The local news did a feature on the construction of the JWST, the space telescope Billy is working on, which is being built right here at Goddard. You can watch it below, or if that doesn't work, follow this link to watch it on their website.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Oscar Wild(e)
Normally, we take pictures of Oscar when he is doing something funny or cute. Like this day, when he was laying on Vickie's bed a few days after she left, feeling sorry for himself.
But yesterday, he must have been in an especially bad mood, because instead of laying nicely on the bed with Vickie's stuffed panther, Sara, like he's doing above, we found him doing this:
And this happened only a few short hours after he tried to force me to stop studying for my German test. I happened to have my camera sitting on the end table next to me.
Both of these still pale in comparison, however, to the time we once came upstairs and discovered he had done this:
Luckily, my friend Kelsey arrives tomorrow for a 10 day visit, during which he will surely be spoiled with all the attention he has been missing since Vickie headed West.
(Oscar Wilde is a biography of... you guessed it! I'm a bigger fan of Oscar Wilde than I am of Wild Oscar.)
But yesterday, he must have been in an especially bad mood, because instead of laying nicely on the bed with Vickie's stuffed panther, Sara, like he's doing above, we found him doing this:
And this happened only a few short hours after he tried to force me to stop studying for my German test. I happened to have my camera sitting on the end table next to me.
Both of these still pale in comparison, however, to the time we once came upstairs and discovered he had done this:
Luckily, my friend Kelsey arrives tomorrow for a 10 day visit, during which he will surely be spoiled with all the attention he has been missing since Vickie headed West.
(Oscar Wilde is a biography of... you guessed it! I'm a bigger fan of Oscar Wilde than I am of Wild Oscar.)
Sunday, July 18, 2010
The Summons
I've survived week 1 of a my super-busy three week span! Though most of the campus is quiet during the summer, this is actually the busiest time of year for my job. I'm in charge of processing the paperwork and computer data for all of our adjunct lecturers and graduate assistants by July 31, which, not coincidentally, is the final day of my own appointment in the office. We have about 80 graduate assistants and 80 adjunct lecturers in our department, so you can imagine that this process is pretty time consuming. For the past year, I've been filling in for my old full-time officemate, who accepted a job in another department. Several months after she left, they replaced her by promoting another one of my officemates, and then they finally hired someone to replace that officemate, so after I go they will have a full-time person to occupy this job again. I've been trying to do a 40 hour job in 20 hours per week, and though I'm glad I've been able to help the department, I'm thankful to be moving back to teaching in August.
These three weeks are extra busy because in addition to my office job, I've taken on a 6 week Intermediate German class which meets four days a week. I'm taking it to try to reacquire my German proficiency, and after I complete the course, I hope to be able to pass the foreign language exam that's required for my PhD degree. Ultimately, I'd love to get a firm enough command on my German to be able to read German-American immigrant texts from before, during, and after WW1 (though the language was officially outlawed for a while, the stuff is still out there). For now, though, I'm taking one hurdle at a time.
I am really enjoying the German class. I was hoping to audit it, but the German department is forcing me to take it for credit and the grade will show up on my transcript, so I feel some extra pressure to do well. I took four years of German in high school and one semester in college, and though I never reached the level of fluency that I might have attained if I'd traveled to Germany, I was a fairly capable German speaker back then. When I arrived to class on Monday and was handed a "placement quiz," I realized just how much of the language I had lost. I couldn't remember how to conjugate any verbs and I couldn't even think of how to write the plural form of "you." It's really fun to see how quickly it is coming back, though. It's fascinating to me that I can pull words I had all-but-forgotten out of the cobwebs of my brain. Shortly after I answered a yes or no question with "si," I correctly used the word "Schauspieleren," which is German for "actress."
