oh man

i just realized something.
what i used to say (jokingly) about Vijay still holds true for my current situation.
i like my coffee like i like my men -
strong and dark.
only this one's stronger and darker.
and busier. this might as well be a long-distance relationship for all i see him.

but anyway. now I'm reading another Barbara Kingsolver book - this time, not a novel, but a book of essays. It's called Small Wonders, and it's a book of essays she wrote in response to September 11, 2001, so a timely read, i suppose.
so far, it's mixed, horribly depressing and uplifting.

more twigs on the family tree

Susan DellOrto called me up the other day to invite me to Friday night dinner at her house, since she was having another relative over for dinner. John Kelly from Texas, son of Aunt Gert, was in town for a retiring-from-the-Navy party for one of his old friends. Susan also had a friend from Boston in town, Elaine. The four of us had a very quiet, relaxing dinner. He was a very nice, pretty retiring guy, and I think he was slightly overwhelmed by the three of us loud, aggressive women, but I think we all enjoyed ourselves. I would have been home for a relatively early evening, except Susan spilled wax on a suede-upholstered stool, and we spent about an hour working on getting the wax out (we ironed it, with paper towels to soak up the wax - was that bad? i think we might have burned the suede ... )

and now I'm off for a morning at the beach, at $11/hour. Life isn't so bad, i guess. I mean, besides the fact that I'm working on a Saturday. I just don't have enough backbone, and I have too much compassion and commitment to this job (what a silly thing to have, it's not like commitment is going to get me a promotion or keep me here any longer ...)

hopefully I'm going to get to play with puppies this afternoon. that's all i want from my life right now - more dogs in it.

the decimals!!!

i just had an enormous tirade on the importance of decimal points. i just spent an hour deciphering the GPS coordinates given to me by this lady who apparently thinks a decimal point one direction or the other doesn't really matter. there is a *BIG* difference between decimal degrees and degrees minutes decimal, lady. Also a difference between NAD-27 and WGS-84.

so, i feel like a big nerd. but i still maintain the necessity of the tirade. data integrity is important, dammit.

what i forgot to say

So, in an effort to understand this new person who thinks in a way i have never tried to understand before (being complacent in my liberal Ivory Tower bubble), i am reading Jarhead - on Fiona's recommendation - which is written by an ex-Marine about what it's like to be a Marine. i picked it up this morning, and i'm most of the way through. it's very disturbing for this sheltered little girl to read (not because it's graphically violent - it's not, so far he's seen no combat), just because the thought processes are totally foreign but perfectly logical, in their own way. i think it's also offered some insight into why Noe reenlisted, which myself and his friends have been wondering about.
i'd say this book is worth reading. he's a vivid writer, and very accessible. thanks, Fifi.

sometimes i am the one with the exciting life

so, as most of the folks who ever read this already know, i recently acquired what is commonly called a boyfriend. i never really liked the term, but can't think of a better one that isn't out-dated.

he prefers to be called Snake, although i call him Noe, as i can't say "Snake" without cracking up, and i'm sure he'd be offended. this new friendship is a journey into totally foreign territory for me. he is both a former and a future Navy boy, with six years' prior service and a recent re-enlistment and pending deployment. he is very proud of his service, and that of his three brothers (all Navy, all Blue Knights of the Navy, whatever that means exactly). perhaps as a result, i am occasionally the audience for short lectures on the validity of the war, the importance of pride in the U.S., the superiority of Ford over imported cars (and any other American-made), and very occasionally, the watchfulness of God the Almighty.

