big Tonka trucks ------ Tuesday 11 January

The massive project to widen I-10 (my parents' house is about a mile south of this coast-to-coast interstate) continues, and yesterday morning construction crews began wiping out a nearby overpass. Last night my dad and I spent about three hours watching heavy machinery break concrete, move piles of twisted re-bar and pavement, and knock down heavy support beams. Very impressive. What was done in 12 hours yesterday would have taken weeks at a similar Oklahoma road construction site. We weren't the only spectators-- when we rolled into a suitably situated shopping center parking lot at about 9:30 pm, there were already more than a dozen folks sitting around taking in the sights. Some came equipped with lawn chairs (which they set up in their pick-up beds to get the birds' eye view) and beverages. Later, after we'd moved to the other side of the overpass and then decided to run home to get jackets to hold off the stiffening night breeze, we came back with some water (mine), diet Mountain Dew (my dad's), and spicy chicarones and dry roasted almonds. We sat on the tail-gate and companionably munched and watched till well after midnight.

welcome to Houston ----- Thursday 6 January

I'm filling out my online application to substitute teach in Katy ISD. I hate applications. I hate pieces of paper (or, in this case, computer screens) with cold, harsh blanks that leave no room for explanation or elaboration. (I'm a great one for elaboration.)

The past few days have been unexpectedly busy. Tuesday morning I went out to the curb to retrieve the emptied trash cans, only to discover that the rear window of my car had been shot out. Welcome to Houston, indeed. It seems that vandalism is quite rampant in this upper middle-class surburban haven I am to learn to call home. Vandalism that, moreover, tends to be of the destructive sort. Stealing mail (a handy little federal offense), trenching yards, knocking down mailboxes, shooting out windows with the pellet gun your doting parents gave you for Christmas.... I'm telling you, it's loads of fun down here.
So yesterday I had to get the window replaced (fortunately just BEFORE the rains came through yesterday evening), a feat that was vastly complicated by the absence of my father's van, which was already at the garage to have work done on the struts and various things. Somehow-- with the help of one of my sisters-- we managed to get my mother to school, my father to the lab across town, and me to both drop off and pick up my car. And we even picked up the van in the evening.

Kristin and I went to Biraporretti's Tuesday night to watch the game with the OU Club of Houston. We gave up by halftime, and I didn't see any of the rest of the debacle. Boomer Sooner. We did not get carded for our drinks (a tart gin gimlet and a smooth Nutty Irishman (Bailey's and Frangelico on the rocks)), so I still don't know about the usefulness of my temporary license. (Though it did pass muster under the scrutiny of the deputy who came to file a report on my shattered car window.)

UN-packing AGAIN ------ Sunday 2 January 2005

The past week or so has, of course, been wildly hectic. I'm behind on phone messages, emails, and blogging. The blog seemed the most egalitarian (so to speak) way to start communicating again, so as I take a break from unpacking I'm beginning here.

It's warm and muggy here. Of course. What else would it be? Though it did snow on Christmas Eve-- but I'm still suspicious that particular highly unlikely weather phenomenon is a big hoax perpetrated not only by my parents but also by the local media. Because certainly the news made the front page of the Houston Chronicle.
Anyhow, I've spent the past few days wearing t-shirts and sandals, and my dad's outside wearing shorts right now. Alexandria and Cairo were colder than this.

My dad and I went out last night to hear some music. We share the opinion that New Year's Eve is not the best night to be out gadding about town. We were dodging drunk drivers on the freeway last night as it was. But the music was good. After checking out Shakespeare's and discovering that at 10:30 the band was still nowhere within sight of the stage, we moved on to Dan Electro's to hear a pretty good blues band, and then finished up the night at Cosmos with The Zydeco Dots. I do enjoy zydeco music. It's the accordions and the washboard. Gets me every time.

Fortunately I didn't get ID-ed at any of those locations. Last Thursday I traded in my beloved Oklahoma driver's license for a piece of PAPER that supposedly is my temporary Texas license. My permanent one should come in the mail in the next two to four weeks-- which isn't in time for the Orange Bowl this Tuesday night. Since I'll probably be going to watch that someplace (we'll look for an OU alumni association gathering) with my friend Kristin, who has, I believe, occasionally been mistaken for one of her kindergarten students, I'm certain to be carded along with her. So we'll see how that goes.

Back to unpacking.