There is a "culture" portion of the curriculum that is essentially unrelated to my reasons for taking the course, but I find it really interesting nonetheless. Some of the more surprising things I've learned in the first week of class include:
-My instructor, who is my age and is working on her PhD in Germanic Studies, was born in East Germany (DDR) and got choked up talking about the fall of the Berlin Wall. She told us that before the wall came down she had never seen a grape or a banana, that her father waited 20 years to be given permission to buy a car, and that she was almost expelled from her school at age 7 for asking what all the blank spaces on the map were. (She says only Communist countries were labelled.)
-She did say she misses the camaraderie her old neighborhood had before the fall of the DDR. She said "we had no money and so everyone was kind."
-My instructor also claims that nobody in Germany flies the German flag or demonstrates German patriotism except during the World Cup, when German flags hang from every window and people paint their faces on match days. She says that if you hung a German flag at any other time, people would think you were a Nazi.
-On a related note, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin was seriously damaged during WWII, but the Germans did not repair it, and it stands as a war memorial. My instructor said they left it alone "so we can never forget what we did."
-She also told us that the US planned to drop an atomic bomb on Dresden but changed their minds. Google hasn't helped me verify the validity of this statement, but when I asked her why we targeted Dresden and not Berlin, she said "because the Germans love Dresden most." This rationale seems to stand up, at least-- my web surfing reveals that the fire bombing of Dresden is believed to have achieved so little military advantage that it is considered a war crime by many and an act of terrorism by others.
-If you are a young American man who would like to date my beautiful German instructor, and you take her to see "Inglorious Basterds," that will be your last date with her.
-The German word for diarrhea translates roughly as "it falls out."
-UMd undergraduates in 2010 make the same jokes about drinking alcohol in Germany that WLHS underclassmen made in 1998. If I had a dollar for every time I'd heard someone say "Bier ist gut!" I could finance a trip to Germany.
Another thing I'm noticing about myself and the German class is how fun it is to work on something completely different than literary studies while still working on my degree. It feels like I'm taking a "break," but at the same time, I still feel productive because I'm being proactive about my degree requirements. I hope it continues to be interesting and fun.
The other highlight of my week was my trip to traffic court. Did I really just write that? Yes, I thought it was BS when I got pulled over just off campus for "running a stop sign." I believe I stopped. Both officers who approached my car peered into my vehicle while they were speaking to me, so I assumed they were looking for someone/something else and would let me go with a warning... but a $90 ticket and 1 point on my license later, I found out they were serious. This marks my first traffic violation since 1998. I decided to go to court, and figured I'd plead guilty in hopes of getting the point taken off my license. After watching a few people go ahead of me, I decided to "explain" that I thought I had stopped but I may have failed to come to a complete stop. The judge issued me "probation before judgment," my fine was reduced to $9.50 plus $25.50 in court costs, and the point was suspended. If you don't care what happened in traffic court, feel free to stop reading, but I find these kinds of interactions very intriguing, so I thought I'd share a few things I learned in court.
1) If you're ticketed by a UMd officer, expect him to show up in court. They seem to have more spare time than other police officers in PG County. Mine entered the courtroom and fist-bumped two bailiffs, the court reporter, and the Spanish translator. At this point pleading guilty felt like an even better idea.
2) When the judge begins his directions with "Make sure your shirttails are tucked in and your pants are around your waist before you approach my bench," he means it. The first guy walked up with an untucked polo shirt and khakis and was promptly instructed to "exit the courtroom, tuck in your shirttails, and return to your seat. Your case will be called again after we've gone through the rest of the docket."
3) When the judge explains how the proceedings will go, listen. He didn't say "If your officer is not present, don't plead guilty," but he said everything short of this to get the idea across. My benchmate was called up after Mr. Shirttails was excused, told by the judge that his officer was not present, and asked how he would plead. His answer? "Um, guilty." Poor kid. The judge told him to sit back down. I said "Did you just plead guilty when your officer is not here?" to which he responded "Oh, God." The officer sitting in front of us turned around, gave him a "What is wrong with you?" look, and gave him some suggestions about asking to change his plea. Everyone else who plead guilty was asked for an explanation and then issued a reduced fine, so I think the judge told him to sit down so he could call him up again at the end after giving him a chance to realize his mistake. I felt bad for him. It's awful going first.
