I was out shopping with a friend all day, but I didn't think of it that way until I made my movie and music purchases. I got new hiking shoes, a Smiths shirt, a week-late birthday present for my friend (The Smiths Singles), movies and a Rasputina cd for myself. Louder than Bombs was playing in the music section at the Telegraph Rasputin, which made me very happy.

After saying goodbye to my friend after dinner, I went to a bookstore, skimmed a really good atheist book, reordered the shelf to seperate the real skeptic books from the idiots, and bought a book to add to my presentation on the history of skepticism. Then I went home. There, I must have undercooked some leftovers because they made me sick the next day...

Lazy Saturday

I woke up today around noon after some really odd, incredibly detailed dreams, involving my old Michigan apartment, and other things that I'm not quite sure how to describe. I got ready to go hiking, which mainly involved ripping the music from all my Morrissey and Smiths CDs to put on my phone, now with a 2GB memory card. I also needed to go get food, but I could not find my hands free device, so I took off with my wallet and keys.

I had a chicken sandwich, salad, and coffee at Sconehendge, then went back via Berkeley Bowl. I saw some guys giving away samples of their beef, tried some, and talked to them a little bit about advances made in grass-fed beef. Then I went in and headed for the produce section to pick up a few things. I got some bananas, chatted with another woman also not very impressed with the strawberry selection, then picked up some cherries after deciding that I would wait until strawberries were in season before getting some. I then checked out the power bar selection and decided to get some nuts after seeing that all of them (even Clif) had WAY too much sugar in them for my liking. I picked up some raw cashews and then some cheddar sesame sticks, which were errantly labeled whole wheat sesame sticks by the people that weigh stuff. I left with my food and walked to the flea market.

There were stands at the market that I hadn't thought I'd seen before, and I guess it's getting close to being "not winter" now, so more people are out. I saw a BART ticket with 80 cents on it on the ground and decided to pick it up. I looked around to see if anyone had dropped one recently, but didn't see that to be the case. I couldn't find one of the phone accessory places, so I stopped by the "black guy and chinese lady" stand (that's the name) and asked about hands free devices for my phone. They had just sold the last one, but the guy said he might have some at home, so I should stop by the next day, earlier in the day. I walked around a little more too, then headed for home.

On the way, I passed by these people doing something in front of a house. I accidentally almost ran into an old guy with a ukulele and he started telling me about what was happening. I had a bit of the broccoli stuff they were growing and signed up to help out. This was a neighborhood garden thing and they were just starting up. I figured that it was a good use of a weekend afternoon and he was really excited to have someone that could do data entry.

I got home and found my hands free thing, but after testing it out on my phone, I found taht it didn't work really well at all and resolved to buy a proper music player. I can play music through the regular speakers, which might be fine for the car, but not so much for hiking. My plan for the evening is to call a friend and see what she is up to, then possibly watch the Olympics and otherwise do nothing.

The Holidays are Over

First day of work after a vacation. Went to Napa, the beach, and Muir Woods in January this year, with my sister. Today was my first day back at work and back reading my websites. Alternet has an atheist section now.

Day One

I woke up in Berkeley today and drove to work. The Caldecott was like butter. I could enjoy this commute.

Moving Day

The movers arrived and began to carry things while I watched. Things were happening and I wasn't actually doing anything.

I bought a corndog at a gas station that was marketed as a "sausage wrapped in a pancake".

I beat the movers by a significant amount, and then directed them to arrange my living room.

After they left, M came over and we chatted.

I found that a neighbor had an unsecured wireless connection, harvested my crops, talked with J, and ordered Chinese food. It did not come with utensils, which were one of the few things left at the old place (along with the rest of my kitchen).

Frantic!

Packing, packing, without boxes! I take at least one trip to Berkeley, maybe two, but still, there is crap everywhere, and the movers will be there tomorrow. I miss the birthday party in Lafayette. I create some order. I go to bed.

Happy Birthday Me!

I went to the dentist, then got annoyed at some people standing in front of the skin care section when I needed some damn aloe. No confrontation, just annoyance. Then I went home and hired movers for Sunday and took a nap. After my nap, I called my dad and wished him a Happy Birthday too, then I think I talked to C too. After my crazy weekend, I needed a day like this.

Ouch

I got burned today, pretty badly too. The pictorial is on facebook if you wanna know more.

Vacations

Today, I had a vacation day from work, but R and J weren't arriving until midnight, so I drove to Berkeley to sign my lease and get my keys.

Apartment hunting was horrible. Everything sucked. Then I went to a party in Castro Valley. It rained tonight.

