Burning Man, burning town, unpacking, Paris, boxes, GO!
First off, I just had a look at Rax's recent posts, and would like to encourage other people to read them if they haven't already done so. (LJ username = rax) The posts raise interesting questions about gender and (talking about) rape, and they do so in her typically nuanced and thoughtful way. So, if she's not on your friends list, please do check out her LJ.
Onto completely unrelated topics! Namely:
Burning Man
I am sitting on the couch, completely surrounded by a terrifying array of paper bags and boxes. I just spent a heart-stopping amount of money on food and booze and Random Useful Things for Burning Man, and oh Lord. Now, I have to unpack them and repack them in more efficient ways and try not to freak out about having spent such a huge amount of money in a short amount of time.
(It's not like these were rash purchases or something. I adhered to a list that I'd been obsessively editing for several weeks. Am I the only one out there who seriously freaks out like this about spending money? It sucks, because I also like Having Useful Things and Nice Food to Cook With, so... it's like being a miser, but with all of the anxiety and none of the savings.)
All of this stuff must somehow be made to fit into my car in a little over a week's time, when a bunch of my friends and I will head off to Burning Man. (For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, it's a week-long concert/art festival/party/campout in the exact geographic middle of nowhere, Nevada.)
We'll be camping together, in the loosest possible sense of the word, near 4:00 and K, under an as-yet unmade banner reading "Radius of Action." (Why yes, we will be a living, breathing, communal XKCD reference, thanks for asking!)
Will any of you be at Burning Man this year? If so, we should hang out!
Consider this an open invitation to drop by our camp and shoot the breeze. (And to drink some of my booze. I just bought over $120 worth of alcohol, and the only reason I didn't immediately go commit myself to AA upon paying the bill was the small, reassuring voice in the back of my head that whispered, "But most of this will go into other peoples' bodies! Because you're using this to extend your hospitality to all the nice, friendly people at Burning Man!" Don't prove my rationalizations wrong, people.)
This camp is going to be really different from the one I was a part of during my first time there, in 2007. This year, we're a bunch of people who are just going to aim to camp near one another. Some of us know each other, some don't-- it's basically my astro/physics friends from here, along with a group of some of their college friends and family members.
We're not bringing any art projects. We're not cooking any big meals together. We aren't worrying about how to hook into somebody else's generator. We aren't doing anything ambitious.
We are, however, bringing a metric butt-load of shade structures, and of booze, and we are going to chill the heck out. My car will probably also break down catastrophically, but... let's try to stick our fingers in our ears and pretend we don't know that.
I'm also going over to a friends to dye my hair Bright Fucking Pink tomorrow night, in preparation for the event. (This means I'll be sitting down to my 1st year Board Review with extremely unprofessional hair, but I passed one of my quals, so I earnestly hope that'll make a more lasting impression on them than the crazy hair does.)
My advisor's been out of town, working on an insane list of Science Things, so... things haven't been going quite as quickly as I wanted, and...
Well, I just feel like I'm not really earning my keep, since it's been almost two years and I haven't published anything for him yet.
I really want to know what the heck I'm writing this paper about, exactly, before I leave for Burning Man.
The one bad thing about having a week-long party in the desert is that it sets up a hard deadline for, basically, all the other projects you have in play in all the other areas of your life.
(I really want to publish. Jesus Christ, have I mentioned this enough, yet? I REALLY WANT TO PUBLISH. IMMEDIATELY. NOW. YES. IF I SAY THIS LOUDLY ENOUGH WILL THE COMPLETED PAPER SOMEHOW MAGICALLY APPEAR?)
Ye Olde Local Wildfires
Locations near SC are on fire again, for the second summer running!
Like, very, very EXTREMELY ON FIRE. Everything around here smells like a campfire gone horribly, horribly awry.
We are safe, here, in this town right by the sea, and the fire is supposedly 80% contained now, but we're directly under a plume of smoke that's the size of whatever you get when several square miles of trees go up in flames. It looks like it's foggy, until you realize that... it's smokey.
It makes for some very surreal weather.
I keep seeing a burly parade of fire engines and forest-fighter-wagons moving through town-- most of them on loan to us from other parts of the great state of CA.
It's... is it wrong to say it's kind of exciting and cool? Even if it sucks for the people up the road who had to evacuate? (I don't think any structures have burned down, which is why typing this probably doesn't make me irredeemably evil.)
So, yeah: life on the Left Coast = flammable.
Onward to
Paris
I think I posted here right before I left, about how I'd just taken quals and had to turn right around and wrestle with my computer to get stuff installed for that summer school, and how I kind of wished I could just skip it and stay in bed and sleep for three weeks, instead.
But you know what?
Paris turned out to be really awesome. (This comes as a surprise to exactly no one, I'm sure.)
It was a really... comfortable... city. I wasn't expecting that.
I was going to post some photos, here, but it looks like I need to upload them to Flickr, first, and it's getting pretty late here, and... I will do this later!
I will also talk more about visiting my parents, and nature, in AZ
later. What this probably means is that I'll never really get around to posting about either of those things, but let me sum it up here as:
they were beautiful and lovely, and I'd like to see more of all of them again soon.
