Sunday, April the twenty ninth, nineteen eighty four. Ten thousand days ago today. I remember absolutely nothing about this day because, at the time, I did not know there was anything to be remembered. I didn't know anything could be remembered. I did not know what remembering was. I do know that I was vastly confused. Everything was bright. Everything was strange. I do not like sudden changes, never have, never will. UNLESS IT HAPPENS RIGHT NOW. No, wait, that's especially not true.
Here I am today, ten thousand days later, writing about, well, we'll just start with the past six months or so. Sometime in March I realized that I would be turning 10,000 years old this year. My 10,000th dieversary was scheduled for Thursday, September 15, 2011. I knew I had to do something special for it. I brainstormed for a while, ranging from the wildly impractical (raising $10K for charity) to the more absurd (releasing 10,000 bouncy balls off the roof of my house.... FOR SCIENCE!) Finally, I realized that my Twitter account was sitting at roughly 410 tweets off of 10,000. I did the math and discovered that I could budget my twitter usage to 2.3 tweets per day and it would line up that my 10,000th tweet would hit on my 10,000th dieversary.
This new Twitter diet seemed easy enough. Who really needs more than two tweets a day anyway? ME. I DO. The task grew increasingly difficult as the summer progressed. This summer was one of my busiest travel seasons of, well, ever. I made it through the remainder of the school year. I made it through the super busy finals weeks, filled with papers and classes I didn't want to do work for but needed to pass. I had trouble around April when I reevaluated my life plan and changed my major from Photography to Art Studies and decided I would take one more year at ASU and graduate. I had been scheduled to present a panel at Phoenix Comicon in May and instead had an anxiety attack that caused me to buy a plane ticket and flee to Massachusetts... where there was a fucking tornado. I came home for a week and immediately repacked the backpack to go to Europe with my mom for a week. Home for only a week after that and had to put on a week-long series of wedding festivities for my sister WHO GOT MARRIED, DID YOU KNOW THAT? I bet you did not know that, because I was saving my tweets.
My summer continued and so did my limited Twitter usage. Two weeks past the wedding and I had edited most of the photos I took. I did not post but maybe one to Twitter. We celebrated Shannon's birthday and left for San Diego Comic Con before she even left Phoenix. We had wild (read: moderate) adventures in San Diego, at the convention, at Sea World, at the beach. Did I tweet them? Well, maybe two per day.
School started two weeks after San Diego Comic Con. I'm taking a full schedule this year in order to graduate. I'm taking some classes I thought I would love but I do not like them all that much and some I thought I wouldn't like but actually do. I share two classes with Annie (my cousin-friend, for those of you who for some reason don't know me but are still reading my personal blogs, hi strangers! Don't talk to me in person.) I have a teacher who I like to compare to Delores Umbridge from the Harry Potter books. These are things I would tweet about but didn't.
In May, shortly after (or was it shortly before, it was definitely shortly before) fleeing for the disastrous east coast, I signed on to lead this years Can't Stop the Serenity event in Phoenix. Can't Stop the Serenity is the Browncoats' annual charity event where we screen Serenity (the movie continuation of the Firefly television series, for those of you who don't know, and to you I would like to say HOW DID YOU FIND ME?) and often pair it with Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (honestly, watch it), raffles, and merchandise sales. It's a good event and needs to be run. This year, however, the Arizona Browncoats are putting on a huge event in Tucson and most of the resources and effort are going toward making that a success. It was brought up that we might not even have one in Phoenix this year... which is when I decided to step up and take claim. It's important to me, it's important to the group, that we have this event in both cities every year. Miss one year and you get out of the habit. People forget. People move on.
There was debate on whether I could handle the event this year, considering my abandoning the Comicon panel in May. I assured everyone that not only could I do it, but I could coordinate the arrangement of a full in-person event, working primarily on the computer and communicating through the internet. Apparently I had some people worried with my techniques because they babied me for the first few months. In fact, it wasn't until I spoke up a few weeks ago that I finally feel I asserted enough authority to pull the reins back over to my own hands. I'm sure some people still think I haven't done enough or am not doing it right. The event is this Sunday. I anticipate a sell-out, though people are taking their time and not buying tickets online, which is a bit worrying. Still, we have pre-sold nearly half the seats. It's not that big of an event and the numbers on the Facebook event are a promising (though not nearly accurate) count.
Annie is making some some pretty awesome Jayne Hat (watch the show) inspired shirts for the event. I bought the material back when I actually had some money to throw around and she is going to be donating them to the cause. I think they will turn out well and may prove a really good addition to our merchandise at the event. I encouraged her to also attach her business card to the shirts and maybe after the event she can drum up some “starving college student” income from it.
I am highly considering nominating myself to run the CSTS event next year as well. I think I can take the experience I've had this year to make next year a bigger and better event. This year the “Phoenix” event is in Mesa, at a theatre with only 48 seats. It is in September, which has been a pet peeve of mine since we first started holding them in September... I don't know how many years ago. The rest of the world holds their CSTS events in June, to line up with Joss Whedon's birthday (if you don't know Joss Whedon, go look him up or stop reading my blog). The global idea was conceived as a birthday gift and “thank you” of sorts to Joss Whedon, which is why the main charity is Joss Whedon's charity of choice: Equality Now (women's rights, look them up). If elected to coordinate again next year I will start soon and aim to hold the event at a bigger venue, in Phoenix, in June.
