatest acoustic versions of any song, ever. (T., I know you like live sets, so I defy you to disagree with me!) I also love: Born to Run, Racing in the Street, Darkness on the Edge of Town, Stolen Car and Backstreets.

Naked Towel Dance: Visits from home.

2009-11-06T14:06:00.001+01:00

M. came to visit last weekend...and showed up literally two minutes after I stepped out of the shower. So she got a naked towel dance* (that's right, Fraggle...be jealous!) when I answered the door.

We had a fun visit! And oddly enough, I had the second conversation about nipple rings in the course of week that led to a discussion about the Marquis de Sade. The first, for those of you who are friends on Facebook might remember the nipple ring discussion. The second I neither started, nor directed towards the Marquis de Sade.

M. and I have a long, long history of *really* strange conversations. One involved starting an algae farm. The latest one involved me sitting outside the room of my new housemate (Siobhan moved out =( ) in the middle of the night, listening to him breathe and how that wouldn't be weird at all. Not even when the other guy housemate, who works late night at a bar, came home to find me doing this. Of all the great things about M., this is the thing I miss most about not seeing her very often.

I was really happy to see her. It's always nice to see a familiar face, especially one I haven't seen in so long -- though admittedly, it had been less time since I last saw M. than it had been since I'd last seen S. when she was here. She was only here for two days, so we didn't get a ton of time, but she brought some sun, so we wandered around the city centre and went into the Cathedral and swing danced at my local to something not meant for swing dancing and listened to some unbelievably bad karaoke and she showed me pictures from J.'s wedding three weeks ago (which I, obviously and sadly, missed.) Good times were definitely had!

Yay for my Tuttle 2 girls!

*The naked towel dance is a dance indigenous to wet girls on Tuttle 2, who are naked underneath their towels. Traditionally done in doorways of open rooms along the hall when returning from the bathroom.

Hello, my friends: Watching the World Series from 4000+ miles away.

2009-11-05T04:01:00.001+01:00

Several of my friends and I are watching the World Series. Yes, it keeps me up really late, but I'm always up that late so it's not really a big deal. What's great about technology is that a. I can stream the games online and b. I can talk with my friends about the games in real time even though I'm far away from them. At least nine of my friends have posted Facebook commentaries as their status updates (and so have I...my favourite one involves my love for this sign I saw in game 5 in Philly: "Our Lee will never surrender. Damn those Yankees!") It has been nice, being away from home with no other baseball fans, but still being able to talk about it. Even without the face time.

And...a few things on the streams:

1. TBS' commentators during the NLCS were HORRIBLE. I literally thought I was watching a foreign feed and that the MLB had decided to educate foreigners about baseball, but it was actually the TBS feed. If I have heard a worse commentator than Chip Caray, I have repressed it. I have major hatred for the stupidity that comes out of his mouth.

2. I actually heard this interview...which, I should add, was broadcast to the entire US during the ALCS: "Alex, you guys are up two games to none. What position does that put you guys in going to Los Angeles?" "Well, it's better to be up 2-0 than 1-1." You have no idea the amount of profanity that came out of my mouth after that. Seriously, FOX? An eight year old Djibutian girl could have given a better interview. I fucking hate you.

3. I have never hated Joe Buck so much as I do this year. Honestly, the depths of my hatred lack words. I want nothing more than to reach through my screen and bitch slap that guy. I swear to God, he actually said the following in the first game of the Series: "Both teams have won seven games to get here." Dear Joe Buck, are you fucking kidding me?

4. Mercifully, most of what I've watched in the Series has been Rick Sutcliffe and Dan Schulman on the ESPN America feed. Words cannot express how much better it is listening to them than it is listening to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver on the FOX feed.

On music: The great disappointment of my life.

2009-11-03T01:14:00.003+01:00

I have been playing the piano since I was six. When I was seven, I joined the church choir. When I was eight, I started taking harp lessons. All of this continued through high school. I still play the piano every day when I can. I sing to myself in the shower. I play the harp anytime I can find one since mine is in New York. I am a decent singer, a good pianist and an excellent harpist. And no matter how hard I practice, I will never be a *great* musician.

I can read what you put in front of me, I can learn it and I can follow the tempo and volume notations and play it well, but it is empty.

I can listen to music and I can tell you that I like something or don't and why I do or don't. I can tell from chord progression when a piece of music was written and I have an uncanny ability to pinpoint which composer wrote a piece, but all the theory is meaningless.

I don't feel the music.

I am aware that this is something intrinsic, either you get it or you don't and no amount of practice will change this. Because of that, I can accept that I fall on the wrong side of the line, but I will never be at peace with it. I want music to speak to me more than it does (I can list probably fewer than 10 pieces of music that truly speak to me.) I will forever envy the people who can feel it.

This is the great disappointment of my life.

Four hundred years later: Romeo and Juliet.

2009-10-29T23:04:00.002+01:00

I have long been a non-fan of Shakespeare. With a few notable exceptions*, I'm quite apathetic when it comes to the Bard. But, I rewatched 'Romeo and Juliet' last month just for the heck of it...

There's a desperation in it that, as an adult, is oddly refreshing; that idea that if this one love doesn't work out the world will end, the idea that one kiss means everything. It's an easy thing to forget, years later, because we've loved and lost and loved again and we're still here and we're mostly okay. We fall down, but we get up, brush ourselves off and we're away again; the world does not implode. In the intervening years, we have forgotten what it was like to feel like the sun rose and set with him. We grew up and moved on to other boys and other lives and we forgot to remember the taste of his kiss, the comforting smell of him, the feeling, both emotional and physical, of his arms around us.

Maybe the true test of Shakespeare's work isn't the words on the page (though I will admit that the line 'ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man' is probably one of the most clever in all of literature) but the response it elicits from its audience. I may not have lived in 16th century Italy, but I remember the first boy I ever loved. And some little part of me, somewhere deep down, will always be a little bit in love with him. Because he was the first and he was wonderful.

In a different life, a different situation, I could have been Juliet. Maybe *that's* Shakespeare's genius.

* I love Hamlet.

Glee: Fall television and my inner music nerd.

2009-10-22T06:06:00.011+02:00

This post is weeks overdue...and very much NOT news to people like T., who has been subjected to at least two Facebook status updates a week regarding the following subject:

I was fairly certain after three episodes of 'Glee' that the best of it had passed, but C. talked me into sticking it out for another two before passing my final judgment. And since the third episode had a very hot, topless boy, I agreed to it. What can I say, I'm shallow when it comes to men on television.

So here we are, five episodes later.

Yeah, I'm hooked. And not just on the aforementioned (and pictured) very hot boy with a nice voice.* It soothes my inner music dork. I don't care what lessons I'm supposed to be learning from it or whatever. I show up for the music.** Plus, it brings back a lot of good memories from when I did show choir in high school. It was fun -- admittedly not as fun as the kids in Glee seem to be having, but fun all the same -- and I had a good time with it. And I did sports, so I know what it's like to juggle the two -- though it was never the stigma at my high school that it is in the show because about half of us were also athletes.

Anyway, with having my research and these stupid required modules that make me believe that the UK government is out to bore its Ph.D. students to death before they ever come close to submitting their dissertations, 'Glee' is really great way to unwind in the middle of the week. It's funny***, the music is great (if obviously overproduced), the characters are likeable, even some of them who aren't (except for Will's batshit crazy wife; she's a harpee) and I bow to the person who thought it was a good idea. Because it is. It's a good midweek pick-me-up and some weeks, I really need that. I always feel like I can cope with the rest of my week afterwards.

*There are several actual publicity shots of the hotness that is Mark Salling (who is mercifully not 18, but 27) but he's wearing a New Kids t-shirt in this shot, which makes him a fucking stud. Not that he was lacking before, but the t-shirt is awesome!

**And the fact that Josh Groban showed up in what was the worst episode, (but skinwise the best one -- we really need to see more of Puck without his shirt! Oh, my Jesus, YES!) and delivered the line, "Lemme tell you something, throngs of screaming teenagers don't do it for Josh Groban. No, Josh Groban loves a blousy alcoholic."

***"Unless you want to lose your man to a mentally ill ginger pygmy with eyes like a bush baby." Best. Line. Ever. And possibly my favourite description of another person ever uttered.

The moment: Photographs.

2009-10-19T02:32:00.004+02:00

I really like looking at old photographs of strangers. Sometimes, I see the moment.

It's not often, but I love it when I do.

I hope that someday, someone sees a picture of me and instantly gets it.

*This is one of my favourite pictures from the past year because it's so obvious to me in this picture how much we like each other. I miss Shiva.

The Weight: Thirty.

2009-10-17T19:30:00.003+02:00

In a little over six months, I will turn 30. It's weighing heavily on me. I can't help but think I've wasted the last 12 years of my life.

I'm supposed to be further along in my life by now, aren't I?

I'm supposed to be done with school, working a steady job, settling down with a man, buying a station wagon and a house and having children, a dog and a goldfish or two. I'm supposed to have competed in a triathlon and raised money for charity. I'm supposed to have joined the board of something. I'm supposed to be buying nice things for my parents like a holiday to South Africa as a thank you for putting up with me during my teenaged years.

I'm supposed to be looking back at my late teens and early 20s and thinking, 'I was so young then.'

And I do, but when I do, I inevitably follow that with, 'and I've done nothing to grow up in the intervening years.'

Instead, since I left high school, my life has been biochemistry, then Baltimore and college, then stage managing, then religion and the dreaded Aristotle, then New Jersey, then baseball, then Indiana, then sports information, then Texas, then grad school, then baseball again, then lifeguarding, then Prague, then English, then Belfast, then a doctorate. And in between all that, tedious nothing jobs of waiting tables and TV master control and museum maintenance.