4) If you get a ticket for "operating a bicycle with earphones in both ears," do not: a) claim you did not know it was against the law, b) explain that you're a musical theater student and were listening to classical music very low, c) suggest that you were listening to the music to study for a test that you were going to take when you arrived at your destination, d) claim that the University is responsible for not offering a bicycle safety course, e) answer "the volume was turned down" when the judge asks you "even if you didn't know it was illegal, does it seem safe to ride with headphones on?" Certainly do NOT do all of these things while also adopting an "I'm better than this garbage" attitude. If you do, the bailiff will moan, groan, roll his eyes back in his head, shift his weight, etc. The judge will tell you that ignorance of the law is not an excuse and reduce your fine by only $10 (which will mean your fine has actually gone up due to the court costs). Then, if you snatch the form out of the annoyed bailiff's hand, he will follow you down the aisle and whisper loudly "If you do that again, I will knock you out." (When I went to pay the cashier, this student was registering a complaint about the bailiff. I wish I could have stayed to see how it was resolved.)
5) Beyonce might be in her late 20s, but her "booty is popping like a teenager's" and therefore "Jay-Z knows what he's doing." At least according to the gentlemen discussing it behind me.
I also had my one mile track race Saturday morning. I was hoping to run it in under 7:45 so I could beat my PR as a 13 year old track star (ha!), but it didn't go according to plan. I ran a 7:51 last weekend on the track, and two separate miles in the 7:40s on the treadmill this week, but I finished the race yesterday in 8:01. Like last time, it was about 80 degrees with humidity above 90%, and I could feel the extra heat emanating from the fieldturf surface inside the track. Awful. I've decided that yes, it's hard cardiovascularly to perform well in these conditions, but they ruin my mental approach, too. Normally, I hate getting beaten, and I love chasing people down at the finish. This time it was like I could feel the heat sapping away my will to compete and I just didn't care. I'm not horribly disappointed with 8:01, especially given the conditions, but obviously I feel like I could have done better. After seeing the standings in the Championship series this morning, yesterday's race can be classified as "mission accomplished." I only went because I didn't want to fall behind in the standings, and since most of my "competitors" didn't participate, I actually moved up from 3rd place into 2nd. The girl in first place consistently runs much better times than me, so I don't think I can catch her, but my paces are pretty competitive with everyone else below her, so this was a good boost.
I have another 8k race in about two weeks, and I am crossing all my fingers and toes that the weather cooperates. My good friend Kelsey from back home is visiting, though, and her visit coincides with the run, so it will be fun to have run it with me even if she beats me by several minutes. It would be nice to have cooler weather for her visit in general. I love the heat more than most people, but I'm getting tired of being trapped inside when it looks beautiful out but is so hot that the NWS advises you to avoid being outdoors.
(The Summons is a 2002 novel by John Grisham. In 1994, when I was 12, I got ahold of someone's copy of The Client and then promptly moved on to A Time to Kill, The Firm, and The Pelican Brief. Thereafter I read The Chamber, The Rainmaker, and The Runaway Jury, and The Partner before I lost interest. I don't remember much about them, outside A Time to Kill, which was always my favorite, but this evidently amounts to over 3,600 John Grisham pages read before I was 15. I think this classifies as one of a long line of events which indicated that my reading habits have always been fairly unusual.)
These three weeks are extra busy because in addition to my office job, I've taken on a 6 week Intermediate German class which meets four days a week. I'm taking it to try to reacquire my German proficiency, and after I complete the course, I hope to be able to pass the foreign language exam that's required for my PhD degree. Ultimately, I'd love to get a firm enough command on my German to be able to read German-American immigrant texts from before, during, and after WW1 (though the language was officially outlawed for a while, the stuff is still out there). For now, though, I'm taking one hurdle at a time.