His childhood was split between Evanston and Detroit, but he claims Detroit as his real home. He is devoted to muscle cars, and is the (very) proud owner of 2 1/2 racing Mustangs (he doesn't race them himself, just does all of the wrench work). Today I went on a field trip to his garage (Snake's Chop Shop) to see his babies, and while i didn't understand most of what he was talking about, i can attest to the shininess of the cars, both under the hood and on the outside. while he is not very educated in the academic sense, he is certainly not a dumb guy - he taught himself physics so that he could understand how to make cars go faster, and is just as quick as Dad to point to a piece of a car's engine and begin explaining the laws that make it work. he is also trilingual. people who speak more than one language always make me feel dumber.

what i find to be the most ironic about this new relationship is that i, the feminist, have found myself the ultimately traditional-minded man, who insists and demonstrates that chivalry is not dead. he is scandalized if i ever pull out my wallet to pay for anything in his presence, holds doors open for me, and is solicitous of my every need. he extends this consideration to all females - my co-worker Rachel came out to the session yesterday, and the two of them had dinner while i played, and he insisted on paying for her dinner as well. despite this determination to care for women, he claims (to my roommate, while i was away from the table), that my main attraction is my sass. he likes it that i talk back rather than deferring to him. apparently this doesn't happen to him very often, as he is pretty physically intimidating - barrel-chested and over six feet tall, with a default expression pretty close to a scowl and a penchant for heavy-metal music.

so, at this point, i have no illusions about this relationship. he will be shipping out sometime between October and March, and I am moving away from Illinois sometime between May and August. he and I have very different goals in life - when i told him I was studying for the GRE, he asked what grad school is, and what use it will be for me. we also have very different philosophies on life - he is a firm believer in the value of violence as a conflict-resolution tool, and doesn't really see the value in reading books.
however, at this point, he certainly does break up the monotony, and i am learning a lot. he has many good (and terrifying) stories from his life, including the tale behind the piece of lead still lodged in his sternum - he was shot off his HumVee in Fallujah, and it cured him of his homophobia, as the man who saved his life is gay and they are now bosom buddies.
I am not entirely convinced of the truth of all of his stories, being somewhat of an embellisher myself, but i did get to feel the bullet, and he is certainly nervous enough to have seen combat. i have already learned never to sneak up on him.
additionally, besides stories, he has two brand-new puppies - pitbulls, which according to him, are superior to all other dogs. and God knows i love puppies.

my coworker is making me a bad person.
i have gotten fed up with her shiftless selfish ways, and i can't be the nice girl anymore.

now i am being exactly as nice to her as she is to me. this translates to not giving a damn how she's doing, what she's doing, or anything about her unless what she's doing isn't exactly what she's supposed to be doing according to job protocol, in which case i am taking careful note so that i can backstab her later.

i feel terrible. i didn't know i could backstab like this. i am quite good at being catty. i have also perfected the ignoring whatever she says unless it is directly stated to me, and falling asleep as soon as she starts driving the 1.5 hours to her site (on days I go along to help). How well I learned from her!
the only thing i can't master is the interrupting. she's just too blatant and too aggressive about it, and it makes me cringe.

cool!

So, this morning I went to a beautiful piece of prairie to the southwest of Chicago, in the largest roadless area left in Illinois. The plants were super-abundant, and the man I was working with is an awesome guy, a professor of biology at a local college who is trying to make a former parking lot into 2 acres of prairie - that is a *hard* task!!!
When we finished monitoring, we were sitting at the side of the road we came in on, near the entrance to our prairie as well as the entrance to the woods. While we were sitting there, two four-wheelers came out of the woods, each with a driver dressed entirely in camouflage. Each driver had a big belt with lots of tools on it, including a pistol. They were government guys, and each one had a huge bundle of plants on the back of his vehicle. My first guess was marijuana, then I thought, no, it can't be - this seems so unlikely, and that is a *lot*. Then we both looked closer, and, yes, indeed, they were in the midst of a drug bust, taking someone's pot crop out of the woods. The steward I was working with told me that happens frequently in those woods - it's just such a vast tract of land that it's not too hard to grow things unnoticed, but now the authorities are onto them, so it's more difficult to make it to harvest.
It was something different for my field day, anyway.