a december that went out with a bang

Finals being over! A week in the Baja Peninsula! Christmas! Homey-home-home in Bozeman for New Year's! Books! Dr. Who! So many  fabulous things have happened in the past month that I don’t know where to begin.   Since I don’t want this to be a chronicle to my everyday urges and itches (one Facebook friend has taken to parodying status updates by updating her status to things like: “I just took the biggest dump ever!”) I think I’ll just stick to the glamorous. 

Es decir, Mexico!

We explored around La Paz during our first day:

And lounged around at our lovely hotel:

We then hopped a boat over to a desert island (no kidding!) and set up camp on the beach:

We had toilets with gorgeous views:

And we did fun things like kayaking:

Complete with thumb brace from the freak banjo accident

and snorkeling with lobitos marinos:

and gorging our eyes on scenery, flora, and fauna:

People laughed at my silly Spanish accent, we spent far too much time surrounded by other people (we were not, alas, on a deserted desert island; there were 16 other American tourists on our slice of beach heaven) and I lost quite a few layers of skin from the endless sand-scouring wind, but all in all, it was a fabulous trip.  And did I mention, I got to spend great time with family?  That was the point, after all, and after a stressful quarter of grad school, relaxing and spending time with la familia was the best Christmas present of all.

phew

Well—I finally feel like I have enough of a breather to sit down and post an update.

SCHOOL: same-same.   I’m learning fascinating stuff, I’m completely finished with one class, and now all I have to do is study for finals, re-write one 7-page paper, and write a 3-page self-reflection.  Child’s play!  I spent all day today re-writing and editing a 15-page paper, and it was easy-peasy.  I had 5 hours to do it, and I just lounged around in bed alternating lazy one-handed typing with scrolling through the New York Times.  Thank goodness Herman Cain isn’t in the headlines anymore—I got tired of throwing up a little in my mouth when reading about him.  One headline that did catch my eye and give me a chuckle, though, was “Building a Better Mitt Romney-Bot.”

ONE-HANDED-NESS: same-same.  Still sucks.  What, I haven’t whined about this before on the interwebs?  I guess I got tired thinking about typing a whole post-one-handed and went back to studying the nuances between the Interactional Model and Sociocultural Theory.  Yeah, Vygotsky!  So, anyways, due to a freak banjo accident, I no longer have the use of my left hand (temporarily! I hope) except my little finger, and fat lot of good that does—try picking up anything with just your little finger, or opening a jar with one finger (the other hand has to hold the jar, remember), or putting toothpaste on your brush with one hand (how to hold the brush steady so it doesn’t tip and smear toothpaste all over the countertop is a perennial question), etc. etc.  Mom, o-you-who-were-no-handed-for-so-long, I feel your pain.  Well, not really.  I didn’t smash my wrists to pieces, and I’m hopefully not going to have surgery.  But still, I know at least part of what you went through.  Moving on, though, no time for whining:

GREAT WEEKEND: So, since I’ve had no life, I planned months ago to have a roommate-outing day on a Sunday when I only had one big project due the following week, instead of three projects.  We went mushroom-picking on the coast!  We didn’t find a ton of chanterelles, but we did get a huge basket full of shaggy manes before they turned all black and oozy (google it and you can see pics).  It just so happened that our outing-day was the day after I seriously injured my hand, so I was rather useless at cutting the mushrooms, but it was still fun to tromp through the woods and tell other people to harvest my finds.  If I’m not careful, I’ll turn into the Queen of Sheba.

THANKSGIVING: a fantastic day with fantastic friends!  I went to McMinnville, I read some books, I caught up with friends, I made some fantastic mashed potatoes, I played fun games, I ate great food (including those mashed potatoes, om nom nom), and, most importantly, I relaxed.  This quarter has been low on relaxing and high on streeesssssss that feels like it’s never going to end.  But it’s ending!  On Tuesday, I’ll be done for a whole month!!