The Phoenix Comicon panel that I backed out of, causing me to lose confidence in those who would be voting for me for next year's coordinator, was a how-to panel on cosplay photography for next to no cost. I had come up with an entire panel in my head. It seemed easy enough to teach. It was basically teaching what I already do myself. I came up with the idea when they asked for options in, was it November (?) of last year. They told me then that I wouldn't have to host the panel myself, just submit the idea. I was feeling confident that week and agreed to host.
In April I had a mild breakdown involving school, people in general, and everything that involved outside or in person socialization. I had passed time to register for classes. I needed to pick classes for the Fall semester. I needed to bring my GPA up .06 points before they would pass my portfolio review for the Photography major. I had a class I hated and wasn't sure was easy enough to pass, let alone with a good enough grade to raise my GPA. I looked through the required classes I would need for the Photography major and it was primarily exhibition classes. Socialization. Judgment. Metaphors. Bullshit. I am not a fine artist. I consider myself an artist, sure. But not to the extent that the Herberger College of Fine Arts defines “art.” I can't get behind the concept of meaning. Everything must have meaning and something without meaning is nothing. I just couldn't bring myself to sign up for any of the classes that were required. I'd worked for the past four years on getting into this major and graduating with a degree in fine art photography. It wasn't going to happen. I considered dropping out of ASU all together and moving over to Phoenix College for their commercial photography program. I blogged about it. I vented to my mom. I made an appointment with my advisor at school. I had already gone to the website and looked up other majors, running them against the credits I have already taken. It was a choice between saying with Photography, moving on to Phoenix College, or switching to Art Studies for the sake of getting a bachelor's degree. I ultimately chose the Art Studies major. It dropped my required classes to just ten and those ten could be classes I felt better taking. Art history classes, one 3D class (which I found a computer based 3D class to make up for my dislike of physical 3D studio classes) and any upper division humanities elective I wanted.
May came around and it was about a week until Phoenix Comicon. We had plans to go in costume but Annie was no where near done with any of our costumes. I had put out a call for volunteers for people in cosplay to come be photographed during my panel. It was the middle of finals weeks and even though by that point in the semester I had dropped two classes and only had two left, those two were not easy. One was my Spanish class which was in no way required for any major as I had already taken enough foreign language to get me through anything that wasn't a foreign language major. Yet I needed to pass the class to get my GPA up. The other was my Chinese Painting (history of) class that I really disliked, it involved a complicated 10 page research paper, which Mo helped me greatly with, and a written test I was not prepared for. It was a required credit for any Art major though and I was not remotely interested in retaking that class or any that fit the credentials. I was also in the finishing stages of my school future, graduation, switching my major crisis.
I had, I guess, what would be the equivalent of an emotional meltdown... for me anyway. I don't normally get emotional about anything. I do, however, get anxiety about social interactions, or the possibility of the like. I don't normally get stressed, but I do shut down and decide to hide in bed all day sometimes. This time, it all piled up. School finally finished, my mom's birthday passed. I was waiting for Comicon to start and by this time I really, really just wanted to hide under my desk for the remainder of the summer. Or else fly to Europe sooner. That thought crossed my mind. I was talking to Shannon on the computer and I made the idle suggestion that I wanted to just hide under my desk and not come out but that I would need someone to bring me some iced tea every once in a while and never question it. She said if I came to hide under her desk she would bring me iced tea and not question it.
I bought a ticket to the east coast on a whim. Then, I had to figure out how to tell everyone I was not going to be there for the convention the next weekend and that I was going for the next two weeks. I left myself a week (plenty of time) to be home before leaving for Europe with my mother.
It turns out Annie, who wasn't done with any of our costumes for Phoenix Comicon yet, and Curtis weren't really all that interested in the social zoo that is a convention either. They were only grudgingly going to go because I was going and we already had tickets. Everyone else got over the fact that I was leaving and Shannon was excited to be saving me.
In Monson, we spent roughly a week not doing anything. It. Was. So. Nice. For Memorial Day we went to see Becka and Christian and their adorable little house an hour and a half away. They threw a back yard barbeque. Becka's dad and brother came and Evie played with their dog Tessie. It was very nice.
A few nights later we were bored. It was the middle of the night and Evie had already gone to bed. We had been watching movies on Shannon's computer and I convinced her to put in Twister. She hadn't seen it despite my telling her how good it is. I even bought her a copy and mailed it to her... perhaps a year before. She still hadn't seen it. We watched it... and it was just as good. That's the thing about movies not made by George Lucas, they don't change.
The next day we were hanging out in the up-upstairs room, the closest we could get to the air conditioner. The weather there has a mind of it's own and the week leading up to then had been so humid I swear I could go fishing out of the upstairs window. So we gathered around the air conditioner on the third floor of the house while Evie played in the yard and we kept an ear on her through the open window.
Without warning it began to rain. Just light sprinkles. I leaned out the window and yelled for Evie to come in anyway. The power flickered. Evie came up stairs and within a minute it had started to hail. The hail grew larger and larger within seconds. Evie went out and collected some off of the deck. They were up to golf ball sized and looked like river rocks with intricate spiral designs throughout. The power flickered again and the sky was suddenly dark and gray. I had been taking pictures on my phone. The sky was a pretty blue with a few puffy clouds and within minutes a wall of cloud passed by darkening the entire town.
