ask the internets

Internets,

I need to pay for one night in any place with private rooms (hotel, b&b, whatever) in Amsterdam in early November. Naturally, I’d like to pay as little as possible while still having a door to close and no cigarette smell in the bed. Any suggestions?

(LJ feed readers: I won’t see replies left directly on LJ. You know what to do.)

long days of summer

At the moment of the summer solstice – at least, it was solstice as far as the internet was concerned – I was washing dishes in a quieted house, after an exquisitely summery grilled meal. A year ago I was in a very different place. The last year has brought with it changes I’d never imagined, not then, not in the near future. I went to the darkest place I’d ever been, and have come back out into the light.

Life is softly humming along. I’ve been getting re-acquainted with how it feels to rely almost exclusively on public transport and my feet for getting from point N to point ΔN. It feels long-ago-homey – more like Kishinev than even my recent experiences in New York and Boston. Maybe it also feels a little like London, where I also took both subway trains and buses regularly. It’s an entirely different pace of life, and (aside from the fact that some things are just not possible without a car) I think I like it better. But I need more audio books.

There are still many, many days left in the season before I begin feeling like they’re getting short again. The sun tends to lighten people, and I’ve been feeling my friends’ burdens fade into the background even as they don’t fall away. My own, too.

Been daydreaming about the Burning Man road trip. Right now I’m thinking something like this on the way out, and maybe a southerly route on the way back. It’s a lot of driving – the way out west as I’ve mapped it out is 11 driving hours more than the shortest route, and the way back – 13, which amounts to two extra days of driving. I don’t know how I’ll afford it, but this is the year of a cathartic road trip, so hopefully I’ll find a way to make this happen. Or, you know, shorten the route. The shortening will likely be on the southerly side, though, because the northern plains and the Bad Lands (thanks for the link, Rosa) are calling me.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some mushroom caps to stuff. Happy solar holiday, all.

jump start

Been a while since I’ve blogged publicly, hasn’t it? Hello, again.

I go to write this post, and notice a new comment from Regina, an old friend from Moldova who now lives in Israel, with whom I’d fallen out of touch a while ago. Holy cats. Hello, again. It’s lovely to hear from you.

(The timing of the comment and of my being compelled to write here again are a coincidence.)

Yeah, there’s been a lot of sadness that I’m not quite ready to write down. Luckily, the last month or so has also been filled with joy and light and smart people and work (hooray, work!), so it’s not like there’s nothing to tell.

My job at Boston University, the title of which has now settled at Digital Collections and Computing Support Librarian [in the School of Theology], rocks my socks so far. It’s not that I’ve done a whole lot, yet; it’s only been a month, and the end of the academic year at that, and my boss the head librarian has been out on vacation for the past two weeks, so things are relatively slow. On the other hand, there’s plenty to do in the computing-support half of the job. I’ve been learning [more] about how BU’s network is set up, which is nifty. We’re purchasing a big pile of equipment to replace old stuff – both servers and personal workstations for faculty and staff – which, you know, from the support standpoint is great. Soon there’ll be no more @$#%! five-year-old Dells to support, and many of the four-year-old machines are going away too. People are open to the idea of Macs, which is huge in such a behemoth mostly-Windows org. (BU is an immense bureaucratic machine, and I say that with all the affection that one would expect a girl to have for her alma mater.)

Best of all, people want to learn. I’ve been getting to know the faculty and staff. Some of them are already doing digital humanities projects (like the History of Missiology site). Others have cool ideas (hello, Admissions Director using Facebook in all kinds of cool community-building ways). And still others want to figure out how computing can make their research and teaching (and administration, and the school as a community) more awesome.

This is what they hired me to work on. I’m unspeakably excited. Yeah, so far it’s been all support and no digilib, but I expect that to change. There’s a lot of hardware overhauling to do, and some basics to catch up on. That will take some months. But there’s already so much concrete investment of time, thought and resources in digital library stuff at STH that I have no doubt it’s going to go somewhere interesting.

Then there’s life outside of work. That’s been filled with friends, children, loved ones, cats, cooking, Burning Man planning, hand drumming, sci-fi reading, Battlestar Galactica, water and fire and earth, casual photography, breathing deeply. And the weather’s been nice.

Yesterday I flew to DC. Today I participated in a day-long grant proposal review panel for which I read a total of thirty proposals, which took an unreal amount of time and was fascinating and instructive, and I’m not being sarcastic about any of that. The panel itself was great too; in the past month or so I’ve learned a ton about the grant review and award process, and I fully intend to use this knowledge for good. I have generalized thoughts on the whole thing, but have to formulate them separately – must wrap my brain around the whole thing first, and also make sure not to cross any confidentiality boundaries. The whole thing made me feel awfully important, and going away for just over 24 hours meant I could travel with just my work bag, light and easy.

