In Transit/ion

Anakashiko

2006-08-07T12:02:00.000-04:00

Since my last post I've gotten my husband back for a brief interlude before he headed off to Japan to do dissertation research for three months - he's now blogging at Anakashiko.

Oh, and I'm 16 weeks pregnant! A few developments, I guess...

Tree live!

2006-03-22T11:18:00.000-05:00

Got a call from Miss A yesterday, asking if I wanted to go with her to see a friend of hers sing at a Chinese Jewish place on Fairfax called Genghis Cohen. Her friend's name is Tree and she fronts a band of two - one guy on guitar and bass and the other quite literally "on" drum - he sits on a wooden cube, tapping it between his legs like a bongo, and it is somehow amplified. I tried googling "electric percussion box" but got nothing useful. Wonder what that thing's called?

Anyway, Tree was great. She sang about six songs, all her own except a cover of A-ha's "Take On Me" which was great fun. My favorite was "Minefield": "I'm a minefield, you have to tiptoe around me because you never know when I'll explode." It sounded like Fiona Apple as sung by Lucinda Williams.

Afterwards Miss A came to my place and we had a piece of the green tea and black sesame cheesecake I had left over from having photo_re and phdave over for dinner Sunday. They brought me a sweet little hyacinth bulb which is now blooming. I had quite a weekend, in fact - out drinking at the Cozy Friday with Miss A and Bree. Bree had a dinner party Saturday - check out the pictures at her blog, Foodville! Then, a simple dinner at my place with the Two Fish crew Sunday night. I made (vegetarian) harissa, a Moroccan soup with chickpeas and thin noodles. The cheesecake was what I was really excited about, and had to buy a springform pan for. I was almost done making it Sunday afternoon when I noticed the last step: allow to set overnight in the refrigerator! I was like to die, as they say in the south. But it ended up having about four hours in the fridge and didn't slump when I cut it, so it was all right. We had it while we watched the Sopranos.

Of cars, committees, and connubiality

2006-01-27T20:30:00.000-05:00

Whoops, fell off the wagon again. Here's an update on the major events in my life:

I've been involved in a search committee to add a member to our monographic cataloging section. I'm too wise to say anything about it here, even under my thin cloak of anonymity. Let's just say that it's a fascinating process - you'll learn a lot about the process, your institution, and your co-workers. I would heartily recommend that any new librarian jump at the chance. Plus you may get some great free meals.

Z is back in NC teaching, and it's going very well. We take advantage of our Verizon "in" plan for an hour or so each night. He's going to visit frequently during the spring semester class, though he won't be able to come back during the five-week summer course he'll be teaching in May and June. Then he'll be back, but... his dissertation committee insists that he spend at least three months researching in Japan. For various reasons, we settled on a three-month span falling August through November. Sigh...

Finally, we had a fender bender Saturday while Jeff was visiting. Got hit from behind while waiting at a light on Overland Avenue. Luckily no one was hurt and the other driver is fully insured. I'm driving a rented Nissan Murano while the Camry is in the shop. I feel like ducking when I park it in our building's parking area under the first floor.

Back in LA

2006-01-03T16:49:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to get back in the swing of things at work, where we are infested by ants. We flew back from Texas last night (Monday), deciding not to volunteer to get bumped because there would be no guaranteed seats until Thursday. This Saturday Z flies to North Carolina to teach for six months. Loneliness looms, and we have much to do.

Good news from photo_re at Two Fish - a job with our crosstown rival!

Boxing Day

2005-12-26T10:58:00.000-05:00

we had a nice Christmas Eve, with the Houston Texans-Jacksonville Jaguars game for the menfolk and some game women, and shopping for me and Peggy. We did a yankee swap at Aunt S's, and if I do say so myself, our gifts were a hit. The 20 11/12 male cousin was very excited about the book "Cooking with Beer," and his dad would have happily kept the two DVDs of westerns if Z hadn't gone and stolen them back when his turn came!
Christmas was not the morning affair it is for my family. Everyone slept late (I slept until 11!) and eventually we ate breakfast, looked at our stockings, and we "kids" (ages 28-31) got out Santa gifts under the tree. The wrapped gifts got piled into the car, an dwe went to grandma's house to open them there. Both nights involved rousing games of Catchphrase - the best game ever!