Shannon had come back up from the deck and Evie was still down on the second floor, having just come in from collecting hail. I noticed things flying and said “Does Monson get tornadoes?” Shannon shrugged. I called my dad, still staring out the window in wonder. He was busy and did not have an immediate answer for me, hanging up rather quickly. The power had gone out completely and larger things were flying through the air. Lightning had been flickering. I called Evie upstairs and ordered everyone into the bathroom. There's a window in the bathroom, but it is small and I wasn't concerned enough to cause panic. We watched through the little window as the sky grew black and the trees fell all around the house. It was over within minutes.
We ventured downstairs to see the damage. It was definitely a tornado. Trees were down everywhere. A 40 foot tree from the back yard fell on the tricycle that Evie had just been playing with in the driveway. All of the trees managed to miss the house. Others weren't as lucky. Two streets down people had lost entire houses. The whole town was out of power. The grocery store was gone.
Shannon, Evelyn and I grabbed our cameras and made our way out through the neighborhood by foot. All of the residents had walked down to Main street in disbelief. Someone was trapped under their house which had slid off it's foundation. We took photos. They started yelling from up the road that another tornado was coming. We decided that was enough for the day and headed in. Later, after finishing off some of the melting ice cream and feeding milk and cookies to Evie for dinner, we decided we would go out and try to find a way to Friendly's for some real food. There was bound to be one, maybe the next town over, that had power and was open.
That was a bad idea. Not only could we not get out of town, but the power was out and the storm was threatening to drop more tornadoes on us at any moment. Road closures and detours took us up a single lane mountain road which soon ran out of pavement. It started to rain. It was raining hard. It was pitch black. There was a mountain on one side of us and a ditch on the other. It was now a mud road. My phone offered no 3G and the cell signal went out.
The windshield wipers were not working.
I got out of the truck and directed Shannon, yelling through the rain and rumbling clouds (which I swear were mere feet above my head). I wiped the windshield with old newspaper, hoping to clear some of the fog that had built up with the drops. We slowly inched back down the mountain and into more familiar territory. It stopped raining, but by the time we got back to Main street they had closed off the road further south, blocking our way back home. We pleaded with the police officer who did not care that we lived there. He told us we would have to park on the street and walk the three blocks back. In the dark. In the sporadic rain. Through the fallen power lines. With a 6 year old.
We did what we were told and were promptly reprimanded for having a child out in a disaster situation. “This isn't a street fair, people!” They yelled at us. The same officer then came up and expressed his distaste that we were walking home with a child. I explained, calmly, that he himself had told us to do just that. I said that we parked just over there and that our house was up the street two blocks, on the corner. He acted like we were crazy and told us to get back in the truck and head home and not come back out. As if we were planning that.
It took hours to get Evie to sleep in the silent darkness of the powerless night. Firefighters came by around 1am, banging on all of the doors in the neighborhood. They did not wait for us to respond, we waited downstairs, outside, staring in amazement at all of the earth worms that had taken advantage of the darkness to throw their own star gazing party in the yard, just in case the firefighters decided to come back. They did not come back but their yelling through the houses down the street and around the corner (to see if people were okay?) woke up Evelyn anyway.
Mrs. Duffy came home from her out of state work trip the following night. We made it out earlier in the afternoon when the National Guard had arrived and were nicer to us than the Springfield and Ware police that were on loan to Monson. We drove South, the only way we could, and spent the day in Connecticut. We charged all of our electronics, computers, phones, camera batteries, etc. at Friendly's and then went and wandered through a mall. We drove in to Hartford and went to a movie (Pirates of the Caribbean) just to keep Evie entertained until Mrs. Duffy's 11PM flight came in.
We spent four days without power. We cleared trees out of the driveway, yard, and neighbor's property for the entire weekend. Actually, we cleared the neighbor's driveway and yard first, with the help of some volunteers who traveled in from other towns. They promised to help us with the Duffy's yard after but we didn't finish until it was time for the hockey game, and so they had to leave. They never returned. You know who did return though? The neighbor, from work. He did not thank us for clearing their yard. He told us that their landlord would have taken care of it, and then went inside and never came back out. Luckily the neighbors on the other side were nicer and offered their power tools, ATV, and teenaged children.
The most disturbing of that disaster situation however, was not the tornado, it was not the power outage that lasted for days, nor was it the hundreds of National Guard soldiers stationed throughout as if the the town were on lock down. It was the residents of Main Street. The ones least affected, up on the north side of town and further away from the damage. The ones with the signs. Signs that said “Go Away” and “Here to help, FREE. Here to look, $1.” The worst one, the one that made me want to get out of the car, hand the man a $20 and give him a stern lecture was a sign that said “Pictures $5.”
I felt extremely offended by that comment. I was not a citizen. I had not exactly come for the tornado, but I was traveling the streets taking pictures. I am a photographer. It is what I do. Taking pictures is my normal response to things like this. When we returned to the house each night I sat up on my computer until the power ran out, editing photos of the damage. When I had a complete set, I posted them to my website with a note explaining the situation and linking to Monson Bank disaster relief fund. I am certain that others who came to the town specifically to get pictures were doing similar acts. The more publicity the situation received the more help the victims would be offered. Here were citizens, not even affected by the disaster, sitting on their porches and yelling at the traffic. Yelling at people who were traveling in from out of town to help with the clean up efforts. Yelling at people like me, for walking the streets with their cameras.