Coming back tonight, at the Reagan Airport, I texted a friend something to the effect of, I like traveling – the interstitial part, the going – even more than being places. She laughed and declared me liminal girl. Certainly that holds true for my life in a larger sense.

There’s more, always – the children I get to hang out with, the surprisingly strong presence of love in my days, feeling so strong from weightlifting with one of my dearest, the USB turntable I bought with which I’m digitizing records from the old country – but it’s 1:45am, and tomorrow’s a workday. Er, today. Whatever.

bang on de drum

Friday afternoon I left town just a bit too late, too close to Friday traffic going out of the city along the Pike. That and the slush coming down from the sky made the trip to Inspirit Common in Hadley a two-and-a-half-hour one; good thing that just before leaving I had downloaded some talks by Ajahn Brahm (thanks for the suggestion, Rob, what I’ve heard so far is good).

Together with Emily and Bucky (the friends who own and run the above-linked mind-body-spirit center) and their six-month-old son Kadin, I went to a drum-and-dance event. And for the first time ever I played a djembe in a drum circle, for half an hour or so. It’s a rush! I came in with this tightness in the middle of my chest, which almost worked itself out in the course of trancy dancing to the drums, but it was still there afterwards. Sat down to make rhythms, next thing I know there’s a lightness where the bad used to be. Later on in the evening Bucky said, “It opens up the heart, doesn’t it?” That’s exactly what drumming did for me. I will buy a djembe before I buy an iPhone, and that’s saying a lot.

Driving home late at night, I took the long way along Route 9. On and on and on through endless trees and industrial towns and mist. The road looked like it belonged in Neil Gaiman’s stories.

tease, and other travel

Subject line of a spam email: “saskatoon typography festival”. My first reaction: Damn, I want to go!

But, speaking of travel: I’ll be in Chicago 12/27-30 for a conference. I have a hotel room for the nights of the 27th and 28th; does anyone reading this have, or know of, a place I could crash on the eve of the 29th? My plane leaves O’Hare at 9am on the 30th, which means I’ll want to be there by 7:15-7:30ish; so proximity to public transport would be lovely. Bribes of chocolate, genuine Boston saltwater taffy, a drink and/or dinner available.

too much jetsetting

I’m so tired of travel.

On Friday I came back from the latest – to Maryland on Tuesday, to give a talk at MITH; and then DC for the Reinvention Center conference. This was my fourth trip in just under two months: the other three were to Nebraska (digital humanities workshop), Fredericton (text-analysis conference) and Chester, Vermont (Readex Digital Institute, which got extensively blogged here). On Tuesday I leave for Chester again, to return on Wednesday after a meeting. This is the blessed last trip for the foreseeable future.

Don’t get me wrong: all the events I went to have been fabulous (see below), and I’m looking forward to going back to Readex. But – and I’ve known this from the start – this is too much travel right now.

The talk at MITH went well. I guess the crowd was a bit diminished compared to their usual; it was election day, and there was a Human-Computer Interaction event precisely coinciding with my talk. Nevertheless, it was a good group, and boy, they really mean it when they call these things “Digital Dialogues.” They jumped right in about five minutes into my talk, and the lively conversation didn’t stop for the next hour and a half or so. I showed the Virtual Humanities Lab and we talked about collaboration, its logistical issues and benefits-vs-drawbacks and ways in which VHL can be made a more friendly collaboration environment. It was great to receive feedback from people not only interested, but way more knowledgeable about the state of the field. It felt easy to be there; they’ve created a great atmosphere both for conversation and for work.

Wednesday I took advantage of MITH’s generous offer to use their “coffeehouse” space for work. That evening I found myself at the downtown Washington hotel where the Reinvention Center conference was to take place in the next two days.

I’ve a ton of notes from that conference. I only got to go because my dissertation director was leading one of the sessions, and asked me to be his session recorder; this way the Center gives a few grad students the opportunity to see what’s going on in research universities around the country, while at the same time getting young’uns to more or less write the proceedings. A more than fair price, I must say.

So I’d been reasonably interested in the conference, but had no idea how useful it would be and how much new information I would get that will be applicable in my near-future work. For one thing, I saw the largest concentration of high-level university administrators that I’ve ever seen before. Not sure what the ratio of administrators (and staff, like librarians) to faculty was, but it felt something like 2:1 or maybe even 3:1, and perhaps 300 people in attendance. (I may be wildly off here. It’s just an estimate.) I’ll have to go over my notes later and perhaps write it up here, if I get to it.

