Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Heronblue's LiveJournal:

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Monday, July 13th, 2009
11:02 pm	This journal has become friends-only in practice, if not by intent. (make me real)
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
6:19 pm	remembering how to hope I would be remiss if I said nothing about the historic election, but the reality hasn't really sunk in yet. After throwing my heart into two failed Democratic campaigns, my cynicism got in the way of any hope for this one, even at the end. I really didn't dare hope. I never thought I'd see a blue Virginia. I never thought I'd see NC as a swing state. It only took 143 years for the heart of the Confederacy to vote for a black man as president. Eight years of Bush has all but ruined this country, and it's going to take more than four years to undo the damage. But this is a good start. Nothing is certain, right now, and it's going to be a very hard recovery. Obama could still blow it. But maybe he won't. After eight years of burying any shred of political optimism to stave off disappointment, it's still going to take me a while before I can let myself believe things can get better for this country. But maybe it's time to start trying. Current Mood: cautious (3 whispers | make me real)
Friday, September 12th, 2008
5:44 am	The longer I stay silent, the harder it is to say anything at all. (5 whispers | make me real)
Thursday, June 26th, 2008
6:41 pm	breaking silence I'm still around. I still read livejournal (frequently) and comment (sometimes). I just haven't written in... ack, bloody forever. My internship was supposed to end today. I don't really have information on what I'll be doing for the rest of the summer, and they've been kinda running out of work to give me, but I'm told they'll keep me on through August, for which I'm grateful. Maybe another job will come up by then. I'm told that if I want to keep doing GIS stuff (or anything else in my field), I'll probably have to move elsewhere, which I'd really rather not do. I like my life in Vermont... the house and the cats and my friends. Even though we can't seem to find anyone to play D&D with us on a regular basis (Michael is slowly going crazy from lack of game), it's good to have local friends. My brother was studying in Greece this last semester (his last... he graduated!), so my parents and I went out there to visit as his program ended. I was really nervous about going... I tend to be nervous whenever traveling, and this was the first time I'd been somewhere with absolutely no knowledge of the language (well, Amsterdam, but everyone can speak English there). However, my brother knew enough Greek to get us around, and I knew enough of the alphabet from physics equations to at least transliterate, mostly. We spent three days in Athens and four on Crete. Alan gave a fantastic tour of the Acropolis, and knew a great deal about the other archeological sites in the area. On Crete, I was impressed with Knossos but much more so with Phaesos, a different Minoan palace that hadn't suffered from as much reconstruction by a fanciful early 20th century British "archeologist". We spent one night in a town where the cliff overlooking the beach was riddled with man-made caves that had served as Roman tombs. Hippies moved into those cave (desecrated them? I had a really interesting conversation with my father about sacred places) in the 60s, and had to be chased out. We spent two days in Chania (Hania? The Venetians called it Canea) on the northern coast of the island, where we learned a great deal about Crete in World War II (bad things happened) from a rather propagandistic maritime museum. The Mediterranean was beautiful, but too cold to swim in comfortably. Most of the rocks were limestone, though the Acropolis itself is metamorphic rock. Crete was the first time I'd ever been on a microplate, which was exciting. We visited one Roman ruin where the "harbor" was high and dry because the western side of the island has uplifted 8 meters in the last few thousand years. The climate reminded me of California, which of course makes a lot of sense. The food was better than I expected-- more meat than I usually eat in a month, but the best orange juice I've ever encountered. There were a depressing number of stray cats and dogs (including two dead kittens in Irakleion... very sad). I was glad to get home to my well-fed and well-loved cats. My journey home was a nightmare. I had planned that I'd wake up at 1 AM EST in Athens and arrive in Burlington at about 11 PM EST-- a very long day. However, I got stuck in Newark-- my flight got canceled for no discernible reason. I spent three hours in a customer service line, at the end of which I was unceremoniously handed an itty-bitty blanket and pillow and sent to sleep on the floor. I ended up getting home at about 2 PM the next day (my bag didn't arrive until a day after that), and I spent most of last week recovering from the sleep deprivation. I never want to travel again, but I don't really have much choice in the matter. Michael (who's never been on a plane) was horrified by the whole ordeal, and says he now completely understands why I get nervous about travel. But I'm home for now. I still get nervous about stupid things. I still get depressed sometimes. But I'm really quite happy with my life right now. I don't like the growing distance between me and my older friends (exacerbated by my silence here in livejournal), so I'll have to work on that. I am still around. (10 whispers | make me real)