I am really enjoying the German class. I was hoping to audit it, but the German department is forcing me to take it for credit and the grade will show up on my transcript, so I feel some extra pressure to do well. I took four years of German in high school and one semester in college, and though I never reached the level of fluency that I might have attained if I'd traveled to Germany, I was a fairly capable German speaker back then. When I arrived to class on Monday and was handed a "placement quiz," I realized just how much of the language I had lost. I couldn't remember how to conjugate any verbs and I couldn't even think of how to write the plural form of "you." It's really fun to see how quickly it is coming back, though. It's fascinating to me that I can pull words I had all-but-forgotten out of the cobwebs of my brain. Shortly after I answered a yes or no question with "si," I correctly used the word "Schauspieleren," which is German for "actress."
There is a "culture" portion of the curriculum that is essentially unrelated to my reasons for taking the course, but I find it really interesting nonetheless. Some of the more surprising things I've learned in the first week of class include:
-My instructor, who is my age and is working on her PhD in Germanic Studies, was born in East Germany (DDR) and got choked up talking about the fall of the Berlin Wall. She told us that before the wall came down she had never seen a grape or a banana, that her father waited 20 years to be given permission to buy a car, and that she was almost expelled from her school at age 7 for asking what all the blank spaces on the map were. (She says only Communist countries were labelled.)
-She did say she misses the camaraderie her old neighborhood had before the fall of the DDR. She said "we had no money and so everyone was kind."
-My instructor also claims that nobody in Germany flies the German flag or demonstrates German patriotism except during the World Cup, when German flags hang from every window and people paint their faces on match days. She says that if you hung a German flag at any other time, people would think you were a Nazi.
-On a related note, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin was seriously damaged during WWII, but the Germans did not repair it, and it stands as a war memorial. My instructor said they left it alone "so we can never forget what we did."
-She also told us that the US planned to drop an atomic bomb on Dresden but changed their minds. Google hasn't helped me verify the validity of this statement, but when I asked her why we targeted Dresden and not Berlin, she said "because the Germans love Dresden most." This rationale seems to stand up, at least-- my web surfing reveals that the fire bombing of Dresden is believed to have achieved so little military advantage that it is considered a war crime by many and an act of terrorism by others.
-If you are a young American man who would like to date my beautiful German instructor, and you take her to see "Inglorious Basterds," that will be your last date with her.
-The German word for diarrhea translates roughly as "it falls out."
-UMd undergraduates in 2010 make the same jokes about drinking alcohol in Germany that WLHS underclassmen made in 1998. If I had a dollar for every time I'd heard someone say "Bier ist gut!" I could finance a trip to Germany.
Another thing I'm noticing about myself and the German class is how fun it is to work on something completely different than literary studies while still working on my degree. It feels like I'm taking a "break," but at the same time, I still feel productive because I'm being proactive about my degree requirements. I hope it continues to be interesting and fun.
The other highlight of my week was my trip to traffic court. Did I really just write that? Yes, I thought it was BS when I got pulled over just off campus for "running a stop sign." I believe I stopped. Both officers who approached my car peered into my vehicle while they were speaking to me, so I assumed they were looking for someone/something else and would let me go with a warning... but a $90 ticket and 1 point on my license later, I found out they were serious. This marks my first traffic violation since 1998. I decided to go to court, and figured I'd plead guilty in hopes of getting the point taken off my license. After watching a few people go ahead of me, I decided to "explain" that I thought I had stopped but I may have failed to come to a complete stop. The judge issued me "probation before judgment," my fine was reduced to $9.50 plus $25.50 in court costs, and the point was suspended. If you don't care what happened in traffic court, feel free to stop reading, but I find these kinds of interactions very intriguing, so I thought I'd share a few things I learned in court.
1) If you're ticketed by a UMd officer, expect him to show up in court. They seem to have more spare time than other police officers in PG County. Mine entered the courtroom and fist-bumped two bailiffs, the court reporter, and the Spanish translator. At this point pleading guilty felt like an even better idea.