If I get to it. Friday I came back; and yesterday my adored husband took me out for a romantic evening out that stretched well into this morning. I had no idea what we were doing; turned out, we were going to an Ani DiFranco concert. Well, holy shit: I hadn’t been to a concert in a long, long time, and had only seen Ani in concert once. It was a treat. Not only does she rock the the house, but she is touring while quite pregnant, and her happiness with where she is and what she’s doing could be felt all the way at the back bar where we were standing. She had with her a stand-up-bassist and a percussionist with a xylophone and a steel drum and a bunch of other unusual rhythm instruments. Beautiful sound, mostly good crowd, amazing energy.

Then we reconnected over dinner and conversation and general dalliance. This past summer, going into early fall, was difficult for both of us. We both had to reduce and eventually stop taking anti-depressants: welcome to U.S. health care, which left us scrambling for two months (three in Ethan’s case). In the fall we both dove into new work, and have been trying to catch up with each other ever since. Last evening (orchestrated in part by a kind friend – many thanks!) was a badly needed one.

And now… now there’s more work. The final VHL report to the NEH is due at the end of the month. My write-up of our session at the Reinvention Center conference is due at the same time. I’ve got a job app to send out tomorrow, blessedly almost done but still on the to-do list. Tuesday-Wednesday there’s the trip, and my next task for the dissertation is the transcription and encoding of around 600 lines of poetry. Then there’s another fellowship app to get together.

And then there’s the social life, without which Vika gets to be a dull and sad girl. Tonight we were treated by our fabulous housemate to Marie Antoinette the movie, which had an unexpected soundtrack (Aphex Twin!) and was generally not half bad. Monday (tomorrow!) we have a friend visiting. Haven’t seen her in a long long time, so I’m really looking forward to it, and to the inevitable good food associated with the visit.

So what do I do? Instead of getting some sleep I write a long blog entry. Ah well, at least now I have a de facto to do list. There’s more to write about – details of the movie, Sean McMullen’s The Miocene Arrow which I’m enjoying these days, my relationship with the uncertainties of life after May, various anxieties about whether I’ll finish the dissertation in time. But all these can wait. Good night now.

Leave it to yet another public gathering…

…to get me blogging again. I hope.

Much has happened on the personal front. For one, I’m back to the PhD gig, writing my dissertation this year. Been kinda re-evaluating this whole blogging thing, but for now I’ll just try to blog the 2006 Readex Digital Institute in scenic (whooboy, is it scenic! seriously) Chester, Vermont.

NYC - small gather?

Next Wednesday the 17th I’ll be in New York, to attend the presentation of the Richard Lyman Award to one of my favorite people and an honored mentor, Willard McCarty. If you are interested in humanities computing, work in it, and/or know Willard, come show your support and appreciation, not to mention meet interesting people:

• 3-5pm Lyman Award recipients lead a discussion of the American Council of Learned Societies’ Report on Cyberinfrastructure in the Humanities and Social Sciences
• 5-6pm Presentation of the Award to Willard McCarty, Reader in Humanities Computing, Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London
• 6-7pm Reception in the Library’s Margaret Liebman Berger Forum

If you’d like to attend, please call Martha at 919.549.0661 ext. 156 to get put on the guest list. (It’s free to attend, but they’d like to know how many people are coming, and if you tell them you’re working on something related, they might be able to introduce you to like-minded souls.)

I’m planning to get there… well, early-ish, not too early. Lunch, anyone?.. 1:30ish, maybe 1ish? Anywhere in the city that (a) has good food and (b) is cheap. After the event I’ll probably be tied up.

Summit, evening the first.

I’m in Charlottesville, Virginia at the summit on digital tools for the humanities. It’s almost 10:30pm, I’ve got to catch a 7:30am bus to campus for breakfast and a day of intense work, and I’m jazzed to the point of spinning in the elevator.

The flights were fun, and even flying out of Providence at the ungodly hour of 6am was rewarded by one of those perfectly cloudless full-rainbow-spectrum sunrises. I read and read materials for the summit, and am happy to report that I completed the reading before getting to the hotel. The hotel gave me a warm chocolate-chip cookie upon check-in.

Today was a reception and dinner, followed by the usual greetings and a keynote by Brian Cantwell Smith, a computer scientist from U of Toronto. The man knows how to talk. He gesticlated wildly, looking at times as if he was about to leap towards us from behind the podium. He talked quickly and intensely, and yet managed to keep most of the audience.

Here are some points he brought up, rephrased by me; any brilliance is his, flat language would be mine. I haven’t entirely digested all of this, so present it mostly without commentary. Your thoughts, though, would be much appreciated.

Digital is a trendy word, he said, second only to like on college campuses.

Descartes was a smart guy. He separated the work, or process, of understanding the world from the world thereby understood.