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
6:01 pm	one month later I haven't written in a long time, but here are a few little things. Work feels like work now, rather than a brief interlude between school semesters. I finally got up the courage to ask today when I should start looking for a new job (I saw a posting for a job not too far away that I'm vaguely qualified for). Turns out they can probably afford to keep me over the summer-- I'd be out doing fieldwork instead of sitting at the computer, which might be really nice. Spring is slow in coming... the driveway is still covered in ice. We had a full-blown ice storm a few weeks ago that knocked the power out briefly. The cats were amusingly confused when all the lights went out at 7 PM. I miss being inspired to write. I don't miss school. Hackers in Brazil have my debit card numbers, since a local/regional grocery store has been hemorrhaging data since December. I'm already paranoid about tech security, and this really didn't help. I've been reading a lot of Charles Stross' fiction, and thinking a lot about this essay of his that discusses the (looming) possibility of a society where one's every move is observed, blogged, or tracked. Having finally reached endgame status in Final Fantasy XI, I realize that being able to run around and do most of the things in the game comes with a price: people expect you to run around and do most of the things in the game. If I did what other players of the game seem to want me to do, I'd have 5/7 nights of the week spoken for by one in-game obligation or another. No thanks. I'm cutting back, regardless of whether they "need" another Red Mage. I'd rather have a bit of a life. (2 whispers | make me real)
Saturday, January 12th, 2008
7:50 pm	Things are going really well, which is probably why I haven't been writing much (I've been neglecting my paper journal a bit as well... which is really bad). I like my job-- I've accomplished a lot on the project I'm working on, and got a chance to print out some maps on the huge map plotter. I also solved a real-world problem using the smattering of VBasic I learned in my last GIS class (we only learned how to do two things, one of which was exactly what I needed). The people are nice, and the work is interesting enough that I'm not bored. I drink an awful lot of tea, though. The weather warmed up enough that all the snow melted... it's now depressingly grey outside, but at least my driveway is clear. The shoulder I injured shoveling snow almost a year ago is still bothering me, so I hope we don't get any more huge blizzards. The only problem with my current job schedule is that because I allow myself time to sleep in, I don't get home until after dark and thus can't take long walks very often. I may have to juggle that around, at least until we get more daylight. Life with Michael and the kitties is good. I still read the news obsessively, though I've found my tolerance for political news diminishing. I was thrilled that Obama won Iowa and Clinton won New Hampshire... I like both of them, so I'm fence-sitting for the moment, but I'm really glad one person didn't win both contests. That artificial "momentum" (people are sheep, and the media is stupid) would have resulted in the presidential nomination season ending a week into the election year, which would have been absolutely disgusting. It was New Hampshire's blind ratification of Iowa's decision in 2004 that stuck us with a lackluster candidate. The nomination calender is utterly broken (which I think people are beginning to realize), but at least we go into the second week of the year with competition still active. I doubt the suspense will last until February, though. (make me real)
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008