CHRISTMAS: so, for a whole month’s break, what better way to celebrate than filling up the ENTIRE break with fun times?  After finals are over, I’ll be spending about a week cleaning my room, hanging out with roomies, going to various doctor appointments and Christmas parties (not in that order of fun), and hanging out in McMinnville.  I’ll then go to my grandma’s house for a short week, when my nukular family shows up and we all fly to Mexico!  Kayaking in Baja, anyone?  (One-handed kayaking?)  And then we’re all skipping back to grandma’s house for Christmas Day, where we will eat a ton, lament that we don’t have more time, and drive back to Montana.  Montana for a short week, then perhaps Wyoming for a short week, then back to Portland and back to the grindstone.  But all worth it!

a bite o' math

168 hours: total hours in the time span from 8am on Thursday, Oct. 27th to 8am on Thursday, Nov. 3rd.
45 hours: time spent sleeping (6-7 hours per day)
21 hours: time spent doing essential things like eating and showering
14 hours: time spent working at my yard work job
4 hours: time spent toodling around reading things like this and this and watching this on the internet (going from giggly to optimistic to infuriated by looking at those sites in that order)
3 hours: time spent on fulfilling purely social needs, like talking with my roommates or classmates
10 hours: time spent in class
71 hours: time spent doing homework.

Do you see that number?  That last one.  Look up.  There.  71 hours of homework.  Including time spent inside and outside of class, I work for 80+ hours a week doing a job that I'm paying for.  And now I wonder why I have no life.

in which i become employed

So... I have a job!  I was worried that I might find myself with one moment of spare time sometime in the future, and I decided to quash that hope by getting a weekend job.  Stress, commence!  Actually, my job is very de-stressy.  I do yard work with a fantastic guy who's very nice and who explains everything well but doesn't beat the horse, and when he says, "Mow" I put on my earmuffs, turn on the mower, and turn off my brain.  It's like a little brain-cation that I'm getting paid for.  I also get to learn all about the native plants of Oregon (so far, I've learned that vinca=bad, ivy=bad, and the rest looks like a green blur [perhaps because anything and everything is covered with ivy]).  I'm also getting to explore all over south Portland and hang out in people's beautiful gardens.  Most people have to work in their own gardens and mow their own lawns, all for free, but I get all the benefits of being in a beautiful space and getting a workout AND I'm getting paid for it.  The only downside is that I've become one of those people that neighbors and environmentalists everywhere hate: I blow leaves.  With a leafblower.  I try to blow them very very fast to keep my noise disturbance to a minimum, but I still cringe at how many times I cursed the leaf-blowers at Linfield.  Oh, well; those Linfielders got paid for it, I'm getting paid for it, so instead let's all curse the universities and homeowners who want their leaves blown.  Curse ye!  (And thanks for my paycheck.)

On another note, one more downside to this job is that it cuts into any fun times I may have had time to have.  E.g., potentially not-happening fun times: 1) my roommates are having a brew-party (brewing hard apple cider and/or beer) in the near future, and unless I stop blogging and start homework, I will not be able to participate, and 2) all of the book blogs of which I am fond of snooping in on are participating in a 24-hour-Read-a-thon as we speak (reading as many books as they can in a 24-hour sprint with no significant breaks and blogging about it every hour) and I am ABSOLUTELY NOT participating because I am BURIED in homework.  Does reading a textbook for 24 hours count?  Except I really don't think anyone else wants me to blog about my experiences reading "Cultural Globalization and Language Education" and "Distant Mirrors: America as a Strange Culture" (2 books, 417 pages) and "One Functional Approach to Second Language Acquisition: The Concept-Oriented Approach" and "The Associative-Cognitive CREED" and "Processability Theory" and "Natural Language Learning and Organized Language Teaching" and "Where Data Come From" and "Understanding Research Designs" and "Categories, Context and Comparison in Conversation Analysis" (5 book chapters, 2 articles, 161 pages), all due next week.  Plus writing my thoughts on all these.  Plus conducting several hours of ethnographic interviews.  Plus several other mini side-projects.  So, yeah, no life for me.

