When the Earth takes it all back

"There Will Come Soft Rains"

Sara Teasdale

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

There is this recent trend out there that deals with speculating what the world would be like if humans just vanished. This poem was written in 1920 and inspired Ray Bradbury's story of the same name. Now the hot book is Alan Weisman's "The World Without Us", which relates to the new History Channel series "Life After People". I haven't read this yet, but will definitely do so. It is fascinating to think that the earth would simply reclaim all the buildings and roads and bridges that we work so hard to maintain.

Happy birthday Mom!

My mom had her birthday yesterday. She's the same age as my dad, but if you want to know the number, you'll have to look for my dad's birthday post.
Don't you know it's impolite to ask a lady her age?

Love you Mom!

The year of eye maladies

What is up with my eyes this year?! They are going straight to hell in an eye socket. I've had opthalmic migraines, that crazy and annoying bout of incessant twitching and now a sub-conjunctival hemorrhage. In layman's terms, that's a popped blood vessel in the white part of my eye. Yes, I have a blood spot on my eye! ARRRRAUGHHH!

Thank God the blood didn't spread to cover the entire left half of my left eye, but rather just a little spot. It appeared on Friday night while I was out on a date (perfect timing, I know) and I have no idea what caused it. It's been five days now and I don't think it's as red as it was, but it doesn't seem to be going away as quickly as the Internet said it would (a week is the generally accepted time frame it appears). Oh wait...Wiki says it could take two weeks. That makes me feel a bit better.

I am not alone in my suffering though. Ronit somehow managed to get one of these within 12 hours of seeing mine even though she's never had one before either. Isn't that sweet of her? She's been referring to us as the "crazy popped blood vessel twins" since. I haven't seen her's yet, but will on Thursday night. Perhaps we'll take a picture to commemorate this monumental event in our lives. Look for that soon!

Rebranded...part 1

I'm starting my rebranding campaign slowly, with just a title and subtitle change. Perhaps in the near future I'll pick a different blog template and go whole hog.

Bode Miller I'm not.

Check me out in my crazy yellow coat! (Thanks to Ronit for lending it to me.)

Does everyone remember the story of my first ski adventure? I don't, but Summer told me all about it when my brain was functioning again. It was at Sundown in Dubuque, IA, where there are no mountains. I apparently hit my head on the ground at some point in the first thirty or so minutes of bunny hill action, which caused all sorts of problems for the chaperones. Summer says I asked all sorts of funny questions and when I didn't remember the other kids from school she decided to take me to her mom in the lodge and get me checked out. That resulted in a fun ambulance ride (for her at least, I don't remember) and a CAT scan. Diagnosis: mild concussion.

One might think after an experience like that, the victim would avoid skiing ever again. Well, not me! I tried again in Austria in 2000 and also in 2004-2005, when I went skiing a whopping three times. That was major. So by this point, I've been a total of 5 times including the concussion run. My colleague and friend Natalie invited me to join the riotous group going for a ski weekend in Pennsylvania's Pochonos. I decided it was high time to try out my skillz again and went along with the 14 other people she had organized for the weekend.

Some of the crew in front of our rental house

We skiied on Saturday at Camelback Resort near Scotrun, PA. It had a good bunch of green (easiest) and double green (2nd easiest) runs, so I was feeling good about the whole thing. A girl named Jennifer decided to ski with me for the day, so we got our rental equipment and headed off to warm up on the bigger bunny hill. Both of us did really well there and after a couple times down the hill we decided we were ready for something more challenging. We rode halfway up the mountain to the Upper Moore's Ramble, which connected to the Turkey Trot, both of which were single greens. The Upper Moore's was all good...we did some synchronized side-to-side skiing (totally not consciously coordinated, but that's just how it turned out) on the steeper parts and then we reached the Turkey Trot. I was still feeling a bit unsteady and freaked out by any sort of speed, which improved as the day went on. The first time we stood at the top of the Turkey Troy though, both Jennifer and I said, "Turkey Trot my ass!" It was a curvy, steep slope with a little sheen on ice in the center, which we needed to ski across to continue with our synchronized side-to-side switchbacks. We were scared. I managed to make the first run with just one fall, but it wasn't bad. We decided we could do that same run again and went back up the lift. This time my false confidence in my abilities was thrown in my face with a solid wipe out that hurt my shoulder. I managed to stand up, which is a real challenge for me, and continue.

We did that same run several more times because we were a little to scared to go further up the mountain and have to connect to a *gasp* double green! Then, as we stood at the bottom of our little hill, a mom with her two kids came past us and said something about this being the hardest green they'd been on that day. That was when we decided we could try one of the others, and they were fine! I had another decent face-plant pole-flying wipe out on the Nile Mile, but otherwise it was all good.