Controversial revelation of this talk: computers don’t actually exist. There do exist many devices, but what are they?

Around the turn of the 20th century, we discovered that we could fuse meaning and mechanism. An example of this would be us. This idea eventually gave birth to computers.

Computers aren’t anything special, and computer scientists aren’t studying anything special. Or maybe anything in particular. This is liberating: instead of a restricted domain, they have a sort of monopoly on the universe.

We (computing humanists) shouldn’t be party to propagating the dualism between the ostensible “abstract” and the concrete. A server going down loses not the representation of mail, but actual mail.

Descartes said that we should have clear and distinct ideas. But this isn’t the way the world actually works.

Maybe the tools we build are digital at the level of the bits, but what matters about them is humanistic.

Computers are a historical moment (a long one, which started in the mid-1800s and is still going) in which we are getting past Descartes.

Matter is both a noun and a verb. Material comes from matter.

Computing is allowing us to get past the temporary, 300-year divorse between matter-noun and matter-verb.

Our commitment to what it means to be human shouldn’t be ideological (”if it’s human, it’s good”).

People can be special as in worthy of study and careful consideration, not special as in this is where inquiry stops because there’s nothing more to say.

…

That’s it for now. If you’re interested in one or more elements of this, comment and we’ll talk (in comments). I’m too tired to attempt an actual argument. Tomorrow is another day, with more photography and some serious hyperte… I mean, blogging.

reflections on nature

Victoria, BC, 5pm on Wednesday June 15th
(that’s yesterday)

I am jet lagged all to hell. First we went two (one?) hours back, from Denmark to Iceland. Then we (I) realized that it just wasn’t going to get dark in Reykjavik at all; it’s close to summer solstice, and we were after all in the land of the midnight sun.

Then we flew from Iceland back five hours to Boston, from whence to Providence by bus in the evening. One full day and two nights at home, and off to Seattle – another three hours back.

So, all in all, nine time zones broken up over several days. My body has stopped trying to figure out what time it is and sort of floats through time and space, alternating between running on fumes, perking right up at random intervals, and threatening to shut down completely with distressing frequency.

In the course of all these travels, nature has been gloriously varied.

Denmark is lush and green, punctuated by vast fields of blinding yellow rape plants, purple and pink and white flowers by random bodies of water, and sky-high sky. Sometimes it’s grey, other times pale blue and whispy white, but it’s always high up above you. Denmark has space and rolling shallow hills and wide wide bike lanes, as wide as for cars! It rained more than I would’ve liked, but such is spring in that part of the world.

Iceland is… like nothing I’ve ever seen. Its volcanic soil clumps up softly. Get out of Reykjavik, and all you see is this clumpy fuzzy rug and a few long narrow highways. Misty geyser steam in the distance, and mountains, volcanoes. SUVs everywhere, but they’re actually useful there, necessary even. Reykjavik is a mish-mash of funky architectural styles, some older, some with a decidedly modern aesthetic, none of them simple copies of mainland-European styles. Public art in the form of swoopy steel statues, as well as courageous men (on horseback or not), proudly green with bronze oxidation.

Boston, oof. Coming back to Boston was like getting into a steam bath against your will and clothed, and not being allowed to come back out. Muggy, oppressive. We spent half an hour or so waiting for the bus underneath a raised road, concrete all around us, beyond it grey pillows of sky so close you almost think you can touch them. Thank the technology gods for air conditioning at home and at work!

Seattle greeted us with mild-mannered evening sun, and for the rest of the evening proceeded to live up to its perpetual “60s, partly cloudy, chance of rain” weather forcast. This morning the sun didn’t wake and show his face until I was on the ferry to

Victoria, which is surprisingly like Denmark in its lush greenness. But it’s also sunny and mild, gorgeous in its pacific-northwest way. The bay where our ferry arrived turned out to be located near beautiful museum buildings and downtown. Lovely walk into town, a bit of shopping, some free wireless net time at the coffee shop where I had lunch but not coffee (see jet lag above), uneventful bus ride to the UVic campus, which is hyoooge and has many,

many

bunnies. ALL OVER. *dies of cute*

(The morning session is about to start. Hooray! I always get so… giddy at ACH/ALLC conferences. Skipped almost all the way to the room.)

Honeymoon photos, take one.

They’re up, and I am in big trouble. It’s way, way past bedtime.

Best. honeymoon. evar.

It’s 2am in Bergen, Norway. It didn’t really get all the way dark until about midnight.

I meant to blog more extensively while visiting Jill and her mum, since net access from your own laptop is a beautiful thing. But somehow I got sucked into catching up on all my net-reading instead, and… there’s just so much.