I have only amassed a small fortune in student loan debt, a slew of failed relationships and a growing sense of failure.

I feel so insignificant next my peers who are all seemingly more talented at 28 than I’ll ever be in my whole life. They have it figured out. They know what they want and they’ve put themselves there.

I’m afraid I’m never going to figure it out.

That, more than anything, is why I'm terrified of 30. And it's criminal that I wasted so much time that I'm only realizing it now.

It's crushing me.

The Squash Soup Incident.

2009-10-06T02:51:00.000+02:00

"There was a squash soup incident," she tells him.
They'd been lying in the dark in the moments before sleep when the mind wanders aimlessly. He'd been thinking about a cricket tournament from five years ago when she stumbled on the squash soup.
"What?"
"I have never liked squash."
"Oh."
"I thought you should know."
"Okay."
"I pretend to like zucchini, but I secretly hate it."
He stares into the darkness as she curls herself into his bare chest. He wonders what he's supposed to do with the information.
"Unless it's in bread," she breathes into him before drifting off to sleep.

Ireland and Wales: The defining pictures.

2009-10-05T14:01:00.006+02:00

I've neglected S.'s visit, which is unfortunate because we had a really good time. And saw some amazing pretty! We were rewarded in our effort to go around the Spout Lake, through the Land of the Giant Slugs, across the Rock Quarry (which came complete with inukshuk), past the Fields of Heather, march with the three-legged sheepdog (no lie) and make it to the Castle at the End of the World on the Cliffs of Moher. Yes, we totally made up those names. We didn't make it to the Castle at the End of the World because it started raining and we were about 3 miles from the visitors centre of the cliffs -- we were well past the "do not go past this sign" sign -- but even though we had to turn back, we got the most amazing rainbow EVER.

I've also neglected Cardiff, which was a great time and involved me getting together with a whole bunch of random strangers. You know how it is when you're traveling alone.

Anyway, here are the best shots from those trips:
The double rainbow on the Cliffs of Moher
The other end of the rainbow in Liscannor Bay

The pub in Cardiff that sells Brains (it's a Welsh brand of beer, but I like to think they cater to zombies!)

The silver half circle waterfall thingy outside of the Millenium Centre in Cardiff Bay. It's also the entrance to Torchwood (if you watch totally camp BBC series.) I was totally fascinated by this thing. At one point I just sat and stared at it for about an hour and a half. It's weirdly soothing. It's probably better I don't live in Cardiff (though I would totally live there for a few years) because I'd probably waste a lot of hours just staring at it.

So yeah, all in all a pair of good trips!

Bon Voyage: The 2010 travel schedule.

2009-10-04T14:29:00.006+02:00

1. This isn't a 2010 travel plan or even my travel plan, but it involves me and friends and travel...M. will be here at the end of October for a few days! YAY! I haven't seen her in over three years so it'll be really fun to have her here. We won't be hitting the road like S. and I did, but that's okay, I'm sure we can find plenty to do.

2. New Year's 2010: Beks and I were supposed to go to Cardiff together, but her new job put the kibosh on that. There were some other discussions, but we finally landed on going to see Lew (henceforth L.R.) in France for New Year's...which was a brilliant plan until L.R. announced that he in no way wants to stay in St. Malo. So the three of us threw out a bunch of ideas -- oddly, none of them Prague -- and we landed on Budapest! Realistically, I think none of us care all that much where we end up so long as we end up there together. But definite yay for Hungary! Budapest is on the very top of my list of places to go.

3. St. Paddy's Day 2010: Again, not my own travel plans, but...the Swedish contingent -- E.B., Malin, Rickard and Caroline -- (and Juri) are talking about coming over here for St. Paddy's Day so they can celebrate it in Ireland. Yay!

4. Easter 2010: I have some Goucher people in the middle east, I have the time and I have the money (mostly), so I'm off to see these two friends in Israel and Jordan. I am *so* excited about this trip! The logistics of this trip are a bit of a nightmare because I'm trying to work around the high holy days of my friend in Israel, which is only fair, trying to figure out who is coming with me where because each has expressed an interest in seeing the other country and trying to figure out exact dates. But in a few weeks this should all be worked out and booked. Yay!

5. The Mini-UN 2010: Amsterdam, sometime in June or July is the plan. There's been some discussion about Grenoble in January, but it came down to a choice between seeing Beks and L.R. for New Year's or seeing some of the Mini-UN and since I'll see some of them for St. Paddy's Day and the rest of them in Amsterdam, they lost me for Grenoble.

The greatness of Jason Bourne: Conspiracy theories and me.

2009-09-30T20:08:00.002+02:00

I love conspiracy theories. Not so much that I do much research into them or anything, but I find them entertaining.

Secretly, I don't doubt there's some truth in all of the crazy.

I like the idea of spies and double agents and top secret missions because it's fucking fun! It's Jason Bourne and James Bond in real life. The Israelis authorizes a secret vendetta crew, a Bulgarian dissident takes a risin pellet to the leg from an umbrella, a former KGB agent turned dissident writer is poisoned with a radioactive compound. By his own government. You know why that's awesome? Because it's the movies come to life...political intrigue, espionage, assassination...

.sesab ymra tcilered no snoitarepo terces fo stroper eht era ereht dnA

.yhw wonk t'nod I . ni tuo emac ti dna yllamron ecnetnes taht etorw tsuj I ,kcuf ot raews I
.rettam tcejbus eht nevig emosewa .fo dnik si siht tub ,retupmoc ym htiw no gniog si tahw aedi on evah I

Seriously, I have no idea what that was all about. I swear on all that is holy, my computer just decided for no reason at all to take everything I typed and put it in in reverse. I would type and it would freeze for a few seconds and then the writing would show up exactly the way you see it. Which is pretty freaking awesome given the subject of the post.

Anyway, as I was saying...possible secret operations on derelict army bases...

I like the idea of it all exactly *because* it's all secret and hush-hush and "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."

Reading: What I've got on my plate.

2009-09-26T17:05:00.002+02:00

1. I decided recently, that I want to finish Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' before my 30th birthday. I've got 7 months, so it's not like it's a daunting task time-wise. But this is the fourth go at this book...I've never made it past 200 pages. Mostly because I don't think I should have to read the equivalent of a full book before the book I'm reading gets interesting. It's 1300+ pages...if you want to keep me reading, it's got to be interesting before 200 pages. This time, though, it's interesting sooner. I think likely because since my last attempt, I've had classes in both Russian and revolutionary history. Anyway, I did the math and if I read 30 pages at a time, I will can finish the book in 42 reading days (which is actually kind of funny if you consider Adams). So far, I've got 40 reading days to go.

2. The Catastrophist - Ronan Bennett -- A story of an Irish writer who chases his Italian lover to the Congo in 1959 in order to save their relationship and, as a result of timing, finds himself in the midst of the liberation movement therein. I'm only 5 chapters in, but I really like it so far. I mean, any time you combine revolution with a history I don't know, I'm on board. Also, I've been on a hunt for literature regarding Africa (either by Africans or, as in this case, by a foreigner in Africa) because almost all of the literature I've read in my life has been "western." And there is some very good work that is non-Western (Salman Rushdie is likely the most well known, but also one of my personal favourites Arundhati Roy's 'The God of Small Things') and I don't want to miss out.

3. Goodbye to Berlin - Christopher Isherwood -- The novel on which the musical 'Cabaret' is based. I finally got my hands on a copy (they're harder to find than you might think) and I'm pretty excited about that.

Reading: What I've read for fun in the last six months

2009-09-26T04:16:00.006+02:00

I've been reading a lot more in the last six months than I have in a long time. It's been nice. I had forgotten how much I love to read, I think because I spend so much of my time reading for school.

1. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card -- A number of friends who don't know each other have been on me for years to read this and I finally got around to it. I *loved* it. I mean really, really loved it. I finally shut the light out at half three in the morning with 80 pages to go, dreamt about it and promptly picked it up as soon as I woke up again. For such a straightforward story, it's so complex.

2. The Neverending Story - Michael Ende -- I was a bit hesitant to read this because this movie and Disney's 'Robin Hood' are the defining movies of my childhood and I was afraid the book was going to ruin it for me. But, the book was SO good. The movie ends halfway through the book, but to me the whole point of the book was the second half. The getting to Fantasia (the first half) is nowhere near as interesting as what happens when Bastian gets there (the second half.)

3. A Lion Among Men - Gregory Maguire -- The third in the Oz series that really picked up after the kind of blah 'Son of a Witch.' It's the cowardly lion's story in the days before the revolution...which is just starting to boil over at the end of the book, which sets the fourth book up to be pretty epic. Very much looking forward to the fourth book!

4. The Gargoyle - Andrew Davidson -- The single worst, most misogynistic piece of crap I've ever read. No lie. The concept is cool. The execution is shit.

5. The Gathering - Anne Enright -- The second worst book I've read this year. It won the Booker Prize last year or the year before, but it was mind-numbingly dull.

6. The Cellist of Sarajevo - Steven Galloway -- I think I'm going to have to read this again before I decide if I like it or not. It's set in Sarajevo during the war, during the time when Vedran Smailovic was playing Albinoni. He's the focal character for the three characters in the novel. It felt sort of disjointed, so I'm going to have to give it another go.

7. Children of the Revolution - Dinaw Mengestu -- This was just sort of meh. I think it wanted to be and tried to be something it wasn't. If it was a commentary on the African experience in America, I missed the message.

8. The Shipping News - Annie Proulx -- This was my second go at it; I gave up about 50 pages in when I was 15. Reading it now, I know why. It's set in Newfoundland and it's got fishing and big water. Love.

