See if you can see how far out it goes. See? You can't see the end!
I'd take you out there
but it's a six-hour walk
and the work's redundant: one board laid down after another.
When the sun is high
the boards are hot.
Splinters always pose a problem walking any other way but straight.
What keeps me working on it, driving piles,
hauling timber, what's kept my hand
on the hammer, the barnacle scraper,
what keeps me working through the thirst,
the nights when the waves' tops pound
the pier from beneath, what keeps me glad
for the work, the theory is, despite the ridicule
at the lumberyard, the treks with pails
of nails (my arms
two centimeters longer each trip), the theory
is this: it's my body's habit,
hand over foot, paycheck to paycheck,
it's in the grain of my bones,
lunch bucket to lunch box.
It's good to wear an X
on my back, to bend my back to the sky, it's right
to use the hammer and the saw,
it's good to sleep
out there - attached at one distant end
and tomorrow adding to that distance.
The theory
is: It will be a bridge.

"And I'll raise a glass to you, among my little children, and I'll say, Here's to you, Mazer Rackham, you foolish old optimist. You thought humans were better than they are, which is why you went to all the trouble of saving the human race a couple of times."

I was walking Monty today and there was a group of people crossing the street ahead of me, presumably on their lunch break. One of them looked strangely like Yoni. Not exactly like him, but enough like him, and enough time has passed since I last saw him, that it could've been him. Which made me curious if there was any chance that he may have moved to Seattle. I did some cursory Facebook stalking and have decided it wasn't him after all. Still it got me thinking.

I haven't thought about Yoni in ages. I think once I was back home and I bumped into him at the store or somewhere unexpected. We chatted briefly but hadn't kept in touch through college so really had nothing to talk about. Didn't really know each other any more you know? In fact, we weren't really friends before or after the 8th grade. -laughs-

But thinking of Yoni always makes me think of Diana Koulechova. And her I miss a little. She was always so fun and friendly. Very similar to Maddy I guess. And she had a completely different way of seeing the world. It was interesting to talk to her, and I felt like I learned something new about life when I talked to her. I think the last time I IM'd her on a whim and asked her about her dog, Buffy. But I think she had said she had gotten a cat instead or some such.

I guess it's sad that people drift apart but it doesn't bother me as much as it used to. Maybe it's that "time heals all wounds" or something - it's just been so long since I've talked to Yoni or DK that I've gotten used to the idea that we're no longer close. Haven't been for ages really. Had different sets in high school. In fact it's a bit odd, the three of us. We became friends just in Mr. Fritz's class, and after that we just...dispersed.

~whisperingsea~

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in."

Suffolk, Virginia, high school student David Merrell finished first in regional and state science fairs by demonstrating the effects of music on lab mice. After the mice ran through a maze in about 10 minutes, Merrell played classical music to one group and heavy metal to another for 10 hours a day. After three weeks, the mice exposed to classical music made it through the maze in a minute and a half. The rock music group took 30 minutes. Merrell added he "had to cut my project short because all the hard-rock mice killed each other. none of the classical mice did that."

Hi, Cream!

Getting off the Ann Arbor Airport Shuttle, I went to the back to get my luggage. The driver was an older woman, and she grabbed my things and set them on the road. I went to get a cart, the better to wheel them in. The airport had two types of carts, normal shopping carts, and those mini, double-decker shopping carts [just like Uwajimaya, only these carts were gray and white like the ones at Costco]. I grabbed one of each and put my purse in the smaller one. I wheeled them over to the van.

I had two cardboard boxes as my luggage and I stacked them in the larger cart. Another girl was also getting off at my terminal, and she just dragged her bag(s) over to the curb. We were both about to turn and walk in when the driver called out, "You both paid right?" The other girl shouted back that she had prepaid, but I grabbed my wallet out of my purse and hurried over and said I had forgotten. I asked how much it was and the lady said $53.95. I opened my wallet, and it was my green and pink wallet from Gina, but there were only a few ones and fives in it. Floundering [interesting word, floundering - think about it], I flipped it over and looked in the other compartment, for now the inside of the wallet was like my old Target clasp wallet with the two sides. There was only a $2-bill and my Ananth-100 [which actually isn't even in my wallet anymore]. So I asked if I could pay with credit card. [This bit reminded me of the recently-watched "You've Got Mail" scene. "You have no cash? She has no cash! Get in another line lady! This is a cash-only lane."] The driver said sure, and handed me a clip-board to sign.

The clipboard had a large table down the middle listing all the charges, but at the bottom there was no total. The first entry was $53.95 but then there was a discount of $55 something and charges for bags and weird things. So I tried to add up everything in my head and I got to $51.95. I asked the lady if the top number was meant to be $58 and she said she didn't know. I said my total was $51.95 but she thought I was trying to cheat her. I said, well do you want to add it up yourself? And she glared at me and told me to just sign it and pay her the proper amount. I asked if she had a calculator, and she threw up her hands in frustration. I noticed Rob in the corner of the van and called out to ask him if he had a calculator. He brought it over, but I couldn't use it because it was reverse-Polish notation or whatever. So I asked him to add it up for me while I read out the numbers. He peered over my shoulder and looked at the table and said it was practically unintelligible. I looked again and noticed that there were two columns, sort of like an accounting spreadsheet, with debits on one side and credits on the other. But some of the debits had negative signs, and I didn't know if I should have added that number instead of subtracting. Rob did the best he could, and in the mean time I asked him what he was doing in SoCal again [even though we were on the Ann Arbor shuttle, remember]. He said he just had a layover, and he was going to New York. His flight was at 1:59p and he was going to be late if the shuttle didn't get going soon. I apologized for holding up the shuttle. [Yes, apparently his trip started by going to the airport for the second leg of a layover or something, it doesn't make sense but that's my dreams for you.]

