Thoughts on Texas

Before I left for Austin, I was a bit nervous. It had been a while since I'd traveled commercial, alone, or since the TSA's full-body scanner came into the equation, and I definitely thought once or twice "Why am I interrupting my comfortable routine again?" The answer always was the same: because routine can be stagnating, because I miss my friends, and that exceedingly good brisket. And once I was in Austin, there wasn't a question that I wanted to be there - I needed to meet certain friend's significant others, belch like I was back in college, and spend some quality time hanging out with friends. My initial nervousness was just inertia, and the trick to overcoming it was to lower the activation energy. In my case, this takes an expiring free ticket + basic planning effort.

Once I got back to San Francisco, I thought "It's so nice to be surrounded by yoga-practicing, composting, vegetable-eating, re-usable-bag-toting, prius-driving hippies again." We choose to live insulated lives. Our friends naturally think like us, and because of this, our views get skewed until I forget that in large parts of the country, a normal Sunday activity is going to church and then going to a BBQ joint/gas station in your Sunday best. This would be untenable with my lifestyle purely from the amount of BBQ sauce I spill on myself, although I did notice a shift in my attitude when I was there. While walking by a family with little girls in fancy dresses, I actually thought "Aw, how cute those little girls look in their matching dresses!" This thought would never have crossed my mind back when My Mom was making Me wear fancy dresses to church. Boy oh boy, I hated those days, and I still haven't forgiven mom for a particular pink flowered-and-belted one that I was forced to take a family portrait in. And as a last parting thought, only in Texas could you build a fire and roast s'mores in 65 degree weather and have it be considered normal behavior. 65 degrees is not Cold Weather!

In December I was up in Oregon for 3 weeks, working 1.5 of those weeks and taking vacation for the rest. On the first weekend there I carpooled up to Fort Lewis with a co-worker and visited my best friend Ali, and we dropped by Olympia for a homemade brunch with C's sister and a walk thru the last farmer's market of the season. We bought these Comice pears that I'm still kicking myself for not buying pounds to turn into pear butter - it was only once we got our 6 pears home and ate one that Ali and I realized we were going to a) need a lot more pears and b) fight over the rest. Somehow one survived to make it to Portland, and even as bruised and battered as it was from the drive, it still impressed my mom. 1-0 local fruit to Costco! Don't get me wrong, I love Costco, but the taste vs availability compromise will hopefully always keep local farmers in business.

I recently read a disturbing article about how I've been writing incorrectly: you can read it here. This is far more disturbing to me than the fact that my astrological sign is no longer the Virgo, which was old and irrelevant news anyways. I've always used two spaces to separate my sentences because I thought that was the correct way; to the extent that I would fight with my phone's auto-complete software to send text messages with two spaces after a period. In this very email, which took shape slower than normal due to twin desires to have a busy life* and write about interesting things, you can see the struggling to adjust. Well, you probably can't see it very clearly, but I've been re-writing this paragraph's sentences and later ones to comply with this life-altering typography rule. Have I mentioned how uncomfortable it is to be wrong?

*Certainly if you ask me "Would you like your life busy or free?" I'll reply that I'd rather be free. And I love weekends when I have nothing planned to do. But when I have so many activities(bi-monthly work trips to Oregon, two soccer teams and a ceramics class, in addition to semi-regular climbing/running outings, an orchid collection, and cooking through our CSA veggies) going on that getting dinner with friends requires planning two weeks in advance, I have to conclude that I must actually like my life to be busy. I'm leaving C out of this because so far he seems content to come along occasionally for the ride...all this busyness is my fault alone. I once remember talking to a friend of mine that constantly complained that she had no time and yet constantly signing herself up for more and thinking "Why are you doing this to yourself?" Nice to meet you Pot, my name is Kettle...have you noticed that we're both black?

We're currently in Jackson Hole, WY enjoying a non-busy weekend. The biggest plan was to cross-country ski, but I'm a bit sick and staying inside the house catching up on my reading and some gorgeous mountain views sounded much more manageable. So far the weather here has been blue skies and just-below freezing temperatures, with a sizeable amount of snow on the ground. C's mom was telling me that the Jackson natives were complaining about the recent blizzard to hit the rest of the country - apparently they think y'all don't appreciate that snow the way they do here, and they'd thank you kindly if you'd return it to it's rightful place.