I flew back home about a week after the tornado. A month or so later I received an e-mail from a woman who lives around the corner from Shannon. She had found my website and wanted to know if she could purchase my pictures and how much would I charge. I confirmed that she was, in fact, a resident who just wanted pictures, and not a publisher or journalist that wanted to sell the images, and I told her they were free. I loaded them on a flash drive (they promote my business, it was worth the loss to get exposure in MA, especially considering she works with the Red Sox) and mailed them the next day.
An uneventful week passed (hard to follow up excitement like a tornado in the hilly small town region) and it was time to pack for Europe. I decided in January that I wanted to go to Europe. Well, I decided decades ago that I wanted to go to Europe... I decided in January that I was definitely going. I picked a time frame I wanted to go, I decided THE ENTIRE MONTH OF JUNE was a good idea. I tried to convince Gloria to go with me. She even got a passport, but she could not take the time off. I dropped my time frame down to three weeks, then two, then just one. Still, she could not get the time off of work. I finally convinced my mother it would be good for her to go with me, and let me pay. I had budgeted my credit limits and saved a small amount of spendable cash for an entire month of myself going, so it was a possibility for me to pay for 2 people to go for just one week. I was hoping to go for her birthday in May, tickets were $400 cheaper (each) to go then. But, like Gloria, she could not get the time off in May. I settled for June.
We flew to Minneapolis and transferred to a plane to London. The plane to Minneapolis had wi-fi, I tweeted pictures that whole leg of the trip, breaking my twitter diet and cutting that .3 tweets off of the 2.3 for each day I had left. I love technology and living in the future though, I couldn't help myself.
The flight to London did not have internet. It did have movies... and a nifty trivia game that you can play with the other passengers of the plane. My mother and I played and I even won a few times. There were on average 5-15 players on the plane at any given time. I think I only won when we were down to five or six.
We arrived in London and it took a while to adjust to where everything was. I could not figure out how to pay for the train from the airport to the city, so we just boarded it. The “Tickets?!?” lady came up and I had to explain, awkwardly, that we could not find how to buy tickets and can we please buy them from her. She sold us the tickets at what I am sure was a greatly inflated price. I paid grudgingly and we rode the train into Piccadilly Circus station, where the travel agency we bought our public transit and train to Paris passes from is.
Exiting the train and walking through the station, I found free wi-fi. I checked my e-mail and updated my statuses to reflect our current location. We found the exit we needed and headed out. There were push gates we needed to exit through to get out. They had card readers. My mother's friend had given us two transit cards with a few pounds each on them to use. I slid the card and exited the gate. My mother refused to admit we had to pay to leave and pushed her way through the gate.
An alarm sounded. The station was evacuated.
A crowd of people came flooding in from behind us. All making their way to the street like rats from a flood. I threw my mother a questioning look, then a “this is your fault” expression. She acted like she had no idea what the emergency was but we should definitely make no haste in exiting the station.
The travel agency/welcome center was directly across the street and obtaining our transit passes, tourist trap access cards, train tickets, and Paris sight seeing tickets was relatively easy. I had already studied the map of the underground system and so finding our hotel wasn't hard either. It was two trains, a light rail, and a short walk away. The hotel was prepaid through Expedia and they did not ask for my credit card to be kept on file. The beds were small, Ikea type beds, and the room was tiny but cute and I thought it was pretty nice.
We ventured back out to find food at a pub by tower bridge. They put the strangest shit in their tea. They have iced tea, at least, which is nice, except they apparently do not know how to make iced tea without mixing it like a cocktail.
Later, we took the light rail to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. We learned all about the history of London and meridian line. From there we took a ferry up the Thames to see the sites. A large group of touring German students sat behind us and gossiped loudly. It wasn't until one of them yelled “EXPELLIARMUS!” that I realized they had been talking about Harry Potter the entire time. Then it was like “German-garble-garble-garble-Ron-garble-g
arble-garble-Hermoine-garble-garble.” We could not hear the half-assed tour recording through the thick crowd of teenagers and I could not get pictures through the light patter of rain on the windows of the ferry but it was still a very nice ride.
We rode up to the end of the line, Westminster Abbey, where we walked about a mile up to Trafalgar Square where we found the Texas Embassy restaurant. Their concept of a Texas restaurant was actually pretty good. It was a little closer to New Mexico with their Mexican food dishes, and their chicken fried steak was made with the same beer batter breading you would find in English pub fish, but it they had west-coast American iced tea. Sure, that's not the sweet tea Texas is used to but I didn't care, I prefer it that way.
The following day we took the light rail and a train, and then walked a mile, to Shakespeare's Globe theatre in Southwark, which for some reason is pronounced “suvvuck.” The London visitor pass card I bought got us into the Theatre tour for free and we didn't have to wait long for it to start. While we waited however, we got to explore the little Shakespeare and theatre history museum they have in the lobby. The tour took us through the insides of the theatre, including in to watch actors rehearsing for a production of Doctor Faustus. The theatre, if you are unaware, has an open air amphitheater design which allows birds to come in and mess with the actors while they are trying to concentrate. This apparently amuses the birds greatly and so they kept doing it. It wasn't until the actors were being yelled at by the director to stop reacting to the birds that I realized I recognized the dude playing Mephistopheles was none other than Arthur Darvill from Doctor Who. I was accidentally turning this into a Doctor Who trip and I was completely unaware. I now somewhat regret not having enough time to go to the Doctor Who Experience.