9. The Visible World - Mark Slouka -- A Czech twist on the post-war child digging into his parents' secret life in the war. It was okay...mostly I picked it up because I was feeling a bit homesick for Prague.

10. Embers - Sandor Marai -- Just sort of meh. I think the purpose of holding a grudge for 40 years is lost on me.

11. The Pesthouse - Jim Crace -- If you took Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' (of which I wasn't much of a fan to be honest), combined it with the Benet short story 'By the Waters of Babylon' (which is probably my favourite piece of post-apocalyptic literature) and made it boring, you'd have this book.

12. Heat and Dust - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala -- This also won a Booker Prize, which leads me to the conclusion that books that win the Booker Prize are all boring and will lead me to skip over about 100 pages in the middle.

13. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -- Everyone else has loved this book, and I did like it, but it wasn't the mind blowing awesomeness everyone said it was going to be.

14. Dances with Wolves - Michael Blake -- I really quite liked this. It was apparently adapted from the screenplay by its own author. I've never seen the movie, but apparently it's good and judging from the book, I can see why.

15. Gods Behaving Badly - Marie Phillips -- Great premise, poor execution, which is too bad because it's a very cool premise.

Spring in the Dakotas.

2009-09-21T16:01:00.003+02:00

He drinks her beautiful out of desperation and asks her for a date. She turns him down.
"I've known you before," she tells him.
"It always ends with me waking up alone," she tells him.
A cold rain betrays April and chills him to the bone. He watches it rain from a bar stool, watches the gathering dark and addresses her like she cares.
"I think I'll go to California in the fall," he tells her.
He wants to leave this nothing town and head for the coast. He tells her so.
But she knows better; he never will.
She's known him before.
The time will never be right. The weather will never be right. The money will never be right.
So he'll go on drinking the local girls beautiful out of a desperation he'll never shake.

After Prague: A year on.

2009-09-13T14:15:00.002+02:00

On the 3rd, it was a year since I left Prague.

On the 2nd, I scrambled to wire money to a member of my Prague family who was hiding out in the middle of nowhere in an undisclosed European country (I know which one, but you don't get to,) lying low after a scuffle that landed the other guy in hospital with a broken jaw so that he could literally leave town (perfectly legally.)

Dear Prague,

We miss you. You made things like this seem normal.

Sincerely,

Wegrit and undisclosed friend.

Weird things come out afterwards. Things you didn't think to tell each other. "You know I slept with him?" "You know Hot Chris got mugged by gypsies?" "You know, I never liked her."

On the island of Britain: How Cardiff and England are related.

2009-09-10T22:58:00.004+02:00

I've been gone longer than usual. And I was pretty scarce before the long break anyway. I blame the rain. It's just pulling my mood down so much that I can't be bothered with much of anything. It's summer, it's supposed to be sunny and warm and it has been neither and that, combined with being between friend sets for the most part, has just been making me miserable. Mercifully, the summer has been broken up in mini-holidays with my friends.

Anyway, I'm in a much better mood after three days in Cardiff that involved: football, the ocean, a castle, the Cardiff Blues rugby team, Torchwood, middle-of-the-night fire alarms, seafood, Americans, an Australian, Russians, a Frenchman, a very drunken Englishman, a South African and a whole lot of Welshmen including the REALLY drunk guy who propositioned me in the street at 7pm. I'll leave that for another post, but I will say that I *love* Cardiff.

And...despite Wales' 3-0 loss to Russia last night, England qualified for the World Cup next summer with a 5-1 (!) win over Croatia -- who knocked England out of last summer's Euro. Yay! I want to start getting excited about England, but I can't help but wait for the other shoe to drop. My own feelings aside, the press over here are practically sucking Capello's dick today.

I promise I'll try to be more present from now on. Hopefully the weather will stay nice for a few more days so I can recharge whatever it is in me that needs sun for more than two hours a day (if I'm lucky.) Plus, school starts up again soon, so I'll be meeting people again.

Summer in Ireland: Lukewarm with plenty of rain.

2009-08-23T02:09:00.002+02:00

Dear People of Belfast,

20 degrees (68F) is not hot. It's not even really warm.* It's a nice spring day.** Once upon a time, not that long ago, I lived in a place where summer actually existed and I didn't have to wear a sweater to go outside in August. So please believe me when I say that if one more of you says to me "Oh God, it's SO hot outside," I'm going to punch you in the throat.

Sincerely,

Wegrit

*And it only happens about once every two weeks or so.

**It even has the spring showers thing going. I literally can't remember the last day we had where it didn't rain at least once.

Home again, home again: The siren song.

2009-08-20T22:20:00.006+02:00

J.B. is moving back to Prague next month. He's finished with school, so this time he's got a legitimate job. Anyway, on top of this, Beks has been talking since the spring about moving back next spring, though she conceded last week it'll probably be July before she's finally back. Given these two things and knowing him like I do, I think it's only a matter of time before Lew, who ditched Paris for Poland, then home to Scotland and is now away again to France, which he hates, packs up and heads back. There is a question brewing that potentially puts me back in Prague at this time next year. It also potentially puts me in Toronto. It may also all be moot.

We'll revisit this in six months.

As a side note, none of this surprises me. We were all ready to go when we left, but as the year since our departure has passed, we've all found that Prague got deeper under our skin than we ever imagined possible.

My life: August in a nutshell.

2009-08-15T21:55:00.004+02:00

M. was a bit on my case last night about how I've been derelict in my updating of the blog.

What things there have been to write about I've not cared enough to be bothered, which is sad because it involves a really fantastic three day road trip around the north and west in a BMW with S. (finally) ten years after we first talked about going on the road together.

In other news:

1. I got a new tattoo that I'm not convinced I love, which is kind of a problem. I'm waiting on a verdict.

2. I'm going to Cardiff with Beks in three weeks. We're going to see the Wales v. Russia World Cup qualifier! Woo!

3. My parents are coming over in a month.

4. J.B. is moving back to Prague next month. This will factor heavily into a later post (if I can be bothered in the next few days.)

5. There's been some discussion about what will happen after next summer, which is kind of tied to the whole J.B. returning to Prague thing.

6. 'In Bruges' was surprisingly good. If it succeeded in nothing else, it struck me with a sudden, urgent need to see Bruges.

7. Facebook is weird sometimes. At the moment, there's a conversation going on between two girls I barely know (girls from last semester) by way of commenting on a picture of mine. It's creeping me out. I feel like a voyeur in my own photograph.

Rumours, truths and speculations.

2009-08-08T14:51:00.004+02:00

It got ahold of us, and slowly, deliberately, it calls us all back.

Subconsicously: The motif we carry.

2009-07-24T19:17:00.005+02:00

Kundera talks, in 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being', about motif and how everyone has one. It creeps in, sometimes even when we actively seek to keep it out.

My motif is the road.

Driving, for me, particularly at night, is incredibly freeing. Especially out west where it's just you and the car and the open space and the prairie moon. So when I write, the road frequently becomes a character.

"It is night traffic, not day, that captivates me, the traveler who uses the cover of darkness as a vehicle to anonymity and something else, maybe something better. It is not businessmen and families on vacation that you meet in greasy all-night diners off the Interstate at four in the morning. No, the midnight voyager is far more edgy, more unsettled. He scorns the neon harbingers of sleep and drinks gritty coffee and circles classified ads in yesterdays paper from three states ago, a cast-off of an earlier cipher. He decries the service speed to a yawning, bleary-eyed waitress, stating that he must get back on the road. He is, above all, ill at ease without the pavement rushing beneath him at 75 miles per hour. His comfort comes not in a 3:30 breakfast of fried eggs, questionably edible bacon and cold toast, but in the knowledge that while the city sleeps, he is slipping through unknown to all but the tired waitress and a trucker on his way to St. Louis, neither of whom will likely remember they even saw him."

I used to drive out to New Mexico in the middle of the night just because. Usually I'd turn around in Tucumcari; a quick four hour round trip. Sometimes I'd go all the way out to Albuquerque (8 hours round trip) and be back in Canyon in time to catch a quick nap before class. One of my favourite things to do would be to stop somewhere for chocolate milk (what? I *love* chocolate milk) in the middle of the night and ask for a time estimate on somewhere absurd, a thousand miles away. How long will it take me to get to Salt Lake City from here, do you think? How far to Little Rock? Do you think I could make it to Tupelo by 4 this afternoon? Could I make it to the coast by sunset?

It never mattered that I wasn't going any of these places. What mattered was that if I'd wanted to, I could have been.*

*The photograph is just over the NI/Republic border in Co. Donegal from the road trip with the boys in April.

Remnants of an old life: Putting The Aussie away.

2009-07-19T04:44:00.000+02:00

I try not to speak to him these days, The Aussie.

Not because I don't love him.

It is hard to put someone you care about so much into a box to be shoved to the back of the metaphorical closet. There are entire months where I don't think of him and then suddenly, he is everywhere...in the music I hear and the things that I smell, sometimes even in the people I see. I saw a guy the other day who was a dead ringer for The Aussie and did a double take.

When he pops up, I send him an email or a text. We wanted to stay friends, but I need to stop doing that. He is happily married to someone who is not me; it is not fair to either of us for me to drag him into this life.

He is a part of what was a phenomenal year of my life. I need to leave him there.

We have separate lives to get on with.

The Dream.

2009-07-17T20:09:00.000+02:00

I hear him turn off the shower and his soft footsteps on the floor.
"For future reference," I tell him, still mostly asleep, "it's a bad idea for you to brandish a gun at the cops when you're drunk."
He doesn't question the utter absurdity of this statement. He chuckles and pulls his shirt over his head.
"I will keep that in mind."
I half open my eyes; he is grinning wildly at me. He was always better at mornings.
"I saved your life," I mumble, submitting to my eyes' desire to keep morning out just a little longer. "I took the gun from you before they could shoot."
"Because you love me."
He kisses my forehead and watches me smile sleepily.
"Because you couldn't live without me."

