My First Post About Dental Floss

Currently I have another new teacher staying with me. Randomly enough, we were neighbors when I first moved to Ithaca, we went to high school together and worked on the school newspaper together. Hes teaching math at a sister charter school.

Anyways, he the second man to bring those little plastic flossers into my house. What is it with men and their inability to use dental floss? It is one of the simplest technologies I know, not to mention the cheapest. Then someone came along and said, "Hey, how can we make this more expensive, less environmentally friendly and more goofy looking?"

This is along the lines of those combination jelly/peanut butter jars. I guess it is far to much work to be opening TWO jars and dirtying TWO knives.

Ok, off my soap box for the time being...

I thought of you when...music edition

Pretty much every other song on the radio makes me think of you or Wesleyan. Strangely enough there is a radio station here that really likes playing MGMT. Also there is great station ("music you can move to") that plays California Love all the time.

Yesterday at the gym, for the first time since I've been in AZ, I heard the award winner "Put your lips on my mouth". This cross-country transfer of music makes no sense to me. Isn't most the music recorded in the LA area? Why does it always show up on the East Coast, and way before it gets to the West Coast? Kiss Me Through the Phone was blowing up here in just a few weeks ago, and I remember being sick of that song in March.

One of life's many mysteries...

Oregon Coast Part 1

I feel like I'm cheating on Ithaca, but I think the OR coast really is the most beautiful place I've ever seen. (Don't worry Ithaca! You still have swimming holes and snow and the best library ever!)

I was only in OR for two full days but we did a lot!





The first park we visited was called Shore Acres. We took a guided hike that led us around the coast and then through the woods, and, for the first time in my life, I was up close and personal with northwest sized trees. I wanted Victor to take a picture of me hugging the tree to show the proportion but I resisted because (a) of the cliche and (b) there is really no need to give people more ammunition about my tree hugging hippy tendencies.

Above are views of the ocean from the park. The mystery men are Victor and Victor's friend Ryan, who is training to be a Buddhist monk.








At the second beach there was a long rocky jetty that we clamored out on. Ryan and Victor totally out-clamored me, but then, they had been doing this for years. The first picture is looking out from the beach, the second is looking back at the beach from the jetty and the third is me looking over the ocean from an overlook above the beach.

Montezuma's Castle

The problem with being busy with travels and other exciting activities is that one is too busy to write about those activities - though I'd rather have it this way. The alternative is, of course, writing about how bored one is, which is enjoyed by no one.

Two weekends ago Victor and I decided to forgo the forecasted 115 degree highs and head up to Flagstaff, where the temperature promised to top out in the low 80s. On the way up we stopped at Montezuma's Castle National Monument, which contains the ruins of a prehistoric community. The ruins were erroneously attributed to Montezuma and the Aztecs by the Spanish who (re)discovered the ruins in the 17th century. The actual inhabitants were several hundred Sinagua Indians, a tribe that mysteriously disappeared from the site approximately 800 years ago. Archeologists speculate that the Sinagua may have joined nearby Hopi tribes.






These are some of the cliffside dwellings built by the Sinagau. At the peak of the community there were 60-70 rooms built into area cliffs, though many of the structures have since fallen apart.






This is by far the coolest part of the site. In the middle of the desert, surrounded by prickly pears, sagauro cacti and sand there is a beautiful natural lake. Called Montezuma's Well, it is fed by underground streams and thus is kept at a constant 76 degrees (we were still about an hour south of Flagstaff, and so not yet out of the 100 plus degree heat). Down at the shore we were able to dip our feet in.



Victor: Only YOU can prevent forest fires. (Possibly he was actually pointing to a lizard).

Working Toward the 50

I counted up the number of states I've been in and (after I see you in Arizona) it will be 31.

In a recent email that I was cc'd on, my new boss explained to her colleagues that I will be shadowing her on visits to both Washington state, and Oregon early in the fall. This is so great! These are TWO MORE states left on the list. Strangely, one of the states I am most concerned about is Maine. It's awful far north in the Northeast, and I feel like without making a conscious effort to drive 7 hours some time when I am visiting home in the next couple years, I may never get there. NB must make more friends with vacation houses and/or yearly campsites in Maine.