We headed out late and saw Syriana. It was good, though hard to keep track of all the characters. I enjoyed hearing the deliberate movie Arabic (George Clooney's was an incoherent mumble, though).

We're off for Dallas this morning to visit a great aunt, and eventually to hill country and San Antonio.

Dateline: Missouri City

2005-12-23T13:44:00.000-05:00

We landed in Bush International in Houston late last night, met up with Hank and Peggy, and drove out to Zawji's aunt and uncle's place in adjacent Missouri City, Texas. They have a Texas-themed home, as most of his relatives here do. Stars on the light fixtures, Texas-shaped this and that, Texas flag bedspreads. Someone once told me that Virginians were second only to Texans in state pride, but it's a distant second, I tell you what. There may be a single Virginia-themed tchotchke in an old Virginny-an's home, but nothing like this! it's all in good fun, though. Z's aunt was quite impressed when I told her that Sam Houston was from my hometown in Virginia, last time we were here.

Peggy and I are making plans for last-minute shopping, etc. There are various family events going on over the next few days, with different members hosting parties and different presents to be given to different groups. Tomorrow night is a Yankee swap/White elephant party. We were talking about it, me and Hank and Peggy and Aunt J, when I realized something and said "Oh, I forgot Z and I aren't one person. We have to get another gift!" Because each participant in the swap needs a present to swap. They were tickled. We are really a unit!

Google calendar

2005-12-20T15:00:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago my boss was extolling the virtues of using an online calendar. She said that when you go through peer review (the promotion/"tenure" process for librarians) it's great to be able to go back and see every meeting, project, activity, and conference you took part in. I wasn't too excited but thought that if Google had an online calendar I'd give it a whirl. So naturally I googled "google calendar." It turns out that the Google-watchers of the world were at that moment on pins and needles about a possible announcement of a Google calendar - there had been a calendaring conference (!!) only two days before at which the announcement was expected, but it hadn't happened. All the bloggers and columnists had vague forecasts of an announcement any day now, but it hadn't happened yet.

Round about the same time, I found about the Google notifications service. You can list keywords that you're interested in, and you'll get an email with links to where they are used in Google discussion boards. I added Google calendar - nothing relevant yet. I also just received Google's first newsletter for librarians. It includes an explanation of the ranking system for results, in obviously not-too-specific terms.

LIbraryThing

2005-12-17T02:02:00.000-05:00

LibraryThing is great. We sucked it up and got a lifetime membership.

Movies

2005-12-13T20:05:00.000-05:00

After a long dry spell when no moment could be spared for the frivolity of watching a movie, Zawji and I jumped right back in as soon as he got back from taking his exams. We made plans to see The Adventures of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with our friend Sunday afternoon, then found we had enough time to rush to a showing of Marebito, a Japanese horror film, right before.

Marebito was made by the director of Ju-on and his own American remake, The Grudge. Sadly, it turned out to be a self-indulgent snuff film. It's about a cameraman who witnesses a suicide, goes in search of terror, and abducts a sort of vampiress from the underworld. And somehow he managed to make it incredibly boring. The filmmaker fell into the trap of thinking that showing the view through a viewfinder (the cameraman films everything, including murders he commits) imparts significance to the image. It doesn't. It just makes it look like crappy DV. Boo to that!

The Narnia film had me in near-tears throughout most of the movie, but not because of the beauty of the scenery, the plight of various hurt creatures, and certainly not because of the awkward Christian allegory. No, it was just because the actress who played little Lucy looked exactly like my own little sister at age five or six. Every time she looked upset, from the moment her mother gets ready to put her on a train and send her out of wartime London, my heart ached with the thought my little sis in any sort of pain! The movie itself was probably as good an adaptation as it could be. No complaints, though I can't say it will stick in my mind long...

Finally, last night we really treated ourselves and finally got around to seeing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - on Imax! It was definitely worth spending a few extra dollars. The scene near the beginning at the Quidditch World Cup really felt like being in a huge, vertical-sided stadium, and you could see so much more of the details throughout the movie - people moving around in the pictures, details on the dragon, etc. Now, if only we can see King Kong this way!

With honors!

2005-12-09T16:51:00.000-05:00

Zawji passed his Ph.D. exams today! With honors! And only the fourth in his department ever to get honors, I might add. That means as soon as his dissertation proposal is approved (maybe this month) he'll be ABD (All But Dissertation). I'm so proud.

