NYC, What Is It About You?

See, from time to time I can quote musicals that aren't Les Misérables!

When I first started scheming this little adventure and I was thinking I would be going alone, my plan was to get an Airbnb somewhere for a night or two, see Les Mis, visit the Strand Bookstore, and then take in whatever I could of New York in whatever time I had left. (MoMA & FAO Schwarz were high on the list, until FAO closed the week before we went. I'm still mad.) And while I agree that's a crazy way to attempt one's first trip to New York, my only reason for this trip was to see Ramin Karimloo as Valjean while I still could, so the rest could wait.

Of course, that turned out to be not quite what happened, because Keely was able to come along and "a day or two" in NYC quickly turned into a long weekend in NYC, which meant we could add a second show (It Shoulda Been You, recap of which is coming eventually, I promise!) and add a few more things to our list.

We ran across the New York City Pass and ultimately decided that it was a good way to see a whole bunch of things in a short period of time. We were able to hop from one attraction to another without feeling like we were wasting money on entrance fees to only be places for an hour or two. (And while we could have spent an entire day in places like the Met or MoMA, other things like Top of the Rock or the Empire State Building are really not places where you'd spend a whole day, no matter how much money you hand over to get in.)

So, here's what we did with our five days (I am so not looking up the links to all of these, so you're on your own for Googling):

Grand Central Station

Rockefeller Center

Top of the Rock

Central Park

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Guggenheim Museum

Times Square

It Shoulda Been You at Brooks Atkinson Theatre

The Museum of Modern Art

Les Misérables at Imperial Theatre

Discovery Times Square

Madame Tussauds

Chelsea Market

A Chelsea Market bookstore's
plea for people to stop stealing.

The High Line

City Sightseeing Cruise

Brooklyn Bridge Park

Bryant Park
Went by the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (New York Public Library), but had just missed closing time

Empire State Building

Strand Bookstore

Forbidden Planet
And Strawberry Fields in Central Park before we headed out on Monday

This is actually the Sheep Meadow in Central Park, but we
walked through Strawberry Fields to get here.

Obviously, with packing this much stuff into so short a time, I am probably the wrong person to ask for recommendations on anything. But if you do want my thoughts on what I did see, ask away & I'll do my best to answer.

But Tomorrow Never Came

Yeah, I know, I promised you other New York things. And you believed me? That was just silly. It's still coming, but I'm trying to get my photos off my phone and into a more usable spot, and in the meantime it's always a good day for more Les Misérables. Yes, believe it or not, I left things out yesterday and still have more to say.

Saturday night, Keely was reading Broadway news or something and mentioned that Kyle Jean-Baptiste had been Valjean just a couple of nights before (making Broadway history as both the youngest and the first African-American man to play Valjean). And to think of all the times that I've wondered if Ramin Karimloo wasn't a bit of a young Valjean... never mind about that, then. (Since the character ages 20 years in the course of the show, I suppose there's a wide range of right ages to be to play Valjean, after all.)

Incidentally, the people next to us in the theatre had tickets for Saturday's show without knowing anything about the cast, they didn't know Ramin is leaving soon and Alfie Boe is joining the cast--they just love Les Misérables and were able to enjoy the show without all the obsessive whatever it is that I do. While we were chatting, the guy said, "I really wasn't expecting to see a 30-year-old playing Valjean," and it took everything in me not to correct him with Ramin's actual age. (I swear, I only know it because he and I were born in the same year. I've no idea how old anyone else on Broadway is.) (Except Kyle Jean-Baptiste, but that's because it's been in the news for a couple days. I'll forget soon.) Instead, I just agreed that Ramin is young and we moved on to talking about other stuff.

Anyway, Keely said it was a good thing we hadn't gotten tickets for Thursday, I said I wouldn't have done anyway since I knew Ramin always has Thursdays off, Keely might have said something about me being a weirdo stalker. (Just kidding, I'm the one who says that. But she wasn't surprised that I was so well informed.)

After the 25th anniversary of Les Mis in 2010, the show has been re-orchestrated, re-imagined, and re-whatevered so that there are significant differences from what the show is now versus what it was the first couple of times I saw it--the characteristic turntable, for example, is gone. (See more changes through the years in this article.) I noticed the Broadway version also has a couple lines from the 2012 movie that I've never heard on stage before. Every show is in a constant state of tweaking, obviously, because that's how you get an amazing product night after night-- by refining what's not working, changing things as needed, etc. But the changes as the show gets older are one reason I keep going back to see it every couple of years--it's literally never been the same show twice.