OK, self, stop whining (and blogging) and start working that brain!

surfacing

Maybe...?  Nope.  Still drowning in schoolwork.

sendoff

Last weekend, my family hosted a rollicking sendoff for my grandpa.  There were friends, there was wine, there were stories, laughs, tears, and a 21-gun salute.  (And don’t forget the Olympia; it’s the water.)  Grandpa died in August, a wonderful man well-loved by his friends and family, and last Friday we had a ceremony at the National Cemetery in Tahoma, Washington (honoring his service in World War II) and on Saturday we celebrated his life.  What a life!  He was a scientist, a soldier, a husband and father, and one of the funniest people I ever knew.  The stories that came out at the celebration were fantastic—most were old family classics, but one was new for me: he was down at the experiment station looking at nematodes in carrots, so he had carefully cut away the dirt along a row of carrots and was on his knees, sweeping the dirt away and peering closely at the roots.  A car pulled up along the road bordering the experiment station field; the people stopped and stared.  Grandpa continued working and the people kept staring, but he was never one to pass up a good prank.  He grabbed two carrots, put them on top of his head like horns, and charged the car.  The people took off and went down to the local hospital’s psychiatric ward and told the superintendent that one of their inmates had gotten loose; eventually it got back to his boss, who wasn’t too pleased, but Grandpa kept the job and apparently relished re-telling the story.  We all told his favorite stories in his honor, and raised our orange cans of Oly (one of his old-time favorites) to him.  We sure miss you, Grandpa.

house hunting a la portlandia

Where else but Portland would your potential new roommates have a pet pig? 

Or say things like (this woman was the cream of the crop for portlandiness):

>        “Oh, good, you’re a student—then I won’t have to talk with you” or

>        “I’m really into food.  I don’t like cooking; I do food projects” or

>        “[The current tenant] eats McDonald’s the whole time.  That freaks me out.  I don’t even know people who eat like that” or

>        “I found out that [previous tenants] were Mormons, and it really freaked me out.  I’m not judgemental normally, but I guess there are a lot of Mormons around” or

>        “I’m Native American and the Mormon thing freaks me out.  You know, the food” or

>        “I don’t like weed.  Well, yes, I do.  I’m from here.  As you’ll find out, we don’t care.  You know?  But I’ve had people move in who have weed cards and smoke all day long, and I’m like, that’s lame. [The current tenant] smokes, and I’m like whatever, but I run a kindergarten in my home and sometimes I’m like, shit, it smells like pot” etc. etc.

So, anyways, the quest has begun!   I’ve met people from a dozen houses, chatted away about my dreams and goals to perfect strangers, in the pursuit of that one perfect place, that one group of totally rad people (who never actually say “totally rad”), in other words, home. 

You can find anything you want on craigslist.  Houses, jobs, pets, dates, stuff... for your own personal entertainment, please check out Craigslist's Best-Of: http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/all/ and giggle for me.  If you're simply looking for housing, the world is your oyster.  Lots of -friendly people (insert noun: 420-, queer-, pet-, kid-, eco-, and—my own personal favorite—felony-friendly).

I'm looking for something not too housey-boring-homey, though.  Hell, I’m in Portland.  I could live with boring people anywhere I chose.  (I’m rather boring most of the time).  But I’ve got to take advantage of my time in Portland, goddammit, and find someplace great!

Has my search borne fruit?  I have found not one, but two awesome places (neither the pig people—who were, admittedly, super nice—nor the pot/kindergarten teacher, though; the two that I'm thinking of are much closer to the "normal" end of the scale—although, to repeat myself, they are have not reached "boring"), and now I just have to decide between the two.  If I were rich, and wanted to duplicate all my stuff, I would live at both places.  Lead a double life.  Have babies by both families. (OK, no; now the metaphor’s gone far enough.)  I’m supposed to decide today which place I want—wish me luck. (Not on the baby thing, obviously.)

summer reading wrap-up

Well, 4 months ago I posted a challenge for the summer: read 50 great, weighty, must-read books.  Last summer I read almost 100 books, and was a regular friend of the Teton County Library.  This summer, though, I wanted to be more social, and I wanted to read bigger books, so I figured that 50 was easily doable.  WRONG.  One book alone took me an entire month to read (I’m glaring at you, Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, although you were worth it).  All in all, I read 22 books, plus one Did Not Finish (Walden: who dreams of torturing high school students with this crap?) plus a textbook and lots of outside research for my job.  Rather shabby, you say?  Oh, well: I do feel much more edified and satiated than when I was in Spain, where I read a dozen books over the entire year and spent far too much time just toodling around on the internet.