I was woken up by wind and rain at 6 this morning, and it was overcast when I got up. For the first time in L.A., I gave thought to wearing an actual coat. Good thing I didn't things cleared up and it's now 73 degrees.

Word of the Day

2005-12-08T12:43:00.000-05:00

Discovered while checking definition of "tutelaire" in a crappy old paperback French-English/English-French dictionary:

unijambiste adj one-legged || mf one-legged person

Why does this sound so much more diginified than "one-legged"? I feel like I could toss off "Je suis un unijambiste" as insouciantly as "I'm a tobogganer" or some other sport or enthusiasm. Either one would be a lie, though.

Corduroy Dept.

2005-12-06T18:57:00.000-05:00

I was catching up on the New Yorker, and in the Nov. 28 issue, one of those little ads in the back caught my eye. It read: "Finally, horizontal corduroy pants ... cordarounds.com."

Finally? Who ever would have thought of such a thing, much less wait impatiently for it?

I persevered with the New Yorker rather than pursue the pants. Last night I moved on the the December 5 issue and found, to my surprise, that a whole Talk of the Town piece was devoted to corduroy. Specifically, to a fellow who founded the Corduroy Appreciation Club ("All Wales Welcome"). At an inaugural meeting on 11/11 ("the date that most resembles corduroy") the keynote speaker was the creator of Cordarounds, who brought along samples of his new invention, "'waffle cords,' which look as though they are covered with Braille."

Wow. So then I had to look.

Apparently horizontal corduroy is a more effective windcheat than vertical, as wind does tend to blow horizontally. Also, the site points out, "Don't you hate it when vertical cord friction heats your crotch to uncomfortable, even dangerous levels? Problem solved. Lindland's Cordarounds mesh evenly, lowering the crotch heat index by up to 22%!"

It's a very funny site with dry humor. On the page called "For now: pants" the rotating images go from happy people and piles of pants to tanks, oil rigs, and other products of the "evil multinational corporation" they aspire to be.

I just had to wear cords today.

Back at last

2005-12-04T21:52:00.000-05:00

I'll just pretend that five months haven't passed - surely nothing significant has happened! Forgive me, all who care.

I feel much more accomplished in my work than I did when I began in July, although when one is basically being trained to be an expert, one goes through the levels slowly. I've just begun doing NACOs (name authority records) in European languages, and I'm chomping at the bit to do them in Arabic, since that's the majority of the books I catalog and the area most in need of authority work. Besides original cataloging of all books in Arabic and those in western European languages on Middle Eastern topics, I'm also responsible for books in Turkish (which I've never studied, though I always say "That's my next language") and sometimes other languages - on Friday, I cataloged "Little Red Riding Hood" in Kurdish!

LA, baby

2005-07-04T13:25:00.000-04:00

We are in L.A., and we have the essentials, mostly. We arrived Thursday and I bought a car (white Toyota Camry, 2000 but only 26,000 miles) Friday night from Carmax. We've been getting other stuff together and learning our way around over the weekend. We were supposed to get our stuff delivered today, Monday, but when the driver got here he said that our street was too small, it's illegal to park the 18 wheeler there. So instead they have to park the truck somewhere, load our stuff into a smaller truck, and unload it from the smaller truck into the apartment. They kindly took out our bed, microwave, and a few tables while they were here. I don't even care about getting the stuff right away, the problem is that they are calling my employer for authorization for increasing the price - moving everything from one truck to another means more time, labor, and money. Ugh. I hate how much this is costing them anyway.

We're getting a fridge delivered today. Finally, cold food at our fingertips!

I start work tomorrow. Thank heavens things will be quiet - lots of people still on vacation, etc.

The weather here continues to amaze. It was overcast when we arrived June 30, the famous June gloom of LA. However, the next day it started to burn off, and by Saturday there were gorgeous blue skies every day. It cools off drastically in the evening, though. I'll need more light jackets.

We went to the West LA Buddhist Temple yesterday for their Sunday service. It's a Jodo Shinshu temple about a mile from our apartment. It was a small gathering, as it was a non-festival day on a national holiday weekend, but usually there are more people. It will be fun being involved with a group like that again.