Norway has great seafood. Bergen is mountainous and half-hidden in rolling fog, it’s as though they’re living in a cloud. I’ve never been so bruised in my life (biking + sleeping on hard ground afterwards, for days on end), and am loving it. Having a bed to sleep in for the past two nights has been an insane luxury. Jill’s daughter Aurora is the sweetest kid since my nephew. Denmark seems Very Hilly when you’re lugging a heavy trailer behind your bicycle, but is actually Rather Flat. Fjords are gorgeous and unexpectedly (for us and for the locals) windy just when you dedicate an entire day to biking around one. The Danish campsite network is impressive and convenient, but morning pastries overshadow all of that by a mile. Camp stove was superfluous, since most campsites have kitchens. We’ve only actually cooked once, but ate out (including Copenhagen) for about five meals out of more than a week, covering the rest with energy bars and remarkably satisfying supermarket food. Snails and slugs abound and are cute; spiders are not cute but luckily don’t abound either. Cows prance and frolic, I kid you not. The last campsite we stayed at had goats that talked to you, and not one but three of those huge inflatable bouncy trampoline-like pillows that you can flop and bounce on (and we did). Ferries rock, and – Molly and David, I feel like a traitor – Clif Shot energy packets are much tastier than Gu. Or perhaps it’s the texture.

I can feel myself getting stronger. Some biking-relevant muscle groups have gained a surprising amount of definition already.

It’s like a dream. Still a bit surreal, although we’ve been traveling for ten days now. To have and to hold such a brilliant mind and generous, patient, kind heart is a privilege, and isn’t lost on me. We’ve spent more time than I’d expected in companionable silence. At first this felt odd, since usually we can’t stop conversing, but it feels good, so to hell with the usual.

Tomorrow, ferry back to Denmark and ten more days of traveling. Net access from the campsites is spotty, and when it is available, it’s on the camp’s computer, not a wireless connection. (But it blows my mind that it exists in such boonies at all!) I’m internalizing much more than I’m able… well, willing to write. It’s too much effort to write. I’m retreating into my own head again, thoughts of family and humanity and my place in the world whirling like tiny mosquitoes all around me. How do you write about all of this when increasingly your MO is to live fully, day by day?

You don’t, is how. Especially not at 2:30am. Definitely time for sleep. I’ll leave you with a post I wrote on the plane over, many days ago.

–

Wed 18 May 11:01 Copenhagen time

I haven’t blogged much about personal life in a while, mostly due to time constraints. So much to do before honeymoon! I’m happy to say that, for the most part, the sudden rush of work in the last few weeks resulted in some happy developments. Now I just have to remember to pitch VHL’s new toys to some lists, and hopefully gather some interest.

Today is my mom’s 65^th birthday. For her, it’s still yesterday: she’s in Hawaii with a friend. Happy birthday, mom! We’re thinking of you.

I’m writing this on a plane from Reykjavik to Copenhagen. We left home at 4:30pm yesterday, and at 4 I was still doing the dishes. A bit of a rushed feeling persisted, but I noticed an undercurrent of that state whee you just can’t be bothered to do things any quicker, you know? It all worked out, in any case. Taxi to Kennedy Plaza in downtown Providence, on to a bus to Boston’s Logan airport, timed so that we would arrive three hours before our flight left. We figured, we had two heavy and very carefully packed suitcases with bicycles in them. If TSA wanted to check that stuff by hand, there might’ve been trouble: they’re notorious for, well, repacking things in such a way that they get damaged. In an attempt to avoid this, we even taped love letters to TSA agents to the inside of the bike cases, explaining that if they break, our honeymoon will be VERY VERY SAD.

I don’t think they checked us, unless it was behind the scenes. The entire check-in process for Icelandair took about 10 minutes, including standing in line (of which there was none). Perhaps there’s more havoc when it comes closer to a flight, but it was just… so… pleasant. I don’t think there’s an elevated terrorist alert in the northern countries.

And so we left! Zooommm, off on a 9:40pm airplane. Dinner was bad food, but I didn’t care, as I spent most of that flight asleep. Now, post-nap and Reykjavik airport Earl Grey tea ($4.50 a cup) and airline coffee (surprisingly full-bodied and tasty!), I’m wide awake and bouncy. In a couple of hours we’ll be in Copenhagen.

What we saw of Iceland on the descent, and then on take-off, was pretty amazing. Pretty snow-covered mountains, steaming geysers, water so blue. We’ll be there for about a day and a half on the way back, staying in an actual hotel – the only hotel reservation we’ve made the entire trip.