I’m not going to be a book blogger: see this blog post to read the “top five sins of book reviewers,” and realize that I would commit every one of those sins.  Read this post to see this comment about reading Keats, Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley: “reading this stuff is like drinking a rotten milkshake made of velvet, peat moss, and 200-year-old roses” and realize that I would never make you laugh your pants off like that, and go to this blog to realize that it’s all already been dissected much more drolly.

That said, I’ve added a few comments, to inspire you to pick up a great book, or else to run away! Run away!

So, behold, the list! 

Summer 2011 Book List:

1. Annals of a Former World · · by John McPhee

®2. Half the Sky · · · · · · · · · · · by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (8/31/2011) (10 out of 10; incredibly inspiring, terribly heart-breaking: about the plight of women around the world. Makes you want to pick up your comfy American woes and go thrash somebody.)

3. The Shell Collector · · · · · · by Anthony Doerr

®4. The Botany of Desire · · · · · by Michael Pollan (8/21/2011) (6 out of 10; I guess I learned something about how Michael Pollan thinks tulips are sexy and Dionysian.  And that Johnny Appleseed was Dionysian because he brought the promise of alcohol [hard cider and applejack] to the frontier.  Marijuana is Dionysian.  Potatoes are, somehow, also Dionysian.  This book was mainly about Michael Pollan and his personal philosophy, versus anything really about botany. Still, worth reading, if you’re into food and want to shake your fist at Monsanto, while toasting Dionysus.)

5. The Child in Time · · · · · · · by Ian McEwan

®6. Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (6/14/2011) (7 out of 10; Barbara Kingsolver still isn’t my favorite writer, but she does write a gripping tale, and this is an interesting bi-cultural-ish view of America and Mexico in the first half of the 20^th Century.)

7. The English Patient · · · · · · · by Michael Ondaatje

®8. Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler (7/31/2011) (8 out of 10; this book took me AN ENTIRE MONTH to read. Very detailed, very much ‘and then the Sanskrit character X turned to the character X¹ because of the cultural dynamics of blah blah blah’ but one of the best, most eye-opening books about language history I’ve ever read. OK, probably the only entire book I’ve read about language history. But still. Loved it.  My life goal is to get a PhD in Historical Linguistics, so this seemed like a pretty good start.)

9. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

10. Me Talk Pretty One Day · · · by David Sedaris

11. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius · · by Dave Eggers

12. Midnight’s Children · · · · · by Salman Rushdie

®13. The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary · · · · · · · · by Simon Winchester (6/18/2011) (8 out of 10; murder? insanity? the OED? It’s all here. And it’s a true story! A quick, easy read that will knock your socks off about dictionaries. Really.)

®14. Drums of Autumn · · · · · · by Diana Gabaldon (6/25/2011) (6 out of 10; still the same old characters [no matter that they change names and are supposed to be entirely different people; Diana Gabaldon is a 2-character, 1-plot lady, and she is able to spin it out for an entire series.], still the same old trick [“they’re from the future! when will the others find out?”], and yet I still gobble it up.)