One final thought before I really do leave this alone for a while. In the 2012 movie, as well as the book, Courfeyrac is Gavroche's big brother among Les Amis. In the stage version, it's usually Grantaire who looks after Gavroche. I don't know if this is a change from before-- the first couple of Grantaires I saw were comic relief, with hardly any emotional swings (although "Drink With Me" was always a low point). At least one of them sat at a table drinking throughout the barricade scene, and that's where he was shot, so there wasn't a lot of time for noticing whether he interacted with the smallest Ami. For that matter, there's not a lot to distinguish movie Grantaire from the other Amis, except that he climbs the stairs at the end to be killed alongside Enjolras. (Sob!) So for Grantaire and Gavroche to have that connection on the stage does make Grantaire more interesting, more emotional and less comic, even if it does leave Courfeyrac without a lot to do except take the watch since they might attack before it's light. (And by the way, it was in part Grantaire's interactions with Gavroche at Saturday's show that made me go looking to see if this was the same actor I'd seen before.)

And with that, I really am done. Other New York adventures still coming, once my phone starts to cooperate.

Here They Sang About Tomorrow

This post is going to be long. Here's the short version: I went to see Les Misérables on Broadway over the weekend, was completely blown away, as I so often am, and am now here to tell you about it. Feel free to skip to the end if you're not into the details, of which there are many.

Outside the Imperial
Theatre. Yes, he does
rip his shirt open during
the show. Yes, he does
work out a lot.

So! It all started when Ramin Karimloo, who is currently playing Valjean, announced that he's leaving the show at the end of August and he has no plans to play Valjean again. So I called up my friend Keely, we started plotting, and the upshot was that we planned a fun weekend in New York that would include watching Les Misérables, and for good measure, we threw in a trip to It Shoulda Been You. (Yes, I absolutely should have known better than see two plays in a single weekend. My brain is more addled than usual.)

Here we go, all the stuff I loved:

Earl Carpenter (Javert): I had already bought our tickets before he joined the cast, but was pretty excited to see him. He was one of Chadwick's favourite actors, and sometime a few weeks ago I thought, "Oh, I haven't told Chad yet that I'm going to see Earl Carpenter! Oh..." So it was special for me to see him, even though, and perhaps especially because, Chadwick couldn't.

Brennyn Lark (Éponine): Holy smokes, what a gorgeous voice. And she came to stage door, so I have her autograph on my playbill.

I've never been to stage
door before this weekend.
Definitely going to do that
more often.

Chris McCarrell (Marius): Early on in my Les-Mis-loving days, all I cared about was Marius and Cosette, but once I started paying attention to other characters (i.e., Enjolras), I realised that Marius can be kind of annoying, a perception that was not helped by reading the book, where he's even worse. This Marius, however, is delightful and not annoying. He sings a phenomenal "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables." Also, he's quite possibly the prettiest Marius I've ever seen.

Wallace Smith (Enjolras): Enjolras will always be my favourite. Wallace Smith has a beautiful voice, fantastic stage presence, and is altogether awesome.

So, a quick note: in 2012, the national tour of Les Misérables came through Austin, and Chadwick and I went to go see it. Back then, inexplicably, I hadn't yet started my current tradition of following cast members on Twitter right after seeing the show... which is a pity, because if I had, I'd have been a lot more familiar with a lot more of the cast that I got to see this weekend. Also inexplicably, the 2012 Les Mis is the only show that I've seen in the last 15 years that I don't still have the playbill for (or if I do, it's hidden deep in the bottom of goodness-knows-what). Based on some intense Googling the last couple of days, at least four people I saw in that cast in 2012 are on Broadway now. (And yes, I really am that obsessive. If it helps, I'm like this with all my hobbies.) And with that in mind...

My new favourite Grantaire.
One result of all this intense
Googling is that I've been
reminded that I of all people
shouldn't make assumptions
about someone else's age.

Joseph Spieldenner (Grantaire): is one of the people I'm almost positive I saw in 2012, also as Grantaire. Why am I so sure of this? Chadwick and I were up in the rafters for that show, so we couldn't see faces, just body language, but I was so impressed by that Grantaire's acting choices (which were significantly different than any other Grantaire we'd seen up to that point) that I talked about him most of the way home. On Saturday, it started kicking against my attention that this Grantaire was acting in similar ways, but since I was close enough to see his face, my first impression was more about how emotional he was. (What I actually thought to myself was, "Wow, this is a really weepy Grantaire.") It wasn't until I got back to the hotel and Googled a few of the cast that I saw that he was in the touring company about that time--and the other shoe dropped. I was so curious that I even tweeted him to ask, which I normally don't like to do, because that's one step too close to creepy stalker fandom for me. (Although given the length of this paragraph, that ship may have sailed.)

Anyway, after seeing some 2012 tour press and one magical cast list, I'm almost positive it's the same guy. I spent some time searching for the old playbill, with no luck, and finally had to stop to wonder why this is so important. This weekend, this experience of my first Broadway musical(s), were more things that Chadwick and I should have had together but didn't. But since we were both impressed by Grantaire in 2012, if it was Joseph Spieldenner we saw together, that's one less thing he missed and one more thing we shared. And that's why it matters. It's a small thing, but I'm hanging on to small things right now.

