those who were seen dancing

Gosh, I don't know why I feel disconnected from my people (especially my local people, but really all of y'all). It's not like I ever tell anyone what's going on with me or anything. Aside from 255 character summaries of what city I'm in and where I'm eating, that is.

Things happened!

For instance, I was in Chicago on a project for a few months. I used to hate Chicago, but I don't after finding dance classes and various forms of art and entertainment I couldn't find anywhere else. It's unlikely I'd move there, but it's a pretty decent town outside of the winters. It does have spectacular condiments. And fireworks every Wednesday night.

That ended abruptly and with some rejoicing on my part.

In the meantime, a certain someone moved first from Hawai'i to southwest VA and shortly after that in with Willie, My Roommate the Cheese Lady & me. I've been told recently that having your boyfriend move in is a reasonably big deal, and might have merited some sort of announcement. It didn't seem like that huge an event. One weekend he left town when I did, and the next he didn't.

I'm currently working in Creve Coeur (which, while French for "broken heart" or "heartbroken", is pronounced Creev Cor), a suburb outside St Louis. This means I spend probably 16 hours a week in planes and airports (mind, I still bill 40). I noticed this past weekend that I spend the majority of my life in two of the situations in which people feel the most entitled, powerless, tired and pouty: namely, organizational change and air travel. It's a problem; I can feel my faith in the basic goodness of people slowly eroding. People - self included - can go through terrible things with great dignity, but so often endure little hardships like exhausted children.

So, travel is wearing on me some - it's the mix of being gone, dealing with people in airports and on planes, and not successfully changing the entire world in the past 6 months. Mostly I'm lonely. It turns out almost everyone I hung out with is quite busy without me, so rather than the problem I expected to have (not having enough time on weekends to do what I want) I have the exact opposite (not having anyone who wants or is able to go play). And, like, all the dance in Richmond happens during the workweek. Harrumph!

I don't mean that I am miserably sad! The part of travel where I am in new places all the time is pretty great. Thanks to the care of My Roommate the Cheese Lady and the aforementioned fantastically useful [not to mention just fantastic, period] boyfriend, the house is constantly getting cozier and happier. My current work is usually more interesting than my old work (sorry, former colleagues - it's just true), and it changes enough that I'm always learning. I've forgotten how to wear high heels. I still see my parents once a month. I get to find and explore new dance stuff most places I go. That sort of thing.

Still. My predominant feeling is a sortof wistful loneliness and disconnection.

I'm starting to get into a rhythm of travel for work. It's pretty fun. I mean, I've had flights cancelled 3 weeks in a row now, and that part's not fun. The actual travel is.

Bags are challenging. Since I go back to the same place, I tried a checked bag (a 20 in roller) and a carried one (a duffel/gym bag) with the idea that I could leave the roller between trips. I kept having to move them around anyhow. I think keeping a week of stuff in a duffel-style bag is the most flexible way to go. Easy to get around town with, and a single unchecked bag is a huge plus in the midst of airport shenanigans: just show up and fly.

But. I also want to be able to skip going home and spend a weekend exploring - ideally by choice & with friends, not stuck in weather - without too much angst. I think I finally have this figured out: it's not how much, but what you pack. Simple color palette. Interchangeable pieces. Minimal shoe choices (shoes take up a lot of space). This week's single bag could easily get me through two weeks, provided some things get washed.

I like my work situation a lot more if I get to walk to and from work. Our first week, we stayed at a hotel in walking distance. Last week for a variety of complicated reasons we ended up over a mile from the office & had to cab it. I didn't like this. This coming week I'm walking. Or else!

Food is complicated. Meaning, we keep eating complicated food & drinking red wine. I came home this weekend wanting tofu, fresh fruit, veggies I cook myself. Nothing in a cream sauce! No gnocchi! No seafood! The food while we travel is good, don't get me wrong - and wow, Boston loves a meringue even more than I do. We were talking the other evening about this, how much eating out constantly can make you just want a simple sandwich or ramen noodles in your own kitchen. Then you get home, and people want to go out to eat with you.

Unless, of course, it effing snows every time you come home, and you never see anyone ever. Richmond peeps, I miss you terribly! I'm home, but I never see you! That part just sucks. Knowing it's an effect of freak weather doesn't make it any less sucky.

Costa Rica manages to simultaneously smell like Pennsic and the US Navy and highway onramps and my friends' kitchen in Hilo. It's an interesting mix.