®15. The Fiery Cross · · · · · · · by Diana Gabaldon (7/15/2011) (6 out of 10; see above)

16. His Majesty’s Dragon · · · · by Naomi Novik

17. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

18. The Orchid Thief · · · · · · by Susan Orlean

19. Dune by Frank Herbert

20. The Fifth Child · · · · · · · by Doris Lessing

21. Encounters with the Archdruid · · · · · · · · by John McPhee

22. The Book Thief · · · · · · · by Markus Zusak

23. Rebecca · · · · · · · · · · · · by Daphne du Maurier

®24. A Tale of Two Cities · · · · by Charles Dickens (5/16/2011) (5 out of 10; I’m sorry… am I allowed to not like Dickens?  There, I’ve said it: I don’t like Dickens.  I know he was a pioneer, and his genius has been copied so many times that he only seems cliché, although the original of an over-repeated formula cannot be, by definition, cliché… but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.  I like believable characters, no matter what’s going on in the plot—sure, two men who look identical but are not related at all (mystery? never solved) and who really have no character traits in common end up switching places so that *spoiler* the good man with the beautiful, kind wife goes free and the scrummy, bitter man ends up sacrificing himself gallantly on the guillotine—that’s fine by me.  My problem is with the fact that the good man is always good, and the beautiful, kind wife is always beautiful and kind, and the scrummy, bitter man is always good except when he’s being secretly gallant (and that was the only character twist in the entire book).  Give me some dimension!)

25. Eat, Pray, Love · · · · · · · by Elizabeth Gilbert

26. The Lake of Dead Languages · · · · · · · · by Carol Goodman

27. A Wizard of Earthsea · · · · by Ursula K. Le Guin

28. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay · · · · · by Michael Chabon

29. All the Pretty Horses · · · · by Cormac McCarthy

30. How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn

31. The Highest Tide · · · · · · · by Jim Lynch

32. All the King’s Men · · · · · · by Robert Penn Warren

33. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret · · · · · by Judy Blume

34. Brideshead Revisited · · · · by Evelyn Waugh

35. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao · · · · · · · · by Junot Diaz

36. Middlemarch · · · · · · · · · · by George Eliot

37. The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

®38. The Catcher in the Rye · · · by J.D. Salinger (6/3/2011) (… out of 10; I read this on the airplane on the way back from Spain and sped-read through it while simultaneously playing Bedazzled on my personal backseat console.  I’m assuming it was good.  Listening to some good academic discussion on the value of the book is probably in order, because I’m not sure I remember enough to pronounce weighty statements on why this is a Classic That You Ought To Read.)

39. A Clockwork Orange · · · · · by Anthony Burgess

®40. Tess of the D’Urbervilles · · by Thomas Hardy (5/12/2011) (9 out of 10; ah, drama! ah, England! ah, Tess and the plight of women!  A fantastic, fantastic book: the only annoying parts are Hardy’s asides about how Tess had been wronged, how Tess was an angel who wouldn’t dream of taking advantage of her situation, etc. etc., but eventually you come to realize that the asides are the genius of the entire book.  Hardy gives a clear commentary on the sexism and classism rampant in 19th Century England, with the compelling drama of Tess thrown in on the side.  An excellent read.  ALSO, watch the new(ish) BBC version and you will melt in Tess’s innocent eyes and drool over the evil Hans Matheson [Alec D’Uberville—the rich purported relation] and the equally-evil-but-purportedly-angelic Eddie Redmayne [not-so-subtly-named “Angel”].)

41. The Death of the Heart · · · by Elizabeth Bowen

®42. The Great Gatsby · · · · · · by F. Scott Fitzgerald (7/26/2011) (3 out of 10; not really my cup of tea.  Sorry, green light; your symbolic weightiness is not enough to draw me into liking this book.)

43. I, Claudius · · · · · · · · · · · by Robert Graves

®44. A Walk in the Woods · · · · by Bill Bryson (8/29/2011) (5 out of 10; listened to the book on tape.  Not bad; Bill Bryson is always humorous, and so is his account of hiking the Appalachian Trail.  He blathers humorously about the problems to be encountered along the trail, then not so humorously about his bear-phobia [“take my word: run”], and about how he’s never camped before in his life, and how he’s going to hike 2000 miles with an overweight idiot [to whom he also, annoyingly, gives invented dialogue: I’m sure his exaggeratedly dim-witted companion never actually used the word “capacious”], and he whines incessantly about how the Federal government is mis-managing our public lands [to some extent, he’s right; hey, he has the audience and the drollness that he can whine his affronted ass off, but if he really wanted to make a difference, taking pot-shots at the Forest Service and Park Service isn’t going to do much] but it is, in general, a diverting story.)