Christmas Eve in Norman----- still Friday

My roommate Charley and I played music for a service at his church earlier this evening. His guitar-picking and my cello-bowing (and occasional plucking) were a big hit. And I realised that it's been almost two and a half years since I last played in front of people. Practicing at home with other people within earshot doesn't count. Nor do lessons, where Kyle was apt to stop me at any moment to critique my phrasing or my posture. Two and a half years is a long time to go without an audience. I've really missed it.
It's also been at least six or seven months since I was last in church. I don't think I've missed that.

Charley has gone to pick up his kids from their grandparents' house, and Mark should be home soon from his gig at one of the state prisons (we're such a musical household), and then we're all going to sing and play Christmas carols and bake cookies for Santa... until the kids go to bed, which is when Charley and Mark both go into frantic-parent, Santa-still-has-a-lot-of-wrapping-to-do mode and when I get to start packing. (To my parents when you read this: Don't worry. I'm always ready somehow.) But there are also possibilities of Jaegermeister, hot chocolate with butterscotch schnapps, and a plummy merlot, so it won't be all work.

packing to move AGAIN----- Friday 24 December

Procrastination is an art not appreciated by many, including my parents. I, however, try to use this finely honed skill of mine whenever possible. And moving provides such wonderful vistas (vistae?) of opportunities.

Monday 20 December

All the thoughts in my head pile up and then the thought of posting is too overwhelming, so one or two days snowballs into nearly two weeks. Finals are over, my last day at the clinic is Wednesday, and I'm making preparations to move out of here. I'll come back to this later.

ARGH ----- 7 December 2004

OU computer labs are a wonderful thing.
I'm sitting here, sweating slightly from the warmth generated by 46 computers (plus various copiers and printers) and at least as many bodies, unable to complete my stats lab homework because the license for the program I need to use has expired. Oh. Wait. A computer behind that was able to access the program has just opened up. More later.

Sunday 5 December

It's a gorgeously damp, grey Sunday in Norman, and I'm enjoying lazing around the house, doing whatever strikes my fancy, alternately cleaning my room, playing piano, reading Middlemarch, starting some laundry, cooking lunch, replying to emails.... Theoretically, I should probably be studying for finals, but in my personal reality the semester is essentially already over, and, as I told someone, I'm now merely spinning my wheels as I wait for the rest of the university to catch up with me. I do plan on taking my exams; I'm just not overly concerned about them [understatement].

Charley left the television on when he left for work, and the noise pollution of a commercial break is drifting up the stairs to my room, but I don't at the moment have the gumption to go turn it off. It's that sort of day. Next on the agenda (once I've finished this post) is probably a nap, and then I might peruse some Arabic later. I'm told there'll be a good South Park episode on tonight, and I'm contemplating munching on some of the peppermint Chex mix I made for Dead Heretics last night. Yup. That's about it. A good day, no?

stalling ---- Saturday 20 November

I'm supposed to be writing my paper for developmental psych right now: 5-6 pages on what makes a successful marriage, comparing research published in peer-reviewed psychology journals with tips in popular magazines like Cosmopolitan. All in 5-6 pages. I couldn't even begin to define "successful marriage" in 5-6 pages. I think the very scope of the topic is delaying the start of writing. I've done my research. Just... have... to start... writing....

I'm developing a fondness for bad horror films. Last night a friend and I watched Christine, an entertainingly ineffectual horror flick about a haunted car-- based on a Stephen King novel. It was almost as good (in a bad way) as Prom Night 2, which we watched over Halloween. I can't handle watching horror movies that are actually frightening, but movies whose very attempts to scare end up being merely amusing are rapidly gaining my affection.

I'm still stalling. And now I'm making myself stop.

proverbs back in action ---- still Tuesday

I've corrected the source coding for the Greek and English proverbs (see box to the left). In the next few days I'll try to remember to post some links to helpful pages for you poor blokes who still can't see the Greek.

countdown again ---- Tuesday 16 November

It's that time of the semester-- when suddenly the remaining classes, labs, assignments, etc. begin to be countable on only one hand. Tonight was my next-to-the-last torturous lab in my Stats for Idiots-- whoops, I mean psych majors-- class. (Was that too harsh? I may edit that out at some point in the future when I'm less irked by the utter uselessness of this entire course.) Of course, now this countdown has extra significance, since the end of the semester is all that I'm waiting for before I shake the Norman dust off my feet (again) and move to Houston. If I didn't have classes, I'd already have given my two-weeks' at work and would be ready to leave over Thanksgiving. I'm not usually one to hang on once the decision has been made. Now I have to make a persistent and conscious effort to remember that I am in fact still here and and that I am actually still enrolled in these pre-physical therapy courses that need to be completed. Mentally, however, I'm already gone.