Back and Forth

Apartment hunting, training session workout, SANE's Friday night oddities.

Beginnings

Today was the day I started my new job and turned in my 30 day notice that I would be moving out of San Ramon.

The President Ordered It

:( I woke up with my throat hurting something fierce. My ears were tickly again, and my head hurt a little bit. The president was on NPR telling people with flu symptoms to stay home. This is just a cold. No fever. I told my co-worker about my throat and got all ready for work, but called her anyway to ask if I should come into work anyway. She said no, I should stay home and rest. I didn't want to, I felt ok, ok enough to sit in front of a computer and make decisions, but after a nap, I'm not so sure. I need to go to the store and get some juice and things, but I don't really want to leave the apartment.

Pu-ma Man, he flies like a mo-ron

I made it into work today, and I'll be working a full day today, then resting all night. I may or may not teach a class tomorrow.

Its really been a long time

Over three months at this point.

Well, today, I got up and contemplated calling in sick because I wasn't feeling much better than yesterday, then decided to shower anyway. After my shower, however, I didn't feel really good. My head hurt, my throat hurt, and I still had that mild delirium. I notified people with my blackberry that I wasn't able to make it in, then I had some food, painkillers, and medication. The painkillers allowed me to be a little bit productive, but I took a nap in the middle of the day. I hope this headache is gone tomorrow. My ears also feel weird.

Traffic was good in the morning, but I met up with back-up for the Caldecott going east - this never happens to me - then the other tunnel opened up

I awoke on Sunday with pain in my back and left with the other crasher since I just wanted some food and my comfy bed. The guy found the note I had put in his pocket with my number and as a consequence, gave me his. I went to Au Coquelet and performed my hangover ritual, got some food, took a walk up to Shattuck and back, then got to my car to discover that...

I lost my keys!

OMG! What could I do!? I searched the restaurant, I went to my friend's apartment, and still no keys. So I took the bart to Walnut Creek, but wasn't sure what to do from that point (I needed to get home to get my spare keys). There were no busses to go to San Ramon from WC, and a cab would be to expensive, so I was like "who do I know in WC?" That turned out to be A and K, so I sent K a text and as I was typing one up to send A, she called and she would be able to take me to my place. We ended up going to berkeley together, hitting up the ashby flea market, then having lunch on University. Then I went to Au Coquelet to give them my name and number and they had found my keys. Apparently, during my hangover ritual in the bathroom, they must have fallen on the ground and I didn't see them the three times I checked that bathroom.

Traffic on 24 in the afternoon was good and the Caldecott back-up going back that night was really light

On Saturday, I got up, moved my car, got some food, drove home, napped, made a phone call, got ready for the party, took some photos and wrote up copy for a new CL ad, and headed out for Berkeley again. There, I went to a party, got drunk, sorta flirted with a guy, passed out on the loveseat because that guy took the couch.

Traffic on 24 was backed up at the Caldecott going back to Orinda

On Friday, I drove to Berkeley in the rain, kinda glad that I wasn't clubbing that night. I met some random people on Telegraph and had sushi with them before meeting the atheists. I caught up with a bunch of people there, which was good, and most contention was avoided.

Being sick is so boring

Today, I was online, tried to sleep, sat around, slept, went online, went out shopping and was reminded that I need to look at the price tags on the shelves at Whole Foods, came back and ate, tried to sleep, went back online and found this.

And the first act my new congress does....

... is to make it easier for women to find out whether or not the playing field is really equal, exposing injustices where they lie! It is a good week to be a woman in America, and maybe we can make the 111th Congress an even better one for us too.

Inner Peace (Part 1)

Being in Africa was a kick in the pants. The short is that it was hot, humid, dirty, and very different from what I was used to. Visually, the streets of Luanda were cluttered with buildings in various states of disrepair, people selling and/or carrying things, and massive amounts of garbage and debris. I could not spend my money as nowhere took plastic and I had all of $15 American on me. Not to mention that the prices were incredibly high - a couple of slices of pizza could run someone $25! Then, of course, there was the difference in all of the people I saw. You'll laugh, I know I still do, but I fully realized that yes, there ARE a lot of black people in Africa. I have recently been called "aesthetically focused", but really, I am likely to be just slightly more visually focused than the average person. I do, after all, think visually, but I'm not sure how different this makes me than most people. Regardless, the visual affect of this difference in skin color was striking. I grew up around white people and even here, I am surrounded by light colored people. And central Africans aren't just "black", no, it was the most amazing dark skin I've seen in my life. I got really really jealous too.