2) When the judge begins his directions with "Make sure your shirttails are tucked in and your pants are around your waist before you approach my bench," he means it. The first guy walked up with an untucked polo shirt and khakis and was promptly instructed to "exit the courtroom, tuck in your shirttails, and return to your seat. Your case will be called again after we've gone through the rest of the docket."
3) When the judge explains how the proceedings will go, listen. He didn't say "If your officer is not present, don't plead guilty," but he said everything short of this to get the idea across. My benchmate was called up after Mr. Shirttails was excused, told by the judge that his officer was not present, and asked how he would plead. His answer? "Um, guilty." Poor kid. The judge told him to sit back down. I said "Did you just plead guilty when your officer is not here?" to which he responded "Oh, God." The officer sitting in front of us turned around, gave him a "What is wrong with you?" look, and gave him some suggestions about asking to change his plea. Everyone else who plead guilty was asked for an explanation and then issued a reduced fine, so I think the judge told him to sit down so he could call him up again at the end after giving him a chance to realize his mistake. I felt bad for him. It's awful going first.
4) If you get a ticket for "operating a bicycle with earphones in both ears," do not: a) claim you did not know it was against the law, b) explain that you're a musical theater student and were listening to classical music very low, c) suggest that you were listening to the music to study for a test that you were going to take when you arrived at your destination, d) claim that the University is responsible for not offering a bicycle safety course, e) answer "the volume was turned down" when the judge asks you "even if you didn't know it was illegal, does it seem safe to ride with headphones on?" Certainly do NOT do all of these things while also adopting an "I'm better than this garbage" attitude. If you do, the bailiff will moan, groan, roll his eyes back in his head, shift his weight, etc. The judge will tell you that ignorance of the law is not an excuse and reduce your fine by only $10 (which will mean your fine has actually gone up due to the court costs). Then, if you snatch the form out of the annoyed bailiff's hand, he will follow you down the aisle and whisper loudly "If you do that again, I will knock you out." (When I went to pay the cashier, this student was registering a complaint about the bailiff. I wish I could have stayed to see how it was resolved.)
5) Beyonce might be in her late 20s, but her "booty is popping like a teenager's" and therefore "Jay-Z knows what he's doing." At least according to the gentlemen discussing it behind me.
I also had my one mile track race Saturday morning. I was hoping to run it in under 7:45 so I could beat my PR as a 13 year old track star (ha!), but it didn't go according to plan. I ran a 7:51 last weekend on the track, and two separate miles in the 7:40s on the treadmill this week, but I finished the race yesterday in 8:01. Like last time, it was about 80 degrees with humidity above 90%, and I could feel the extra heat emanating from the fieldturf surface inside the track. Awful. I've decided that yes, it's hard cardiovascularly to perform well in these conditions, but they ruin my mental approach, too. Normally, I hate getting beaten, and I love chasing people down at the finish. This time it was like I could feel the heat sapping away my will to compete and I just didn't care. I'm not horribly disappointed with 8:01, especially given the conditions, but obviously I feel like I could have done better. After seeing the standings in the Championship series this morning, yesterday's race can be classified as "mission accomplished." I only went because I didn't want to fall behind in the standings, and since most of my "competitors" didn't participate, I actually moved up from 3rd place into 2nd. The girl in first place consistently runs much better times than me, so I don't think I can catch her, but my paces are pretty competitive with everyone else below her, so this was a good boost.
I have another 8k race in about two weeks, and I am crossing all my fingers and toes that the weather cooperates. My good friend Kelsey from back home is visiting, though, and her visit coincides with the run, so it will be fun to have run it with me even if she beats me by several minutes. It would be nice to have cooler weather for her visit in general. I love the heat more than most people, but I'm getting tired of being trapped inside when it looks beautiful out but is so hot that the NWS advises you to avoid being outdoors.