Old lives: OJ gets married.

2009-07-11T02:55:00.004+02:00

I chose this life. I chose to move 4000 miles from home, from the people who know me best. I chose to move so far away that the weddings of the people who matter are more than just a matter of scheduling a weekend away.

And so I have to remember, when I miss the wedding of someone who has meant the world to me for ten years, that I *wanted* this.

But that doesn't matter to me right now.

I have just missed the wedding of someone who has meant the world to me for ten years.

I look around my room and I see what I've gotten from this life, pictures of the mini-UN both in Belfast and in Munich, pictures from Sweden and the Ireland road trip, pictures with people I wouldn't have met.

But then I look at the pictures of OJ and me and I begin to think that the mini-UN and my Belgian brothers and The Albanian and Ireland and Sweden and Germany, they aren't worth the trade-off.

The mini-UN is great and I love each one of them, but when it comes down to it, they can't hold a candle to the storied friendship that OJ and I have.

In this moment, I believe I have chosen the wrong life.

On the life I've said nothing about: The last six months.

2009-07-10T13:52:00.002+02:00

I feel like I've been very detached from my life, and consequently my blog, in recent months.

When I first started blogging (four years ago next week!) I would post something every day, sometimes more than once. Granted, a lot of the time, they reflected the weirdness that my life was in Texas. Goings on at the theatre, the weird shit that's on TV late at night (which gets even weirder when you add drugs,) work in the sports office, school, baseball, etc.

Now, I'm tired of talking about school, my nights out aren't so strange as they used to be, there are no longer drugs involved and baseball isn't played anywhere near me. And all of that seemingly removes anything interesting to talk about. In the last six months my posts have discussed: the Ireland/Sweden/Germany trips, football, my friends, things from past lives, sometimes school and sometimes something else.

I am suddenly incredibly boring.

There is no mention of The Albanian at all, despite his being, at least briefly, someone of note in my life. There is no mention of the weirdness that was my Canada Day outing or the really annoying girl who wouldn't shut up on the way home from the airport. No mention of having moved house or of the ridiculously unlikely situation surrounding my move in. There is no mention of the fact that the guy who means the most to me from my college days is getting married today and I'm not there and how much that breaks my heart. Or of the afternoon football games on the lawn, the day trip to Derry or the great Mount Charles BBQ.

I have just started living trip to trip, sleepwalking through my life until the next time I see the people who *really* matter. It's the same old restlessness where being on the road is the only way to fix it. I come home from one and start planning another.

I need something new. I need a hobby. A theatre. A team. Something. I can't keep living just for the next time I see the people I love.

Good morning!: After the all-nighter.

2009-07-05T15:57:00.004+02:00

A snippet of my life:

Here's the scenario...my guy housemate misplaced his keys on Friday night (we're quite the pair this week because over the course of four drunken minutes on Wednesday night, I magically and inexplicably lost my phone.) Anyway, he comes staggering, absolutely smammered, through the door at 10:30 this morning after having to ring the doorbell a few times to wake me up. I let him in and this is what happens:

He stops, looks at himself in the mirror and says,

"Am I wearing a green t-shirt with muppets on it?"

Yup, that's the kind of house I live in.

Munich, baby: A weekend with the Mini-UN.

2009-07-01T19:24:00.004+02:00

Munich was wonderful! Some of my favourite people, some really cool sights, a really great city that I could definitely live in -- and given that I've said that only about two other cities in my life, that's no faint praise -- and some quality beer. Next stop for the Mini-UN? AMSTERDAM!!!

Munich: YAY!!!

2009-06-25T04:28:00.001+02:00

I'm off to spend five days with the Mini-UN. I couldn't be happier! Six people I really love and admire in a city I've never been to? It's going to be great. See you all when I get back!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Munich: GRR!

2009-06-22T17:34:00.001+02:00

Dear Aer Lingus,

I thought it was love, I really did. You offered me a round trip flight to Munich to see my friends for less than $55 US. What a great deal! I had a bit of a hangup with the flight being at 8:30 in the morning, but I got over it. 8:30 is manageable; we were going to be friends forever.

And then it all changed.

You decided you resent having offered me that flight so cheaply and that you actually hate me. So you bumped the flight up to 6:30 in the morning just because you know that means I have to leave the house at 4:30 to walk to the bus station to catch the bus at 5 to make it to the airport for 5:30. Do you have any idea how early 4:30 is?

I will be seeing two friends I haven't seen in six months...I *know* you know I have plans for that first night that don't involve me falling asleep in my goulash and beer.

Fuck you!

Sincerely, Wegrit

The crossroads: An old life accidentally revisited.

2009-06-17T19:09:00.001+02:00

It's always a little strange when two completely unrelated parts of your life magically intersect. I'm reading a book called 'The Cellist of Sarajevo' by Steven Galloway at the moment and it's set during the siege of Sarajevo and I'm reading and suddenly a street name appears.

Strossmayer.

I know that name!

I should. I heard it a couple times a day nearly every day for a year.

"Příští zastávka, Strossmayerovo Náměstí."

There is no way that square in Prague, which is the intersection between those trams going east-west (1, 8, 15, 25 and 26) and those going north-south (12, 14 and 17) in my old neighbourhood, was named after someone different from this street in Sarajevo. I mean, how many famous guys running around with a name like Strossmayer can there possibly be in Eastern Europe?

So I did a little research.

It's fun, sometimes, to connect the dots.

Two certain things: Death and Twitter.

2009-06-16T20:03:00.004+02:00

This is going to be an odd post so bear with me...

1. My old baseball life has come back to haunt me in ways I never wanted it to in 2009. In February, my mentor in Media Relations, Mike, with whom I worked in Indiana, died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 43. Yesterday, I got an email from James, the scoreboard op with whom I worked in Texas. Yesterday, the PA announcer, Joe Frank, dropped dead of a heart attack at the age of 53. Both were people I really enjoyed being around, from whom I learned a whole lot and for whom I had a tremendous amount of respect. The baseball world has lost two smart, talented, interesting, stand-up guys.

2. One of my good friends, T., whose blog I (naturally) follow has been sucked into the Twitter craze. Twitter annoys me. It implies that everyone's lives are so important that people want to read about how they're wishing they could be outside to enjoy the weather or thinking about maybe going to Starbucks. My life is not that exciting. And I certainly don't care about you enough to care what you're up to every 10 minutes. So excuse me while I put my head in the sand and believe that my once a day (if that) Facebook status update is plenty.

Boys: The one you'll miss.

2009-06-10T16:36:00.002+02:00

I will miss Torsten. A lot. Because I know him best. Because we're old hands at this. Because we've spent 9 months together. Because we have shared so much. Because we know each other. Torsten and I, we are equals.

But mostly, I will miss Nicolas. Not because we know each other particularly well or because we are particularly close (though I'm closer with him than with anyone else I've met this semester,) but because we have a specific kind of friendship.

Nicolas reminds me a lot of my brother. He has discovered the buttons to push and does so with great glee. But not in a malicious way. In the "pain in the ass" younger brother kind of way.

I will miss that more than I think I like to admit. I like having him around, even if he gives me a lot of shit.

Borrowed Truth.

2009-06-08T07:31:00.001+02:00

For the record, this is not about Lew (my close Scottish friend) or The Aussie, but it is mostly true.

I could have fallen in love with him in that instant.

I found out later the instant wasn't real; it had been imagined, in a sense. He was real, the instance was real, but the brilliance wasn't. It had been changed, altered, rendered almost pedestrian by the chemical assistance.

"Is all fair in love and war?" I'd asked.
"Nothing is fair in either," he'd answered in his charming Scottish accent.

We were in Prague then. Late in our twenties. Early in the fall. Smoking joints and drinking absinthe in a funky robot bar where we had to shout to be heard. There had been others with us, but by the end of the night, I wasn't convinced I liked any of them. Even him.

Especially him.

We wandered around the old town the next day, mostly in silence. He hadn't come to bed. I didn't tell him I knew his secret. It would have been the end and I wasn't ready to let him go. I didn't love him, but he had taught me to drink coffee. And absinthe. And he'd reminded me what happiness sounded like.

I tried not to resent him for his borrowed brilliance. But I did.

He had cheated me. Maybe worse, he had cheated us.

Prague: A love letter, of sorts.

2009-06-06T02:09:00.002+02:00

My love,

I adore you and I know you know it. Your ears must ring constantly for all I talk about you given half a chance. I know you have other lovers now, other friends, but please understand that I cannot forget you, that I think about you constantly.

Wherever else I might be, somehow you always find your way into my head and I am starting to resent that because I know I cannot have you back right now, no matter how much I might want it. You are ruining my chance at truly loving another city and I know that's not really your fault, but it's hard for me not to blame you; you were the first place I've ever lived where I felt like I was truly home.

I should hide the pictures away, banish the people I knew, but I cannot. You are too beautiful; I cannot keep from looking at you. And the reminders of our life together, they are everywhere; we have mutual friends, mutual interests, mutual loves.

You have spoiled me, ruined me for other cities forever, because nowhere will ever be as good, as exciting, as fun, as centring as you. But I cannot come back to you, even briefly, right now. It's not that I don't want to; I would die to see you again. I just cannot bear to see you wrap your arms around your other lovers knowing that I cannot stay with you for long; I deserve better. I deserve the comfort of familiarity and routine that you no longer openly offer me and that kills me.

I try and I fail; I cannot get over you.

Tu me manques, so much, sometimes, that it hurts.

Someday...

Love always,

Wegrit

Yes, I took the photograph and no, you absolutely cannot use it because I will not give you permission. Not for any other reason than because you do not and cannot understand why this photograph means everything to me.