And speaking of... "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables": It was one of Chadwick's favourite songs, and that alone was enough to make me pay extra attention and already be a bit emotional before it started. At the end of "Turning," the women all left candles sitting on the stage, which had me wondering what was happening next. All the students who died on the barricade come on stage during "Empty Chairs", and each one took one of the candles and blew it out before leaving the stage again. My description can't possibly do it justice, so let's just say it's a good thing I had a hankie. It was a powerful moment.

"Lovely Ladies": This has always been the saddest part of the show for me, ever since the first time the line, "Only joking, dearie knows her place," first registered in my brain during a show (it's not in the soundtrack I own). Incidentally, you know Bamatabois, the guy who gets Fantine arrested after this song? Also played by Joseph Spieldenner. I was in awe when I re-read the program and saw that-- I mean, I get that the audience isn't supposed to catch on to who all each member of the ensemble plays, but I try to keep track of them on purpose because I like being awed by the range of abilities Les Mis actors have. In this case? I did not even notice, because the characters were so different. (And Bamatabois was standing right in front of me, close enough for me to see all the blood on his face.) I'm still both blown away and heartbroken at the same time that such a captivating Grantaire is also such a vile bad guy.

I was cool with just getting a pic with
the poster instead of getting one
with Ramin at stage door. His
autograph is one of the ones on my
playbill, but no live pic. 

And finally... Ramin Karimloo (Jean Valjean): He's the reason I went, so naturally I was not surprised at how amazing his performance was. I saw him in concert a couple of years ago on his Broadgrass tour, which was delightful, but seeing him live and in character is something else altogether. Three hours is just not long enough, which is probably why I've spent the last three days in a fog thinking about this show. I'm definitely grabbing any chance I get to see him live again.

So, if you're still with me, you deserve a medal! Unfortunately, Thénardier stole them all. Anyway, that was my experience at Les Misérables on Broadway. Totally worth it, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

And since Jenni asked so nicely, other highlights of my New York trip are coming soon. I did see a few things in between trips to the theatre.

Perchance to Dream

I have dozens of pictures of my
grandmother and I together. Can I find
any of them? Of course not. So, my
granny is on the left and her mother
(who passed away a few years ago) is
on the right. Did I inherit the genes to
have such nice dark hair well into my
70s? I did not. 

I don't know if I ever mentioned this on the blog, but my paternal grandmother passed away two weeks before Chadwick did. Denise & I made a mad dash up to Indiana when the docs said she had less than a week left, only to arrive a few hours too late to see her alive. Of course, we knew when we saw her last September that we were probably saying good-bye, and that this is one of the life choices we made when we decided that a couple states' distance never hurt anybody, but that doesn't make it any easier.

But of course, that loss was overshadowed by the much closer and much less expected loss a couple of weeks later, so much so that I have a hard time remembering that she's gone. When I ordered Mother's Day flowers this year, I was halfway through typing in her address before I remembered that no one was there to receive them. I've lost count of how many times I've thought about calling her, only to realise that hers is one of the phantom numbers in my phone. And, just this week, I've started dreaming about her again.

For years and years, this has been my favourite pic of my
paternal grandparents. My granddad died when I was five
months old. He & I shared a birthday, and I get physically
ill when I think about all the joint birthday parties we missed
out on and all the fun we could have had. So I try not to think
about it a lot. (My dad is the kid on the far left that Grandpa
has such a tight hold on. If you know my dad, you know that
was probably out of necessity.) 

I've started dreaming about Chadwick, too, which has led to a bout of not wanting to get out of bed in the morning. I only see him when I'm sleeping, I can only talk to him then-- or rather, that's the only time he can answer me. And that being the case, why on earth would I ever want to wake up?

I'm not really surprised I'd start dreaming about Grandma and Chadwick at about the same time, considering how close together their deaths were. My grandmother and I don't really talk in my dreams; she's just there, the same presence she's been all my life. The reality that I'll never again open my mailbox and find one of her letters is starting to settle over me. Even into her 80s, she had beautiful handwriting, the kind that's so pretty it's almost unreadable. :) Even into her 80s, she wrote long letters full of the kind of insider information about various family members that none of them would ever tell me themselves. Now my only news source is what they're willing to tell me on Facebook.

No dreams can bring back what we've lost.

Wow, July 1?

I'm 14 hours into Camp NaNoWriMo and I still haven't decided what I'm writing. Thank goodness for the variable word count goals during Camp NaNo. Missing a couple days won't hurt too much!

(Yes, I know, blog posts from me four days in a row. There must be some sort of apocalypse happening.)

I just dug this up off my blog archives.
I don't remember where I found it.
I can't narrow it down in Google images.
Basically, this is not my pic, so thanks
to whoever made it.
At least there's a copyright on it.