(The Summons is a 2002 novel by John Grisham. In 1994, when I was 12, I got ahold of someone's copy of The Client and then promptly moved on to A Time to Kill, The Firm, and The Pelican Brief. Thereafter I read The Chamber, The Rainmaker, and The Runaway Jury, and The Partner before I lost interest. I don't remember much about them, outside A Time to Kill, which was always my favorite, but this evidently amounts to over 3,600 John Grisham pages read before I was 15. I think this classifies as one of a long line of events which indicated that my reading habits have always been fairly unusual.)
Friday, July 9, 2010
Picture This
Hi everybody! The first week back from vacation has gone quickly. I don't have a lot to say, really, but I wanted to share a few pictures with you from the week.
Oscar was giving me the evil eye for about 48 hours after we returned from vacation, but I pouted until he forgave me.
I've been eating well-- Billy and I went to the Melting Pot to celebrate our anniversary (thanks for all your various well-wishes through the blog, email, facebook, snail mail, and texts!), and then somehow, I managed to get through an entire meal at the Cheesecake Factory the next evening with Katie and Anne-Marie, my good friends and collaborators over at Scholar Style Guide.
The most exciting part of my week, outside spending time with Billy, Oscar, and the girls has been the MAIL! Look what came first!
Now I not only have my Master's Degree, I also have my Master's Diploma! I know there are people who might say this is "just a piece of paper," and yes-- the things I've learned and the way these two years of education have changed my life mean more to me than having the degree or the "honors, rights, and privileges" that go along with it. But I worked my ass off for this piece of paper, and so many people have made sacrifices to help me to earn it that I was giddy when it arrived!
And THEN! My birthday came a few weeks early when our Legg Mason tickets arrived!
As you can tell, Billy and I will again be spreading out my birthday celebration for the entire first week of August. I'm excited that Kelsey's upcoming visit will coincide with the beginning of the tournament and that I'll get to take in matches with Billy and Danielle, plus I'm hoping Katie and Anne-Marie will join us for one or two sessions, as well. I'm kind of bummed that Juan Martin del Potro won't be able to defend his title this year, but the list of players is still pretty exciting. Aside from Andy, I'm most looking forward to seeing Robin Soderling, who entered last year's tournament but went out with an injury before I was able to see him play. Word on the street is that he hits the ball harder than anyone on tour, and I can't wait to see that up close. We'll also get to see Isner, Querrey, Berdych, Cilic, Hewitt, Baghdatis, Wawrinka, Fish, and Ginepri. Plus, you better believe I'll be shooting eye daggers at Yen-Hsun Lu! (And they printed the full price on the tickets instead of the discounted price we paid, but they retracted our access to the Courtside Clubhouse. What gives?!)
I hope you all had a good week, as well, and that you're able to enjoy a restful and restorative weekend! I have to practice a one mile sprint for my race next weekend and get ready for my German class to start up on Monday, but we're also planning on catching a Baysox game with Danielle.
(Picture This is a really bizarre novel by Joseph Heller. I've never had an occasion to read it, but it's on my radar because of his experimentation with temporality and his tweaking of the genre of historical fiction.)
Oscar was giving me the evil eye for about 48 hours after we returned from vacation, but I pouted until he forgave me.
I've been eating well-- Billy and I went to the Melting Pot to celebrate our anniversary (thanks for all your various well-wishes through the blog, email, facebook, snail mail, and texts!), and then somehow, I managed to get through an entire meal at the Cheesecake Factory the next evening with Katie and Anne-Marie, my good friends and collaborators over at Scholar Style Guide.
The most exciting part of my week, outside spending time with Billy, Oscar, and the girls has been the MAIL! Look what came first!
Now I not only have my Master's Degree, I also have my Master's Diploma! I know there are people who might say this is "just a piece of paper," and yes-- the things I've learned and the way these two years of education have changed my life mean more to me than having the degree or the "honors, rights, and privileges" that go along with it. But I worked my ass off for this piece of paper, and so many people have made sacrifices to help me to earn it that I was giddy when it arrived!