Entitled 'Why I should not watch spy shows before bed.'

2009-06-02T14:07:00.007+02:00

Remember the crazy vivid dream I had wherein R.A. and I were spies and she tried (and epically failed) to kill me and left me to take the tram home all full of bullets? That came on the heels of an episode of 'Burn Notice' that I watched right before bed.

Last night's dream:

So I'm at Macy's buying bras with Jerkface to go to a club or something (I assume this because for no reason at all, I ended up at a club.) Next thing I know, I'm being recruited by this guy who I got the sense I vaguely knew from somewhere, but I can't place him now, and taken through this club to this place next door that had some sign out front that had letters that didn't mean anything and was all graffitied up in yellow spray paint. Apparently, these were safe houses and they all looked the same all over the world and there was one in every major city. So anyway, this guy introduces me to the head lady and I get taught how to build this staircase (don't ask...at the time, it made perfect sense) and given a gun and that's that.*

Skip to later and all the spies and I are hanging out at the club where it turns out that the house DJ is the brother of the guy who recruited us all. The spies: me, Nicolas, Christian (the Norwegian who came with on the road trip,) this girl I used to know in New Jersey called Morgan and a few other random people. Anyway, we party it up and then we go and get our assignments from the head lady. I'm not really thrilled about this whole spy thing in general because I don't so much love the idea of always having to look behind me and always having the possibility that someone's just going to shoot me in the head. We get our assignment and it has something to do with bringing down some nuclear towers. Christian and Nicolas are assigned as group leaders and then Morgan and I are their partners and from then on those will be the teams. I get asked who I'd rather work with because I know both of them and I choose Nicolas (likely because in real life, I know him better and I'd be more apt to trust him with my life.)

So off we go to execute our tasks and we have to sneak backstage at some performance to get access to this nuclear tower we're bringing down.** Somehow, and this part is truly a mystery that I will attribute to my subconscious' need for advancement of plot, we managed to get backstage and halfway through our job, but then things got hinky and people with glowing eyes (you see what nuclear towers do to people?) came to stop us and they were all dressed in black like maybe they were part of the running crew for this play that was going on inside. And we're totally out numbered, but I manage to distract them for long enough that Nicolas can set off the charges and then the tower gets blown and falls into a lake, which promptly turns into earth and the nuclear explosion happens underground. We have saved the day. Until they shoot Nicolas a whole bunch of times. But somehow he lives (yay Kevlar?) and then this lady comes out all mad and wants to know what we're doing and why we did it and she arrives just in time to see us looking towards where the Christian/Morgan team are doing their thing to make sure they get it done. Meanwhile, back at the safe house, we learn Morgan has been killed, but Christian escaped.

Nicolas and I decide we don't want to be a part of the program anymore and go rogue. The head lady and the guy tell us that we'll be hunted and killed, but we can run if we like. Liking our chances at success this way better than sitting and waiting for our assassins to come, we leave the safehouse (which was a different one from the first one so we must have been in a different city) and try to formulate a plan. All the while, we hear Christian and his new partner (a Korean guy I knew in New Jersey called Jae) arrive at the safehouse to build the stairs, which has to be done before they can chase us and then they have to chase us with the stairs (seriously, I have no idea why, but it all made sense at the time.) Anyway, I remember an air field a few miles away that I drove past at some point with Morgan before she died and we decide that having C. get her parents to get their private plane to the airfield is our best bet. I don't know why, but the rules are we have to walk to our first location...it would, in retrospect, have made more sense to catch a cab or steal a car (hey, we're rogue assassin/spies. I have no problem with this.)

Anyway, we take off walking in one direction and then double back because they've seen us go that way*** and head off across this wide open space**** and we decide to hide in this weird moving water thingy that will allow us to see them, but not for them to see us (like they wouldn't check there anyway given that they were in the middle of these wide open fields...we were kind of shit spies.) Then suddenly, these three blonde teenaged girls appear and start helping us by following the railroad tracks because they head towards the air field. So we're following the train tracks and it eventually leads into a tunnel and the girls leave us and we're going through this tunnel looking for the train station when suddenly a train starts coming up behind us. So Nicolas and I climb over the wall to keep from getting hit, but Herve (who has magically appeared out of nowhere as people tend to do in dreams) starts crouching down and cowering as the train is coming at him, but the train is slowing down and eventually stops well before it hits him. Then we realize that Herve is just down the tracks from the station so he walks a little ways and then climbs up onto the platform...

...and then Adam was shouting outside my window and woke me up so I have no idea whether we got caught or if we escaped.

The moral of the story is, I should really, really not watch spy shows before I go to sleep; they fuck with my dreams. In a very cool way, but still...

*There's something about a carpeted street and an Irish Republican club next door to the club and spy safe house and something about Shiva and a bus into a mall type thing across a bridge over a gully or another road or something, but I can't remember how they have anything to do with the story because they were at the beginning. I think we all lived there though because we often walked there from the safe house as a group.

**As a side note, Nicolas and I sucked at stealth. I don't think we were all that well trained. I mean all I had to do to become a spy was learn to properly assemble this staircase.

***In retrospect, this is probably the most obvious attempt at fooling a spy there could possibly be. I'm just saying.

****Which I guess explains the need for a set of stairs.

Nights out: Those I adore.

2009-05-30T06:14:00.003+02:00

Sometimes, you just need to spend an unanticipated night out with the boys drinking beer and shooting the shit and staying out until the sun comes up.

Yes, it's in New Jersey: 'Cabaret' comes to Belfast.

2009-05-27T01:42:00.003+02:00

[theatre geek out]

There is always a danger in watching a show you know inside out and backwards.

I went to see 'Cabaret' and on the whole, it was very good. Some things (the set kicked ass) more than others (the final scene was too obvious). Now, having said this, I've seen about 8 different productions of 'Cabaret' so my opinion of this show is tainted by past productions and past actors -- I will refrain from turning this into an all-out Alan Cumming lovefest* because I could easily do that.

But $18 tickets to one's favourite show is a tough thing to pass up so off I went.

The good:

1. This version decided to put Cliff's song 'Why Should I Wake Up' back in (it was in the original stage production, but was replaced by Sally's 'Maybe This Time' in the movie and most subsequent revivals.) It was nice to hear because Cliff's voice is underutilized in the show without it.

2. The guy who played Cliff has a GREAT voice. A shit American accent, but a great voice.

3. Instead of ending the first act with the reprise of 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me' at the engagement party, this version used the first entry of it in the creepiest way possible, taking it from what you would normally hear the young boy and putting it instead on a very blond member of the Nazi party and then swelling it from there in a very, very effective way and made that the break. So the second act began with 'Married' and then a stark reprise of 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me' done just by Fraulein Kost at the engagement party, which moved straight into 'Money'. So things got a bit shifted, but I think the shift was hugely effective. I have *never* felt so unsettled going into intermission. However, I will admit that by moving 'Married' to the second act, the second act doesn't have the quick decline into violence that it normally would. But the tradeoff is so worth it.

4. The woman who played Fraulein Schneider was excellent.

5. The set was awesomely versatile.

6. They added a really interesting beat with Bobby (Cliff's fling) to explain why Sally later makes the comment, "Bobby's disappeared" in which he's beaten by Hitler Youth who draw a pink triangle on his back.

The bad:

1. I *hated* the ending. Now, 'Cabaret' is a notoriously lewd show. But after the first act, it all comes unravelled and what I like about most of the endings of the show that I've seen is that they're subtle and that subtlety offsets the lewdness of the beginning; they are counterpoints. So (SPOILER ALERT) at the end when the emcee does his big reveal in the post euphoric title song climax, Cliff's abandonment of Berlin and the rest of the cast's regret filled denouement, he only has to raise his arm or open his coat to reveal the striped pyjamas and we get it. We understand because we all knew this is where the story of 1930s Berlin ends. This particular production could have had that subtlety. If it had stopped with the idea of the fence and the single file of half naked bodies walking into a darkened chamber being overseen by Herr Ludwig and turned on the sound of the gas, it would have been excellent. But instead, they decided we needed to be bashed over the head with the point and raised the set piece to reveal the actors naked and writhing and bathed in red light. I had a discussion with S.P. (a fellow Gooch theatre grad, though she was performance and I was technical) about it and said that I was rather insulted that they felt I, as an audience member, wasn't smart enough to figure out the significance of it on my own without the visual aid. As she noted, "it's not like we haven't all, at this point, seen a play or a movie or read a book or 12 about the Holocaust." So by taking the end just a step too far, it eclipsed all the lewdness that was the point of the first act.**

2. Speaking of the lewdness, it wasn't as racy as I'd have liked. Especially given the ending. If you take away the impact of the contrast, you can't also take away the exceptional perversion.

3. Wayne Sleep of ballet fame played the emcee and while he was slightly creepy and generally odd looking, he just didn't quite have it. I will, however, admit that this may be a product of my belief that Alan Cumming is the God of that part.

4. I believed the random "gay sex" acted out between two background characters far more than I believed that Bobby and Cliff had ever had any kind of relationship.

The odd:

1. It was really strange to watch this with a European audience because my favourite line, which revolves around Cliff's recitation of the last stanza of 'Casey at the Bat', didn't get a single laugh because no one got the (admittedly very American) joke. Sad.

Overall, it was a very good production and I'm glad I went. Twice.

[/theatre geek out]

*I seriously heart Alan Cumming. Dude managed, not only to pull off a mohawk for the part of Macheath (aka Mack the Knife) in 'The Threepenny Opera' a few years back at the age of 40, but managed to look hot as fuck doing it. Plus he's Scottish. And rocked the emcee harder than everyone (yes, even Joel Grey) giving one of the best audience betrayal moment in all of theatre (the smirk as he's unbuttoning the coat at the end is truly one of the most chilling things I've ever seen onstage.) And he was the Nightcrawler. And was wickedly funny in 'Reefer Madness.'