My real reason to post today, though, isn't to be frantic about Camp NaNo. Rather, I'm here to say HAPPY CANADA DAY!! to all my bloggy friends from the north. I hope you're having a fantastic holiday. If you're Canadian and Camp NaNo-ing, then may your celebrations inspire you to write like you've never written before.

So, my narrowed-down choices for Camp NaNo? Either carry on with my thing about a professional knitter that I abandoned during NaNoWriMo last year, or pick up my favourite set of characters who will never see the light of day but who are so much fun to write and see what I can do with them. I may have to flip a coin.

One Last Thing...

... and then I'll be back to blogging about whatever comes to mind instead of Supreme Court cases.

The positive comments I've gotten from Christians have well outnumbered the negative ones. Some of them from surprising people. Most of them have been shared privately, because not everyone is in a position where they can rock the boat without losing the influence they have, so they have to be more subtle. I get that and totally respect those who can do subtlety.

I speak what I do, at least this time, because I can. I'm not going to lose my job over this. I may lose friends, and while I'm willing to fight to keep friendships intact, my best friend in the whole world is already gone beyond reach, so it's not like I have to be scared of the worst that can happen there. A bunch of strangers have suddenly found out how disjointed and nonsensical my writing can be when I'm trying to get a lot of thoughts out in a hurry, but hey, better I hear that now than after I've self-pubbed something awful, yes?

But here's something: I'm not brave. I'm frustrated. I'm not a good ally. I came along late in the game to ask people to find something else to complain about for a while. I haven't even bothered reading the comments I've gotten on Facebook past the first few, because the private messages I was getting were a lot more interesting. These are not the actions of a brave person. It's just me, and I'm pretty boring.

Anyway. So Camp NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow. I've never done any kind of NaNoWriMo without also having background homework. I don't know how one does just NaNo, but I'm about to find out.

Disappointment

It took me a day and a half to change my Facebook photo after I first thought about it, and that's because it takes me a little bit of time to decide whether it's worth it to upset people that I care about.

From lusi on freeimages.com.

Goodness knows I know what it's like to be disappointed by friends. After years of treating friendship far too lightly, I finally learned to give more gravity to how I approach other people. Gravity can hurt when things go in an unexpected direction. The people I care about are only human, after all.

Which leads me to now, and considering who among my dearest friends, people whose friendship is well worth fighting for, would be surprised by me taking a stand they disagreed with. Who would have a hard time with this. Who might need to step back from our online friendship for a while.

So yesterday's post was in part the beginning of a conversation. A conversation about whether friendship can survive disagreement. An acknowledgment that people may want to stop talking to me for a while. A chance for them to see that I don't do things that I know might cause a rift without putting some thought into it first.

I mostly haven't heard from those friends yet. Maybe they didn't notice (I don't really think their worlds revolve around me, after all), maybe they're less surprised than I thought they would be, or maybe they just need time to think things over, too.

Because friendship, when you agree AND when you disagree, is worth fighting for.

Why I Changed My Facebook Photo

Like many others, I've changed my Facebook and Twitter photo to this:

Want one like it? Get yours here.

... to the shock and dismay of many who know me and apparently thought they had me pegged.

I knew people would be shocked. I knew some would be downright angry and disappointed. And I know some people will probably put this down to my grieving and being really confused right now, etc. etc.

The thing is, my position is actually that the government should get out of marriage altogether. We've built so many systems around whether people are married or not (I've spent years checking that box on oh-so-many forms), but I remain unconvinced that it's the government's business who I'm spending my life with.

So much for what I think about that. Why change my public photo and upset so many friends and family members?

1. I have a lot of good friends who get a lot of ugliness from people who call themselves Christians. It's time for me to stand with them for a while.

2. I see so much nonsense, from all ranges of the ideological spectrum, on my feed every day. And while I'm chuffed to have such diverse friends, it's also wearing on me. I have an "unfollow without remorse" policy, meaning that if I'm just getting tired of what someone is saying and can't read another word, I click the button to get them out of my newsfeed. But I'm tired of doing all the work, so I'm using this to weed out the friends list a bit.

3. I think it's well past time for Christians to stop spending so much energy on this and redirect that energy into other things instead of acting like the whole Bible is about gay marriage and abortion. Let's go picket outside the Golden Corral for a while (gluttony). Let's protest at the Lexus dealership and the Neiman Marcus (materialism). Let's stop being okay with people driving to our churches in cars that cost more than some of our neighbours make in a year, and walking into our sanctuaries wearing clothes so expensive that the money spent could have fed a family of four for two weeks. Let's go after the very real problems of poverty and homelessness, to name only two, in our cities instead of thinking it's their own fault for getting into that mess (loving your neighbour, doing for the least of these... I seem to recall Jesus saying something about that).

Do I believe that changing my Facebook and Twitter photo and shocking a few of my friends (some of them in a good way, btw-- there are people who didn't know I had it in me to take a stand!) will accomplish this? Of course not. I'm a lot more likely to get result #2 than result #3. But my silence is not always golden, and in this, I'll risk having fewer friends for the sake of using my voice.