That’s right, no hotel reservations at all in Denmark. We have all the camping gear we need, including over a dozen different spices for cooking: is anyone really surprised? Didn’t think so). The the suitcases in which our bikes are packed turn into trailers (have I mentioned how much Bike Friday rocks? Because they do), and Denmark is flat. It also boasts fifteen or so national bike routes, and a large number of regional ones. Some farmers will let you stay on their land for stupidly low prices. Plus, there are reasonably-equipped camping sites all over. From what we saw, most come with things like showers and electricity, I’m happy to pay a bit more to recharge the laptop. Reportedly, some sites even have wireless access: a geek’s wet dream vacation.

We have… what is it, 24? 28? rechargeable batteries. And the charger, and a laptop, and a digital camera, and Very Bright LED lights for our bikes, and an iPod and an iTrip, and two sets of cheapo radio headphones so that we can listen to the iPod broadcast. [Note at time of posting: this failed to work. Ah well.] And probably other stuff I’m forgetting. (There’ll be photos on flickr, that’s for sure. Watch that space.)

Yeah. Low-tech this trip ain’t. And while we’re on the subject of tech: about a week ago I bought a new battery for my PowerBook, as the old one was dying slowly but surely. Power saving technology sure has come a long way: on the dimmest monitor setting (before it goes totally blank), with the battery settings optimized, we should get something like 5 hours of text editing. Probably less for movie watching and photo handling, but damn. Hoo-ray.

Tomorrow I go to visit Espen Aarseth and his department. Should be fun! [It was! We nattered about the state of humanities computing, games research in Denmark, working and living in Europe, and weather. Which was beautiful.] At the end of the month we’ll take a ferry from Hanstholm, in the northwest of Denmark, to Bergen, Norway and visit with Jill for a while. That, I know, will be awesome. Other than that, we have no set plans, except for a vague itinerary that hits most of the places we would theoretically like to see. But first we have to get used to biking with trailers and panniers full of Stuff. It’s a good thing Denmark is flat.

I’m glad to be out of USA&tm; for a while. There has been a subtle but insidious change in the air over the past several years; the political strife both national and international is taking its toll on the daily lives of everyone around us. Perhaps this has always been the case, and I’m just more sensitive to it now because I’m deeply distressed about the direction the U.S. has taken under Bush Junior. Right now, though, it feels as though with every passing minute I’m shedding another layer of weight I didn’t quite know I was carrying. And it’s not just the feeling you get when you go on vacation after a busy time at work. My soul is more at peace; I feel as though we’re flying toward sanity.

–

Life will take over in quite a hectic and unceremonious manner pretty much the minute we get back. And yet, I feel like this intense traveling experience is about all I can take right now, so I watch the storm of activity rage all around me but keep it at arm’s length, the eye of the storm suspended somewhere in the middle of my ribcage.

Question for Seattleites.

I’m going to this conference in June. Thanks to the grant, travel is reimbursable, but only to a point; and it seems much less expensive to fly into Seattle and take the clipper ferry than to fly all the way to Victoria. However, the scheduling exigencies of flying to Seattle mean that I’d probably have to stay there overnight on 6/14 (Tuesday, and I’d be taking the 7:30am ferry on Wednesday) and 6/18 (a Saturday). At this point I don’t know how late things will run on Saturday the 18th, as the full program hasn’t been posted yet; I may have to stay in Victoria and go straight home on 6/19.

So, hypothetically: if I do this, would any of y’all reading this and residing in the Seattle area have crash space? Reward possibilities for hosting me include chocolate, a homecooked meal (you’d have to allow me the run of your kitchen for that), a low-maintenance guest of sunny disposition, my undying gratitude, and/or negotiable.

It’s the new year already! (NYC)

Hello, world.

Thanks to the generosity of our Brooklyn-residing friends who just happened to need catsitting, Mindlace and I went to New York [Fuckin’] City for a week.

(As an aside: there’s something incredibly cool about referring to Ethan by his middle name in writing. When speaking, however, I never do it.)

I’ve been procrastinating on writing about it, because there’s just so much; so it’s unlikely that I’ll write more than one post about it. Most of it is food porn, so I’ll summarize the rest quickly.

Twenty-fifth was spent with friend Sean here in Providence in the morning and then driving in the afternoon. By the time we got to New York we were fairly tired, and lo, found that Stacy and David had left us a bottle of wine at their place. They surely knew our hearts; we drank the gorgeous red and watched movies.

Twenty-sixth we spent largely at the new and improved MoMA. My, but the building is gorgeous. Tall ceilings and entire walls of glass looking out onto the sculpture yard and over the city. One of the glass walls was frosted with very narrow translucent lines, sailor-suit-on-acid-style; so that when you walked up the stairs several feet away from it, it looked like it was snowing outside. For part of the day, it was lightly snowing, which made the sport of guessing the weather even more fun. In the evening, we met up with GHW at Strand bookstore, browsed around, bought a book on East European cooking…

…remind me to tell you about tonight’s soup. omigod. …

…and went for coffee, subsequently relocating to a beer pub. A fun time was had!, and also we spoiled ourselves by buying PixelBlocks. Hey, you’re only in New York once. Toys are paramount. That, and knife sharpeners.