Sukhothai to Bangkok

2005-06-10T11:07:00.000-04:00

More pictures uploading as I type! My domain + /trip2/index.html. If nothing else watch the short video at the end, involving Thai animal noises - we compared English and Thai with our guide in Chiang Mai. Great moments in cultural exchange, as Zawji put it.

Would have had something up last night, but got to a very slow internet cafe, was almost done, and there was a neighborhood-wide blackout. Z and I grabbed a tuk-tuk (http://www.into-asia.com/bangkok/tuk-tuk/) back to the hotel because it was so dark everywhere, even though se were just a few blocks away. Sukhothai tuk-tuks are backwards - the seating area is in front of the modified motorcycle the driver is driving, as if you were sitting in an enormous bike basket. We were zooming around and the little old man driving the thing was having a fit of merriment, whether because of us silly farang or the blackout, I don't know.

Sukhothai was a little like Angkor and some of the architecture was Khmer-influenced, but they had structured beautiful green parks around the ruins and they were almost totally deserted, although we were told that during the peak season, November-January they have more visitors and even elaborate son et lumiere shows. We were, after a lot of luck with clear skies even in the incipient rainy season, finally getting overcast days, which meant we sweated and just stayed wet.

Wish I could keep up with a running list of everything we did, for heavens sake. Instead I'll list the amusing personal tics I've noticed among our traveling party:

When passing nice houses, Hank always asks our guides how much they would cost, converts Thai Baht to US dollars out loud, and then says, "That's really cheap!" He also changed his shirt in the middle of the checkin area at the tiny Sukhothai airport today, much to the amused shock of the staff.

Peggy goes on about how people use plastic chairs everywhere in southeast Asia.

When a guide is telling us about Buddhist stories or terminology, Zawji rushes to spit out the terms before the guide can say them, to show that he knows them.

I point out exactly how each thing reminds me of or is dissimilar to something in Syria, or occasionally other ME countries.

Luckily, no one seems to be annoying each other too much.

We're off to an island, Samui, tomorrow with our Bangkok hosts Ted and Alice, although Ted has to come later from a sudden business trip to Vietnam. Back Monday night, one more day in Bangkok, and then off to Tokyo! We will snorkel and sea kayak (yikes!) on Sunday in Samui.

Chiang Mai, Thailand

2005-06-09T01:20:00.000-04:00

We've been so relentlessly scheduled that I haven't been able to get to an internet cafe - I go by them, longingly, in vans. Those who know my other domain can find my first batch of pictures at /trip1/index.html. I may be able to put more up tomorrow night in Bangkok.

We spent last weekend in Bangkok in a palatial apartment belonging to Ted and Alice, Hank and Peggy's friends. They - especially she - are living the good expat life. Peggy asked Alice if she had nail polish remover, and Alice looked blank for a moment, until Ted piped up, "Yeah, she lives on Soi [Street] 44!" "Oh, I'm so spoiled now, all these little luxuries," said Alice, snapping back into consciousness. "Manicures, pedicures. I don't even know how to wash my own hair anymore."

Bangkok was just startling in the beauty of its temples and palaces. Everything literally glitters: gold leaf, mirrored tiles, even actual glitter seems to be everywhere. Thailand is 95% Buddhist, but there is an occasional mosque and fantastically multicolored Hindu temple in addition to the beautiful wats. We saw the world's largest gold Buddha (lots of superlatives on this trip), not that big in terms of Buddha figures we've been seeing, but it's 12 feet high and solid gold. It had been covered with concrete for a few years to protect it from being stolen by an invading army - there are lots of stories like that, like the Iraq museum treasures that were hidden before the war.

On Monday we flew Bangkok air to Chiang Mai, the largest city in the north, and went directly to a mountaintop wat. I'll have to write more about this later, as we have to go catch a plane to Sukkhothai, the original thai capital.

Siem Reap, Cambodia (Angkor)

2005-06-03T02:35:00.000-04:00

Ah - after hectic Hong Kong, which feels as if Chinatown ate New York City, Cambodia is refreshingly rural (I am biased towards less developed destinations, I suppose). We have a guide, So Tay, who is younger than Zawji and me and has the long pinky nails that are a sign of male vanity in much of the world - I remember them from Syria. My father-in-law asked him last night :Are you married, So Tay?: :No,no,: he demurred. :Do you have a girlfriend?: :I have...some,: he smiled.