(FYI, I won't delete comments for disagreement, but I will for ugliness. And if you leave me a long rant, I'm probably not going to read it, because I have other things to do. To paraphrase Javert, "Save your breath and save your keystrokes.")

A Small Forest

It would probably be easier
to just have a bonfire.
Image from mordoc on
freeimages.com.

You hear stories, especially on cable TV, about people who manage to live completely off the grid with no paper trail documenting their life. I suppose there are many reasons that kind of lifestyle would be attractive, but right now, there's just one that is calling out to me: No paperwork.

Seriously, why does life take so much paperwork? Even death takes a ton of paperwork. I have days when I feel like Chadwick's life has been reduced to a file drawer full of paper. This human with a huge personality and a capacity to care so much about so many things is now a never-ending series of pages with the "Deceased" box checked and my name on the "Surviving Spouse" line. Except it will end, one of these days, and I'll be left with memories and a file folder. 

And even though all my bills are paperless, in my attempt to stop this single-handed deforestation, I have a box of notices that needs to be shredded and recycled. A project that I need to finish soon, mind you, because I'm going to need a place to store that file folder.

If that's all I have left, I'm hanging on to it as tightly as I can.

Library Love

Image from Goodreads.

I just finished reading This Book is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians can Save Us All, by Marilyn Johnson. And it's fantastic. Biggest takeaway: Learn more about the Connecticut Four, who are the subject of Chapter Five of this book. They fought back when the FBI demanded information about who'd been using the library computers. Learn about them-- this is the kind of thing we need to know.

If you read the Goodreads reviews, you'll see the responses are mixed. The points about the book being disjointed and not having a clear idea of what it's about are fair enough. Especially interesting, IMO, are the reviews from librarians, since this book is about their field.

However! I loved it, in no small part because libraries have kept me reading my entire life. I just dashed off a Goodreads review of Full House, a book I read as a freshman in high school that was solidly among my list of books to never, ever take home, because my parents would have freaked out. Our fantastic little library in my hometown kept me sane as a teen, allowing me to escape from the weird that is high school and my parents' insistence on keeping the TV running all the time. (Sidebar: when my family raced to my side after Chadwick passed away, they went something like 36 hours without the TV on because we just don't watch it that much, until my father finally couldn't take it any longer and turned it on. And that's what happens to people who don't spend enough time in a library.)

As much as I would love to own many of the books that I read, as much as I want to support authors, my book buying budget is sadly limited to buying just a handful of books a year, and in recent years that budget has been entirely spent on textbooks. So I use the library as my second bookshelf, so to speak, until such time as I'm independently wealthy and can build my own library with a small bedroom and kitchen attached.

Do you use your local library? What's your favorite thing about it? If you don't use the library-- why not?

Whether There Will Be Weather

Tomorrow is a "one water bottle, two layers of
sunscreen" day,  for those keeping score at home.

The last few days have been bad ones, in terms of getting through the day still standing. In terms of diving deeper into the soul-crushing side of grief. In terms of, I just don't want to do this anymore.

So when I checked the weather a few minutes ago, my second thought after, "Ugh, hot," was "Ugh, what does it matter?" It's something that seems so important, what the skies are doing to us at any moment, but checking it right now just looks like another weirdo human thing I do out of habit, a weirdo human thing Chad will never do again.

And of course, my more rational side knows that truthfully it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, what the weather is like in Austin one day in June, but tomorrow morning at 8 AM when I'm on a bike to ride to work, it's kind of something I need to know. And even more so at 5 PM when I'm headed back, so I know how many bottles of water I should take and how many layers of sunblock I'll need to apply.

But then I get home, and he's not here, and the 5 PM things pale in comparison to the overnight emptiness in my room. When will I get off this sad-go-round, I wonder?

Post title is a quote from The Whether Man in The Phantom Tollbooth: "It's more important to know whether there will be weather than what the weather will be." Indeed.

It's Getting Reel

Housewarming gift (garden warming?)
from a friend. I love it.

Since I completely abandoned theme days a couple months back, it's totally okay for me to blog about green living-ish things on a Saturday, yes? Of course it is.

So, we moved house (yes, again) at the end of April, and this time we're in a proper house. With a yard. I haven't lived in a proper house since I was 21, y'all. And while we could have paid someone else to continue maintaining our yard, I wasn't down with that and decided to do it myself, because...

I chased this guy around the tree
to get his picture! He was not impressed.

... I've dreamed for years of owning one of those reel push mowers. No gasoline, no motor, just my own calories being burned to cut the grass to reasonable levels. Unfortunately, between me finishing grad school, both Denise and me trying to unpack, and the relentless rain we've been having in Central Texas, we've only managed to cut the grass once since owning the mower. And that was Denise who mowed (Denise who has never dreamed about owning a push mower, but as with so many other things, has been swept along in this particular adventure whether she wanted to be or not. It's dangerous being my sister), because I was writing papers and stuff.