45. The Moviegoer · · · · · · · · by Walker Percy

®46. It by Stephen King (8/3/2011) (3 out of 10; Stephen King is an excellent writer.  Sci-fi is an excellent genre.  This book has an excellent plot and excellent characters, but it was FREAKING WEIRD.  This book does not inherently get a 3, but my perception of my reading pleasure was around a 3.  Please, read more Stephen King, and read It if you want to be seriously disturbed [that’s what King’s best at], and do not judge me for not liking to run away, screaming.)

№47. Walden · · · · · · · · · · · · · by Henry David Thoreau (8/27/11) (0 out of 10; DID NOT FINISH.  I could barely get through the first part of the book without falling into a stupor, or suppressing the desire to hurl the book away.  Or just hurl.  One description of Thoreau that may have influenced my decision was “inestimably priggish.” Walden is interminably priggish.  URGH.)

®48. Snow by Orhan Pamuk (9/20/11) (5 out of 10; I felt a little too dumb to read this book.  I read Pamuk’s My Name is Red and loved it.  Either I completely missed out on the deep subtexts and just enjoyed the rollicking story, or else MNiR didn’t have any deep subtexts.  Snow, on the other hand, has a few rollicking moments but is mainly just symbolism on a plate, as far as I can gather, and I’m afraid I didn’t quite get the cultural allegory/satirism/tragicomedy bits.  Or maybe there wasn’t any symbolism.  [Which I doubt, because Pamuk won a Nobel Prize mainly for this novel.  Cliff Notes, where are you?]  Anyways, not my favorite Pamuk book, and one that pushed me one seat closer to the edge of the Reading Weighty Books That Make Me Look Smrt bandwagon.)

49. Parrot and Olivier in America · · · · · · · · · by Peter Carey

50. The Penelopiad · · · · · · · · by Margaret Atwood

OTHER BOOKS (not on my list) THAT I READ ANYWAY:

®51. Travel as a Political Act by Rick Steves (6/10/2011) (7 out of 10; I had no idea Rick Steves was so thoughtful!  I had only watched a couple of his shows, and sure, they’re fun romps through some European travel-mecca, but deep is not a word I’d ever have used to describe him.  This book proved me wrong; he writes about traveling with a purpose, and why traveling is good for the world. And there are some good romps.)

®52. Lord John and the Private Matter by Diana Gabaldon (6/28/2011) (4 out of 10; not up to scruff with her original Outlander series.)

®53. An Echo in the Bone · · · · · · · by Diana Gabaldon (8/15/2011) (6 out of 10; I think I accidentally skipped one of the books in the series before reading this one, which didn’t really hurt my understanding of the plot, because *see #14-15 above for why every book in this series is practically interchangeable with the others.)

®54. The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie (8/24/2011) (4 out of 10; I got it for $4 at a Border’s close-out sale, and that’s about what it was worth.  Rather ponderous, slightly mysterious, and a few good descriptions.  I enjoyed the 4 hours it took to read, and hope to promptly sell it back to a used book store for slightly more than $4.)

®55. El Paraíso en la otra esquina by Marío Vargas Llosa (9/10/2011) (2 out of 10; uurgh… I started this book when I was in Ecuador [in Spring 2009] and I barely finished it this summer.  A good commentary on the quest for paradise: one woman in France is pushing for a futurist, communist utopia, and one man in Tahiti is pushing for a primitive, sexual utopia.  And the juxtaposition continues for 500 dense pages: salvation in communal sharing or individual freedom? in abstinence or wild abandon? in a stark, atheist future or exotic, ancient rituals? and on and on.)

®56. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood (9/5/2011) (9 out of 10; Margaret Atwood is a genius, and this, like all of her other books, is a masterpiece.)

®57. Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey (9/12/2011) (9 out of 10; acerbic, hilarious, fantastic.  Go blow some shit up.)

