Whoop!

I’ve just finished e-filing my first ever tax return!  Go me!  And thanks much to Paul for helping me out, telling me what all the big, fancy words meant, and for putting up with my tension-induced temper tantrum.  ::grateful smile::

Woo hoo!  ::happy taxes-finished dance::

Better still, I’m supposedly due for refunds!  ::happy money-coming-in dance::

Even better still, Angus arrives tomorrow evening!  ::happy boyfriend-in-town dance::

... And I’m spent.  ::thud of Julia crashing into her bed::

Well, argh.

Conflicting emotions.  Joy, sadness, reluctance, enthusiasm, confusion…

Mom found this…

... and I find it very scary.

http://www.aclu.org/pizza/

Evening musings (from July 13)

I’ve had another of my semi-frequent out-of-body experiences.  I don’t mean this in the “paranormal, Sybil Trelawny” sort of way.  It is simply, and scarily, this:

It’s 11:45 p.m. on Tuesday night.  I’m sitting in my apartment, chastising Debbie for having had caffeine earlier this evening.  Suddenly, I am acutely aware that I am 23, living on my own (with one of my best friends), and yet that I still feel like a 12 year old girl with grandiose dreams about what she might want to do when she grows up and no real idea of how to accomplish those dreams.  I’m living Life, but somehow it doesn’t seem real.  Or perhaps it’s too real, too mundane.  I’m enjoying just being able to relax and do exactly what I want each evening, and getting to see my friends without the stress of school.  However, it’s scary just how easily I could slip into doing this for a very long time. 

That’s not what I want; at least, not if I have a job like the one that I currently have.  If I had a job where I felt I was accomplishing something towards my larger life-goal (whatever that may be), it might be different.  Then I could take each evening off without this nagging sense that I’m just acting as a metronome, counting off the unchanging beats of my life.  This may seem silly, given that I’ve just gotten back from seven months in Europe, but even those seven months seemed merely a way of marking time, for a large part.  I felt alive when I was traveling, meeting new people, falling in love.  Here is a very different way of feeling.  I am comfortable, so comfortable that it’s difficult to contemplate uprooting myself again.  And I’m really happy to be with my friends.  But I don’t have a purpose here.  My job is perforce short-lived, and as I said above, I don’t have any real sense of where I’m going from here.  I realize now that I’m the type of person who needs on some level to have a larger goal. 

So I sit here, with my life happening almost by happenstance, unsure of what exactly I should change and how I should go about changing it.  And, added into the mix, a reluctance to change, because changing will mean leaving my comfort zone. 

My results for a link found on a friend’s website

You are water. You’re not really organic; you’re
neither acidic nor basic, yet you’re an acid
and a base at the same time. You’re strong
willed and opinionated, but relaxed and ready
to flow. So while you often seem worthless,
without you, everything would just not work.
People should definitely drink more of you
every day.


Which Biological Molecule Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Not sure how I feel about that “while you often seem worthless” bit, but the rest of it pleases me.  ::smile::

Cue the Twilight Zone music…

I have been pondering what I am going to do as a career, and graphic design has kept popping back into my mind.  Just a few days ago, I was thinking how much fun it would be to help design the covers for the Willamette Week, a cool local newspaper. They generally have eye-catching covers, even if you don’t really understand what the cover is supposed to be.

Lo and behold, what should appear on a nifty website that I frequently browse but this ad? Sadly, I do not have the experience necessary to get this kind of job.  But it would be fun…

Walking disaster area

There is a cute kid who comes regularly to the park where I work.  He’s really sweet, enthusiastic and energetic.  He is also really, really klutzy.  He walks into the poles for stop signs - one pole has twice been given the opportunity to imprint itself on his forehead!  He trips over his own feet.  Today was his crowning glory, however; oh, that I had had a video camera with me!

He was playing four-square with a number of other park kids, when the ball was hit out of the four-square court (the unfilled wading pool) and into the nearby playground area.  He went chasing after the ball, only to turn around and start back towards the court when somebody on the playground kicked the ball back.  I called out “thank you” to the person on the playground.  Our hero turned his head around to say thank you as well, forgetting (as he frequently does) that he was still moving forwards.  Without any visual references to guide them, his feet took him full-tilt into the side of one of the aluminum garbage cans that we have around the area.  Bang - into the side!  Whoop - over the edge!  Crash - headfirst into the can!

That’s right: like something out of a “Three Stooges” movie, our plucky adventurer ended up head-down inside a garbage can, his little legs sticking straight out of the top for the few moments before the can tumbled onto its side, with him in it!

Torn between concern and side-splitting laughter, I alleviated the first by assuring myself that he was intact and none the worse for the wear.  (This kid is made of rubber, I swear!) I then indulged in a long bout of the second, as did pretty much everyone else within view of the incident.  How could we not?  The kid was good-natured about it, as his is about all of his various scrapes, thumps and bumps.

His later comment: “For a moment there, I had banana on my face!”

Happy happy… oh wait…

So, for those of you who didn’t know me in high school, I was pretty obsessed with the musical “The Phantom of the Opera” for a couple of years.  The obsession wore off some, although it still ranks among the top three of my favorite stage musicals, and I would love to go see it again.

Imagine my joy, then, on discovering that a movie version of it is coming out in December.  Imagine my further joy upon watching the teaser and seeing a wonderful level of visual opulence.  Imagine my surprise and apprehension to discover that the director of the movie version of my beloved musical is… Joel Schumacher. The man who gave the world films such as “Batman and Robin.” Danger, Will Robinson!