My friend Randy has convinced me (no, it didn't take much arm-twisting; sometimes I am fairly agreeable to suggestions) to activate the site feed for my blog, so here's the link for that: http://sar5ah.blogspot.com/atom.xml. If you have no clue what I might be talking about, don't worry-- I'm not sure I know. But here's Randy's explanation: http://www.randyhoyt.net/posts/2004/05/what.is.syndication/. I'm slowly attempting this myself. Tonight when I downloaded and installed the Wildgrape NewsDesk, however, it was unable to read either Randy's blog feed or mine. So at the moment I can't recommend Wildgrape, though it's almost certainly a problem on my end. Point to take from all of this: don't ask me for help with setting up your news aggregator.

spinning off in a new (yet very familiar) direction ---- 14 November 2004

From 13 August to 14 November----- three months is quite a stretch, especially in my life, in which a span of a mere four days can result in drastic alterations in my school plans, my living arrangements, and my general ideas about my future.

Because yes, I have changed my major again. Or whatever such a deed might be called at this point. No more physical therapy-- and I certainly feel no regrets about that (though it was nice to think I would in the future be surrounded by people who knew how to help with my various aches and pains). If what I love is the study of languages-- any language, all languages, anything to do with languages-- and if [maybe this deserves an eiper (Romanization pending getting that into a Greek font)] I could actually make some sort of a living by engaging that love full-time, why wouldn't I do that?
Note that I did say "the study of languages", not "the study of language". So I'm leaning more in an anthropological rather than a pure linguistic direction, so that I can indulge in all things glorious about many different languages and dialects and cultural and environmental influences and effects on culture and environment and perception and the interplay and transmission of interacting languages and cultures and.... I know, I know-- perhaps at some point I'll have to narrow that down a little bit. But I hope not.

So, with my parents' blessing, as soon as this semester ends I'm moving to Houston to save some money and figure out what the next step might be-- and to immerse myself ever more in whatever about languages I can find. And Houston, whatever its other faults, will provide many opportunities for diverse language exposure. It's all in how motivated I am to find those opportunities.

So that's my current craziness. I need to be writing about sympathetic and parasympathetic innervation of the heart and about antiobiotic abuse (two different assignments)-- because, whatever my excitement about my new direction, the semester is not yet finished, and there are papers to be written and exams to be taken and textbooks to be read and pigs to be dissected. So now I'm going to try to finish some of that.

quick like a bunny --- Friday 13 August

I don't have more than a moment before I go swim, so this is mostly just a post to check in and reassure any readers that I am in fact still alive and connected to the internet. Also, in the box to the left-- the source for the daily proverbs has been moved, and as soon as I have time I'll put the new javascripts in so the proverbs reappear. I know you were all very concerned about that.

sweating in Houston ------ Monday 2 August

I hadn't intended it to be so long till my next post, but my week kept getting busier and busier. That's finished now-- in a big way, since Friday was (el-hamd-il-allah) my last day at my job in Admissions. That afternoon when I left the office I checked my cell phone and found a message from the physical therapy clinic asking if I was still interested in working there. (If?) I start there on Thursday morning. I'm in Houston right now and will be leaving Wednesday morning to be back for photography class that evening. My much-anticipated vacation is turning out to be quite a bit shorter than expected, but since starting work on Thursday means that I'll be paid for two more weeks than I had originally planned, I'm coping admirably well with the change.

Today was my lazy day here. Saturday night, after driving down from Norman, that morning and afternoon, I went to a friend's personal shower (she's getting married in September) and then also spent Sunday with some of the girls. In the afternoon we went to Kemah, which is a tourist-trap-type harbour area in southwest Houston, and I'm planning on leaving here early tomorrow morning to go back there (and possibly all the way down to Galveston Island) to take pictures-- probably more of the marina and such than of the tourists, given that I'll almost certainly beat the crowds. Sunday I didn't have the telephoto zoom lens I needed to get good shots of the boats in the harbour. By the time I've finished that, gone to pick my mother up from class and had lunch with her, located and purchased some suitable frames for a few of my photographs, it will time to figure out plans for the evening-- and then go to bed at a fairly early hour (i.e., by midnight) so that I can get up and drive back to Norman the next day... to start up my new routine there. And start getting ready to move.
Why does time off always end up being at least as busy as the daily grind of work?

apolitical still? ---- Tuesday 27 July

Last night I was feeling a trifle under the weather, so I ended up spending the evening on the couch, crocheting while I watched the first night of the Democratic National Convention. I wouldn't generally regard this as the best way to educate myself (at least in an efficient and unbiased-- if such a thing exists-- manner) for the upcoming presidential election, but I was flipping channels and caught a blip of Al Gore cracking a joke. I was intrigued. So I left the TV on PBS and began to listen.

