Bleeding Fiction

I've been quiet lately so as not to be a blog-whiner, and I don't have a lot of positive stuff to say right now. The past few months have been sort of... dull, brightened up once in a while by visitors from out of town (and one trip to Norway - which was awesome), and I've also taken some pretty terrible hits that I don't want to talk about. Or blog about, at least. But Halloween was yesterday, and I really need to say something about what a crappy Halloween it was.

Maybe it's just because it stands in counterpoint to last year's Halloween, which was one of the top three, if not the single best, Halloween I've ever had. I worked in an office that didn't just allow us to wear costumes, but actually encouraged it. We spent the day hanging around, goofing off, taking pictures, eating candy and generally having a good time.

I spent some time with friends, watching bad spooky movies, chatting and eating some really, really good food.

And then I went to an awesome Halloween party. There was this amazingly sexy girl there, in this amazingly sexy costume. Two months later, almost to the day, that girl (who was Marie) and I had a date, of sorts, and that began the best relationship of my life.

This year had none of that. No workplace excitement, no costumes, no parties, no friends, no sexy girl who later became my girlfriend. It's like it wasn't Halloween at all.

And all of that was pretty bad, but I think the worst of it was that I didn't get to watch It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. Most folk, I think, know what a big Peanuts fan I am, particularly Linus. So it's a big part of my holiday psyche to watch the specials every year. This year my computer broke down (more on that later), and my downloaded copy of Great Pumpkin became... well... vaporware.

So, bad Halloween.

But I plan to fix all of this next year. By then I will surely be in an office that celebrates. I hope that Marie and I can throw a hell of a Halloween party (loaded statement? Yes. Yes it was.). And BY GOD will I have Great Pumpkin in my hands to watch and enjoy from my couch, with some apple cider and some pumpkin pie!

Sarah, Who Is Awesome, is defending her PhD dissertation tomorrow. I'm not really sure what it's all about, other than "Physics". She told me at one point, and so did The Ogre™, but I've sort of forgotten. Something involving particles, I think. And possibly the acceleration thereof.

I might feel the need to worry over this for some people - I mean, defending a PhD dissertation, that's a big thing, right? - but for Sarah I'm really not going to stress it. After all, she's Awesome.

She'll stand up in front of a committee of professorial-type people - I imagine them all as bearded - and answer their questions with grace and aplomb. What might be difficult for some, she'll breeze over with a wave of her hand. Oh, the committee might send her back for some revisions, of course, but what are a few extra notes to make on a hundred-or-so page paper?

What I'm saying here is that you should all throw a cheer up for Sarah, because she's just about got her PhD and she's Awesome enough to deserve it.

It snowed on me as I was out getting lunch today, and then again while I was coming back from doing laundry. Nothing heavy, and it didn't stick, but... snow? In the first week of November?

Christ.

Don't get me wrong: While the appeal of the stuff may be inversely proportional to how much of it I have to shovel or brush off of my car, I mostly like snow. Snow angels, snowball fights, sledding, curling up on the couch with some cocoa...

But when it starts up a week after Halloween, it makes me nervous for the winter ahead.

One of my students pretty much asked me to join a cult today. He'd stopped in to talk about a few things related to his studies in the US and, as we were wrapping up, he said "Have you ever heard of the Art of Living classes?" I told him I hadn't, so he elaborated, telling me that they have many classes, and the breathing exercises they teach have many therapeutic effects and have helped many people and so on.

It was... nice of him, I guess. And I certainly do exaggerate; Art of Living does actual service projects, has received numerous non-critical write-ups in news magazines, and doesn't seem to demand unwavering loyalty, submission and tons of money from anyone, unlike certain cults I could name.

Even still, I was never asked to join a cult while I lived in Seattle, despite some people's worries.

Honestly, it's shit like this that keeps me going.

There are few things crappier than waking up from a sad dream to the light of a grey sky. Especially when you were already in a crappy mood from the night before. This is silly, but it was Scrubs that did me in.