::shrug::  I’ll still go and see it, opening night if I can (depends on what continent I’m on - it opens on Christmas Eve in America, but in the first week of December in the UK).  It will have fantastic music, at least, even if they messed with the orchestrations, as several articles have mentioned.  Still, pretty costumes, right?…

Movies, part 1

Two movies that I have watched in the past two nights:

1.) “Empire of the Sun.” A very good movie, touching, nicely understated, superb acting by a very young Christian Bale.  Several spine-tinglingly beautiful images, a plot with no noticeable holes, and an ending that leaves you satisfied.  One of Spielberg’s best, and that’s saying a lot.

2.) “Kill Bill: Vol. 1.” In the end, a boring and fairly laughable movie.  Paul tells me that the second volume is better, and I will probably go ahead and watch it, but I can sum up Volume 1 in three points:
- Uma Thurman’s rear end in tight pants
- blood fountains
- ... oh, no, wait, there are only two points.

Four weeks of traveling, condensed.

Italy was beautiful, although I’m not overly fond of Rome or of Florence.  They were just too big and/or too… hmmm, too city-like.  I’m starting to think that I may be more of a “town” type of person.  I definitely liked Lake Como the best for scenery, although the day that we spent driving around Tuscany was beautiful as well.  I had a lot of fun traveling with Aunt Suse and Bob and Steve, her (and now, my) wonderful friends.  They are indefatigable, especially when it comes to shopping!  ::grin:: And especially when that shopping involves Italian ceramics or wine. 

I had a great time going around England and Scotland with my mom.  We went all over the place - Rye, Hay-on-Wye, the Lake District, Edinburgh and Glasgow.  All in just a week and a half.  Whew!  I think that Edinburgh remains my favorite foreign city after Sydney, Australia - everyone is so nice, the city is pretty, etc.  We went on a tour of Mary King’s Close, an entire series of streets that were roofed over and had the Royal Exchange (now the City Chambers) built on it.  The tour was a lot of fun - a nice balance between historical fact and silliness.  Hay-on-Wye was probably Mom’s favorite - the used-bookstore-to-everything-else ratio was about 3:1. 

Directly after Glasgow, Mom flew back to the US and I flew to Limerick.  I took the bus to Galway city, rented a bicycle, and headed off into Connemara.  It was pretty, but I wasn’t in NEARLY good enough shape to do a full week.  I gave up after four days, but not before making it to a little island called Inishbofin which is simply beautiful, and much less touristy than the Aran Islands.  I also made it to Clifden, Roundstone, and Spiddal; some days I went as few as seven miles by bike, others more than thirty.  After I returned my bike, I took the bus to Dublin, spent one afternoon there (that was enough - I didn’t like Dublin), spent the night at the airport and caught a very early plane to Brighton the next morning. 

I then spent ten wonderful days with Angus, traveling all over the south of England.  We spent the first weekend with his parents, both of whom are very sweet and kind, and who own two adorable Golden Retrievers.  For the rest of the time, we travelled around, staying with various friends of his - all of whom were extremely nice - and just seeing the countryside.  We went to the Eden Project, to Stonehenge, and to myriad other places.  I lost a lens cap in a pond in the field that Angus owns, got to see some of the places in Kent that played key roles in his childhood, and met a mad (as in insane) German Shepherd owned by his friend Richard.  All in all, it was a lot of fun.

Oh, and I got introduced to The Fast Show.  Brilliant, either for comedy or simply for those wishing to study particularly incomprehensible English accents.  Oh - suit you, sir!

Deja vu all over again

So, I’m back in Portland, and between moving into the same apartment that I had last summer, having the same job that I had last summer, having the majority of my friends still in town, and ending up at Paul’s with some regularity to use the internet (thanks, Paul!), I’m feeling rather like the last seven months didn’t happen.

It’s a very odd feeling.  Between the overwhelming deja vu and the state of limbo that I’m in at the moment (not knowing what I will be doing in three months), I’m left feeling rather lost.

I’m a type-A personality in many ways.  ::pauses to let the chorus of all her friends saying, “No kidding!” die down::  So not knowing what I will be doing or where I will be in three months really bothers me, especially since I don’t know what I want to do with the rest of my life, either.

That’s not entirely true; I have made a list of what I really want out of life, at a most basic level. 

1.) I want to have a positive impact on people’s lives.
2.) I want to find true love.
3.) I want to be able to pursue my passions, most specifically music.

Three things.  That’s it.  Who would have thought that it would be so difficult to figure out how to accomplish three things in the span of sixty-odd years? 

Hello all!

I’m back in the US, and will be heading back to Portland on the 10th of this month.  I know that I’ve been bad about posting for the past, oh, month or so, but I claim inability due to lack of internet access.  Hopefully I will be able to start posting more regularly this summer, and can tell you some about my travels of the past month.  ::smile::

Rollin’, rollin’…

Just to give you a rough estimate of the massive mileage Mom and I have covered in the last week:

It’s a little off, as I just used the AA website’s trip planner and told it to go via various cities.  The main differences are that between Rye and Winchester we traveled along the coast, and that between Kendal and Edinburgh we stopped by Hadrian’s Wall and went fairly far east.  Still and all, it’s a good rough estimate!  We be travellin’…

Buon Giorno!

Hello from Italy!  I just wanted to post a brief note letting y’all know that I am safe, have had a great week in Italy with Aunt Suse and her two friends, and am headed off to England today, to meet up with Mom on Tuesday!  I hope that everyone is doing well, and I look forward to seeing a lot of you when I get back to Portland in June!

Texas!

If you don’t have one of the free online memberships, you won’t be able to view this New York Times article about the beauty of the Texas Hill Country during the spring.  But you really ought to take a look!

Heigh ho, heigh ho, to Italy I go…