We visited several temples - Angkor Wat is just one, largest and most impressive on the face of it - in the humid heat. The rainy season is incipient, but we've been blessed with clear skies when we've been out. Yesterday it rained just while we took a midday siesta and cleared up in time for our afternoon outing. We saw the temple with huge spong trees growing from it, with snakelike roots invading the stones, the visual impression I'd had of Angkor. We only saw one group of monkeys, though, on the side of a road. Water buffalo graze roadside as well.

Saffron-robed monks walk along the streets, ride on the ubiquitous motorbikes, and wander the temples. I saw one holding a yellow umbrella, gazing at bikinied girls on a beer ad.

This morning we visited a floating village on the country's huge central lake. Chickens and pigs were kept on the boats, and fenced in fish farms with catfish and crocodile pens. Instead of dashing around on bicycles, children paddled between boats in tiny washtubs, waving to us.

Tonight we fly back to Bangkok - we were in the airport there just long enough to leave bags - and go to the home of former colleagues of my father-in-law, now working there with ING.

Bint al-Gharb fi al-sharq al-aqsa (Daughter of the West in the far east)

2005-05-30T20:25:00.000-04:00

I'm writing this from Hong Kong, where we've finally found an internet cafe across from our hotel. We arrived Sunday afternoon after a 15-hour flight from Chicago, checked in, and had dinner at a restaurant recommended by a Hong Kong native who sat next to my in-laws, our traveling companions, on the plane. It was a seafood restaurant and poor Zawji, a vegetarian for nearly ten years, could barely withstand all the heads and legs on the table. I ate a few tiny crispy dried eels, being brave. We went to bed early and got up to take a full-day tour yesterday. In the morning was a boat tour sailing around Hong Kong Island, Kowloon (the peninsula on which we are staying) and other islands. The geography of this place is amazing - greenery-coated volcanic peaks jutting up behind hugely developed waterfronts - highrises everywhere. After a dim sum lunch we moved on to the bus tour and went up on Victoria Peak, the highest mountain in Hong Kong, which of course afforded spectacular views.

Hong Kong was, of course, run by the British until 1997, when the lease, as it were, was up and it was returned to China. The place still has a dual nature, though - signs are in English and Chinese, and many streets are called "Salisbury Road" or the like. Convenience stores have Chinese muscat gummies as well as Ribena and English chocolate.

Today we're going on an excursion to a temple complex about an hour or so away from the center. Then early in the morning we fly to Bangkok and catch a conecting flight to Siem Reap in Cambodia, to see Angkor Wat for a few days! Sorry I can't put pictues up yet - I'm working on a little iMac with no visible inlets other than a CD drive.

One foot out the door

2005-05-25T13:12:00.000-04:00

This has to be the quickest of updates. We found a cool apartment (balcony! more than one room! gas fireplace!) and fell in love with LA, much to our surprise. I came back a day earlier than Zawji so I could go off and be at the beach for the rest of the week with my buds - as one of them would say, Outstanding! Then reality struck - prepare almost everything for the move as well as pack for a month-long trip, in two days. We have the UHaul almost all packed, and now we just have to finish the trip packing, hoping not to forget important electronic implements (underwear? no big deal. Photo adapter for iPod? crucial). In a panic we went and bought convertible pants last night - both exactly the same size, which will make you laugh if you know us, as we are different shapes. We will drive some stuff up to New England today and tomorrow, and get on the plane Saturday am.

Appointments: 2. Viewings: 0.

2005-05-16T22:27:00.000-04:00

So, the fam came in on Saturday and Sunday I graduated - I was really rather excited. I seemed to have the biggest entourage, at twelve. Wore a school-themed skirt that went over big with the faculty as I shook hands across the stage.

My mom's side of the family stayed later on Sunday than my dad's, and suddenly it was 10 pm and we were frantically trying to clean the house, which may be shown while we are gone.

Here's an unbelievable story: My sister's flight was an hour after ours so she had to get up early and come with us. For some reason as we got on the shuttle from the parking lot we talked about remembering which lot it was in and Zawji said, "Why do you need to remember? I'm coming back separately and taking the car. Just in case I die?" "Yup, just in case," I said. Creek asked, "So which section is the car in - do you remember? I don't." "Sure," I said, and explained to her which stop in the lot it was near, again despite the fact that she would not be coming back to the car.