®58. The Language of Thought by Stephen Pinker (9/23/2011) (8 out of 10; a half-textbook/half-lit-review/half-here’s-some-sciency-stuff-for-the-rest-of-you-all book on psycholinguistic theory is keeping me RIVETED to the steering wheel.  I’m driving out to Oregon as we speak and am listening to this book on tape and Stephen Pinker’s got me transported to the magical world of verbs and causality and all sorts of oodie-goodie grammar.  I can’t wait to get back in the car tomorrow and finish it!  I can’t wait to get to grad school tomorrow for Applied Linguistics!  Oh, the inspiration!)

So now, I’m updating the list in the sidebar: I still want to read the 35 books I didn’t get to this summer, plus 15 more during the luxurious eight-month-long academic year (50 books + grad school + lots of skiing + hopefully a part-time job = possible?), but I don’t want to overburden myself, so you’ll notice that five are children’s books, one is A Game of Thrones, and one title contains the words “Murder” and “Mystery.”  Feel free to comment on my choice of reading material--I gladly take suggestions. 

Books to Read Sometime in the Future:

1.            Who Murdered Chaucer? A Medieval Mystery by Terry Jones, Terry Dolan, Juliette Dor, Alan Fletcher, and Robert E. Yeager

2.            A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

3.            Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris

4.            Close Range by Annie Proulx

5.            The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

6.            Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsberg

7.            The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (a re-read)

8.            The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder (a possible re-read)

9.            Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl

10.         Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

11.         A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

12.         Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

13.         I Like You by Amy Sedaris 

14.         Rainy by Clyde Edgerton

15.         The Magicians by Lev Grossman

last huzzah

a couple of good summery things I forgot in my last summer sum-up:

ALPHORNS!

Two friends from Switzerland of one of my college professors came to the Tetons, so we spent a wonderful weekend together, hiking, canoeing, hiking more, and playing (in my case: listening to) a SWISS ALPHORN!  Hanspeter has a collapsible, lightweight carbon alphorn, which he carries with him on all such adventures.  He said he played out in the middle of a lake in Canada, and could hear a tune echo back three times.  On Jenny Lake, the waves were too big to really play well, but we stopped at a little sandy island near the shore for lunch and he played Brahms over the water.  We then sprinted past the hordes past Hidden Falls; this picture was taken at Inspiration Point.  Could you ever feel more inspired?

 VEGETABLES!

Behold the largesse!

 KITTY-CATS FROLICKING IN THE RHUBARB!

KITTY-CATS FROLICKING IN THE TOMATOES!

 KITTY-CATS FROLICKING UNDER A BENCH!

ANGUS BEEF!

No picture here, but a story: a visitor came into the center and asked me, “What are those big black things?”

He was not referring to anything in sight of the building, so I had to start a guessing game.  “Where did you see them?  In the sagebrush?”

“Yeah.  I don’t think they were bison.  Or buffalo, neither,”

“Did they have long antlers?”

“No… they had horns, though,”

“Did they look like big, shaggy cows?”

“Yeah, sort-of,”

“Well, they were probably bison, then—they’re also called buffalo—and both the males and females have horns,”

“Here, I have a picture of one,” he said helpfully, pulling out his camera.

[Pause]

“Um, sir…?  That’s a cow,”

FRIENDS, COWORKERS, ROOMMATES, and HOBOS!

Roomies & buddies. No me. (These are not the hobos I was referring to; one of my roommates likes to pick up hobos, hitchhikers, and anyone and everyone who needs a place to stay, and bring them home.  I've met some pretty interesting people this summer.)

and last, but not least, DOUBLE RAINBOWS!

a summer of ups and downs

Whooosh—WHAT? There goes another summer.  I’ve been in the Tetons for almost four months, now, and boy, did it go fast. 

A few highlights and lowlights from the summer in semi-chronological order, and then some pictures for your eyes to feast on.

HIGHLIGHT: getting to work in the most beautiful, most serene part of all of Grand Teton National Park.

HIGHLIGHT: working with fun, hardworking people, and having LOTS of work potlucks.