The music throughout London was amazing. Everywhere we went they had excellent music. Some of it I had heard before. Some of it is popular everywhere, it would seem, but a lot of it was new. I will have to go back some time with my computer and an internet connection for the sole purpose of researching and acquiring their music. There was even a guy in the west end playing a pylon (you know, those orange traffic cones) as an instrument. A pylon! It sounded like a mix between a trumpet and a saxophone. It was so amazing that my mother actually gave him money.
On Friday, our third and final day in London, we left early to pick up our theatre tickets for Much Ado About Nothing starring David Tenant and Catherine Tate. After which we hurried over to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards. We were ill prepared, sadly, and were behind a huge crowd that blocked our view of the ceremony itself. I managed to get video of the parade in and decided to use one of my allotted tweets to send it to twitter when we got back to available internet.
From there we walked through Green Park (well back through Green Park, as we had to cut through the park to get from the underground to the palace) and got on a bus towards Hyde Park where the Harrods department store is. Harrods, while fascinating with its architecture and décor, was a terrible place to be with a social anxiety disorder. There were more people than Disneyland on a busy day. The prices are worse than Macy's and right up there with Sax Fifth Avenue! I suffered through the purse and make up departments. We even traveled through the confections, me with my eyes closed. We made it to the kids clothing department which wasn't as bad with the crowds, but still relatively boring to me considering I couldn't afford to buy anything. My mother bought Falyne a pair of expensive (for what they are) but very high quality tights. We went through the toy department and I wanted one of everything. We traveled the ENTIRE FLOOR devoted to pets and pet supplies. How do they even have so many rooms devoted to live animal sales? I swear if I had looked long enough there would have been a pony-for-your-spoiled-brat department. I talked mom into escaping at last and we got lost trying to find our way out. Finally, after stopping in the perfect-panic-room-stall bathrooms for a while, we stumbled upon some stairs that led to the escalators. Down and out we went. I was never so relieved to see the outside world.
We had a few hours to kill so we got lunch and then got on the underground to where I talked my mother into tracking down an old fashioned police box I had heard about. It was right outside the underground station when we got there. I took pictures. I took a lot of pictures. Like an obnoxious tourist. I had not done that for most of the trip.
We left from there back to the west end for the show. We were still fairly early so we checked out the horrible smoke filled casinos (really we just walked through one and I stalked out immediately) and then some tourist shops. We rode the bus up a mile to the Starbucks for some free internet and stopped in at a few music stores looking for a new Kazoo, of which they only had cheap metal ones and not my preferred plastic. We found a bag store called Mucci. It amused my mother so we went in. My bag had ripped several trips before and was being held together by zip ties, small buttons, and luck. I managed to find a bag I liked and we bought it. My mother got a new purse while we were there, and even left her favorite, beat up old black purse in the trash at the hotel when we left London. I am still amazed she did that.
The play was fantastic. A modern day, well, an eighties version, retelling of Much Ado About Nothing. It was extremely well done. The seats at the Wyndham's Theatre were unfortunately not so fantastic. They were small and uncomfortable and provided for much squirming and even more pants-falling-down because of the squirming. The play was worth the discomfort, but I would be careful to know I will truly appreciate any further plays I see in that venue.
We got back to the hotel late. It was already past midnight. The sun had just gone down. (Europe! Am I right?) We were exhausted from three days of excitement and walking. Our train left first thing in the morning. We ordered terrible Chinese food because it was the only thing open that would deliver at that hour. It was not good. I have had some good terrible Mexican food, but Chinese food is never good when it is terrible. This holds true in Europe as well, if you were wondering.
The train to Paris was exciting. It meant we got to see some of the English and French countrysides. We also got to see several miles of pitch black tunnels. Most of the track from London to the English Channel, actually, were in tunnels. I could tell the second we got into France though, because it smelled. It smelled so bad, I can't even describe the smell. Like nothing I had ever smelled before. I now describe that smell as “France.” At the time I equated it to a port-a-potty, mixed with gas station bathroom cleanser (the spray kind that overwhelms the already bad smell) and... there is a component I cannot name. I do not know what it is. I do know that it is not good.
Our train arrived and they did not funnel us through any kind of border check. England stamped our passports both entering and leaving but we looked around expectantly at all of the busy, fast moving french people and could not find anyone that cared to declare us as having arrived. There were no obvious signs for newcomers. Nothing. We stood there for a while taking everything in. Finally we started walking toward an exit, not knowing anything about where we were going to find the metro (subway) and start our obscenely long journey to the hotel in Serris (forty or so miles to the west). We walked several blocks, in circles even, looking for the Metro, and also a place for breakfast. We ended up at a small cafe on the corner that my mother just absolutely loved but that I did not. They only served breakfast food. They only served French food. I dislike breakfast food. I dislike French food. I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them... wait, that is something else.