Then it came to the last run of the evening. I wasn't sure I wanted to go down again because my legs were all tired, but my companions convinced me to go one more time. Jennifer, Karla and I skied up to the chair lift waiting line and I turned around to watch the chair approach. Unfortunately I didn't see the chair because there was a random guy standing directly between me and it! I don't know where he came from or why the guy who was supposed to be controlling the line let him ski into the chair's path, but there he was. He was close enough to me that his skis were inbetween mine. I was standing in the middle of the three of us and had nowhere to escape to. The chair kept coming (not sure what the stupid lift operators were doing at this point, but they didn't stop the lift until WAY too late) and the guy sat in my spot. As it swept forward and picked up Jennifer and Karla, it sort of pushed me and lifted me, after which it promptly caught the chain and was propelled forward at frightening speed with me plastered to the front, much like a cartoon character on the grill of a speeding vehicle. Having no cartoon writers to save me , I of course fell. Maybe five or six feet? Maybe more? Not sure. Suddenly I was on the ground, my equipment displayed in a yard sale. The fall knocked the wind out of me and I couldn't draw breath for a second or two. The lift finally came to a halt with my friends a good 15 yards past me, swearing and yelling. The line guy stood on the loading platform and stared at me. "Are you ok?" he asked. Made no move to help me up or to gather my stuff, so I did that on my own. I climbed back up to the loading platform and tried to get my skis back on, but I was so flustered and annoyed that I couldn't. After maybe 20 seconds of trying I muttered some obscenities under my breath, picked up my skis and stalked off, but not before admonishing the line guy for not even helping me up or apologizing for his failure to do his job. He looked at me with disbelief and then apologized to the line of people BEHIND me, but not to me. I wanted to spit on him. But I didn't. I put my skis back on, got back in line and got onto the lift successfully, swearing and muttering the whole time. My friends were still at the top, discussing my fate. We skiied down to the lodge and that was the end. Yes, I will go again.

At the top of the Nile Mile (before the chair lift incident)

Besides the skiing there were lots of other adventures in PA, including scary tree-lined dirt track roads, 5 mile per hour 20 degree turns all the way to the mountain, wrong directions, a late night stop at Perkins and cocktails. But that's going to have to be for another day, as this post is already inordinately long.

Ski partner Jennifer, who had this interesting habit of "resting" on the side of the hill every chance she got. Here she's also attempting to catch snow flakes.

A visitor from the wild, wild West

A great thing happened last week. I almost missed the opportunity, which makes the whole thing even sweeter! Last Monday my college friend Tony sent me an email asking if I had plans to meet up with our mutual friend Clayton while he was in the city on a layover between flights from Denver and to Africa. Now I haven't seen Clayton since we graduated in 2002, so I definitely don't know about his current travel plans. So I got Clayton's number from Tony and gave him a call. Sure enough, he was staying the night on Thursday in a HoJo out by JFK. His friends wanted to come into town, so we could! definitely meet up for dinner or drinks or whatever. Sweet!

We met up at 43rd and Times Square on Thursday night after some texting and calling. I saw him on the street and it was like old times, you know? I LOVE that about people! He even still smelled like he used to! (That may sound weird, but I spent sooooo much time in Tony and Clayton's dorm room my freshman and sophomore years of college that I would recognize that scent anywhere.) It was fun to reminisce with him about various goings on at Central, including the drunken nights and dance parties and dorm drama. I took him and his four friends to John's of Bleecker on 44th for New York stye pizza and Brooklyn Lagers. After dinner they wanted to see some of the city, so we walked across 42nd, past Bryant Park and the Library to Grand Central, where we caught the subway and headed south to the Brooklyn Bridge. We went halfway across the bridge to take in the view of Manhattan and of the Statue. I'd never been on the bridge at 1 AM before; it was a great view, although by then the Empire State Building had shut off its red and yellow lights. After that I sent them on their way back to the HoJo in cabs so they could get a good night's sleep before the flight the next morning.


Many thanks to Tony for making sure I knew about this little window of opportunity!

Birthday shout out to my dad!

Happy birthday Pops! Still young and spry at the tender age of 53. Hope you had a good one Dad!

Dad in Hawai'i in December

Forever 21 and John 3:16: An unlikely combination

I found this rather striking tonight: as I was looking for a plastic bag in my giant bag of plastic bags, a Forever 21 bag fell out. In line with my anal nature, I smoothed out the rumpled bag, lined up its seams and folded it into a neat little square. When I went to straighten its seams, I noticed that John 3:16 was printed on the bottom of the bag in small print! Isn't that interesting? For those of you who aren't familiar with Forever 21, it's like H&M on steroids. And for those of you not familiar with H&M, Forever 21 is a store with constantly changing, body-hugging fashions made and sold cheaply to people somewhere approaching or older than 21. My roommate shops there frequently apparently. *shrug* Anyway, not a store that I would associate with anything holy, Biblical or spiritual but as usual, appearances can be deceiving.

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16

How does this Bible passage go along with purple sequined, low-cut, v-neck, backless tank tops and skin-tight skinny jeans? That is something only God can know. :)