I find it hard to describe what it is about places that make them uniquely themselves. Descriptions tend to rely on analogies -well, mine do - and if an analogy worked, it wouldn't be a strange and exciting new place. It would be somehow something like another place. Yeah. So I have smells.

I can talk about events and stuff we did, though.

We're here for a long weekend. Its my first foreign land (and my first post of any length from my phone, so bear with any crappiness). The sun is very sunny this deep into the tropics; we were sweaty and gross in the time it took to walk from a boat to shade on the beach this afternoon. Snorkeling trip today. Turtle. Rays. Coral. The tiny jellyfish that don't sting were the most amazing bit of that, actually. Millions of them. I could see and feel them all over. That was fun.

I suspect J got dehydrated in all the fun, since she's in bed crazy early.

It's a sign, I think, of a good vacation that I only vaguely remember what we did yesterday, let alone that I have a job. I got a photo of a monkey leaping fro tree to tree. There's almost no point in taking more pictures after that. I mean. Monkey! Jumping! I'm pretty sure those monkeys laughed at us.

This trip has its own rating scale now, ascending from Houston to monkey. We were stuck in Houston for hours with snow and subsequent de-icing. That kinda sucked. The airport food was bad, there was nowhere for J to smoke, and the internets weren't free. Texas. You aren't making me like you any more.

Tomorrow we're going to Las Pumas, a big cat rehab center in the jungle (we're staying with J's mom in Playas del Coco, where we've our own little apartment thanks to a friend whose place is empty). I suspect that'll be way more monkey than Houston.

Here they are.

These two really amuse me. This is us playing around at the Lego store. I couldn't stage a clearer illustration of the difference between a relational, people-driven person and an abstract, idea-driven person.

What T built (notes to people at home, carefully photographed and texted):


What I built (bridges across other bridges until I ran out of bridge pieces, trying to get my work to fall down):

I drove over to Kona (the other side of the island) today. [If you aren't familiar with Hawai'i, it's about 50-60 miles across, but it takes at least 2, probably 3, hours to drive that. There's no speedy and efficient way across this island. There might not be anything speedy or efficient about this island, come to think of it. That's part of what it does best.]

Anyhow. I drove over here to SNORKEL WITH MANTA RAYS. It was amazing. There were probably 20 mantas out. The way it works is every boat takes out their divers and snorkelers. All the divers hang out on the bottom, and the snorkelers hang out up top. Everyone shines lights. It's otherworldly. Seriously. Amazing. Did I say amazing? I'm not sure you grasp how amazing I'm really talking about here. It's like every day I get to do something bizarre and fantastic. Today's wasn't even physically hard.

I'm staying overnight since the snorkel didn't end till 9. Aaaand. Apparently I need to skip my lazy, slow return back to Hilo and get up early in the morning - there's some crazy weather hitting all the islands that might mean flooding in the afternoon. Did I mention the lack of speedy and efficient ways to get back to Hilo? I like Kona okay (they have tacos!), but I don't feel a need to stay here for the next couple of days. Not even if Kona still has sun while Hilo is submerged; Kona reminds me too much of California suburbs.

I need to leave the country.

Not as in, to avoid the law. But. I have actually never left the US, and the only thing my coach has ever told me to do is add "leave country" to my list of personal goals for the next year.

So. Where should I go?

[NOTE: You may choose to accept or ignore the constraints that I can't afford an expensive or time-consuming trip next year since I'll also be doing my last urban family Hilo visit before my peeps come back to the continent for awhile.]

If you haven't noticed, most of my photos from Hawai'i are of scenery, and a lot are of the mood shifts as the scenery shifts while you're driving or sitting in a spot. I think, in general, I take photographs that reflect the feeling of whatever I'm doing, which means if they have people in them, the people are doing something.

How about you?
[Poll #1056814]

The sun rose!


(clicking the link takes you to the gallery of sunrise photos I took this morning)

I've been home from my six-day camping for three hours now without taking a shower! Or a bath!

I should probably lie down.

I've been trying to pick between expensive (because most of Hawai'i? Does not do hotels under $100) largely identical hotels in Hawai'i on and off for the past week. [PS - volondoinyaface, please tell me I can sleep on your floor the first week of September. Or even a high-backed Victorian chair.]

Mostly what I've accomplished is an unhealthy obsession with my favorite North Shore resort's webcam. Tiny people swimming! And driving cars! Ooh, and if you catch it at a time when other people are watching, you can see what they want to look at.