I found the whole thing a rather disturbing experience. Yesterday at lunch I was reading about vegetarianism (veganism, at that) and actually considering it as a sensible lifestyle. Not that I don't enjoy foods often considered "vegetarian", but trust me-- I relish my meat. And then last night there I was finding myself agreeing with the Democratic party-- with Bill Clinton------- I was raised (whether or not anyone intended this) to be so against these things that I never even considered them options. At all. It has always been a part of my worldview that the Republican party and its leaders stand in the right (no pun intended) on any issue. (Though it is a measure of how far I've already come that to admit that frightens me. A lot.) That vegetarians are tree-hugging liberals threatening to destroy some un-named but incalculably precious element of the American way of life-- which is, of course, The Right Way of Life. I was so indoctrinated into this ideology that, changed though I thought my worldview had become, my gut reaction to many of these terms and names-- "liberal", "Bill Clinton", "Democrat", "left-wing", etc.-- is still one of unthinking self-righteous disgust. I am disturbed by this. (And rightly so, I know many of you are thinking as you read this.)

The crisis I suddenly faced last night was not so much whether I would consider myself Democrat or Republican, but rather the unsettling feeling of having my more recent convictional tendencies conflict so strongly with "beliefs" so deeply laid they seem nearly instinctive. Caught in the middle.

But I also look back at the past few years and am astounded by what I have been living through. The first presidential election in which I could vote was 2000, Bush vs. Gore, and I chose to abstain from voting, still convinced then that Gore was a "complete scumbag" but at the same time not entirely sure I was willing to vote actively for George W. I was 21 years old, struggling against and through Southern Baptistdom and a fairly typical Oklahoma-Buckle-of-the-Bible-Belt upbringing. Less than a year later, during my final semester of undergrad, the Twin Towers fell and the world changed. The country changed. The first anniversary of 9/11 found me living in Egypt-- where I was still living when the war in Iraq began the following spring. A bus accident and resulting nasty injury moved me back to the U.S. only a few days after Bush declared an (overly optimistic) end to major military conflict, and after a few months I found an office job (which did not require my college degree) and joined the ranks of working-class Americans muddling through poor health care-- a service which I sorely needed as I continued to recover from my shoulder injury. Several months later I decided to return to school to pursue a career in physical therapy, greatly influenced by own various trials and successes in rehabilitation. And here I am, just now beginning to see how profoundly these past four years have affected me-- and hopefully changed me. My life does not run in the same temporal cycles as the national government, but listening to Gore, Carter, and the Clintons speak last night highlighted this past presidential term for me. The confusion I, like so many others, felt following the 9/11 attacks as the U.S. government began its "crusade" against terrorists and "evil-doers" and then a year or so later sallied forth with its policy of pre-emptive war. The unforgettable experience of being an American living in the Middle East, living with the constant questions from my Arab friends and with the possibility of evacuation looming every day. A loss of faith and a subsequent onslaught of questions I had never before been allowed to think or ask.

I don't have a resolution for this rather long post. Just a lot of questions. Thoughts. Things to continue pondering.

things that go sting in the night-- still Thursday

Last night my roommate Amy found our first scorpions of the summer. We'd been warned by the homeowners that they were around and sometimes found their way indoors, but so far we'd seen nothing but the usual spiders, june bugs, ants, sowbugs, and other miscellaneous, mostly harmless members of the creepy-crawley world. Scorpions, however, even to me, are an entirely different matter. The first one we saw last night was scuttling around on the back patio, and then within a few minutes Amy had discovered another one on the rug in the foyer. That one I smashed with a shoe-- scorpions are a bit messier than your average arachnid, I've now learned-- but I refused to bother the one outside, though Amy shrieked at me to kill it too. (It still lives, unless something higher on the food chain has eaten it since-- she was too jumpy to go dispatch it herself.) I twitched occasionally as I lay in bed reading, partially convinced that some eight-legged, barbed-tail beastie was crawling up my leg, but nothing was ever there.
Still, given the biting ants we've had visiting us over the past few days, it seems that we're going to have to find more effective means of preventing further invasions. I'd hate to have to give up walking around barefoot.