At the end, Rob got the same number as me, so the shuttle driver let it go, and swiped my card [it was the Citicard]. I turned to hug Rob, thanked him for his help, and then left. I waved to Rob as the van drove off, and then I remembered all my stuff was sitting out in the carts on the curb unwatched. I ran over and they were gone! I thought maybe TSA thought the unattended baggage was a bomb and I started to panic. But then in a corner made by the building I saw my two carts. In the basket of the smaller cart was my cloth bag with my pink/green wallet laying open right on the top, but nothing was missing. I had just left it that way when I went to pay the driver I guess. I slid my Citicard back into its slot and closed the wallet, put it back in my bag. I guessed the wind had blown the carts over into the corner and that's why they weren't where I had left them.

As I pushed the carts toward the airport entrance, a sunny courtyard appeared on my left. When I looked over, it wasn't a courtyard at all by a giant park, and the airport had disappeared. An old lady was sitting on a park bench holding a giant bunch of colorful balloons. Her friend asked her why she had bought so many balloons and the old lady said, "Because it's illegal," and then opened her hand and let them all go. We all watched the balloons floating into the sky and I remembered a news story about another old lady who bought a red balloon and let it go flying into the sky and was arrested. [And then I woke up with a song in my head, and a terrible sense of heaviness. But with the lingering memory of Rob's warmth and his strong arms around me.]

But I am sick now, my days are numbered. So come all ye young men and lay me down...

I got a letter today that I found hilarious:

According to Caltech: You were employed as an hourly or overtime eligible employee between July 13, 2006 and April 14, 2011 for the following number of work days: 1. Based on this, your estimated payment amount is $0.5 less applicable taxes and withholding. This is an estimate and your actual payment may be higher or lower.
If you disagree with the number of work days shown above, send a letter with your Claim Form and include proof of the days you think are correct. See the enclosed Notice for more details about how to dispute the number of days.

*facepalm*

Dear Caltech:
You can keep your 50c. I wasn't mistreated in the SPP.
Love,
K

To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.

- Two or three weeks ago, I was busy moving a bookshelf from Dad's area to the new apartment. It was sort of wedged between the wall and their bureau. So I tilted it forward to get a better grip on the top in order to pull it out. When I did that, the shelves all slid out and slammed in a pile on top of my left foot. It stung a bit but it didn't hurt much so I carried on with my task. A bit later I looked down and realized the shelf board edge had cut into the top of my foot a little and I was bleeding.

- Last week in the shower, I was looking at my heels (because I had been wearing flipflops a lot) thinking about using Mom's pumice stone thing. When I bent my leg to look down at my left heel, I noticed this bizarre bruise. It was a string of three bruises, almost connected, together running four or five inches in length in the middle of my leg between the knee and ankle. I have no idea how I got it.

- As we packed more things into boxes, the center of my room became quite crowded. Between my desk and Mom's desk there was a plastic box and a paper box, and I'd always have to walk over one or the other to get between the two desks. Once, when I was crossing the great box divide, I miscalculated my stride, and when I put my foot down on the far side, the top edge of the box scraped against the back of my left leg, just above the bruises. When I looked, the divide had claimed a bit of skin and there was a patch of pink skin that stung. So I stuck a bandaid on it. That thing really really stung in the shower that night. Hot water + new skin = owie.

- Yesterday, we were in the new place and I spied one of my original book boxes on the metal shelf at eye level. I debated with myself whether to grab it or not. On the one hand, it was higher than I was comfortable with and I knew it was full of books. On the other hand, I was specifically looking for a chunk of the alphabet in my collection that I was currently missing. I decided to go for it. The shelf was jsut above shoulder height, so I tried to rest the box on my shoulder first. That was fine. Then I saw on a lower level, a long file box stuck out a little. So I bent my knees until I could rest the book box on that little ledge. Then from the ledge to my arms, and I was home free. Or so I thought. I turned around to bring the box to my room, took a few steps, and something crashed down and caught the edge of my heel. At first I thought something from the shelves had fallen and I was afraid I had broken something. But when I turned around, it was just the card table. I hadn't noticed it there, and I must've nudged it when maneuvering my box. Final result- a huge line of skin missing from my left heel. Still stings, but it's not that bad. But the bandaid restricts movement a bit so it makes me limp.

Dear Left Leg-
Sorry about the recent tragedies. I love you and I don't really favor Right Leg above you, even though yesterday I was joking to Mike about my lap being uneven. :*
-K