8:56 pm	Um, wow. New year. I went back to work today after taking a week off to go to DC. So far I like my job... I have a freezing-cold office full of rolled-up maps with a view of the mountains. It's right by the kitchenette, so I drink a lot of tea to keep warm. Everyone there has been really nice to me... after working there for two days, I got invited to their holiday brunch and was given chocolate. I am easily bought. My job mostly involves updating parcel data for the county, which is more fun than it sounds. I basically just play with maps all day. It's like tinkering on photoshop, only spatially correct. Today I learned quite a bit about legends (such as how to bend them to my will). The office is a casual one, but I had to spruce my wardrobe up a little bit. My usual flannel-and-jeans routine doesn't quite cut it. It's been a few years since I bought clothes, anyway. While I was in DC, drownophelia spent a day putting up with me being picky at various clothing stores. To make my parents happy, I did try to look at girl-clothes, but they didn't fit right. So I'm sticking with boy-clothes, as pockets are important. Though, to my dismay, it appears that it's stylish now for boy-shirts to lack breast pockets. It took us a long time to find anything that matched my specifications. This is why I don't like shopping for clothes... I know what I want, and it's very rarely available. drownophelia put up with quite a lot that day. DC in general was both low-key and frenetically paced. Many important family dinners took place over a short period of time. It was a relief to come home to my quiet little Vermont life, though the snow's starting to get to me. Apparently, 2007 was the snowiest year on record, which is impressive given that there was no snow at all until those two feet on Valentine's Day. 132 inches of snow fell on Burlington in 2007, and that's not counting the six or so we got last night. Though I've never been in Vermont on New Years before, the weather stopped me from going to the party I've been hearing about for years. Michael and I just had a quiet night at home. New Years Day was nice... we got to game a bit (a D&D game converted to nWoD rules). The game was in a house with a toddler, who, while quite well behaved, reminded me of many of the reasons why I don't want to have children. I didn't sleep at all last night, and I was worried about digging out of the snow and being late to work, which dampened breakfast a bit, though I was seeing thepinnacle for the first time since last summer (I'm sorry I was so tetchy!). Today was really cold, so now that I'm finally warm and fed, I'm falling asleep. It's going to be strange when the end of this month rolls around and I'm not going to classes. Current Mood: sleepy (make me real)
Sunday, December 16th, 2007
1:49 am	graduation The graduation ceremony was strange. The governor gave a little speech that was inappropriately political, and the president of the school gave a little speech that would have been better if it had contained fewer than two appeals for donations (they just finished spending 25 million building that bloody eyesore of a student center, yes, but asking for money in the chapel at a graduation ceremony?). At one point in the ceremony, the parents, grandparents, partners, and children of graduates were sequentially invited to stand and be applauded, but at no time were the graduates asked to stand (we were sitting randomly in the audience with everyone else, not up on stage). At least the ceremony only lasted an hour, and there was decent food (with inferior coffee) afterward. gramcracker and komcaast, who I haven't seen since before their graduation in 2004, drove four and a half hours to be there. It was wonderful to see them, though they and my family both left a day early to get out ahead of the nor'easter that's blowing in (we're going to get at least a foot of snow in the next day or so). Now that they've proven that they don't live insurmountably far away, I'll have to find a way to see them more often. Preferably when weather won't intervene. It's wonderful that gramcracker, especially, could be there... she was one of the first friends I made when I got to college (oh so long ago), and brought me a gift that was a direct reminder of our time at Oberlin. It was great to see both family and friends, but I'm glad everyone got out ahead of the weather. The snow's just beginning to fall now. Current Mood: content (6 whispers | make me real)
Saturday, December 8th, 2007
3:52 pm	metadata blues Despite the coolness of the word "metadata", writing the stuff is absolutely mind-numbing. No wonder so many people don't bother (despite the fact that not having metadata makes their data almost useless to anyone else). I hope I don't have to do this as part of the internship. Not that the internship is going to be ground-breaking or especially exciting GIS work, but it's experience. I don't mind the nitpicky-detail parts of ArcGIS, for the most part-- it's like tinkering with details on photoshop, to some degree. But metadata is just painful. I'd like to get back to straight-up geology at some point-- I love fieldwork, though scientific literature irks me-- but in the meantime I'll be working with maps, which I've always enjoyed. I've been in this computer lab almost every Saturday this semester, not counting the few times the building was unexpectedly locked. Okay, my hands and feet are going numb and my brain's melted... time to go home and make tea. (3 whispers | make me real)
