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I was just given the go-ahead to set up my wireless in the lab.
Zing!
I am writing this from the other side of the room, away from my desk. Now I'd like to see how much of a signal I can leapfrog back to the trailers. If I were to do so, I might become an immediate hero to my peers.
Next stop? Networked printer.
I've learned a few things this weekend.
The first of which is that I need to plan ahead for whirlwind tours of places where I have too many friends if I ever wish to see any of them for a good and reasonable amount of time. I was irresponsible and easily distracted, and as such I failed to make good a few promises and a few meetings. I sorrow for having missed faces that I've not seen in a year who were important to me, but console myself with the fact that some day, I will be back.
Family curses aside, I must inevitably return if only because it seems that in spite of it all, I might just be a Texan. Sort of like Kinky Friedman, but without the musical or writing talent - or Chuck Norris without the asskicking. Or maybe more like Ann Richards without the political savvy and the snark.
What can I say? While I didn't miss the traffic on the interstate, I really did miss the food and the people. I plan on heading back to Austin in September for ACL, and we'll see what happens when next I am in my favorite town I never lived in. I've got such a strange history in my love-affair with Austin that it practically deserves and entry unto itself. Maybe some day soon it will finally get one.
Friends are people with whom you fall back into familiar patterns even after ten years gone. They are good people, and they might as well be family... and you never realize just how much you missed them until they walk right back into your life - even if it is as if they never left.
Hello, family Ketcherside.
It was good seeing you too, even if you did call to wake me up at precisely 8:01 CST after entirely too little sleep. Thank heavens for pecan-flavored coffee, yes? It was also excellent to finally meet the young prince and heir to the Ketcherside throne I've heard so much about. I suppose that he is worthy, in that he definitely possesses the family affinity for novel technology, but he is really going to have to work on that whole "walking" thing before he conquers any worlds.
Much love to the three of you. You kept me sane, and brought me back from the mental Abyss I'd tossed myself down after too many years of going nowhere at Lexicon.
Returning to Houston after almost two weeks shy of a year gone is... unusual. It isn't quite home that I am returning to, but it all still feels terribly familiar. A bit like déjà vu: it is almost as if I have been here before.
The most unusual part of being back is the way I sort of know where I am going when I am driving around. I almost remember where I will have to turn if I want to get where I am trying to go to. It is an unusual sensation, as most of the time I lived in Houston - and certainly during this last year's upheaval and constant shifting - I had no idea where I was going most of the time, and had to rely upon a map to navigate my new environment. Perhaps this is because I have always been a visual sort of learner, and direct myself by landmarks as much as anything else. Little things, like knowing to turn right when you see the "handicapped persons ahead" road sign on Woodlands Parkway.
So now I run around like a madman, trying to overcome my limited planning and sleep, revisiting old haunts, and tracking down as many of my old friends as I can. Another thing that amazes me at being back is the sheer number of people who missed me, and how many I had left behind. I had a pretty reasonable social support network behind me when I was here... but I failed to properly appreciate or utilize them as I should have.
Too stubborn, too independent, and after a few years of disappointment at failing to live up to my own goals and standards... probably too frustrated and angry at myself.
Hey, I have data.
Nothing feels better than data!
Of course, it turns out that my thrips may actually have made the jump from infested host-rose to Schefflera far faster than I'd initially imagined, and I may have to repeat the experiment with a higher resolution for data collection in the initial stages. Whatever! This is still great news for me because it means that at heart, the basic experimental design is functional and valid, and I might actually get some real results that I can interpret.
Of course, this is provided that the few chili thrips larvae I spotted on leaves aren't just statistical flukes, or that my assumptions about thrips-damage on host leaves turn out to be true... and then I still have to develop a host-damage profile for Schefflera, and to try and correlate plant damage levels to thrips population levels... but who cares? Right now, the project might be working, and that is really all that matters.
Those of you who have known me for entirely too long (and who are the inquisitive sort of female who goes through the loose clutter of my belongings in a possessive sort of way) have reminded me that there are other bottle caps from other tea beverages lying around my car, including the following gem:
#34: If you keep a goldfish in a dark room it will eventually turn white.
This particular factoid has been lying in the change-nest beneath the dashboard of my car since at least sometime early in 2003.
"Optimism can make you look stupid, but cynicism always makes you look cynical."
- Calum Fisher
Found on the inside of an "Honest Tea" cap purchased today at the Central Market where I am eating my lunch. I am still trying to decide which of the two listed options is better... or worse, as the case may be. A matter of interpretation and preference, I suppose. I can only retaliate with the words of Croaker from Glen Cook's Shadow Games:
"Every ounce of my cynicism is supported by historical precedent."
Perhaps it is the miserably wet and tropical weather of Southern Florida, but it the shoes I have owned for less than a year are already falling apart under the strain of belonging to my feet. While they have not yet given way, they are well on their way to collapse - and once again, I find myself without appropriate time to search for a new pair. Interestingly enough, they are falling apart in exactly the same fashion as before, with the outsole peeling away laterally from the ball of my foot.
Today has been one of those sorts of days where you occasionally need a spot of spontaneous cheer. It is good then, that CAKE's latest CD, "B-sides and Rarities" chose today to arrive. I haven't actually listened to the disc yet, and as something of a careful collector - I already have some of these tracks, but I am already pleased. In order to sell more discs over digital downloads, this album includes "scratch and sniff" packaging, which smells preposterously of "yellow rose".
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Happy Birthday, America. Two hundred and thirty-one isn't a bad age to be, and it is still fairly young for a nation-state. You may remain a dynamic nation for many years to come before you finally grow old and stodgy like Europe. Feel free to remain a superpower, but promise us you will keep striving to avoid the pitfalls of empire and obsolescence.
I am not sure that my roommates and I have the same understanding of the word "hygiene".