**Torsten, who came with me and had never seen the show before, strongly disagreed with me on this point. He said that showing the writhing gave it that much more impact. So this may well be a case of knowing too much.

Without me: Beks and Lew take Prague.

2009-05-22T02:14:00.002+02:00

Beks and Lew are in Prague this week. I so desperately want to be there with them. Not just because I miss Prague and not just because I miss them and not just because I'm in a foul temper. It's because for me, they *are* Prague. They were two of the key people who made that city what it was for me. And right now, where I am in my own head, I want that back. The city, my friends, my flat, the football, the beer...just for a few days, I want back what Lew so aptly described as the "magical fairyland kingdom the likes of which we shall never see again."

Go on, tell me: I will listen.

2009-05-19T20:31:00.005+02:00

I'm having one of those weeks where I am thoroughly annoyed by everyone and everything. Which has nothing at all to do with them. I'm pretty much hiding out in order to keep from punching random people in the face for no reason.

I just want to scream, "PLEASE, SOMEONE, TELL ME WHAT TO DO! WHY CAN'T YOU SEE THAT I AM SO VERY LOST?"

The answer, of course, is because I don't tell them in the first place, because I refuse to ask for help, because I deny anything is wrong when questioned. The answer is because I have gotten very good at hiding everything so no one will see just how much of me is a facade.

So I have no one but myself to blame when no one can see how lost I really am.

It is a vicious circle.

Coming down: How seeing my friends messed with my head.

2009-05-16T02:04:00.004+02:00

I have been struggling this week.

Having spent time with half of the mini-UN (including the two parts of it with whom I'm closest) while I was on holiday in Sweden made me realize that while I got used to their not being here, I have never, ever liked it.

I am not convinced I've made the right choice as far as what I'm doing with my life. I'm partly convinced that I've chosen this just because it allows me to prolong my entry into "real life" because I have no actual ambition.

It is bothering me more and more that I have never committed to a single thing in my entire life. I have always conquered something and then dropped it for the next experience, person and/or place.

Playing at a pseudo-married life for a few days with E.B. last week made me realize that I really do want that stability of coming home to someone who gets me. But I have spent the last ten years of my life running; I have absolutely no idea how to begin putting down roots.

I am stuck in limbo between Kerouac and society and I don't know how to balance the two.

Defining pictures: Ireland and Sweden.

2009-05-09T18:36:00.008+02:00

Nicolas, me and Laurent on a beach in the Ring of Kerry at VERY low tide

Me driving the last leg of the Ireland road trip

Me, E.B., Juri and Malin - Valborg 2009 - Lund, Sweden

Me driving the train between Bastad and Gothenburg while Magnus oversees our progress

Sweden: A brief recap.

2009-05-07T12:57:00.004+02:00

Sweden = Best. Trip. Ever.

In the course of a week, I...

1. Saw five of my friends (E.B., Juri, Malin, Rickard and Caroline)
2. Saw my favourite Swede (E.B.)
3. Saw my favourite Russian (Juri)
4. Saw two new countries (Sweden and Denmark)
5. Had a very in depth political discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of global communism in front of the main academic building for the University of Lund
6. Had Juri's famous (in our circle at least) spaghetti carbonara
7. Got hammered in a public park starting at 9 am on a weekday morning with about 15,000 other people
8. Got sunburnt
9. Tried snus (and liked it enough to bring some home -- disgusting, I know)
10. Had a late night conversation in the dark wherein the boy I was sharing a bed with, without context (or so it seemed, the context did become clear a few minutes later and NOT in that way, you perverts!) asked, and I quote, "Do you know how big a penis can get?"
11. Managed to break a brand new digital camera (and consequently bought another one)
12. Drove a train. FOR REALS!!!
13. Fell madly in love with Rickard's brother (the train driver) who is both gorgeous and let me drive the train
14. Slept in a bed with two different boys (sadly, neither one of them Rickard's brother)
15. Saw a band get booed offstage
16. Got locked out of the flat where I was staying at 3:30 in the morning
17. Nearly had my head taken off by a bridge
18. Saw a ship in a dry dock (way cool!)
19. Spent the afternoon of my birthday on the beach, knocking back a few beers
20. Had a couple ridiculously married type mornings with E.B.
21. Had a couple of ridiculously awesome chill evenings with E.B. just hanging out, watching football/movies, listening to music and shooting the shit (in fact, I completely changed my last day's plan in order to do so...I was supposed to go to Copenhagen on Tuesday and stay there, but instead he suggested and I agreed that it would be better to go to Copenhagen on Tuesday, sightsee and then go back to Lund and hang out with him then catch the train back after lunch yesterday. In the end, that was better for three reasons. First, I didn't find Copenhagen to be all that, secondly, I'd much rather spend time with E.B. when I have the chance than hang out in a hostel and third, because we had the most awesome lunch yesterday in which we spent an hour and a half watching people pass by the window and commenting on them ...deciding who they were, what they were doing, where they were going, etc.)

There was the minor detail of London and having to sleep in the airport last night because customs held me so long I missed my connection, but all in all, the most excellent holiday of my life. I'll post pictures from both trips soon, I promise.

And, back: How Ireland drove.

2009-04-27T11:33:00.006+02:00

Ireland was phenomenal!

Despite my misgivings about spending five days in a car with a bunch of guys I don't know all that well, it turned out to be a perfect trip. It's always a bit risky to put that many people together in an enclosed space for more than a day or two, but it was exactly the right combination of personalities and with the the exception of one very minor five minute span, there were no conflicts to speak of. We didn't end up meeting Torsten in Galway (actually, he didn't end up meeting us there) as planned, but it was no worries.

Number of beaches walked on: 3
Number of lakes walked in: 1
Number of streams walked in: 1
Number of Guinnesses consumed: A whole lot...it's Ireland, what did you expect?
Number of times I had to stop the car to look at a tower: I lost count...Laurent has a thing for towers
Number of times we heard the songs 'Halo' 'Jai Ho' and 'Poker Face': About 100 combined.
Number of impromptu language lessons: Uncountable -- with four different languages in the car, there was a lot of cultural sharing going on, including Nicolas doing his best to master the Canadian French accent
Number of times they compared me to Michael Schumaker and/or Batman: About 70
Number of sunny days: 2 (the two most crucial ones, at that...we got very lucky)
Number of 50 year old men who tried to take me home: 1 (in Donegal)
Number of 23 year old Afghani men with an afro who tried to take me home: 1 (in Galway)
Number of hostels we're likely not allowed to return to: 1 (in Galway -- "the tourists were drinking at 4 am")
Number of times we were woken up by crazy Italian metal music: 1 (that got vetoed quickly as wake-up music)
Number of people who rode a mechanical bull: 2 (I was not one of them)
Number of ruined castles climbed in: 1
Number of ruined abbeys checked out: 1
Most number of rules broken in one day: 4 (Day 4)
Number of little fishing villages where we had lunch featuring fish that came from the ocean that morning: 1 - Port Magee
Total number of castles and towers seen: A lot
Laughs: Too many to count

Overall, it was the best road trip I've ever been on. The roads were AMAZING, the scenery was beautiful and the company was stellar!

Off for a week in Sweden early tomorrow morning to see E.B. et. al.

Gone, baby, gone: Ireland.

2009-04-22T10:15:00.000+02:00

On the road with a bunch of guys for the next few days! Meeting up with Torsten in Galway for a night of debauchery (and celebrating Nicolas' birthday) on Saturday. Should be a good trip!

Road trip, Ireland: Or how I got roped into spending 5 days in a van with 5 guys.

2009-04-19T18:57:00.001+02:00

So one night a couple weeks ago, I'm out to get a mini-baguette at the local shop when I run into the Belgian guy who lives upstairs. We talk about the upcoming Easter holiday and what we plan to do with our three weeks off. I tell him I have no plans because I'm going to Sweden for a week as soon as everyone gets back from holiday so I'll be sticking around Belfast for the break. He mentions that he and some friends are going to do a driving tour of Ireland for a couple days and says I should join them. I tell him I'll think about it...

Fast forward to four days later and we're all sitting in the kitchen (to where the 40 map has been relocated) and all of a sudden, I'm being promised driving duty. Next thing I know, I'm agreeing to spend five days driving around the island with a bunch of guys I barely know.

We leave the 22nd.

I haven't decided if this is a really good idea or a really, really bad one.

Playoffs: Some sporting notes that aren't about baseball.

2009-04-17T15:26:00.000+02:00

1. The Leafs missed the playoffs. Again. No one is surprised.

2. This Bruins commercial made me laugh out loud. Seriously. It was the best 30 seconds of my month.

3. The Chelsea/Liverpool match on Tuesday night, though seriously goal filled was poorly played. Liverpool, playing without Stevie G. and missing him terribly, did well in the first half and then imploded in the second half. Poor passes and weak defence was all a sub-par Chelsea team needed. All they had to do was sit back and let the Reds' backfield shoot themselves in the foot. Which they did. Gloriously. Point 5 of Off The Post's conclusions on the match: "The fact that Petr Cech was very nearly wearing Liverpool colours might explain some of his decision making." True. And I like Cech.

4. This is a very cool article about two rival high school football teams in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I have to admit that my years in Texas left me with a soft spot for high school football.

5. By some sort of miracle/the return of Robbie Keane to White Hart Lane, Spurs are sitting in 8th place (!) in the Premiership table with six matches to play. They're obviously not going to make the top 6, but given the way the season started, I'll take 8th place.