Friday, December 7th, 2007
8:37 pm	I did get that job. I give permission to all those who put up with my dire whining about how I'd never find employment in my field after college to fling this in my face next time I get obnoxious. I graduate next Saturday, and I start work the week after that. I didn't think that sort of thing happened to real people anymore. Current Mood: elated (25 whispers | make me real)
Thursday, December 6th, 2007
8:57 pm	Job? School stuff, game stuff. I woke up this morning to the phone ringing. The message on the machine was from the nonprofit I interviewed at last week for the GIS position, telling me to call back. I left messages for both the GIS people there, and haven't received a response... so I don't know if I got the job. On the one hand, they called me, but on the other, they haven't gotten back to me, so I'm obviously not a high priority. I'm not sure what to make of it. Taking notes and writing the geology paper over the weekend almost made me preemptively nostalgic for the undergrad experience. Though my printer now only prints in pinkscale. I actually got the paper done and in on time... it wasn't very good (though I'm historically terrible at gaging such things), but it's finished. I churned out a mediocre powerpoint presentation for yesterday's class. The topic was something of a full-circle notion... after all these years, I finally read up on and reported about the bedrock geology of the Washington DC area. I found that there's a shear zone in Rock Creek Park (specifically, in the National Zoo), and a granitoid intrusion somewhere within walking distance of the house I grew up in (must investigate!). I like it that my last geology project in college was about the first rocks I ever saw. So classes are over. The only thing I have left to do is finish my GIS project. Reading over the paper touting the merits of one dataset, I'm beginning to suspect the author told me the wrong file to download. The authors seem to have done very detailed and extensive research, and should have a lot of information associated with the data. But the data itself is just blobs on the page-- no attribute fields except the ones ArcGIS and the geodatabase assign internally. All that beautiful work on inverse-weighted buffers and land types is utterly absent from the final product. It's just a bunch of polygons. When not writing the paper, I did some great tabletop gaming over the weekend. One of Micheal's friends hates D20, so he converted a D&D game to D10 using the new World of Darkness rules (using Mage for magic and magic items), with a little bit of Exalted thrown in. He also un-gimped character creation and reinstated bonus points. I made a badass swordsperson, since my badass swordsperson from the almost five year long Wheel of Time campaign is about to be retired. That game got frustrating at the end... most of the party spent most of the big ultimate battle twiddling our thumbs, unable to act. The other game we played over the weekend (same day, in fact) was a really interesting game using Aberrant rules. I wish they'd make a second edition of Aberrant... rules-wise (forget the setting), it's the best superhero game system out there, but it's deeply flawed in many ways and could use some attention and revision. I hope I hear about that job tomorrow, one way or the other. Also... no more classes. (2 whispers | make me real)
Thursday, November 29th, 2007
8:24 pm	updated! School's almost over. I finally have (almost) all the data for my GIS project, though I'm missing orthophotos and keep having random technical difficulties. My other course-- the nebulous, poorly-taught one-- is in poorer shape. I have a research paper that has undefined extra requirements to it that will only be divulged to me if I meet with the professor outside of class, which strikes me as somewhat dubious. I have to get this done-- I'm two weeks from graduating. A friend of Mary and Joanna's alerted me to an intro GIS internship being offered by the regional planning commission. I interviewed for that yesterday, after a tizzy of resume-writing and trying to find professional-looking clothing that the cats hadn't been napping on. The interview went fairly well, I think. I really hope I get this job... it's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for, and it pays well, though it's only part-time and lasts through the end of June. I could really use the experience in the field, even if it's temporary. Michael tried to upgrade his computer, which really shouldn't have been too difficult, as he's pretty good at such things. But through some spectacular and inexplicable errors, both his old machine and the new components are probably totaled. There were sparks and smoke. The house smelled like ozone for days. He says this is the sort of thing that happens every time he tries to reach out and better his life in some way... I'd scoff at that notion, but the way things went so bizarrely and horribly wrong has me wondering. I went to DC for Thanksgiving, which was mostly positive. We had 16 people for dinner, which was a bit much, but it worked out. After dinner I stayed up late with my brothers and cousins, and learned some interesting new stories about their teenage years. I saw drownophelia for a disappointing movie and amazing pizza, and almost lost my luggage on the way home. A surprising number of people are coming up here for the graduation ceremony-thing. Right now I'm just focused on getting to that point. Current Mood: stressed (16 whispers | make me real)