I'm munching on dry roasted peanuts and listening to "Free Bird" as I write this. Trying not to count the hours I have left at this desk. Contemplating plans for this weekend. Wondering if I have time to go to the grocery store tonight. In short, avoiding starting this next pile of applications.

wasting time?-- Thursday 22 July

Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need, the time you need to have the time of your life.
--Tock, The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster

I do waste time. At least sometimes. But then I also often think that the times when I (or, more likely, others) say that I'm wasting time are perhaps, to me, the most non-wasteful times I spend. I don't consider blogging or reading or sleeping (within reason) or relaxing or thinking or any of a hundred other of my regular activities (I've left most of the nerdier ones, like studying languages, off the above list; I'll try to spare you as much as possible) a waste of time. What I do consider a waste of time is spending 8 hours a day sitting in front of a computer screen at a desk in a cubicle doing mostly-mindless data entry and evaluation of transcripts and test scores. Really, I suppose this activity is not a waste of time in that every month I receive a paycheck in compensation of all the time I've spent being mind-numbingly, stultifyingly bored during those four or so weeks, but that's small (though unfortunately necessary) justification for subjecting myself to this. This, I believe, is a waste of my time, a waste of what I've learned and done before this, a waste of all the potentialities within me. Which is why I'm quitting and going back to school in preparation to do something else-- something that I do believe is more worthwhile. And hopefully more challenging.

Knowing that at least a few people are actually reading my blog again makes me feel slightly bad about the Arabic dates. I know I would want to know the date of a post I'm reading. Wrapped up in my own happy world of blogging, I have a tendency to forget how incomprehensible these date headers must be to nearly everyone else. So I'll try to remember to include the date-- in English-- in the post itself. Perhaps I'll activate the Post Title option and use that. Either way, today is Wednesday, 21 July 2004. Happy reading.

My goal on Tuesday was to waste almost as much time as most other people here do. I had to include "almost" because I wasn't sure I was capable of wasting fully as much time. I'm not entirely sure that I achieved "almost" either, though that's obviously a rather subjective term. My problem is that I don't want to socialize for very long with most of my co-workers, and if I'm wasting time, I don't want to be here wasting time. I want my wasting of time to involve a couch and a book and solitude and some strawberries... possibly covered in chocolate. Still, I was reasonably effective on Tuesday, and I seem to be resuming pursuit of that lofty goal today. Partially because my entire end of office is empty except for me and the assistant director of international students-- and he hides in his office and is rarely noticeable except that he likes to sing old jazz tunes. I find it difficult to work on dull folders of final high school transcripts when I am constantly distracted by the thought that my co-workers are relaxing by the pool or setting up camp in the Wichita Mountains or even just spending a simple quiet day at home. Hence the post.

Before starting this I spent several happy minutes reading all of my January 2003 posts. [To help some of you (most of you) out there, that's the eighth link down from the top of the Archives list. There. You've learned your first Arabic word. That means "January".] That month brought some rather entertaining adventures as I was settling into my new home in Alexandria--- including that wonderful trip to the downtown post office. My life has changed so much since then. <sigh>

Still-- my last day at this job is in only two weeks, and that's a blindingly bright spot in my life. I'll have about two weeks of freedom-- some of it probably spent in Houston, a good deal of it in the darkroom as my class ends and loss of access to the darkroom looms large. And then-- insha-allah-- I'll start some training for my new job at the physical therapy clinic a week before classes begin (23 August), and after that the starter's gun will fire and the furor of the school year will begin. Three years after my last semester at OU. But-- school is something I know how to do and know how to do well, so the approaching familiarity lends a touch of serenity to my days as I prepare to make my life over again.

Update on the weekend: The peach festival was successful in that I took a lot of pictures. I'll develop the film tomorrow evening and see what I got. But other than that, I can't report much. I went by myself and did nothing but shoot, so I was oblivious to everything except potential photos. Including the very hot sun turning the back of my neck a dark shade of red.

My photography instructor and I are occasionally butting heads-- he wants me to print for 12 seconds, I want to print for 11; he wants me to cut out my test print and make a burning tool, I want to burn using my hands; he says my lighting was too poor and that my picture is flat, I think it's one of the best pictures I've taken. I'm learning a lot, but my most precious hours in the darkroom are the ones outside of class.