After our French breakfast we walked outside and it started raining. This was no London fog. This was Paris drench. It made the France smell meld into something new, something perhaps even more unpleasant. It was like France mixed with wet dog. It was the smell of wet french dog. Except it wasn't. It was worse than that. (It was dead, Jim.)
While everyone else popped open their umbrellas (I guess we missed the memo), my mother hopped between tree coverings and I walked, palms up, sometimes face up, into the rain, fully embracing the shower that Paris so desperately needed. We found the metro station but the maps and signage was nowhere to be found. I did not even know which side of the train went which way, and by the time we made enough turns down in the station, I did not even know which was was which when the train finally went it. We asked directions from a metro employee we found after 15 minutes of searching the station, but he only thought he could speak English and only gave us vague directions, pronouncing the French names the way the French pronounce them, as opposed to the way they are spelled.
We got on the wrong train. I figured it out immediately, when I found the map aboard the train and realized we were not traveling what appeared to be north on the map. We exited the next stop but the opposite side track was not immediately across from us as any ordinary stop would have it. We had to exit the train, cross the street (dealing with the worse possible people... French people. French business in a poor quality urban neighborhood) and find our way back to the opposite track. I eventually found our connection, which was an adventure in itself because the track we needed was well hidden beneath several other tracks and there were stairs next to stairs that all went to different places but all appeared they could only go one place. Then once we got to the track, there were three trains using the same track going to completely different parts of town.
It took me two days to figure out how to use the light up board telling us which train was arriving. I did finally figure out where the platform directions (northbound, southbound, etc.) were. They were, of course, in French, but I knew enough French from my one semester of French 101 to know how to read au nord et sud.
Our hotel was actually a small apartment rented by the night like a hotel. It was also prepaid and I did not need to give my credit card. I only had to pay a seven euro tax that Expedia had already warned me about. No big deal. Finding our room wasn't easy. It was a rather large complex, a mixture of apartments and hotel rooms. We found a Spanish speaking housekeeper and for once my mother's attempting to speak Spanish in lieu of French (as if Spanish was an acceptable substitute to the French people) actually worked out. We got into our room and it was only 3pm. I had absolutely no interest of leaving ever again and was pretty much done with France in it's entirety.
We spent the next day at Disneyland Paris (which is actually about a mile from the hotel). The employees there spoke every language ever and it was necessary as the customers came from seemingly everywhere. Like the entire theme park was the Small World ride. Stepping into Main Street through the front gates was like stepping into Bizarro world. Everything is laid out the same as California's Disneyland, and from a distance, everything looks the same. But as you get closer you realize that all of the little details are wrong. They are different colors or different styles. None of the stores are the same. They do not have a Jungle Cruise or Splash Mountain. They do not have traditional Mickey ears. They do not even have a Mad Hatter.
We rode Pirates of the Caribbean, in French. We had Mexican food, in French. We rode the Phantom Manor, their version of the Haunted Mansion, in French.
The differences were wondrous and new. I could not stop staring at everything. It was not a bad experience. I quite enjoyed it. I would not go running back though. It was not our Disneyland, it almost doesn't quite live up to that title.
It does have the largest supply of Lion King memorabilia I have ever seen. They even have a restaurant called Hakuna Matata. They serve... French food. Or perhaps they actually were grubs. We may never know. I read the menu and booked it as far away from there as I could.
They did not have a fireworks show and their parade was pathetic. We went over to the Walt Disney Studios (their version of California Adventures). We rode the studio tour tram thing, which was so beyond fake it was boring and not worth the wait in line. We stood around while their Alien ride failed to impress. My mom took a nap in some cafe chairs while I stood in line for and rode the Aerosmith themed roller coaster. It was the best ride in the park. Not saying much, I would equate it to California's Space Mountain, just bigger... and French.
We took some pictures and made our way out through the gift shop, like good little customers. We visited their version of Downtown Disney and sadly found an expensive but not that great restaurant to have dinner at. We passed by a restaurant on the way out that was a 50's America style diner and thought maybe we should have gone there. We went back the next night and it was, in fact, the place to be.
Back at the hotel I climbed into my bunk bed in my private room. I guess that was maybe the best part of staying in France, the apartment style hotel, for the price of a hotel, with my own room... away from the woman who wakes up every two hours and sighs audibly.
The next day we walked through the huge mall across the street and got on the Metro toward the city. Exiting the metro station was actually breathtaking, I will give them that. We left Serris, a relatively newly developed suburban mall town and were deposited right in the middle of a medley of architectural styles ranging from Roman to Medieval to Neoclassicism, and all playing nicely together like I only wish the French people could.
I had purchased tickets to L'Open Tour bus. It was the best decision I ever didn't realize I was making. For two days we sat on that bus and rode around Paris, listening to a recorded tour guide with a British accent explaining the sites and historical facts of all that surrounded us. We got on and off the bus as we felt necessary. I took so many pictures of things I'm sure thousands if not millions of people have already taken the same pictures of.
The last night we were there, we rode the tour bus until it ended at 6 pm. We had returned to the hotel before sunset each night before but I talked my mom into going to the Tour Maine-Montparnasse, the third tallest building in Paris. It also has as straight view of the Eiffel Tower. I had heard on the tour bus that they had an observation deck we could go up to. We paid the fee, rode the extremely fast elevator filled with old people and school children, and spent the next 3 hours awaiting sunset. The windows were tinted but I still managed to get some excellent pictures. At 10pm, just as the sun was starting to set (seriously, Europe!), the Eiffel Tower was lit up in bright, sparkling lights. It did the same at 11pm, when the sun was in it's final stages of setting and we were leaving.