So, an hour later we've boarded and, just before I turned off my cell phone, it rang. It was Creek. "Thank God you don't lock your car!" she said. "Right after you got off the bus I realized that my cell phone and wallet weren't in my pocket - they'd fallen out on the way here!" Unable to contact us or to check in for her flight, she'd gone back to the parking lot (the name and section of which she, from out of town, never would have remembered were it not for our silly conversation about it) and found the car unlocked. Of course Zawji had in fact attempted to lock the car, but it's so old and wonky that sometimes the driver's door doesn't lock when you "lock all." That was close.

So anyway, we'd gotten about 3 hours sleep and got here 12:20 Pacific time. Zawji's aunt took us around to see exteriors, at least, of some of the apartments on our list. We went to one place we were supposed to see and the manager wasn't there. Then we canceled the evening appointment because it was too far away and not in a great neighborhood. We saw some really pretty neighborhoods, though, and a canyon, and the beach.

Okay, we're exhausted. I need to try to make some more appointments for tomorrow!

Oy, my head

2005-05-13T23:32:00.000-04:00

Wow. Had a blowout night for the final Happy Hour (pictures soon!) , and lemme tellya. I feel like crap today. Messed around on the web all morning until Zawji commanded me to set up some appointments to see apartments in LA because we're going, you know, Monday. Just because he has to write an encyclopedia entry over the next few days while everyone I'm related to is in my house, he acts like he's busy. Humph.

On the bright side, after I being diligent about it this evening, I've set up five appointments, and the buildings look like this:

Um, ok, so the little "Upload image/file" link does not appear to be working. Insert audio file of crickets here. Suffice to say, it was a pretty building. I'm coming around to the idea of trying to get a place really close to campus so I can walk to work or maybe even work some sort of public transportation option (everyone in LA is laughing at me now). Life's too short already to go and get shot on the freeway.

It's funny, even though I lived in NYC for three years and really got used to (though sick of) life in the big city, I've sunk back into my southern small-town girl ways. I think I look younger than I did when I moved here four years ago - it's all about your expression, actually. You have to have a "city face," sort of a mean don't mess with me face so you don't look like a target for robbery, assault, or worst of all, being treated like a naive country mouse. Now when talking to landlords and whoever in LA they are slightly amused that I'm coming from North Carolina. One guy said, "So you're moving to LA?" Yup. "You sure you want to do that?" I've got to say, though, telling them that I'm a librarian is probably going to help us in getting an apartment. If you were renting out a place, wouldn't you want a librarian to live there? (If you didn't know what crazies we all are.) Zawji reminded me to add that he's a religious studies scholar. Oh yes, we are getting a place to live.

Shopping

2005-05-12T00:04:00.000-04:00

Went shopping with Wonder Woman tonight on the very important mission of finding a suitcase for her and spending my gift certificate at an, ahem, adult shop. First however we went to a newly opened rival adult shop. The best thing one can say about that one is that it is near Lowe's. It looked like a head shop when we first went in and was staffed by a stoned-looking guy playing rock music that would stop abruptly between songs, leaving utter silence while we, the only customers, were giggling over something. Of course my mother called my cell while we were there.
After other returns and shopping, we made it to the other shop five minutes before closing, where there was a much nicer vibe - people running around buying battery-powered things and big grinning women behind the counter who test each product you get before it goes in the bag - put in a battery, turn it on, and hold it out to you to feel. Much like sniffing the cork at a fine restaurant.
Want to know what we got? DubDub got a very nice suitcase.

The two-month plan

2005-05-09T21:03:00.000-04:00

Thought I'd detail my weird schedule for the next two months:

Tu-Fr May 10-13: Packing and other moving preparation, hopefully some drinking too.
Sat-Su May 14-15: Tons of family in town. Graduate.
Mon-Wed May16-18: In LA finding an apartment, driving the cheapest rental car I ever heard of. ($50 for 3 days! Maybe we'll just rent a car instead of buying!)
Th-Su May 19-22: Carolina Beach!
Mon-Tu May 23-24: Pack for trip (holy crap!)
Wed-Th May 18-19: Get U-Haul truck, pack it with stuff to store or give to the in-laws, drive to Connecticut.
Fr May 20: Last-minute trip prep.
Sat May 21-Fri June 24: Hong Kong, Angkor Wat (Cambodia), Thailand, Japan.
Sat June 25: Fly back to CH. Sleep.
?Tue or Wed June 28 or 29?: Movers come.
?Wed or Thu June 29 or 30?: Fly to LA.
Fr June 1-10+ days: Sleep in an empty apartment.
Tu June 5: Start work at UCLA!

