Back to my old habits

Clearly, given my new found luxury time you would think that I'd at least update this blog more often, but some habits are old and hard to break. Procrastination is my old nemesis (just ask my parents) and therefore I put of to next week what I should be doing today. So, as per my habits, I am taking off for the European vacation on Sunday and I haven't packed, I have about fourteen errands to run, and I am not in my house right now.

I'm at the boy's parents' house. He's up here for work all week, so I thought I'd join him and sit in a vegetative state watching Olympics and reading. I've accomplished that along with developing a strong need to hide in corners and knots in my back. There is often a lot of tension here, and it's not unusual for the family to just sort of let it be that way, but for an outsider and potential in-law it is awkward and weird. More importantly, the boy's mom likes me a lot and talks to me about all of the behavior and some of the background, but it's in a conspiratorial and justifying sort of way. I better understand some of the dynamics but I see a lot of behaviors that I don't expect out of grown-ups. It doesn't help that my family doesn't openly deal with issues and the boy's family does (in a weird privately public sort of way). I don't really mean openly either because there's just a lot of bickering over really dumb things that sits on top of deeply rooted long term problems and "problem management" techniques which have clearly failed. Let's just say that in forty years from now, I truly hope that the boy and I don't have the same relationship his parents have and that our kids are different. I'm not saying I want it to be like my parent's house, but I certainly don't think that I have the genetic make-up to survive for forty years under this must tension and disappointment.

On a lighter note, I'm still working out my cross US trip. I'll probably get to Tucson, Chicago, DC, Minneapolis, and Portland. But, I really need to take care of the scheduling for all of that and see if some of my dear friends will let me crash with them after I get in at a train station at midnight-thirty. Also, I need to price it out because the "unlimited" rail pass is, in fact, not unlimited but only allows for four trips. As you can see, I'll need to make six. So I have to determine which ones I should do on a pass and which I should do out of pocket. Then I have to determine my schedule. It's a boat load of fun and I'm not that good at reading train schedules yet....

So, I'm gonna be gone for reals for about two weeks and then I'll be on the rails for about a month, followed by weekends spent at wedding and then I start to work and then I find out about the bar and then the Holidays. Hopefully, in the mean time I'll start updating here with regular postings about nothing and how it affects me.

I had a couple of good old fashion rants in my head, but I thought I'd start with a question:

How do they make sun-dried tomatoes? I mean, if I leave tomatoes in the sun, they just rot...

Done

Well, I've finished the bar. My brain is broken as far as reasoning skills. But I hopefully will never need to do this again.

Some highlights from the bar:

There was an earthquake toward the end of the first essay writing section. We all felt it, the lights shook. The reaction of the entire room was to look around to see if we weren't imagining it and then to keep typing.

The second day I went into a bathroom stall at lunch and saw a fully enclosed package of trail mix in the toilet, and all I thought was "that sure went through fast." I'm sure that someone had dropped it in the toilet, but really my brain is amused with itself.

The final day nothing really happened to write about except I finished. That's all that matters.

Now, I get to wait until November to find out if I passed. Woo hoo.


Now for getting back to my life, which I don't really know what that means because I've been in school for so long that I haven't had this much time to myself.

I'm gonna go see a movie today. It's called Batman. I'm very excited...

Much love for all the thoughts and love and support.

My niece is one and see has the looks of a troublemaker who is gonna get away with a lot :)