Paris apparently wakes up at sundown. Even though it was a weekday, thousands of college aged kids had taken to the streets around Montparnasse. They were loud. Their music was loud. Loud French, club music. I have to have it. I mean, it was as obnoxious as they were, but still. We hurried across the street to the Metro station and found ourselves in a crowd of these obnoxious kids. We stood in a vacant spot near the edge of the platform waiting for our train. They huddled around us. As the train arrived, it was already packed. There were at least a hundred of these horrible 20-something people surrounding us, waiting to get on the train. The began to yell “POUSSEZ! POUSSEZ!” I recognized this straight away from the signs on the doors, the other side would say “tirez.”
It did not matter how fast I recognized the trouble, I was not fast enough to warn my mother who started to step on to the train when the doors opened and everyone behind us started pushing their way through like a stampede to to slaughter. She yelled at the crowd in protest. I pulled her back. I suggested we wait for the next train.
We made it back to the hotel around 3am, having to walk the long way around the mall, which had closed hours earlier. We needed to be up, packed and out of there by 6am to make our flight back home. The people at the desk of the hotel told us that if we wanted a cab to the airport, or even to the metro station, we would have to travel back in time and order one the day before. This was no help. We stole a shopping cart someone had left outside the hotel and pushed all of our luggage the mile around the still-closed mall and to the metro station. It was a long ride back to the train station in Paris, crammed in and transferring with all of our luggage that had steadily increased over the course of the trip. I packed just a backpack and a computer bag. I convinced my mother to do the same, and yet we each had an additional bag by the time we were done.
Getting on the flight back was not easy, the line was huge and the ticketing was a mess due to not being able to print the e-mailed boarding passes at the hotel. We finally boarded and flew, for about a half an hour, to Amsterdam. We deplaned in Amsterdam, bought cheese and clogs, smelled the wonderful smell of fresh cooked waffles and went through border check and customs, who interrogated us, asking who packed our bags and where we were going. Amsterdam stamped our passports. France did not care that we left, just as much as they did not care that we arrived.
By the time we left France even I had developed an illness. I'm convinced it was stemmed from the smell of France, mixed with my complete inability to find ANY water without sulfates added to it. I left France stinky, dehydrated, and sick. The flight home from Amsterdam was miserable. The further we got into the flight the worse my congestion, fever, and headache. I ran out of tissues not even half way through. My mom went to the bathroom and stole what was probably their entire box of tissues for me. They were scratchy but they worked. I watched movies and wished I could survive the trip.
The layover in Minneapolis was long, I bought the wrong tissue packs thinking I was getting soft Kleenex but instead buying a cheaper knock-off brand because the package was prettier. I bought Advil Cold and Sinus.
We had talked up the trivia game system to a bunch of the other passengers waiting to board. They were excited to play with us and we were going to start the largest tournament. But when we boarded, we had an older plane without personal screens at all. There was the loudest, most ill behaved child sitting a few rows back from us. She screamed the entire time, and yelled at her parents that no, she would not be quiet, and that it was THEIR FAULT. She was right, there, I'm sure. I'm not sure if they were worried about abuse charges for the idea of smacking their child, but I wish they had asked because I'm sure the entire back end of that plane would get in line to beat the loud right out of that child.
We got home and were greeted by our own personal Sky Harbor security escort (Gloria.) She took us to baggage claim, grabbed our luggage, and even coordinated our ride home for us. Daddy showed up, having talked to Gloria, in no time at all. He drove us directly to Manuel's for proper Mexican food and real iced tea. France does not have iced tea. They do not seem to understand the concept of ice in beverages. The word “glace” to them must be a winter term because it sure did not help me get ice in my drink that often.
I was glad to be home. I loved Europe. Well, I loved London and I loved the tour part of Paris. I loved the new-to-me aspect of Disneyland Paris. I will not miss those people at all. I did miss my cat. I missed my dogs. I missed my bird. Zoey (my cat's sister, my mother's cat) seems to have missed me the most, though, which is odd. She never used to like me and even now, since I returned from all of my summer travel, she spends quality time in my lap when I sit in my recliner in the living room.
I sat with Zoey for a while, recounting to her stories of France and how all of the homeless people there have pets. Homeless cats with homeless dogs, living on the streets in harmony alongside their homeless people. She seemed to enjoy my stories, I was exhausted and sick, but she demanded more. I may have fallen asleep in the middle of an anecdote about the French supermarket.
A week and a half later Shannon arrived. We celebrated the fourth of July with John and Jack at Grandma's house (it was their birthday as well.) We spent a week throwing and attending wedding related festivities: bridal shower, rehearsal dinner, bachelorette party, wedding, etc. And then, my sister was married. What. We tried to call her MR. for a while, but she protested. She even had her name legally changed to Maralynda Olson Remalia. So now we call her MOR. I offered MJOR, she could be Swedish! She objected. She objects MOR, as well, but what are we supposed to do??