Last night, they played the episode where Turk is diagnosed with diabetes. When he finally admits this to Carla, who knew all along, she pops right out with "Turk's Diabetes Box," which has insulin and needles and snacks and low-sugar recipes and such.

A while back, when we hadn't been dating too long, Marie and I had a conversation about my mom's kidney disease, and the potential inheritability thereof. A day or so later, she hit in on my diet, encouraging me to eat this food or that food. "They're low sodium and good for your kidneys," she said. I asked if she'd been doing research for me and she smiled and said "of course." I really couldn't imagine anything that was more touching; that was probably the first day that I thought our relationship might last a while.

I do fine, most days. But sometimes a little thing creeps up and reminds me of something past. That's when I really miss Marie.

I'm writing from the road, riding north and just out of NYC on my way back from my best weekend since, let's say, my trip to Norway. That wouldn't be hard, I guess, the rough times I've had lately, but this would've been a good weekend, anyway. I've been drinking steadily since Sunday, though, and that might have something to do with it.

I came down to New York for a professional conference on Saturday and met up with Kim, who I crashed with, when I got off the train in Penn Station. This is Kim from my InterSlice days, and she hasn't got a nickname - I've been trying to pin one to her for years, but nothing's really stuck. She's at NYU now and was going to the conference, too, so it worked out well.

Kim lives at the edge of Boerum Heights in Brooklyn, one of those little historic areas that's a little bit gentrified, row on row of brownstones and old oaks lining the streets. Her place is a two-story townhouse, a little smaller than mine in Syracuse but spacious for the city, with roof access and a little patio out back. NYC's too crowded for me to move back to, but if I lived there that's the sort of place I'd want to stay. Not that I could afford the $1.2 million price tag on the building. Neither can Kim, which is why she rents.

The one thing we could both afford, though, is beer, and Saturday being a friend of hers' birthday we trekked out to Madam X in SoHo to celebrate.

Sunday saw me on a morning work-trip to JFK airport, which was stupid, and on an evening romp with Dan Proctor, Boy Genius, which rocked. There have to be a million bars in the city, but Proctor somehow knows all of the best ones - the quiet little gems that serve amazing burgers and a huge selection of rare imported beers. One of these, George Keeley's, is where we ended up. They'd just run out of Leffe, a chocolate beer Aaron told me about a while back and I'd last had in its native country, Belgium, but I had some Fishhead-Something-or-Other instead, which was good enough to make up for it.

Mr. Proctor and I caught up and talked, like we always do, about women and music. Commiserations flew back and forth on the one and recommendations on the other. I've been told before that when Dan and I go off on music it's easy for us to leave everyone else behind. From the look on Dan's roommate's face the whole night, I guess that must be true. Sorry, Wes!

Monday was the big conference day, and I'm just geeky enough to have thought it was fun. I went to 4 different sessions and I'd say I learned at least something at three of them, which isn't bad. Woo, professional development! I also talked to some reps from this exhibitor called CDS International. They do study abroad programs, including work/study for mid-career development. "Oh?" says I. We talked about a 9-month program they have in Germany - language training, graduate certificate and 2 work units at different German government offices/NGOs in your field of study; travel and insurance is covered, and it's an 1800 Euro a month salary. Not bad.

I missed the deadline for this year by about two months, but the application has a year turn-around time. So I could apply September '08 to start in 2009, or September '09 to start in 2010. That'd be right around the time I'd be ready to leave Seattle for a bit, I think. Not that Germany's top on my list of places to live, but it would be cool anyway. Cooler if I could find similar programs from a similar company in, say, Holland. Or Belgium. Or New Zealand.

The post-conference cocktail hour actually ran for about 3 hours, and I got back to Kim's around 9:30pm, where I hung with her roommate, Heidi. Heidi's a once-and-future Anthropology student, so we clicked pretty well, and we mostly talked about books and papers we'd read and her research interests ("the anthropology of gay tourism"; I guess it's important to study what you're passionate about...). Kim got in an hour later, and we sat around, watching the Breakfast Club and goofing off.