HIGHLIGHT: re-adjusting to society; after spending 8 months living with a wonderful Bulgarian grandmother and working with people who were all at least 10 years older than me, I’d forgotten what it was like to be around people my age.  20-something Americans are loud. And fun. But very, very loud. My first week back, I kind-of went into a reclusive shock, and spent all week like a hermit in my bedroom, only emerging to eat, go to the bathroom, and go to work.  I soon got over that, and had a lot of fun all summer.

HIGHLIGHT: getting paid to hike!  I developed fun (well, at least, I thought they were fun—I hope the visitors liked them) Ranger-led programs, hiked up to Phelps Lake a couple times a week, and got paid to do it.

LOWLIGHT: spraining my ankle mid-way through July.  I had hiked 4 miles on gently sloping ground, and had gotten to a flat spot when PING! there went one of my ankle-to-foot ligaments.  The foot doctor told me with a smile that I had weird feet.  I’m now in physical therapy (marvelous stuff! who knew?) and it turns out that because my back hurts all the time and my heels hurt all the time, I walk funny, and I was putting too much pressure on my ankle to begin with.  Huh.  Anyways, enough about me whining about my aches and pains.  I’m not old, yet.

HIGHLIGHT: being close-ish to my parents and little brother.  My bro works up in Yellowstone, only a few hours away, and my parents live in Bozeman, a 4.25-hour drive (with no traffic and slight speeding).  I’ve gone up to visit them a few times, and they’ve all come down here to visit me several times.  My little bro has picked up mountain climbing, and over the summer he’s climbed Mt. Rainier, Granite Peak (the highest peak in MT), the Middle Teton, the Grand Teton, Devil’s Tower, and Mt. Moran, along with whatever other peaks he has to climb on a day-to-day basis for his job.  Because of my proximity to great mountains, he’s come down to visit a lot!

LOWLIGHT: not being close enough to my grandparents.  I love the Tetons, but they’re just too damn remote.  I got to visit my grandparents at Christmas when I came back from Spain, but I couldn’t visit them in the spring or summer due to my work schedule, and I was just going to wait until I got to Portland at the end of September.  Unfortunately, my grandpa got very ill very fast, and I only could make one emergency trip out to Washington before he passed away in mid-August.

HIGHLIGHT: going to say goodbye to my grandpa and spend time with my grandma and the rest of the family.  Definite highlight: my grandpa was a wonderful, caring, hilarious person, and it was wonderful to sit with the whole family and tell stories about him.

HIGHLIGT: going up the gondola at the Village to the Couloir restaurant with my roommate and two of her friends from college.  The hostess happened to be one of the volunteers who I work with at the LSR; after a round of introductions, she sent the four of us to the bar.  We decided just to get one appetizer to share and one drink apiece (arriving after happy hour is PRICEY!), but after finding out that one appetizer (meaning 2 scallops artfully arranged on a plate) was $20, the four of us left the Couloir bar and went down to the bar on the deck outside.  Fifteen minutes later, a VERY cute guy and two minions came down with two plates of scallops.  The next day at work, I profusely thanked my volunteer coworker, and she said, "Oh, no, it wasn't me!  That was the manager who came down.  He said he was so sad to see four pretty girls leave the bar, and he would have taken care of you up there if you'd have stayed!  So he was the one who brought you the scallops,"


LOWLIGHT: cars v. bikes.  My mom was riding her bike through Bozeman and she was hit by a car as she crossed an intersection.  She’s fine, generally, except for two broken arms, a few sprains, and lots of bruises.  She's going to be the bionic mother after they put plates and pins in her left arm... at least they're phasing out metal detectors in airports.  Poor mommy.

HIGHLIGHT: starting a new adventure: Grad School! and being back in the Pacific Northwest, and close to college friends, and close to my grandma. 

hey, pay attention to me - I´m in uniform.

my place of work.

the one hike I did this summer that I was NOT paid to do: also, the same hike I sprained my ankle on.

Hucks!

Taggart Lake.

Arrowleaf Balsamroot.  A mouthful, but delicious for the eyes.

bog-orchids!

It´s been a memorable summer.  Most of all, I miss my grandpa very much, and I wish I could kiss my mom better.