Another week passed and it was time to leave for San Diego Comic Con. We celebrated Shannon's birthday and then said our goodbyes to her and Evie, who were leaving the next day. Annie, Curtis and I traveled in my truck and we formed a caravan with Gloria, Falyne and Ethan in Gloria's car. I made a custom, comic con themed music playlist to accompany the ride there. We stayed at a Best Western spitting distance (professional spitters only) from the Mexico border. We could see Mexico from our balcony.
It was a nice hotel, though, it had everything we needed... beds, microwave, fridge, free internet. That was the most important, the free internet. It was about a mile away from the trolley station. We walked the first day and discovered upon getting there that we could have parked in a lot on the other side of the tracks. Oops. We drove the next four days.
We spent most of the time at the convention in the exhibition hall. We separated for a lot of things, it is far easier to break up the group and meet up again for things intermittently. We met up for frozen yogurt once, at Pinkberry, possibly the best frozen yogurt I've ever had. I had watermelon flavor with watermelon chunks for topping. It was excellent. The Pinkberry itself was small and crowded so we ventured out and sat on the sidewalk against a building across the street. There was plenty of stuff to see, people watching seemed the most popular, but there were also street performers and vendors and people giving away free stuff. We sat there for maybe an hour and had people walking by giving us free stuff. We got several bags of PopChips, water bottles and coupons from SyFy, Falyne managed to trade some of the PopChips for a free rose some dude made out of palm leaves. We even had a strolling troubadour come by and play us some Greenday.
The kids were adorable at SDCC. Ethan wore his pirate costume, Falyne gained super popularity with her Empty Child costume (from Doctor Who). Gloria, the kids, and I spent Saturday getting sunburned at Seaworld. It was still fun. We all wrapped up the trip with a Sunday evening trip to the beach.
I got two weeks home before school started and have been busy ever since. I am taking socio-linguistics, which is going better than expected. The linguistics class I took last semester and didn't do so well in is actually helping, surprisingly. I'm taking a online Shakespeare class which is more fun than it should be. My experience at the Globe surely helped win over that teacher. Those are the two classes I have with Annie.
My other classes, which I thought would be the easier classes, are actually less fun. I have Art & Television with Delores Umbridge (ready Harry Potter, you'll understand, not sure you want to) and 3D Tools, a computer based 3D design class. I am awaiting a Rock Since the 1970s online class that starts in October. I'm hoping that one will be fun. I have yet to buy the book and CD set for that. It was prohibitively expensive and I found it on Amazon for cheaper but wanted to make sure it was an acceptable version before I buy it.
This weekend is scheduled to be a busy one. Can't Stop the Serenity is Sunday but Saturday is my aunt Barbie's birthday. Becky (her daughter) is throwing her a pool party at their house (they have a brand new pool and are super excited about it.) I've also volunteered to help my friends Katie and David, move. A last minute necessity that happened to fall just a week after the birth of their adorable daughter Autumn.
Speaking of which, Mo and I were talking earlier about how strange and surreal it is that all of our friends have babies. It didn't seem so strange when Gloria had Falyne. She just fit right away. Evie came around and nothing was out of place that I could think of. I hardly even remember when Ethan got here. But now that Katie has Autumn it makes me think back to all of those times a teacher had us write out where we thought we'd be in ten years.
I'll have to look up one of those things. I wonder if I kept any of them. I'm pretty sure it did not say anything about becoming a photographer, my sister being married, or any of my friends raising children. I'm pretty sure it said something about vet school and awaiting moving into a custom farm house with Gloria, also a vet, and starting our own animal shelter.
It's so strange. Nothing appeared to change in the 18 years leading up to 2002. Then suddenly, ten years time and everything, though not drastically as far as my living arrangements and habits, has changed in some little way or another.
I was talking to Katie, pointing out my various knowledge of what's normal for babies, and then realizing I was turning into “that person” who always talks about their children, imposing a “when MINE was that age...” anytime a new mother tries to brag about their baby, when it suddenly hit me how very very odd that is. I never expected it. I don't even HAVE children. Not really. Well, I have Falyne and Ethan but they are not even mine. Who are these people and where did they come from?
See? So much change that hit us out of nowhere. Never expected. Just, happened. These people up and got married, had kids, got jobs, got divorced, graduated from college, not all in that order. I changed my entire life's plan to accommodate a hobby I've had for a lifetime. I've moved in a completely different direction. I went from not knowing a lick about babies or children to that being all I ever talk about anymore.
Ten years ago I was in high school. I was a veterinary major with an interest in equine studies. I spent my afternoons riding horses and my weekends rescuing animals, setting up foster homes, arranging for transport of neglected pets from an animal hoarder's home to another rescue out of town. I was a pet detective. I legitimately searched for other peoples pets, for free or for donation to our cause. I cleaned some woman's rabbit cage and kitty litter box for $5 a week. Why did I do that? WHO DOES THAT?
Ten years ago I would be sitting here blogging briefly... on Diaryland maybe, conflicted beyond reason on whether or not to move it over to LiveJournal or just wait it out hoping for people to give up on that new found service... about how bored I was and why was there never anything to do. Why was I so whiny?
But now. I'm so busy I actually had to put off a shit ton of homework to write this 14 page, 10,000 word essay on what I did this summer. To make up for tweets I missed by being enough of a nerd to save up to align it with my dieversary. “What are tweets?” Self of the past would say. Yeah, that.
.
gloomy
anxious
accomplished