This isn’t going to be a quick summary, is it?

Twenty-seventh we went to Fleur de Sel for lunch. About the best midday meal I’ve ever had, about which later. Continuing in the vein of vaguely traditional New York vacation, in the evening we saw a performance by the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre. I highly, highly recommend this activity for young and old alike. These people leapt soundlessly across the stage; I had to strain to hear them move, and we were sitting four rows away from the stage. Beautiful performers and soul-baring choreography; no photograph does justice to the live performance. As a bonus, they inspired me to take up yoga again. Soon, strength training too. Holy god.

After the show we met up with Lune, walked through Times Square (it was great seeing Ethan experience Times Sq at night for the first time!) and dropped into a crazy tourist bar named Mars 2112. Cheese factor extra-high, but they make one tasty cosmopolitan. Okay, two. Following that was the Library bar somewhere on the lower East side, a seedy and most fun establishment with skulls on the wall, death metal roaring from the jukebox and a Godzilla movie projected onto the back wall. A perfect way to end the ev… greet the morning.

We paid for this on the twenty-eighth. Met my brother and family for lunch at 2nd Avenue Deli. We had to wait a little, and they fed all the waiting folk little chopped-liver-pate sandwiches. Although they were cute and very tasty sandwiches, and my lunch was also superlative (but only for nostalgia’s sake: this sort of food would be too heavy to eat more than once or twice a year), the noise and general mayhem of the place didn’t impress me. We came out with our ears buzzing; no doubt the five hours of sleep didn’t help, so we begged off for a nap. In the evening, dinner and merriment was had at Z & Jo’s Dobbs Ferry apartment, where we ate very tasty bean soup and – halleluia! – a simple, fresh salad. Ethan sparred with four-and-a-half-year-old Tesher, and then we crashed back in Park Slope.

Thirtieth: met Jo and Tesher (Zhenya was working) at the Museum of Natural History. Saw a butterflies exhibit and another one of frogs. Frogs bear a special mention: well-presented, loads of information, fun! Beautiful frogs, and the second case you saw as you walked in had poisonous frogs inside, with clouds of billowing steam all around them. Spectacular! The rest of the museum was great too, and I also highly recommend going to that place with a wide-eyed kid with impressive stamina for someone so young. The museum excursion ended with a planetarium show, and we proceeded back to Park Slope to meet friends for sushi at Geido. Mmm, fresh tasty fish and catching up with people, one of whom I hadn’t seen for something like seven or eight years. We hadn’t been that closely acquainted in the first place, Dr. Memory and I, and it was fun to talk to him more. His ways around language and irrepressible grin are great fun. After dinner, I sent Ethan off to play some more and headed to another Brooklyn residence to visit Lindy the attention-starved cuddle-puddle kitty on crack. We bonded; it must’ve helped that I smelled like his ex-roommate River. When I returned back to Park Slope, River the Cat Who Hides And Then Yowls For Unfathomable Favors definitely noticed that I now smelled of Lindy, and proceeded to allow me to pet her for longer than usual. I, for my part, proceeded to sneeze a lot. Someday modern medicine will get rid of allergies; until then, give me that Claritin, because I’m certainly having trouble staying away from aminals.

Thirty-first! Friday! We took it easy that day, went to Beacon’s Closet for thrift-store shopping fun. I got a bright brownish-orange very warm knit dress with a very poofy fake-fur collar and sleeve cuffs. Very unlike the rest of my wardrobe, but comfy! Haven’t worn it yet, but will post a photo when I do, just for fun. Also, got slinky black dress with – wait for it – black fringe and rhinestones going diagonally down from hip to the opposite knee. Oh yes. It was beautiful, and I had occasion to wear it that evening, as we went to a speakeasy-themed New Year’s Eve party at a bar in Williamsburg. The band was amazing (holy god, that violinist rocked! I mean, jazzed! who were these people?), the friends and conversation were all great, and we stayed until sufficiently late to be Very Tired but not late enough to stay up all night.

January the First, two thousand and Five, we took Liberties With cApiTal leTTers… just kidding. We slept in a little, got up to meet other friends at Russ & Daughters, but failed to meet with them due to excessive partying the night before. Ah well; it was New Year’s. This didn’t stop us from going to the famed deli, where we purchased ohmygawd-amazing smoked fish, chocolates and dried fruit. Oh, and salty-liquorice fish candy, the real kind, which was tasty.