Thursday, October 25th, 2007
8:53 pm	WUI The Loreena McKennit concert was fantastic. I started listening to her music in 1994 or so, so it was a major part of the soundtrack of my adolescence. I fondly remember sitting reading in Maine or at Hollypoint with one of her albums on the stereo. She played a of her older stuff, including some of my favorites. The backup musicians were a lot of fun to watch... she had about seven people up there, most of whom were playing two or more instruments as varied as the Turkish lyra and the hurdy gurdy. I'm really glad the concert fell on a Tuesday, as that meant Michael could come with me. Though I missed my long-running Wheel of Time game. I missed yet another appointment at Career Services on Monday. The toilet broke on a fundamental level, and I was stuck at home waiting for the plumber. It was flushable only using a complicated jury-rigged system involving an empty Vitamin Water bottle. This was my fault... I was trying to keep it from running (as it had been frequently for a month or so) and snapped something crucial. We actually had to replace it. I am doing the Wildlife-Urban Interface project for my GIS class. I was a little daunted today to find out that it's a national dataset... I may have to focus my analysis on a few states. This country is huge, especially when you're talking about data with a 30 meter cell size. WUI has been an issue in the news this week (though not a big enough issue, in my opinion), with the fires in California. Basically, an increasing number of structures (mostly houses) are being built adjacent to wild areas, which in the west tend to be areas of high risk for wildfires. People keep pushing against the boundary, and act surprised when their homes burn down (or get taken out by a mudslide, which is going to be the case this winter, as deforested hills get hit by the rainy season). I'm probably a bad person for saying so in the midst of a natural disaster, but I really think some of the people who lost homes should be encouraged not to rebuild, rather than getting federal and insurance money to put their houses right back in the fire danger zone. All the data I've been reading on WUI lately (along with John McPhee's brilliant book "The Control of Nature") suggests that people really should be discouraged from living in certain places. The same was true for a lesser extent for New Orleans (that was more a cock-up on the part of the Army Corps of Engineers, though it was still a disaster waiting to happen). The difference is that most of the people who were displaced in California can afford to relocate, which was not the case in New Orleans. The impulse in these situations is to throw money at people so they can rebuild, but a large-scale disaster is also an opportunity for some large-scale urban planning and rethinking, which people never seem to do. They could build bigger buffers between houses and the chaparral, put in more containment areas for debris flows. But they won't. They'll just put houses back in the same places the houses were, which is really poor management. (make me real)
Monday, October 8th, 2007
4:30 pm	gendered geek sammka wrote a fantastic entry about a discussion on single-sex education that sums up a lot about what was wrong with our all-girls highschool. Her conclusion, which really resonates with me, is that single-sex education doesn't really work for people who don't relate well to people of their assigned gender. I really like her notion of being "gendered geek", of feeling better being lumped in with people who are smart and awkward socially, regardless of their gender, than with women in general. My experience with single-sex education left me permanently and irrationally frightened of conventionally normal-seeming females. They seem incredibly alien and often threatening to me. I go out of my way in school to seem as gender-neutral and geeky as possible... I'd much rather people treat me like a geek than treat me like a girl. After years of gender confusion, I've come to accept the fact that I'm female, but I hate being treated as such. I still consider myself a feminist, and I like seeing women overcoming stereotypes and pioneering in male-dominated fields, but I really don't relate to