This is the first part of a series attempting to document the experience I had in Africa this time around. Last year, I heard "try spending a month in silence" from a Jesuit graduate student as a kind of justification for his religious outlook. He had spent a month in silence at a monastery and was unable to really explain what happened to him and how it made him more religious. Well, I can't claim a month in silence, but I went through a sensory deprivation and mental shock that resulted in a higher awareness and a sense of well-being - likely something like what the Jesuit experienced. I found inner peace on the last leg of my trip, the flight from Frankfurt to SFO, while suffering from jet lag, listening to Mandarin pop music, and thinking about good things. The experience had nothing to do with a spirit or an ethereal being, but everything to do with my own brain. I quite enjoyed it. I had a few factors that led to this completely non-spiritual experience, starting with acute emotional stress and a high degree of rational confusion right before leaving for Africa.

In many ways, this visual difference was exciting to me, but the work was a little difficult, and my co-workers sometimes frustrating. In time, it dawned on me that I was chafing, unconsciously, from patronization as well as coming to terms with my own less-than-desirable behavior. This became apparent as a result of cultural, racial, gender, generational, and language differences. Well, those are some of the sociological differences I could identify, which were very significant and made my job that much harder. Much more can be said to these differences, but that is an essay for another time. Now that I've experienced the differences, I'll be better prepared for next time. That covers the visual and cultural differences, on to the other shocks.

I also had to eat a diet completely separate from what I am used to. First and foremost, I had to eat meat. Having grown up eating meat, I'm not good at getting protein from non-meat sources. The only non-meat sources in Africa are maybe beans, but those are not a given. There also was not guaranteed to be fish at every meal I was served. I think I had most common types of meat - pork, beef, chicken, and I even had duck for what I think was the first time in my life - it wasn't bad. In the second week, I started to notice that I smelled different, and I got really excited to return home for some sesame tofu from Whole Foods. The other dietary change was the lack of cold foods. I had never realized just how much cold food I eat until every single meal I had consisted of only hot food. When I returned to work in the first week of December, I had a typical salad for the first time since returning and it was like the best food I had ever tasted.

Sight, culture, and taste, next is the feeling sense. On that front, it was hot and humid all the time. My hotels, office, and the room I was at at the industrial camp were all air conditioned, but I did find myself outside a lot, especially at the industrial camp. I tried to stay inside as much as possible, but there were times when I couldn't get inside and wasn't near shade. At those moments, I realized that if I was outside for too long, I could very well die of exposure. It wasn't nearly as bad as the time in 2001 when I thought that I might die from cold, more like the night two years later when I looked into the sky on a cold Minnesota night and realized just how cruel the universe really was.

But back to the Industrial Camp: We took a plane from the mosquito infested Luanda airport up to Cabinda, then got on a helicopter to the camp. As we arrived, I saw flames on the ocean, then after having my bags searched for contraband, we got into the camp. "Are those birds?" I asked, hearing chirping from the trees. "No, they're bats," my colleague stated. We walked to learn about our rooms, then I walked back to my room. A bare room, with a closet, a desk, a TV, and a twin bed. The walls were metal covered in something and I shared a bathroom with a rather hip Angolan girl. I went to eat at the cafeteria, and at first was happy with the food. After six days, I thought differently and was on the same page as the European woman sitting near me who I overheard say "this is eating for survival".

Every morning, I got up to the sound bats returning to the trees and the sound of fire. I put on my jeans, a thin t-shirt, and my blue hoodie then walked to wherever it was I was going to work. Some days, I went back to my room for a nap to the sounds of BBC World or CNN International. I returned to work in the afternoon, later starting to listen to Ani DeFranco on my iPod. At 6, I would log on to my personal internet sites for some focused conversation with non-work people, then before 8, I would go to a cafeteria. First, I ate at the cafeteria, but later I went to the place to get the take-away meal to eat back in my bare little room. There I could set up my computer and type things (I had no internet access in the room), shower, eat, and watch whatever documentary was on the TV. After a while, I realized that I longed to watch something without any kind of serious plot - I just wanted to laugh. Unfortunately, the only comedic entertainment was in the form of movies, which require a serious mental investment into the plot. And if that wasn't enough, the plot was usually really stupid, misogynistic, and/or otherwise very insulting. I did have some great laughs at the documentary asking if humans were really visited by aliens in the past, but I don't think the creators intended it to be so funny. Maybe they did.

So what have I explained now: cultural, visual, audio, and entertainment differences along with differences in sensations of the mouth and entire body. This is enough for now. I want to point out at this time that this Africa experience, while stressful, was incredibly positive and life changing. Everyone should get to experience such things.