6. This is funny if you know who Berbatov is. And that he's surly.

Spring is officially here: A few notes on the new baseball season.

2009-04-14T04:21:00.005+02:00

1. As usual, the Orioles are giving everyone false hope. Or at least cautious optimism. They do this every spring. Win more games than they lose, let their fans think they're getting better and that this year is going to be the first one in more than a decade that they finish over .500. And then they implode from a dearth of good pitching and by the middle of June, we're left going "I really should have seen this coming."

2. The O's have an outfielder (Felix Pie) on their roster who played for the Lansing Lugnuts -- a Cubs organization at the time, though I don't know if it still is -- of the Midwest League during the 2003 season, which is the same season that I was working in the Midwest League. The only reason I remember him is because dude was crazy fast. And made some completely impossible catches in centre field.

3. The Orioles picked up Gregg Zaun in the offseason. I don't know why, but there is something I don't like about that guy. Always has been. I'm sure he's a very nice guy in real life, but he looks like a douche. He looks like the kind of guy who parks his Mazda (not that he drives a Mazda) in four parking spaces so no one scratches it. I got my fill of the guy during the World Series since I was living (as it were) in Toronto at the time and he was a studio commentator for TSN. He certainly knows his baseball and having to be one of those guys whose job it is to explain baseball as if everyone watching has just flown in from their native Jupiter must be quite beneath him, so fair play to him for that. But he still looks like a douche.

4. My parents are out in Seattle this week for some training seminar thing my mum's doing. Dad's just going for the sake of getting out of the house. Retirement. They're going to see the Mariner's play on Wednesday. I am super jealous.

5. It is time to bust out the following movies: Bull Durham, The Sandlot and Field of Dreams.

My life: 50 random things I've done.

2009-04-13T05:59:00.001+02:00

Part II of the bucket list update...

Over the course of my life, I have:

1. Walked barefoot on a professional baseball field
2. Climbed a windmill (two actually -- the first one required a tetanus shot and eight months of an ankle brace in its aftermath)
3. Driven a combine
4. Flown on theatrical rigging
5. Driven across the US
6. Been shot at with rubber bullets
7. Swum in the Vltava
8. Seen Cal Ripken's last game
9. Been kicked out of Home Depot
10. Gotten drunk on a weekday morning for no reason
11. Illegally set off fireworks on the Fourth of July
12. Seen icebergs in the wild
13. Temporarily piloted a ferry
14. Waded in the Rio Grande (definitely not legal -- at least where I was)
15. Waded in Plymouth Harbour in January (it was -- not surprisingly -- *really* freaking cold)
16. Swum in the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans and set foot in the Gulf of Mexico
17. Been on a working plantation
18. Seen a show on Broadway
19. Been camping alone
20. Lived in a foreign country (technically, three of them, but only two of them *really* count)
21. Played rugby
22. Had a beer at work (at both of my jobs in the same summer, no less)
23. Fallen in love with a foreign boy
24. Had a bar where I was a regular
25. Been mistaken for a lesbian (on more than one occasion)
26. Accidentally melted the fingerprints off three of my fingers (they come back when the old skin sloughs off)
27. Asked how long a drive it was to Little Rock, Arkansas when I was just over the New Mexico/Texas border
28. Been passed by a big rig while going 82 mph (I-40 in Arizona)
29. Snowshoed
30. Made maple syrup
31. Gotten a tattoo (well, five really)
32. Shingled a roof
33. Milked a cow
34. Drunk absinthe
35. Built a table (and a chair)
36. Grudgingly been in a musical
37. Made life sized paper people
38. Swum to an island (way more than once)
39. Heard silence (it was honestly a bit terrifying)
40. Been part of a living history (twice)
41. Been refused entry to a bar for being "too drunk" when I was, in fact, mostly sober
42. Been a VIP at a Champions League match (yay for free beer and stolen pint glasses!)
43. Had a pet snake
44. Gotten up before the sun to cook breakfast for my friends
45. Driven somewhere just for the sake of going there
46. Stomped grapes
47. Driven barefoot in half the states in the union
48. Learned to solve a Rubik's Cube
49. Failed to clear customs in a foreign country
50. Rewired an air conditioner, several stage lights, a few random everyday lights and completely wired up a blacklight from scratch

Check them off and add some more: An update on my bucket list.

2009-04-04T03:27:00.004+02:00

This is really a two part post. Part I (this one) is an update of my bucket list that I posted in August. I've accomplished quite a few. And it adds a few things that have popped up in the interim.

Things I have (or will have in the next month) accomplished:

10. Celebrate St. Patrick's Day in Ireland -- 17 March 2009
12. See as much of the world as I can including, but not limited to: Sweden (28 April - 5 May 2009) and Ireland (22 - 26 April 2009 the first time...I'll be back in the Republic in July to play with S. while she's over.)
15. Live on an island -- 3 September 2008
37. Host a dinner party (I don't count Thanksgiving because though it was fun, it was a lot of strange people I'd never seen before in my flat and though I got both Lew and The Aussie out of the deal, it was way more stressful than I'd have liked) -- 18 December 2008 (more or less...between Thanksgiving and this, I'm considering it mission accomplished!)
43. Learn to identify ten constellations not called Orion, Casseopeia and the Big Dipper -- in progress - constellations learned: 1 (Draco)
44. Reconcile history with my faith and establish exactly what it is that I believe -- I have actually given up on this as I've realized that they can't be reconciled and that I'm a firm believer in evolution and Biblical fallacy.
56. Attend a sporting event as a VIP -- 13 August 2008, Sparta Praha v. Panathinaikos Athens
59. Watch the sun come up on the Charles Bridge -- 19 August 2008
60. Share a road trip with someone -- Ireland, Easter Break 2009*
69. Photograph a demonstration -- 10 January 2009
78. Dance without being so self conscious -- 29 August 2008 spontaneously in the foyer of a random building in Old Town with Lew
91. Crash a kickass party -- 20 September 2008
94. Master liquid eyeliner -- January 2009
102. Solve a Rubik's Cube -- 2 April 2009

Things that have been added to the bucket list:
102. Solve a Rubik's Cube
103. Participate in a polar bear swim
104. Run a 5k -- this was actually supposed to have happened on Wednesday, but I've been sick all week so alas, it'll have to wait until the end of May.

*Last night, I got talked into spending 5 days driving around Ireland in a minivan with five guys I barely know at the end of our three week Easter holiday. More on this later...

April Fool's: A ten year old prank co-authored by a younger Wegrit.

2009-04-01T03:56:00.000+02:00

Ten years ago, I was close to finishing up my first year at the Gooch. My core group of friends was made up of J., S., and M., and four guys who had dubbed themselves (God knows why) The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They even had t-shirts. No, I'm not kidding.

Anyway, someone in the group of guys (Michael, I think?) was bragging on and on in the month leading up to April Fool's Day about how great a prankster he was and so on and so forth so the girls decided we were going to play. And win.

To be fair, we managed only to get two of them. We tried with a third, but it fell through; he didn't open the attachment that was designed to fool his computer into thinking something or other, but I've forgotten what. We couldn't come up with anything for Michael. So we were left with Kendrick and Phil. And we succeeded. Bigtime.

Phil's required a fair amount of planning. It required reconnaissance and a solid plan. It required an accomplice outside the four of us who was willing to keep his mouth shut. It required climbing from one window to another on the second floor of a residence hall. Phil, for reasons that would emerge a few years later, was really, really anal about people being in his room when he wasn't there. So we thought it would be funny to break in while he was in class and take pictures of ourselves naked in his bed. Now, we weren't truly naked, but Phil didn't know that. And when he discovered these pictures slid under his door, he went straight to the rest of the guys to demand to know how we'd gotten in. Except they had no idea about any of it. We had enlisted the help of Phil's next door neighbour -- though I'm not sure any of us ever fessed up to that fact -- for both access to his window (which M. climbed out of, in through Phil's window, then unlocked the door and let the rest of us into the room) and as photographer for our stunt. I still have one of the pictures we took later in the laundry room flashing the victory sign!

Kendrick's was much easier in the execution, but the distribution required more effort. Kendrick was notorious for hooking up with people. Lots of people. So we decided to take a photograph I had of him pole dancing from that Halloween and make it into a wanted poster. Which we then put up all over campus. And I do mean ALL OVER CAMPUS. We split up in the morning and plastered the residence halls, the dining halls, the academic buildings and the student centre. Pretty much everywhere there was a public door, there was a poster. Mercifully, Kendrick has a sense of humour and took it all in stride, though he did get a lot of shit for it from pretty much everyone who knew him. Including at least one professor. I know S. has a copy of the wanted poster somewhere and at one time I had the file on my computer, but it has since been lost. I'd get a good laugh out of seeing it again though. Perhaps posting it to Kendrick's wall...

A bunch of random: Five wholly unrelated things.

2009-03-29T21:55:00.002+02:00

1. "Someday," I told E.B. this week, "I will live near the boats and the fish." There is something in me that is drawn to water. Always has been. Big water makes me calm. I wonder if all my restlessness and my need to be on the road is really just a symptom of my need for water.

2. The new season of Robin Hood started yesterday. Yay!

3. We're finally in Daylight Savings. I'm pretty excited for an extra hour of daylight. I'd write sun, but that would be misleading.

4. There was rioting ahead of the NI/Poland qualifier yesterday and I missed it. I heard it, but I didn't know that's what it was. I miss all the fun, though I did drunkenly ogle some cops Friday night on the way home from the pub with Nick and Shiva.

5. I might be headed to London for a few days in May. Lindsay will be there vising her boyfriend and if I can flight cheap airfare, I'll go. I'd *love* to see her.

Righteous indignation headed your way in 3, 2, 1...