And THEN! My birthday came a few weeks early when our Legg Mason tickets arrived!
As you can tell, Billy and I will again be spreading out my birthday celebration for the entire first week of August. I'm excited that Kelsey's upcoming visit will coincide with the beginning of the tournament and that I'll get to take in matches with Billy and Danielle, plus I'm hoping Katie and Anne-Marie will join us for one or two sessions, as well. I'm kind of bummed that Juan Martin del Potro won't be able to defend his title this year, but the list of players is still pretty exciting. Aside from Andy, I'm most looking forward to seeing Robin Soderling, who entered last year's tournament but went out with an injury before I was able to see him play. Word on the street is that he hits the ball harder than anyone on tour, and I can't wait to see that up close. We'll also get to see Isner, Querrey, Berdych, Cilic, Hewitt, Baghdatis, Wawrinka, Fish, and Ginepri. Plus, you better believe I'll be shooting eye daggers at Yen-Hsun Lu! (And they printed the full price on the tickets instead of the discounted price we paid, but they retracted our access to the Courtside Clubhouse. What gives?!)
I hope you all had a good week, as well, and that you're able to enjoy a restful and restorative weekend! I have to practice a one mile sprint for my race next weekend and get ready for my German class to start up on Monday, but we're also planning on catching a Baysox game with Danielle.
(Picture This is a really bizarre novel by Joseph Heller. I've never had an occasion to read it, but it's on my radar because of his experimentation with temporality and his tweaking of the genre of historical fiction.)
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
The Real Thing
In "The Real Thing," Henry James writes,
"It was a real marriage, an encouragement to the hesitating, a nut for pessimists to crack."
Happy third anniversary, Billy. I love you. Thanks for being the other half of my realest thing!
"Third" anniversary is a little misleading, though. Here we are along the way...
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
(You can read the full text of "The Real Thing" here. And you should. It's one of my favorite short stories. It asks you to consider the tough questions, like: What is the real thing? When is the real thing different from the ideal thing? What do we do when we recognize that the real thing doesn't promise what we thought it did? When are art and the real thing incompatible? When is the real thing more important than art? Of course it asks these questions. It's Henry James.)
Sunday, July 4, 2010
On the Beach
Hi everybody! We're home from the Outer Banks in North Carolina! There's a lot to recap, so I'll just try to give you a brief sketch of what our trip was like. (And you can click any of the photos to enlarge them.)
Wright Brothers National Memorial: They had some interesting stuff there, but the park ranger who gave the talk about how the Wright Brothers figured out how to fly bored us to sleep. They did have a replica of the plane, though, so we learned how they were able to "drive" it. Mostly I left there thinking, "the people who knew these guys must have thought they were out of their minds until they succeeded... and then, maybe still." It does make you stop for a minute to realize how far we've come with flight in under 100 years, though.
Kill Devil Hills vs. Nags Head: Having never been down to OBX before, Billy and Patti spent a lot of time trying to decide on the best place to stay. As a whole, we found that Nags Head had bigger, fancier houses than KDH, but our oceanfront condo in KDH was really nice. It also stuck out farther than the buildings around it, so from our balcony we could see a long way down the beach in both directions. Kitty Hawk seemed like a step down from KDH. We also headed several miles north to Duck, which looked like a cool little town even though it's situated on the sound side of the "island" rather than the ocean side, but the traffic up there was so bad that we didn't even make it to Corolla, the northernmost town. Initially I wanted to head all the way south to Cape Hatteras, but after reading that the lighthouse is currently under construction and surrounded by scaffolding, I figured we could pass.
Running on the Beach: I went for runs on two different mornings, right after sunrise. I loved it! I could hear the ocean even over my headphones, and I liked being able to walk out into the water after I finished my run. On the first day, I ran barefoot, which I learned as a bad idea after I got blisters on the bottoms of my toes. I can say for sure, though, that regular beach running would help you develop some awesome calf muscles.