This fun was followed by more fun, as we strolled on over to M. and K.’s place. I’d only met M. virtually, through blogging, but she’s an amazing mind and delightful spirit. Plus, not knowing me from Eve, she returned my email requesting restaurant recommendations with a detailed, multi-paragraph treasure trove of reviews. My kind of person, I figured; so we went over for hors d’oeuvres and movies. Both were exquisite, from fried goat-cheese balls and runny cheese to the original Stepford Wives and the Mexican wonder that is Aventurera. Successive Bollywood musical and accompanying commentary were priceless.

From there, we went to Applewood for dinner. I… don’t know what to say. I’ll say it in another post. Really.

January Two we drove back to Providence, stopping by Ess-A-Bagel on the way for a dozen bialys and another of hot bagels. I haven’t had bagels this good in a long, long time; and Ethan finally understood the transcendent experience that is the New York bagel. With bagels and salty fish in hand, not to mention pickled cucumbers and tomatoes, we stopped by Z & Jo’s again for brunch, a fun, family-oriented affair.

We came home and more or less crashed, but not before catching up on the internet (geeeks) and unpacking. I got a bit subdued. It was the fourth anniversary of my father’s death.

Okay, so this didn’t turn out short at all. But here it is, New York, sans food pr0n reviews. Those are a whole ‘nother post.

upon finally cleaning off a tarp.

My bathtub is covered in a thin layer of playa dust.

happy!

Trippin’

Ah, Denver. I am sitting in a funky coffee shop with ‘net access. I’ve decided not to kill myself driving, so will attempt to cover less ground today and tomorrow, and sleep in real beds.

Want to call me on the road? Reception has been spotty, but then, I was in the mountains. It should be more reliable now — and in any case, if you call and leave a message, I’ll be glad to call you back. The number is eight-eighteen, nine-fifteen, V-I-K-A. Yes, I am a dork. What?! They did ask me if I wanted anything specific for the last four numbers!

radio silence.

Off to Burning Man in 8 hours. Before then, shower and sleep. See y’all in a couple of weeks, when I regain access.

All packed up and nowhere to go.

Untrue, of course. In 28 hours, I’m driving out from Los Angeles toward Reno. There I pick up friends and, after a shopping stop, we drive on until Burning Man.

To say I’m excited doesn’t begin to cover it. This is my first, and likely only, time there. I’ve been told to plan nothing, so I’ve planned nothing — except for making an extended trip to a copy shop, and packing survival gear. I’ll be there with friends who matter.

I am oddly more sad about leaving here than I ever thought I would be. Mom and I will miss each other; overall we had many more good days than bad.

I’ll miss granny, too, and am sad to think that she may not recognize me when I see her again in a few months. Memories will keep me company, though, the most recent among them from yesterday. Driving over to the doctor’s for what turned out to be a four-and-a-half-hour visit, I was flipping through radio stations and eventually settled on one playing classic rock. Grandma was indifferent to the music… until I noticed her tapping her fingers along to Sunshine of Your Love.

Photo memory

All the cool kids are doing it, especially of late. Looking at others’ photos, I realized that the 381 diigtal pictures taken by myself and Talan on this summer’s Providence –> Los Angeles road trip are still sitting around mostly unsorted. That’s just the digital, too: haven’t developed the Real Film yet, so no count on that.

Here’s one, anyway. I was playing with the macro feature on Talan’s camera, and got into photographing flowers. The light specks in the center of this one are… well, I’ve my own theory as to what they are; but wild speculation is encouraged. Click on the image to get a larger version.

Mostly a trip report.

Hello, technology! After years of stereotypically resisting, I finally got hello-technology: a mobile phone. I’ve claimed lack of need for ages; but the need has become very real, what with driving across the country alone in September, so what the hell. Family plans are a sound financial investment, and peace of mind (not to mention convenience, and the fact that I might just turn off telephone service in my home later on) is worth the cost. Plus I get to play with cool beepy talking machines. After a few days of testing out the equipment and service, we’ll be sure whether we’re keeping this set-up; then I’ll publicize the number to those who are likely to want it.

But this isn’t even what I’m writing about. Today, a certain scholar-at-large left a comment on one of my previous posts gently prodding me to write up a trip report on ACH/ALLC 2003. That François Lachance is reading my Web log at all is flattering and unexpected, so now I am giddy and finally eager to summarize this year’s experience. For the record, I’ve been meaning to do this every year, if not in blog then over on Humanist. But I’ve always found it difficult to write a coherent account of everything important – there’s so much. This below, then, is an entirely personal perspective which will never approximate the actual experience. If you’re a computing humanist, make plans and go there. It’s worth the trip.
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