most women. I'm much more comfortable with people of any gender who were beaten up in highschool for wrecking the grading curve on a test than with the girls that dealt out that verbal and (in the case of that Latin test) physical abuse to me. One of the girls in that particular incident went on to get a lacrosse scholarship at Brown. From a strictly feminist point of view, this is a good thing, as women in sports are empowering. But it struck me as unfair that this (extremely rich) girl who was monstrous to the smart geeky girls in her school would go on to get breaks that I, focused on academics instead of athletics, could only dream of. Anyway, that's a very old and bitter rant. But I do still have trouble thinking of myself as a woman, but none at all with thinking of myself as a geek. (3 whispers | make me real)
Friday, September 28th, 2007
8:12 pm	Ack, I haven't written in forever. researcher and I were talking the other day about how Livejournal projects a skewed vision of how people really are doing, as people seem more likely to journal extensively when they're upset about something. I've been doing well, therefore I haven't been writing here. School's going about as well as it ever has. I'm really enjoying the GIS work. I have to decide relatively soon whether I'm going to graduate in December as I'd hoped or hang on for another semester to get the minor in Geospatial Technologies. The minor is tempting, and it's not something I'd be able to get after graduating. People don't go back to school just to pick up a minor. I'm not sure how much more employable the minor would make me, but it would be another few months of not having to look for a job. The prospect of job-hunting scares me to no end, though I know I have to do it, and soon. I'm utterly spoiled in that I've never had to intensively search for a job before, and I still have serious doubts about my ability to work conventional business hours. Things are going well now, though I'm constantly aware that everything is going to change in the next few months. (1 whisper | make me real)
Friday, September 7th, 2007
7:05 pm	good stuff While I was working on a GIS assignment today (I had to get the park system of Baltimore back where it belonged... it was showing up as being somewhere off the coast of Rhode Island), my teacher from the intro course wandered into the lab. She seemed pleased that I was taking the practicum, as I'd done well in the other course, and people who take the practicum really do end up with a very marketable skill level in the software. During this course, we're going to do real projects (the teacher solicits projects from local companies and organizations) that often result in students getting permanent jobs. I knew that this geospatial software stuff was probably the most practical of the skills I've picked up in the last few years, but I didn't realize that there were so many potential opportunities even here in Vermont. The teacher I was talking to had a student who just got a job with a firm in Waterbury that involves international travel, fieldwork, and computer analysis. I'm now on a listserve for Vermont GIS people that sometimes includes job offerings. This is the first news I've heard in a long time that's given me any kind of hope for finding a job around here that's even remotely in my field. Also, with the courses I've already taken and the one I'm in now, I could get a minor in "Geospatial Technologies" if I stay in school one more semester. Though I've been elated at the prospect of being done in December, that's kind of tempting. Seems I'm a lot closer to getting that minor than I ever was with my long-abandoned English minor (my bullshit skills suffered a critical failure when it came to literary critical theory, and I never got over that hurdle). I haven't gotten a parking permit at school yet, and I'm thinking I might not bother. I got rather sedentary over the summer, and walking a mile to school and back every day has given me a lot more exercise than I had been getting. I might just keep that up. Though it was beastly hot today... as soon as I finish writing this, I'm going to retreat to Michael's room, where it's cooler. I now have a "collection" of ancient geology books written for the layman. My aunt sent me one that's even older than "The Earth for Sam", which was written in 1935. This new one was published in 1886. It's written by a professor from the University of Michigan, who appears to assume that his entire reading audience is also in the upper Midwest. So far it's a lot of fun... it appears they'd just figured out ice ages at that time, and were feeling very clever. The book is in great shape, too. The graffiti of generations (1886, 1907, 1961, 1963) is scribbled on the inside front cover. People used to have much better handwriting than they do now. Burlington-area people: Tonight and tomorrow is the annual South End Art Hop. All those studios tucked