Beach! Almost everyone raves about the Outer Banks, but a few people told us that the beach was narrow and rocky. The beach out front of our condo was great, though. It was fairly narrow, but it never got too crowded, so that just meant we didn't have to walk very far to get to the water. I did find that some areas were very rocky or especially narrow when I ran along the beach, but the note inside our condo said they had a "push" after the last big storm, so I think that must have made a big difference.
Waves and Sun: The weather was in the upper 90s for the first two days, and this caused upwelling (which Billy explained to us), so the water was very, very cold. This made for two shorter days at the beach on Monday and Tuesday, since it was too hot to sit in the sun for an extended time and the water was too cold to get in. On Wednesday it was rainy, so we drove around and did some sightseeing, but Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were pretty nice. It was in the 70s and 80s, and the upwelling stopped, so the water warmed up. I really enjoyed sitting out in the sun, and I got a lot of reading done!
Activities: We spent most of our time at the beach, but we also checked out a few of the sights. We attended the Lost Colony outdoor play on Manteo Island, and though I wasn't really sure what to expect, I quite enjoyed it. I learned enough about the Lost Colony of Roanoke to make me want to look up the historical facts online, so I could tell you all about it now! We checked out a few surf shops, which I always enjoy visiting, and found some good souvenirs. We played the mandatory beach getaway game of miniature golf, and Billy was kind enough to play poorly enough to ensure that I did not have the worst score in the family. (I don't know when I got so bad at this. I used to excel at miniature golf. At least I did get one hole in 1.) We also visited the Nags Head Fishing Pier, where we saw the most elaborate fishing set-ups I've ever seen. I thought one guy had caught several fish until I realized the ones I thought he had caught were just bait. It reminded me of the scene in The Old Man and the Sea where we find out how precisely he takes care of his fishing lines. I didn't know you could do that off a pier!
Tennis: Yes, I went away during the second week of Wimbledon. Even worse, I did this with a full expectation that Andy Roddick was going to win the title this year. I'm not exaggerating here-- I truly believed he was going to win it all. Billy planned ahead to make sure the condo had a decent TV and cable. I planned to set aside some time on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to watch Andy's matches. We'd talked about coming home Saturday night in order to be home in time for Sunday's final, even though checkout was not until Sunday. But... Andy lost on Monday to Yen-Hsun Lu, someone I've never even heard of. In only the FOURTH ROUND! I. was. crushed. And then Wednesday was rainy, so I would have had plenty of time to watch his quarterfinal match. Instead I watched Federer lose to Berdych and Djokovic manhandle Lu. I was thankful to be at the beach when I was dealt this crushing blow so I could forget about it more quickly. Watching Nadal hit the cover off the ball in the final made it feel a little better, too. I don't think I could have stood to watch anyone else raise the trophy. I mean it; I would have had to turn it off. Only a month until the Legg Mason!
I think that's about it as far as what we "did." I really enjoyed getting away and spending some time with the DePriests near the ocean. I love being at the beach because I like sitting out in the sun, but every time I go back I also remember how calming I find it to be near the ocean. The repetitiveness of the waves and the permanent presence of their sound really mellow me out and help me to think about things from a different perspective. I've been "off" of school for over a month now, but this single week at the beach did more to help me calm down and recharge than all that previous time off did. I even got some work done for the class I'll be teaching in the fall, and that helped me start to get excited about making the switch to teaching. Only one month left in the office!
Oscar's glad we're home, too! Now he can recover from his week at Camp Nancy!
(On the Beach is a novel by Nevil Schute about what people in Australia do when faced with the knowledge that nuclear war has killed the rest of the world and is coming for them next. It sounds kind of depressing but I really enjoyed it when Mrs. Hartfeil assigned it to us our senior year of high school. In fact, the girls and I took a photo of ourselves reading On the Beach on the beach at Outdoor School. Luckily, I have no expectations that Andy Roddick will ever with the Australian Open, or we might have the makings of On the Beach II when we are in Australia next year.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)