6 Parts of a Thursday

1.) The trees are beginning to put out blossoms. There is a winter storm warning and I can see the Sierras getting a snow-hell smack down about an hour off to the east, but I'm looking across cherry orchards in early bloom to see it.

2.) Last night I pulled over in an empty soccer field parking lot to watch the lunar eclipse, because there's not going to be another until 2010! Two whole years in which my jones for naked eye astronomy will go unquenched! The fact that the eclipse was a lot slower and less visually showy than I expected left me feeling very American. I kept glancing over at the Honda's digital clock and mentally adjusting the evening's calculus of work-out, dinner, reading for school, and Netflix HBO series until I finally annoyed myself so much that I said fuck it and headed for the gym, where I felt my hour and a half better spent by running to nowhere and lifting weights which have no other purpose than to weigh exactly so much and fit in my hand. (I'm just saying, it's not like I traveled from one place to another or built a brick wall or stacked firewood. The existential pointlessness of what I was doing was somehow unusually clear last night.)

3.) We're going snowboarding this weekend. Originally, I pictured Pants and I having two days of semi-skilled snowplay and then cuddling up at night in our hotel room to watch bad cable movies and create charming moments, but it turns out we're splitting a hotel room with P. the Roomie and Some Other Dude, whose name I know, but that's about it. This is kind of deflating, but as Pants pointed out, it makes good economic sense. I'm not sure how long I can maintain this modified, shared-space version of myself. I'm tired of holding in farts, for one. I'm also tired of appearing way more emotionally stable than I really am-- there's generally something off-putting and unnerving about people who cry as easily and often as I do, and I haven't figured out yet how to explain it quickly to strangers.

4.) I'm making plans to go visit my brother in Indianapolis, and one of the things I'm most looking forward to is the plane trip. I love airports. I love the idea of them-- big, clearly labeled public spaces devoted to mobility and flux-- and I love the reality of them-- all the nervous people, all the different accents, the announcements, all our paths crossing. There's something so invigorating about it. It's also one of the only places I can manage to pull off nearly complete insouciance. It's an act, surely, but it's one I perform with intense and secret glee: "I know where I'm going." I love traveling alone.

a. I don't really know how to explain this very well. Here's an example: once I was flying cross-country from Texas to Georgia with my boyfriend at the time. Our plane got struck by lightning somewhere over New Orleans (big pink flash of light, nervous stewardesses chirping, "Everything's fine! Please stay seated!"), and our whole trip from then on was routed through various airports ridiculously tangential to our actual destination. I loved it. I loved navigating through all the gates and foraging for food and staking out good nap corners. The only miserable part was that my traveling companion came completely unwound ("I just did the math and we could have been fifty miles closer to Georgia if we'd taken a bus this morning!") and it took all my concentration not to reach over and smack him.

[NB: Pants is a delightful traveling companion. Though a bit grumpy with delays, he makes up for lapses in demeanor by narrating a fascinating blow-by-blow account of what the pilots are probably doing right now.]

5.) I don't know what's up with the numbered format of this post. I can only guess that I've been reading too much David Foster Wallace lately. Or maybe I lack the energy for transitions today.

6.) I despise Alicia Keys's new song, whatever the hell it is. There's something about sanctioned workplace radio stations that makes me want to murder everyone and paint the walls in blood warnings. The song pool is so very small, like a fish tank that's not cleaned regularly enough. Or ever. Nearly every job I've ever had has involved short repeating loops of music, and there are songs I can't listen to anymore because they immediately call up the stale onion smell of the Subway Sandwich shop where I had my first job, or the musty, moldy smell of the hurricane wrecked Barnes & Noble where I worked briefly in Pensacola. Even teaching had its songs-- my students had awful ringtones on their phones, but the good part about that was I got to kick the offender out of class. I try here to combat the wretched little workplace stereo by occasionally blasting Buena Vista Social Club or Wu Tang Clan out of iTunes, but my otherwise ridiculously pimped out computer didn't come with speakers, so the music gets muffled under my desk and hits my feet. Plus, it doesn't seem fair that I'm so ornery about the music when I have my own separate office (albeit with an always open door) and everyone else has to share a communal space. Right now Matchbox 20 (Crotchpox 20 to me) is wailing again about how I should "give [them] my heart, make it real, or else forget about it." If only.