Any ideas what these are? Can I
put them on my cereal without any
ill effects?

This morning, after we managed to go about 24 hours without any new rain, I decided the grass was as dry as it was likely to get and hauled the mower out to make my yard look less like a tropical rainforest in the making. I gotta tell you, someone along the way has made some curious landscaping choices in this yard, including a line of rocks through the middle--whatever the rock line used to contain is long gone, so now I just have this weird set of rocks that make it really hard to mow the middle.

And there are sticks. Lots and lots of sticks. Reel mowers don't do well with sticks, as both Denise and I have discovered.

And there's a tree in front of the house that has dropped a few small branches into the flowerbed that lines the front, and I guess no one ever went in after them until today, when I dragged them out.

Does it look better? Probably not. I doubt anyone will be featuring this house on Curb Appeal any time soon.

Who else is doing yard work this weekend?

Saturdays

Yesterday morning I had a work event to go to, so I rolled out of bed and strolled past my neglected homework on the way out the door. Because why wouldn't my work have two events during the final weekend of my semester when I'm trying to write two papers and pass this thing? (I'm not really blaming my boss. He had no say in the timing of either of these events. And I knew that this was exactly what I was signing up for when I decided to work for a nonprofit.)

The group on a mid-ride stop. Image 
grabbed from Senator Ellis' twitter feed 
(he's the gent in the middle
with the colourful jersey).

So the event was a 10-mile bike ride with some legislative interns, which is always fun, even for me who hates group rides. (It makes me nervous to bike alongside that many people, but I can deal.) After getting them all biked up and ridden around and our equipment put away, I had a couple of office-y things to do before I locked the doors and rolled off...

... to the Farmers Market. Yep, I had errands to run after the ride. All told, here's what I did:

• Got stopped at an intersection because of a pro-legalisation march in the middle of town
• Bought eggs at the Farmers Market
• Picked up a book at the library
• Rode through the Capitol grounds while the pro-legalisation group was demonstrating (they were not handing out samples, I'm afraid)
• Stopped by the rummage sale at church
• Figured out how to watch a video on UK's Channel 4 even though I'm in the US (with a lot of help from my friends) (and I still haven't had time to watch it, but it's on my to-do list)
• Went grocery shopping
• Finished one of my grad papers, even though I had to stay up to 4:30 AM to do it

Pic taken with my allegedly smart
phone. I got really lucky with the
dancing marijuana leaf.

I gotta tell y'all, I really underestimated the value of having someone in my house who was willing to do a lot of this stuff for me. It's been a while since I've had to do everything for myself. But! One paper to go, and I am DONE with this grad school thing. And there's nothing not to like about that. I'm looking forward to spending a Saturday soon just laying around with books and cups of tea and possibly some bon-bons.

In More Ways Than One

This is the graphic I usually use when
I write about being a non-trad. I've
used it for so long I can't remember
where I got it.

Many, many times in the course of the last five years, I've talked about the fun involved in being a non-traditional student. That mostly went away when I started grad school, since going to grad school in your mid-30s is not that unusual, but it's not like I've forgotten that a good chunk of my friends and acquaintances in Austin are 12-15 years younger than I. (I've tried to forget. I don't actually like thinking about the differences between us. But the differences come up sometimes.)

So it's been on my mind the past couple of months that not only did I do college weird, but I also made it weird for others. I don't know why I didn't think about this before now. I probably should have figured it out, given the number of questions about long-term relationships that I used to field on a daily basis, or the time one of my classmates said during a TV-centered conversation, "You watch Friends? But that's our parents' show!" and I had to lie down.

But obviously Peak Weird (God, please let this be the peak!) for my college friends was reached a couple of months ago, when the post-college whirl of engagements and weddings was interrupted by the news that one of their classmates had lost a spouse. When so many of my young friends are still undecided about whether a long-term commitment to one person is even something they're interested in, this happens.

And I would be remiss if I didn't give my UT friends all the credit and kudos in the world, because the outpouring of support and kindness I've received from them is just as real and heartfelt and thoughtful and appreciated as it has been from every other group of friends I've managed to collect. Some of them came to the funeral. Some sent cards. One of them took the time to find just the right poem that she thought would lift my spirits (it did). All of them have sent text messages or Facebook messages or phone calls that have brightened my day and reminded me of just how blessed I have been in this chapter of my life, the chapter called "college," the one I'm finally leaving behind after this weekend.

But the point is, you're not supposed to be summoned to a classmate's spouse's funeral a couple years after graduating college. That's just not the way it's meant to be... and yet it happens. And while I would rather have not been non-traditional in this particular sense, had I been given the choice, I don't think I'd trade all the other senses of the word for anything.

It's Bike Month!

Want one of these? Find it here. 