away in old industrial buildings along Pine Street and elsewhere are open and having events. I'm told that if you bring a .jpeg to one of them, they'll put it on a t-shirt (I'm not sure which one... it's somewhere in that rabbit-warren of studios behind Speeder & Earl's). Earlier today, I helped set up at the studio where I work... I know there'll be food and probably music there. Last year's beer-soaked tent party is thankfully not being repeated. There's a singer from the Ivory Coast, whose music I've enjoyed on the world beat radio program I listen to on Fridays, playing nearby on Sunday... I'm contemplating going to the show. Or at least trying to find the CD. Though I might be gaming on Sunday, and my gaming opportunities lately have been rather scarce. We've taken to playing more board games because we can't scrape enough reliable people together for a proper rpg. Current Mood: hopeful (2 whispers | make me real)
Wednesday, September 5th, 2007
4:06 pm	exorcism I just got a major windfall of the bureaucratic variety. If I'm understanding correctly, I will be allowed to graduate if I complete the two courses I'm currently in. Which is... wow. I didn't realize the geology department wanted me gone that badly, but it works. Going to the dean seems to have been a good decision. The meeting itself was difficult... I was on the edge of tears when I left. Later, in my geology class (I was still in a bad mood), someone asked me why they'd never seen me around before. I replied: "I'm actually a ghost. I've been haunting the department for years now. They can't seem to get rid of me." But maybe they will. So... all I have to do now is not screw up. On that note, I'm off to reproject data from an unknown coordinate system. Current Mood: surprised (11 whispers | make me real)
Thursday, August 30th, 2007
2:34 pm	school stuff It came to my attention about a week ago that I can graduate in December if I can manage to pull off a field project this fall (which I failed to do over the summer). So I've contacted all the professors I can think of in the geology department, asking for help coming up with a project. One's on sabbatical, and I heard back from two more today, both saying they don't have time to help me. One was my adviser, and he also basically said that he can't advise me at the moment. Both of them suggested I talk to the newbie professor who's teaching one of my classes. He's never taught before, and just moved here from Florida. What I need is someone who knows the area and can help me come up with someplace to map or analyze. The professor they're steering me towards knows much, much less about Vermont geology than I do. I'm in two classes this semester. One is a class I flaked out of the semester my brother was in chemotherapy, so I've sort of taken it before. However, unlike last time, it's full of cliquey kids four or five years younger than me and is taught by the aforementioned newbie professor. The other class is an advanced course on GIS, which is an actual marketable skill, and is being taught at the grad level. It looks incredibly challenging and interesting, and knowing the ins and outs of GIS software is something that might actually get me a job someday. Though the little tailspin of depression I went into after getting the emails from geology professors today has caused me to miss the second class (I'm going to use the time to go to the UVM shrink instead). If I'm going to do a field project, I need to drop one of the two classes, but I'm not sure which to drop-- the easy geology course or the tough GIS course. That question is moot, of course, unless I can find someone who's willing to help me with the field project. I'd like to talk this through with someone, but all the people I know who might be helpful are either insanely busy right now or have already told me they won't help. If don't resolve this in the next week or so, it looks like I'll be stuck in school for another year. Which, since I'm already a washed-up has-been loser who can't graduate, is unlikely to be a good thing. Current Mood: frustrated (7 whispers | make me real)
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007
4:42 pm	media notes Michael was listening to Tom Waits last night, who I'm not very familiar with. The nonsensical weirdness of the music got me thinking about Leonard Cohen, so I put on the album of his that I used to listen to while going to sleep when I was in elementary school. It's really hard to introduce someone to music that has that much personal resonance... I want Michael to understand what it means to me, but he can't fathom it, the same way I can't fathom precisely what his music has meant to him over the years. There's a communication gap, a history gap. We don't talk about the past all that much. Or the future. Especially not the future. The past comes up sometimes... I found I could barely watch an occult BBC show that a friend lent Michael, because it