The last full week in CH

2005-05-09T08:35:00.000-04:00

Had a nightmare last night - not a terrifying one, more of a dammit dammit DAMMIT one in which I was running all around campus the day of graduation trying to beg, borrow, or steal a robe and regalia which my entire extended family was patiently waiting to see me graduate in. The place where graduation was being held looked exactly like Wall St., that is, the street itself - narrow and walled with tall buildings like a ravine. I was glad to get up and realize I had a week to go yet.

In an effort to empty our freezer, I am eating edamame for breakfast. I wish it were the kind in the shells, they seem tastier.

I have to say, the Bint is sad. I've made a lot of big moves in my adult life, and I've never been sorrier to leave a place than I am now to leave CH. But I suppose this is the first time that I've moved solely for the opportunities in the place I'm going to, and in no way because I had wanted to leave here. In all other cases, I think, I was ready to get out of Dodge - bored of college, homesick living in the ME, worn down to a nub by NYC. And never before have I had such a comfortable group of friends all in one place. It's not the same as making work friends who, though you adore them, you wouldn't want to spend the weekend with as well. And even in college I seemed to spend most of my time with one or two people, and my different friends didn't know each other.
Zawji and I certainly intend to join a UU Church and a Jodo Shinshu church when we get to LA, and I know we'll meet some fine people, but that's not really the way to go for drinking buddies.

I have so much to get done this week - almost all preparations for the move, in fact, plus 10 hours of work at the library, and I really need to finish my book repairs for the ABSC in NY and mail them back before we leave. But I really have to start being good about this darn blog, which will be my link home while we're in Asia, and my link to CH when I'm in LA. I'm so pleased - my dear parents are getting me a digital camera and iPod photo to use as a photo vault, so I'll be a fully functional photo machine on the trip, and hopefully I can post pictures here whenever I can get to a computer!

Wrecked

2005-03-19T23:41:00.000-05:00

There's a white light...

I have about 39 pages...

I've been typing out verb charts...

Thank heavens for the break last night, got to watch La Dolce Vita with our dear friends!

Whoops

2005-03-16T01:14:00.000-05:00

Oh dear. It's been ages since I posted. I have lots of excuses - houseguests, schoolwork, etc. My brother-in-law is leaving us tomorrow (later today, really) after a week of house repairs, getting the house in shape to be sold this summer, when we move to California. It's our spring break this week, and this is my chance to get the Masters Paper written. It's coming along - 20 pages including everything (abstract, t.p., references). I think tomorrow I'll really add a lot.

Wish me luck!

Routine

2005-02-28T23:39:00.000-05:00

Zawji and I went to Virginia to spend the weekend with my dad and stepmom, and my sister who was in from Chicago. I got not a bit of schoolwork done and basically sat around, ate stuff I shouldn't have been eating, and played games.

This morning I woke up discombobulated. I left the house later than usual and just missed the bus to campus, so I decided to go to the grocery store then rather than in the afternoon, since I had time before my 12:30 class. When I got home and unloaded the groceries, I realized I didn't have my wallet, which I'd carried in my hand to the store rather than dragging my backpack inside. Back to the store...and there was my wallet still in the top of the cart, outside in the corral in the rain. I never did look inside, as I hadn't had any cash in it to begin with and I assumed that no one had found it in the rainy deserted lot. Let's see...yep, small change, credit cards, and Hell membership card still inside. Despite yet more missed buses and wasted time, that's something to be thankful for. And tomorrow I'll try to return to my routine and avoid the otherworldly smackdown that results when I deviate.

Orhan Veli Kanik

2005-02-22T23:23:00.000-05:00

In 1998 I went to a book signing in New York for a new translation of Turkish poetry by Orhan Veli Kanik. I can't imagine why I went, other than getting out of the apartment for a few hours, because I'd never heard of him and I've never been a big poetry fan.