What does that mean for me? Not a freaking thing, because I'm surrounded by boxes and still have three papers due before we call this semester done.

But I'll at least ride my bike to work with a slightly bigger smile than usual, because MOVE OVER, EVERYBODY, THIS IS MY MONTH! Or something.

Also, it's Bike to Eat Week in Austin! And there's nothing not to like about that.

"Packing is for leaving. To stay you have to un!"

Denise (my sister, for those not keeping score at home) mentioned this brilliant quote from M*A*S*H season 1, episode 3 while we were unpacking this weekend. There's a lot of un in our future. And that's after getting rid of a lot of stuff prior to the move. How do people manage to collect so much stuff, especially people who spend as much time at home as we do?

(I added "green living" as a tag on this post, mostly to emphasize how much it's not. :/)

Our books & DVDs right now. I may never see them again.

Time (Or: Please Send Chocolate)

This doesn't have anything to
do with my post, unless it's me
burning the candles at both
ends. All the candles.

So, just in case anyone was wondering: final semester of grad school + legislative session + moving is just a bad combination, even if you don't add in being really sad. (Although, obviously, I do.) Throw in friends coming to town (yay!) and going to the theatre twice in three days (stress relief, obvs) and you just have a recipe for disaster.

I'm beginning to understand why some people turn to substances for help with coping. (I'm not doing that; no need to stage an intervention. Yet.)

I'm posting this during a 10-minute break in class. Time to head back. See you after I graduate.

Easter

So today was both the most depressing and also the most joyous Easter I can remember.

Source: osmar01 on
freeimages.com.

Let's start with the easy one. When Chadwick & I went looking for a church a few years ago, high on my "must-have" list was that the worship service had to be joy-filled. I was tired (and still am) of churches that have a joyless, lifeless worship service that may as well be a funeral. If that's your cup of tea, great, but it's not mine.

We were successful at finding a church that's filled with joy, by the way, and today the church was especially so, and for that I am thankful.

But it was also very sad today. Sundays have just been hard for the past six weeks, and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. I've been warned that holidays will be extra-hard, but honestly? We've never been holiday people. It's not like today was our anniversary. It was just sad, like every other Sunday has been, and I only take special note because, as I said, it was the most depressing Easter I can remember.

Also, I made these for the Easter brunch at church, and they were a huge hit. You should make some. (The person I was sitting with for breakfast, when I described the steps: "But how did you get them to stay rolled up?" Me: "I don't know.")

He is risen, indeed.

Final Portfolio #GradSchoolProblems

I'm working on my final portfolio for my grad program, which is technically now late, just like everything else I'm supposed to have turned in over the last four weeks. Well, longer than that, I guess, because I got behind when I went to Indiana for my grandmother's funeral in early February.

I'm literally only carrying on with this right now because my options are to be done in two months or be done in nine months. Send positive vibes, cookies, chocolate, caffeine, prayers, etc.

Casual Conversations

So, here's the thing I want to say to everyone right now but don't always have a chance to say in conversation: It's okay to be awkward around me right now. I've been in a swirling vortex of awkward conversations for a month with no end in sight, and I'd rather my friends talk to me while awkward than stay away for fear of saying something dumb.

Source.

Trust me, if you're my friend, it's probably because you say things that are dumb. That's why I like you so much. This is no time to get self-conscious about that.

So those of you who are lurking and afraid to say anything (yes, I'm looking at you. You know who you are): Knock it off. Say something. We'll still be friends afterwards, no matter how awkward it is.

(And if you're wondering why I'm not starting the conversation myself-- I'm trying. Really, I am. But I can barely hang on to my own personality right now, and there's a good chance I'll forget who it was I was looking at before I even hit 'publish' on this post. We're still friends, but I'm hanging on by my fingertips and need you to help me out on this one.)

I'm Just Not That Good at Alphabetizing

I grabbed one of the A to Z badges
while I was poking around. 'S' for Su,
in case that wasn't abundantly obvious.

Just saw someone post about the A to Z Challenge, which is about to begin on April 1, and which I strongly encourage all bloggers to participate in, because it's fun and a great way to find lots of awesome blogs you may have never seen before.

As for me... Well, I still haven't finished last year's Challenge. I left off at Q and then was sucked into the swirling vortex that is the end of the semester, and... well. I have since knocked out an R post. Eventually I'll finish the rest, but it won't be during the A to Z Challenge. I won't be doing Camp NaNoWriMo this time around, either, to my own great regret. I have a hard enough time right now finishing the things I'm already obligated to do without giving myself more things to keep track of.

So, A-to-Z-ers, have a great time. Not an A-to-Z-er yet? Sign up now! It's fun! Maybe I'll be back with you next year.

Look What I Found on the Internet

This went rolling across my Twitter feed yesterday. It's now hanging on the wall of my office:

Source: @myerman on Twitter. I don't know where he found it.

Sounds about right. Cup of tea and all.