As a side note, my grandmother asked me if I thought I would at least be having dinner at the top of the space needle when I was visiting Seattle for work. I said I probably wouldn't have the time--fearing she would be unable to bear my explanation that this new job in no way carries an expense account or salary figure appropriate for a space needle meal. This could be the opposite of being accused of yuppiedom? No wait, it is instead a strange, misplaced assumption of yuppiedom! Yes, that must be it.

OK I'll let me post the states left to go:

arizona

washinton

oregon

north dakota

south dakota

nevada

idaho

maine

south carolina

hawaii

alaska

alabama

louisiana

mississippi

wisconsin

michigan

minnesota

oklahoma

kansas

Oh My Cod! (a retrospective) Part 1

This post is a long time coming, but hopefully worth waiting for. The first thing I must say about the trip is that it would have been made infinitely better if Anna and I were brilliant pop-lockers. Even now, almost a month later, I can think of nothing that would have more disturbing to our blue-blood vacay companions than the two of us pop-locking down the main street of Chatham, MA.

As Anna explained in her account of our vacay, there was a great deal of time spent enjoying the atmosphere of the Cape's public libraries and used and new book stores. I took the opportunity to "tweet" about some of the more exciting incidences of print culture I encountered during our trip. The irony of sending text messages to a microblog page while sitting in a public library surrounded my books (perhaps the antithesis of microblogs) was not lost on me, instead it felt at times seductively subversive. Among the print culture great finds (courtesy of Anna) was a Biblophile Shelf located in the corner of the "Where the sidewalk ends" bookstore.

Beautiful books from this shelf include: Men of Letters and People of Substance as well as Off the Page. Below is a picture of Anna, ecstatic over our stimulating visit to WTSE. I should add that like well-trained ex-college students, we drank our fair share of the free coffee offered at this bookstore.

The coffee comment makes me think about our food adventures during this visit, but I think they deserve their own post. I'll leave you instead with two incidences of peculiar signage from the New England landscape, the second one will be a good segue for my upcoming post on our food adventures.

I'll be back soon. Off to catch some sun rays.

The Bird Strikes Back

The first day of our road trip my mom and I hit a bird while driving. Bird murder was bad enough, but to make matters worse, when we stopped we realized the brid was still stuck in between the hood and the bumper, with a wing sticking out. We hit the bird somewhere in Ohio, and I think my mother finally got the guts to remove it around Oklaholma or Texas. Or remove the wing anyways; you could still see a dessicated talon reaching out from the engine.

Fast forward to tonight when I (finally) decided to check my oil, seeing as the car had endured a 3,000 cross country road trip. I stuck my hand in between the hood and bumper and touched...bird. Such jumping around and screaming has not been witnessed maybe since the time last fall when a bird got into our house one Saturday morning. Yes, the poor bird, minus one wing, had been riding around with me for almost a month. Lucky for me Victor was around to perform bird removal and burial services, and we had a nice funeral procession to the dumpster.

I just feel bad for the bird, because his body is strewn across state lines and his spirit will have a time getting back together.

P.S. Victor helped me write this post. He says hi.

I thought of you so many times

when I read this article.

First of all, the word TIMBO! And then of course I laughed out loud when the writer speaks about young men who "think they are ghetto but really are quite white." I believe the young gentleman who used to wear his timbos in the gym fits that description, more or less. Also, a quick shout out to Wu-Tang. And a final passing reference to none other than, Say Anything.

I also really liked the article itself, and that's NOT just because the term neologism is used in it.

In other news, I'm trying to get rid of some of my books. I know this must be unbelievable to you. But the time has come to separate myself from such titles as: The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England and The Dictionary of Poetic Terms. Ahh for the life of a liberal arts student...so many titles, so little use.

So T-Pain and a Fox News Anchor walk into a bar...

Auto tune the news. You will die laughing.