2009-03-25T04:44:00.000+01:00

Dear creator of emotional manipulation emails,

I would like to tell you a story. There's no punch line. Just ask yourself what you would do...

I am sick and fucking tired of reading your emails with some sob story about a dead child, a dead soldier, a dead mother, etc. that has some sort of contrived point on morality, ethics and/or God's genius at its core. Leave my fucking inbox alone. It has no conscience. And when it comes to your emails, neither do I. I don't even read them before I hit delete.

You do not get to decide whether I love and/or support any of the following based on whether or not I forward your self-righteous bullshit: God, the troops, America, babies, the differently abled (or whatever the ridiculous PC term we're using this month is), the planet, Jesus, dying children, starving children and/or puppies.

Kindly go fuck yourself right off your pedestal.

Sincerely,

Wegrit

The Bartender: A forgotten boyfriend finds his way into my consciousness.

2009-03-21T05:19:00.007+01:00

Do you ever have those times where someone from your past who you'd completely forgotten about just randomly pops into your head? I had that moment today. For no reason...

When I first moved to Texas in February of 2004, I started working at a very well known steakhouse. Not a chain...one of the best known steakhouses in the world. I'll leave it there. I was waiting tables while I figured out the next step. I knew no one in the entire city -- my whole experience with the town had been a passing fling with a rodeo cowboy from Alberta when I was driving Route 66 the previous fall -- and I had no friends. I didn't know it then, but I had been spoiled in my waiting job in Indiana in every regard. I was well paid and I was surrounded by a really great staff. In any event, I took this job and quickly found that while I really am a good waitress and I really do enjoy waiting tables, this job wasn't for me. The staff were very redneck, the pay was shit, the managers were horrid and the clientele made me more restless than I've ever been in my life; everyone who ate there was on their way somewhere else. And they liked to talk about it. Which was cool in a lot of ways, but two months in, I was struggling not to make a run for it once I finished work every night.

Over the course of this job, I started dating one of the bartenders. I was just shy of 24 at the time; he was 35 (33?). His name was Troy and he had a giant tattoo of an alien on his shoulder. I can't for the life of me remember why. He was a former drug addict who had lived sort of everywhere doing sort of everything, which fascinated me, of course. He hated it when I used big words. And I don't remember a single other thing about him. Apart from a conversation after I got cut one night informing him that I had spontaneously decided that I was going to head to Roswell that night (at 11:oo pm) and spend my day off down there the next day and I would see him at work two nights later, I don't remember a single thing we said to each other. I don't remember where he lived or what kind of a car he drove or where he was from. I can only vaguely remember what he looked like...really the only thing I can say for certain is he was blond. I truly wouldn't know him now if he bit me.

Anyway, our relationship was short lived. Four months maybe? Even the details of that are a bit fuzzy now. There was something to do with him sleeping with three other girls, but I seem to recall not finding out about that until after the relationship had ended. There's some vague idea that he was fired or reprimanded or something for getting caught making out with one of the other servers in the women's washroom while on the clock? But I don't remember if that was what ended it either. Or if that even happened. The only thing I remember for sure is that I had quit working a the restaurant by the time our relationship ended.

So I'm sitting at my desk this afternoon doing some research and out of nowhere, he just pops into my head. Absolutely unprompted.

I had totally forgotten he existed.

But it all makes me wonder...do I sometimes, for no reason at all, pop into the heads of people I've known in passing?

St. Paddy's Day: Or, booze + people = riots.

2009-03-19T19:04:00.003+01:00

1: Number of valuable lessons learned...do not, under any circumstances, go running in a residential neighbourhood in the middle of the afternoon on St. Patrick's Day.
10: Number of parties I ran by that decided cheering like I was running a marathon wasn't totally obnoxious
2: Number of parties I ran by that just watched me go
2: Number of parties I ran by that were exclusively female...you do the math
1: Number of riots I accidentally found myself in the middle of during my run
4: Number of times I wanted to stop and ogle the riot cops
1: Number of times I actually *did* stop and ogle the riot cops
x+2: Number of beers consumed (in which x is the number at which I should have stopped)
4: Number of drunk men who tried to pick me up
0: Number of drunk men who succeeded
2: Number of drunk men who defended my honour (The Italian and The Indian, who are both friends, but it was sweet.)
1: Number of people I saw try to steal a bottle of very cheap, *very* bad wine called Buckfast
0: Number of people who succeeded in stealing a bottle of very cheap, *very* bad wine
6,112: Approximate number of people crammed into the pub
3,000: Likely legal number of people allowed into the pub
17: Number of people who saw my maple leaf tattoo and commented
5: Number of said people who truly believed that I wasn't Canadian, I just really like maple syrup
3: Number of German drinking games played
2: Number of dirty German drinking games played
1: Number of beers I opened with a bottle of Fanta (I am pretty pleased with myself over that)

This week: Conferences, hockey, crab fishing, Munich, my friends and my friends in Munich.

2009-03-15T06:13:00.009+01:00

A bunch of stuff:

1. I can't believe I haven't mentioned this...there had been some discussion about R. coming over for St. Paddy's Day (Torsten and I have been talking about catching a bus down to Dublin, but it's still undecided) but that didn't work out. Instead, he decided to fly up to see me in Baltimore the weekend I'm in town. I'm SO fucking excited about that! I mean, it was already playing out as a good weekend. OJ's getting married, I'm going to see a whole bunch of my friends who I haven't seen in years (like S., whom I haven't seen since her wedding in October of 2005) and I get to be back in Baltimore for a week. And then R. decided he was going to come up. And take me to an O's game!

2. I had a conversation with E.B. this week in which we empirically analyzed the potential effectiveness of a pickup line he and a buddy of his drunkenly made up. We're both convinced it would work...for totally different reasons.

3. Inspired by E.B.'s raging excitement over his own flight -- which prompted him to create an event on Facebook despite his longtime refusal to even *get* Facebook -- I booked my flight to Munich today. Grand total for a round trip ticket? Less than 40 quid (a little over $55 US.) Aer Lingus rocks my face off! The mini-UN will be back together on the 25th of June for a weekend of beer garden debauchery. It'll be nice to finally get there. I never did make it over when The Ex-fiance was assigned there.

4. I got an email from Rickard this evening. I had been thinking about him this afternoon as I looked up the Swedish hockey league's schedule in the hopes that they'd still be playing when I get there. Unfortunately, they're already in the semifinals of their playoffs so by the time the end of April rolls around, everything will be finished for the season. It's too bad, really, because it would have been really fun to go to a game with Rickard...we have a good time watching hockey together.

5. A propos of Rickard's timely email, The Aussie and I have been apart long enough now that we are no longer thinking of each other at the same time. This is better. Also, he really loves his wife. I like that.

6. Yeah, I'm totally sneaking this in, but apropos of the aforementioned pickup line conversation with E.B. -- I swear on my life the two are related -- it's almost time for the crab fishing show to start up again! Yay!

7. I'm being sent to a conference in Scotland (I think) in May. I'm submitting a proposal to give a paper, but the likelihood is that it won't be accepted given how new I am to the whole process. But the worse they can say is no, so I might as well apply and see what happens.

Revolution: Three things.

2009-03-12T05:51:00.008+01:00

Because I've had nothing to say for a week...

Things are getting heated here in NI this week. The IRA has resurfaced despite having been (at least officially) decommissioned in the fall of 2006.

I'm in the process of preparing a proposal to give a paper at a conference on revolution in Scotland in May.

On those notes, a long overdue visit from my favourite six-year-old existentialist.

Karma: International football, diving and the Carling Cup final.

2009-03-05T05:53:00.009+01:00

This makes me so happy.* First because it's an actual footballer saying it like it is as regards Cristiano Ronaldo, that sneaky little fuck, and his diving antics. Secondly because said footballer is a Spurs (and Croatia) midfielder and that automatically makes him ten times cooler than pretty much everyone not called David Beckham (even if he does look like the nighthob from 'The Neverending Story') and possibly my new boyfriend, Charlie (who is also a Croatia international who plays for Spurs.) Thirdly, he totally agrees with everything I've been saying for the last two and a half years.

It's called karma, Cris, you sneaky little fuck...

*The fact that it makes me giggle suggests that I'm doomed to watch Spurs hang about the middle of the table for the next decade, I'm sure. It's called karma, Wegrit... On second thought, maybe I can claim Sunday's penalties loss in the Carling Cup final (thus a post that was seven total words, of which five were "fuck.")

Ah well, there's still hope for England, right? Right?

Fuckety fuck fuck! FUCK!

2009-03-01T19:05:00.002+01:00

Fuck Manchester United.

The Last Dance.

2009-02-28T03:29:00.000+01:00

"You look good," you tell him, even though it's half a lie.
He looks sickly.
"Yeah. How are you?" he asks, as if he barely knew you in the first place.
"Great. Finishing up my thesis. You?"
He nods, pretending to understand.
"Things have been good," he lies, thinking you haven't heard the truth from mutual friends who still talk.
"That's good," you tell him, even though you know the truth.
He smiles at you. You feel the urge to shower. He's looking at you like he's seen you naked.
He has, but that's not the point.
"Yeah, I'm thinking about moving to Missouri."
Point you've heard.
"Hmmm."
You know he'll never go.
You exchange small talk for a few minutes. He can't look you in the eye.
"I'm going to kill myself," he tells you.
You laugh him off; it's a stupid game, a test to see how much you still care.
"Why plan to move to Missouri, then?" you ask without changing tone.
He makes up an answer that doesn't quite make sense. You let it slide; you can't be bothered to argue.
"Are you still getting high?"
He pretends not to hear. You accept the answer.
"Well," you lie, "I've got to get going."
He lies with you one last time.
"Yeah. I've got to get back too..."