Not much to say for today - I wrapped up my conference attendance this morning, said my goodbyes and caught the train out just before 2pm. Now I've got 4 hours left to Syracuse, the Hudson River wide on my left with rolling hills behind it, and a book or two waiting for me. See you all when my train comes in!

As part of our staff wellness program, my division sponsored a Red Cross CPR course that we staff could elect to attend. I'll jump at any chance to get out of the office for two hours, so away I went. Plus, I figured it's generally a good thing to know how to perform CPR.

A fair amount has changed since the last time I was certified, which was back when I was in the Boy Scouts. Detail stuff, like how to find the point on the chest you compress and the number of compressions per breath.

The instructor was a fairly funny guy but, like most paramedics I've met, had a somewhat macabre sense of humor and a tendency to give out a bit Too Much Information. A lot of what he said, though, was meant to be pretty reassuring; like how we should expect to hear a loud pop when doing CPR on a person - that's the cartilage that holds the breastbone and the ribs together snapping loose. "After that gives," he said, "it's really easy to get good, steady compressions."

The Gates Foundation is advertising a job as a Senior Program Officer, External Relations, Europe, in their Global Health Program. Private industry-level salary, NGO-quality benefits/vacation package, Seattle-based and up to 60%-time travel internationally. Plus, you know, the part where I get to do a great deal of good in the world.

Holy shit do I want this job. It's pretty much ideal. I mean, I'd effectively get to live in Seattle and all of Europe at the same time, I could time vacations with business trips and thereby never have to pay for my own flights, I'd have gobs of time off and a salary to use while I'm taking it.

Unfortunately I'm about 5 years of work and one graduate certificate shy of being qualified. So meanwhile I'll have to content myself with applying for the less lucrative lower-level positions that only do 25% travel (but do it the world over). You know, the jobs that I actually qualify for.

Gotta start somewhere, right?

There's a quote from Sandman that goes "the price of getting what you want is getting what once you wanted." So true, so true.

While I lived in Seattle I'd whine about how Thanksgiving was the one day a year I liked to spend with my family, and how sad I was that I couldn't do that.

Now that I'm back on the east coast and sitting in my parents' living room on the day itself, I can think of maybe three other places I'd rather be.

It was nice to see everyone, don't get me wrong, but the reasons Thanksgiving-with-the-family was so important to me are sort of... gone. I've shifted priorities. I've moved on. I've known that for a few months, I guess; I was comfortably making alternate Thanksgiving plans for next year back in July. But today really drove the point home.

Honestly, it feels a little weird, but also pretty liberating.

I'm not sure why I'm watching the debate tonight. Masochism, maybe. Or because I need a good laugh. I mean, I don't actually agree with any of these guys on almost anything that matters to me, so it's not like any of them are going to get my vote. But here I am and there they are and what they're showing me is just so... weird. Observe:

1. The questioneers are skewing very young. Is that because questions were submitted via YouTube and older people can't use the interweb or because the producers decided to show more young people?

2. These YouTube videos are pretty funny, though. An Uncle Sam cartoon, a guy eating corn, a guy cocking a shotgun... But... this is what now passes for debate in this country? Sad.

2. Anderson Cooper has no control at all over these guys. He's being a total wuss.

3. Number of times Ronald Reagan Invoked: 6. For two hours, I'm honestly a little disappointed.

4. Tancredo says immigration makes it more difficult for us to understand other people. How does that make any sense at all?

5. Why the hell do they keep cutting to a shot of Chuck Norris?

6. The Coors Brewing Company is one of the sponsors of this debate.

7. They all seem convinced that they'll be running to beat Hilary Clinton. I know she's polling ahead right now, but... yeesh.

8. Everyone's solution to repairing America's rep in the Middle East seems to involve killing lots of people. I'm not buying it.

9. Is Gulliani taking credit for the Yankees winning 4 pennants?

The debate ended worse than it began. It just stopped being funny an hour or so in. It got sort of... serious. Without, you know, actually addressing any issue in depth or head on.

Here's hoping the Democrats will keep me more entertained the next time they get together.