How It Has to Be

I can't believe my husband and Terry Pratchett would leave me within three weeks of each other like this.

But there's this quote from Soul Music, the first Terry Pratchett book I ever read, that has gotten me through other crappy times (although none as crappy as this, I have to say):

You could say to the universe, this is not fair. And the universe would say: Oh, isn't it? Sorry.
You could save people. You could get there in the nick of time. And something could snap its fingers and say, no, it has to be this way. Let me tell you how it has to be.
― Terry Pratchett, Soul Music

So, on I go.

This is my favourite Terry Pratchett book so far, but I'm nowhere near
having read them all. So I may change my mind.
Image from Goodreads, and while you're there, you should check
out all the rest of Terry Pratchett's books.

In My Mailbox: Something I'm In Edition

So, this arrived today:

Want a copy of this book? It's really quite good as a reference,
even without my essay in it. Get it on Amazon here. And if you
want to shop Amazon Smile supporting the Texas Bicycle Coalition,
that'd be okay, too. 

It's a college textbook. To be more specific, it's the latest edition of a textbook that was required for a class I took at my final semester at UT, and the major difference between this edition and the edition I was supposed to buy in the spring of 2012 (totally didn't buy it. I borrowed a classmate's all semester long) is this: I HAVE AN ESSAY IN THIS BOOK.

Yep, after the assignment that's in here, my instructor (John J. Ruszkiewicz, the first name on the cover there) said he thought my essay was better than the one that was in that edition of the textbook and asked if he could use mine in the next edition. I managed not to shriek, "YES! ARE YOU KIDDING? OF COURSE!" when I agreed. I just didn't expect the next edition to come out this fast.

I admit I did wait until used copies appeared on Amazon before I bought a copy, because textbooks are freakishly expensive (sorry, Dr. Ruszkiewicz). And after my initial shrieking and jumping up and down and posting on Facebook that I did earlier, I took a closer look at the index & saw that some of my classmates are also in this edition, which of course makes me all kinds of happy. I already read one of their essays and will eventually make my way through the others.

If you want to read the essay without buying the book, you can read it on Google books here (click on the top result). It's about women running marathons. I know, I know, big surprise.

Oh, yeah, the Austin Half

I meant to post an Austin Half Marathon recap, but that got pushed way off my list, I'm afraid.

Before the race. This was taken seconds
after Chadwick asked if I had lost my
mind. The photographer stopped us as
we were headed to gear check and asked
if we wanted our picture taken.
(Also, this is not a copyright violation.
Our dear friend Ruth bought our race
photos for me in lieu of flowers. I'm free
to use this image here.)

Here's the gist: they went back to an older version of the course, similar to the one I ran in 2009 and 2010, and I loved it. Every inch of it, except for the pretty boring stretch on Lake Austin Boulevard where there's not a lot of crowd support and also not a lot of interesting things to look at. I mean, I love trees as much as the next gal, but even I can only be enraptured by so many before wanting to see something else. (Here's the course map, for the extra-curious.)

It's weird, thinking about that day now. I didn't run with Chadwick-- he wasn't trained for it, so he started the race planning to DNF at about mile 2, which is exactly what he did--but we spent the rest of the day together. I don't remember what we talked about. I don't think we did anything else but run a race and then sit on a couch. And get some In-n-Out.

Before the race, though, when I was in pre-race crazy mode, he asked me if I had lost my mind, and I asked him if he'd forgotten what I'm like on race day. It had been a while since we'd stood at a start line together.

My next race is the Cap10K in April, and I'll be running it alone.

Anyway, the half marathon medal this year was really ugly, by usual Austin Marathon standards. The day that Chad died, a bunch of the younger folks from church came over and spent the evening in my living room, and we passed around the medal. Some of them didn't believe that it was ugly until I got out one of my old ones by comparison, and then they obliged my feelings by making fun of the ugly one.

I haven't decided yet what I'll do with the race medals and numbers Chad managed to collect over the years. I have some ideas. But I'm not in a hurry to make that decision. They are made of durable metal, and I have faith that having lasted in our possession this long, they will remain for a while longer while I think of something to do with them.

I Didn't Mean to Greet the Day Like This

Do the wee hours even count as day? I mean, this is still night, right? With apologies to those who work night shifts-- this is supposed to be sleeping time.

My iPad clock when I started writing
this. It also said it was 84° outside,
which was obviously crazy, so I turned
that off before I took the screenshot.

I thought, after a few sleepless nights, that maybe my body could get back at least into this much of a rhythm. I know, I know. Expecting too much too soon. I'm really good at unrealistic expectations. (See also: Grad School, Ease of.)

So here I am at nearly 1:30 AM, debating whether to watch Torchwood or House. I blame tonight's bout of sleeplessness on the mysterious noise I heard earlier, that for just a second I thought was Chad coming to bed. But that's just one of a thousand reasons for my brain to be up right now. I can't erase those reasons long enough to drop off.