took place on the campus of a snooty boarding school where some of the students were all too familiar. I've been enjoying reading the new "Changeling" book (I'm not sure how much to thank heron61 for that). They did a good job of taking the cute out of the game and emphasizing just how terrifying creatures in fairy tales can be. Though I don't understand how White Wolf can sell such cheaply bound books for $30 and still apparently can't afford to hire a proofreader. Sentences don't begin with lowercase letters. Paragraphs don't begin with "And". Typos have no place in such a slick-looking book. They need better editing in general... I'm not sure why Changeling needs three different rule sets for powers that basically boil down to "can breathe underwater for a while", for example. I understand that a book with so many contributers is going to have unintentional redundancies, but that's what editing is for. This week, I've been sleeping late, playing games too much, not doing enough to prepare for the weeks ahead. The weather hasn't helped... everything out there is holding its breath, waiting for rain. School starts Monday. Feels like summer has been gone for a while. (2 whispers | make me real)
Saturday, August 4th, 2007
6:37 pm	covering ground / tiny faded photographs and onionskin paper / black water I've done a lot more traveling this summer than I'd anticipated... I look forward to going home on Monday, though the drive is sure to be penitential. I left Burlington a week ago Wednesday, and for the last week I've been in North Carolina. The beach was quite nice-- lots of reading and walking on the sand daydreaming. Good southern food... I hadn't had fried green tomatoes in forever. My aunt found four boxes of my late grandmother's papers in her basement last winter, and she brought them all with her. They contained things like my mom's grade school report cards, birthday cards my uncle sent when he was a kid, some kid-written poetry, and oddities like my great-grandfather's Masonic watch fob. Most precious were the letters my grandfather (who I never met) wrote home during WWII, and the photographs that accompanied them. He was a field surgeon in Papua New Guinea during the war, and nobody in our family knew much about his time there. The photographs were amazing, and at some times harrowing. His handwriting was all but undecipherable, but there were captions like "crashed plane after fire went out", "palm trees cut down by bombs". Most of the photos were more innocuous. I was allowed to keep one of them, an amazing accidental double-exposure that looks like a piece of intentional art (the caption reads: "This looks like a spirit picture of me, minus the ectoplasm. Looks [illegible, possibly "good"] for the river and the kangaroos."). Some of the pictures were total mysteries-- people working on the railroad (maybe my great-grandfather was the foreman?), a flooded town somewhere, somewhen. The WWII stuff is a treasure... it contained enough information that we can, finally, look up my grandfather's service history in military databases and maybe find out more about his time in the Pacific. Yesterday I was rousted at the ungodly early hour of 9 AM and went kayaking. We were on a blackwater river (cypress trees emit tannin or something that darkens the water) with marsh and woods on either side. Flowers were blooming everywhere... my mom and aunt can identify them, but that's not one of my skills. General paddling wisdom holds that you should go upstream first and then drift back downstream, but a ways upstream we realized that the water was flowing in the same direction we were paddling. We had failed to take the tide into account. So we drifted up a river, under two highways. I've spent my whole life looking out car windows and seeing little rivers, wondering "where does that go?". It was really interesting to be the one on the river, looking up. I wrecked the trip, though... the boat I had was really awful, with something in the seat jutting into my lower back, and after a while the pain made me irritable. When we went downriver, I ended up giving up and drifting back upstream (so strange!) for a while while the others paddled on. The dark water looked oily, and the reflections in the boat ripples were hypnotic. My frustration at the kayak trip underscored a thread of depression that floated through the entire week. Maybe it came from missing home, or from overexposure to my family. Maybe it was due to my abject failure to achieve my stated purpose for this summer and my general worthlessness as a human being. Who knows? I'm in DC right now-- my back still hurts-- and I hope to drive to Vermont on Monday. Though it'll be ten hours in the car with my mom, which could get interesting. She made me cry on the trip down. Then again, it doesn't take much probing about the state of my life or my prospects for the future to get me to break down. (1 whisper | make me real)