And also
I'd like to hear about what all y'all have been up to lately. Please feel free to drop me a line, here or elsewhere.
Onto completely unrelated topics! Namely:
- Burning Man!
- Ye Olde Local Wild Fires
- I went to Paris for work, and all I got were these amazing photographs!
- Visiting parents, and the wonders of the natural world, last week in AZ.
Burning Man
I am sitting on the couch, completely surrounded by a terrifying array of paper bags and boxes. I just spent a heart-stopping amount of money on food and booze and Random Useful Things for Burning Man, and oh Lord. Now, I have to unpack them and repack them in more efficient ways and try not to freak out about having spent such a huge amount of money in a short amount of time.
(It's not like these were rash purchases or something. I adhered to a list that I'd been obsessively editing for several weeks. Am I the only one out there who seriously freaks out like this about spending money? It sucks, because I also like Having Useful Things and Nice Food to Cook With, so... it's like being a miser, but with all of the anxiety and none of the savings.)
All of this stuff must somehow be made to fit into my car in a little over a week's time, when a bunch of my friends and I will head off to Burning Man. (For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, it's a week-long concert/art festival/party/campout in the exact geographic middle of nowhere, Nevada.)
We'll be camping together, in the loosest possible sense of the word, near 4:00 and K, under an as-yet unmade banner reading "Radius of Action." (Why yes, we will be a living, breathing, communal XKCD reference, thanks for asking!)
Will any of you be at Burning Man this year? If so, we should hang out!
Consider this an open invitation to drop by our camp and shoot the breeze. (And to drink some of my booze. I just bought over $120 worth of alcohol, and the only reason I didn't immediately go commit myself to AA upon paying the bill was the small, reassuring voice in the back of my head that whispered, "But most of this will go into other peoples' bodies! Because you're using this to extend your hospitality to all the nice, friendly people at Burning Man!" Don't prove my rationalizations wrong, people.)
This camp is going to be really different from the one I was a part of during my first time there, in 2007. This year, we're a bunch of people who are just going to aim to camp near one another. Some of us know each other, some don't-- it's basically my astro/physics friends from here, along with a group of some of their college friends and family members.
We're not bringing any art projects. We're not cooking any big meals together. We aren't worrying about how to hook into somebody else's generator. We aren't doing anything ambitious.
We are, however, bringing a metric butt-load of shade structures, and of booze, and we are going to chill the heck out. My car will probably also break down catastrophically, but... let's try to stick our fingers in our ears and pretend we don't know that.
I'm also going over to a friends to dye my hair Bright Fucking Pink tomorrow night, in preparation for the event. (This means I'll be sitting down to my 1st year Board Review with extremely unprofessional hair, but I passed one of my quals, so I earnestly hope that'll make a more lasting impression on them than the crazy hair does.)
My advisor's been out of town, working on an insane list of Science Things, so... things haven't been going quite as quickly as I wanted, and...
Well, I just feel like I'm not really earning my keep, since it's been almost two years and I haven't published anything for him yet.
I really want to know what the heck I'm writing this paper about, exactly, before I leave for Burning Man.
The one bad thing about having a week-long party in the desert is that it sets up a hard deadline for, basically, all the other projects you have in play in all the other areas of your life.
(I really want to publish. Jesus Christ, have I mentioned this enough, yet? I REALLY WANT TO PUBLISH. IMMEDIATELY. NOW. YES. IF I SAY THIS LOUDLY ENOUGH WILL THE COMPLETED PAPER SOMEHOW MAGICALLY APPEAR?)
Ye Olde Local Wildfires
Locations near SC are on fire again, for the second summer running!
Like, very, very EXTREMELY ON FIRE. Everything around here smells like a campfire gone horribly, horribly awry.
We are safe, here, in this town right by the sea, and the fire is supposedly 80% contained now, but we're directly under a plume of smoke that's the size of whatever you get when several square miles of trees go up in flames. It looks like it's foggy, until you realize that... it's smokey.
It makes for some very surreal weather.
I keep seeing a burly parade of fire engines and forest-fighter-wagons moving through town-- most of them on loan to us from other parts of the great state of CA.
It's... is it wrong to say it's kind of exciting and cool? Even if it sucks for the people up the road who had to evacuate? (I don't think any structures have burned down, which is why typing this probably doesn't make me irredeemably evil.)
So, yeah: life on the Left Coast = flammable.
Onward to
Paris
I think I posted here right before I left, about how I'd just taken quals and had to turn right around and wrestle with my computer to get stuff installed for that summer school, and how I kind of wished I could just skip it and stay in bed and sleep for three weeks, instead.
But you know what?
Paris turned out to be really awesome. (This comes as a surprise to exactly no one, I'm sure.)
It was a really... comfortable... city. I wasn't expecting that.
I was going to post some photos, here, but it looks like I need to upload them to Flickr, first, and it's getting pretty late here, and... I will do this later!
I will also talk more about visiting my parents, and nature, in AZ
later. What this probably means is that I'll never really get around to posting about either of those things, but let me sum it up here as:
they were beautiful and lovely, and I'd like to see more of all of them again soon.
And also
I'd like to hear about what all y'all have been up to lately. Please feel free to drop me a line, here or elsewhere.