(Heresy, I know! And I was an English major!)

Nevertheless, I adored what I heard. Kanik wrote primarily in the 1940s and was one of the "Garip" poets. Garip means strange, or awkward, and Kanik, especially, overthrew the longstanding traditions of classical Turkish poetry for colloquial free verse, more akin to William Carlos Williams (thanks, Chad!) or even haiku. Lines from his poems became household phrases, even if some critics accused him of dragging Turkish culture through the mud. Here are a pair I heard at that reading by the translator in 1998, and just found again in I Am Listening to Istanbul (translated by Talat Sait Halman).

Poem With a Tail

We're not compatible: you're a different breed;
You're the butcher's pet, I'm an alley cat,
You eat out of a polished tin can,
I eat out of the lion's mouth;
You dream of love, I dream of meat.

But your life's not easy either,
Tough job, brother,
To have to wag your tail day in day out.

Reply

from the butcher's pet
to the alley cat

You're talking of hunger,
So you're a communist.
So you burned down all the buildings,
Those in Istanbul
And in Ankara...
You, filthy swine, you!

Movement on all fronts

2005-02-21T23:09:00.000-05:00

Yay, I wrote two more pages of my Masters Paper yesterday! It's hard, though, to explain how to use the Hans Wehr Arabic to English dictionary for people who don't know Arabic. It's not organized alphabetically by the spelling of the word, it's by the three letter root, so you have to figure out what that is. It's enough trouble when you have a clue!

While working on this, I realized I couldn't go through this whole process adding each Arabic letter to the Word document using "insert symbol." So I finally found instructions on how to easily type in Arabic - not just in Word, but in Arabic search engines, maybe even on this blog - hmmm...

الحمدلله فعلته

Not sure if punctuation is a possibility, though. I'll have to work on that. And a simple left Alt shift changes me back and forth! Here are directions that can be adapted for other languages as well:
http://web.syr.edu/~diekemar/How_to_type_Arabic_characters.pdf

Had wanted to enthuse about Orhan Veli tonight, I'll have to get into that later.

The Tyranny of Books

2005-02-19T17:55:00.000-05:00

Because my husband (I'll call him Zawji) and I will be moving across the country in a few months, we've been weeding our book collections. This is no easy task. Zawji is a PhD student and former fiction writer, and as a budding librarian I spent this summer making an EndNote catalog of his books and even printed call number labels for each one - about 1500 items. I don't have as many - having discarded a lot of the free stuff I got as an editor in my former life - but there are still a few hundred. I didn't catalog mine because I don't see them as reference material, like he does. They're primarily fiction or travel literature, the kind of stuff I don't necessarily need to keep after reading, especially the cheap paperbacks. And yet I'm most enamored of those shelves of books that I haven't quite gotten to, even through a few moves, but have the potential of being the best thing I've ever read. Sometimes it's most enjoyable just to read the spines and dream of the day when I'll have all that time again. Ha!
So anyway, we've been making the tough choices and that most painful of admissions: "I'm not really ever going to read this book." Zawji's books, of course, have to be taken back out of the catalog. I've been forcing books on friends who I think might have the vaguest interest (not to mention stray kitchen appliances, and all that tuna I bought before I heard about the mercury content) and, of course we've been hitting the used bookstores.
The problem with that is that it seems much more reasonable to take credit for your books than the smaller amount of cash they offer. And you manage to spend it right away, as we did today. So, two steps forward and one step back. I just added 17 new books to the catalog.

Our late lunch at a Middle Eastern cafe on Ninth Street was so nice, though. It was the best hummus I'd had in a long time. Add tea infused with sage and tinny Arabic music, and I had a flashback to Syria.

An end and a beginning

2005-02-18T19:24:00.000-05:00

I started a blog over a year ago but only posted twice, because I didn't have a real "theme," any real reason I needed to regularly explore my thoughts in public. Nowadays, however, I think I'd like to make notes for myself and anyone else who cares to read my meandering thoughts, because I'm returning to the familiar theme of my life, transitioning. It's my last semester in a graduate program and my husband and I are off for the next adventure of our lives, because I've gotten a job in Los Angeles for after I graduate. I'd like to make this move, this change, less severe than past moves, after which I've lost touch with a lot of people. Maybe this will help keep me in touch.