For all you curious minds who have been wondering what I'm up to here in Portland....
ARCHIVES
Here's me!
Calendar!
02.11 Visit DeMara
02.22 Amory Lovins lecture
02.24-28 Mom visits!
03.11-13 Graham visits! (hopefully)
03.18-27 Spring Break
04.22 Earth Day!
Renegade Rose Morris!
www.renegaderose.org
Photos!
See all my Flickr photos
Quotes!
"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered."
-Tom Stoppard, ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’
"To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s."
-Dostoevsky, ‘Crime and Punishment’
"We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily difference we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee."
-Marian Wright Edelman, ‘Families in Peril’
"If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal, - that is your success."
-Thoreau, ‘Walden’
P.S. My hair is getting longer -- I can put it in half-ponytails now! Hee hee hee!!! :P
Wow, I've posted a lot today. Read from the bottom up if it matters to you.
I just realized in looking at my calendar that, as of this last Thursday (June 19), I have been living in Portland for a year. Wow. It sure doesn't feel like that long. On the other hand, in some ways I feel like I've been here my whole life. Granted, I still don't know my way around and I haven't been to a quarter of the nifty little places or local attractions that I should, but it definitely does feel like home. I've heard that Portland can do this to people. :)
Looking back on my "year off," I see a lot of change. Changes in location, jobs, hobbies, relationships, and huge changes in my priorities and my attitude toward life. I didn't really know what I wanted to acheive by taking time off, but whatever it is, I feel like I'm at least a few steps further along my path. My palm was briefly read this afternoon by a morris-dancing palmist friend, and she came up with some things that really resonated with my life, my feelings, and especially related to this last year. Among many other things, she said that my life line is not grounded, which means that I'm still up in the air with where I want to be in my life, and am constantly turning the next corner (and I have lots of corners) and finding challenge after challenge. And that my lesson to learn in this life is that of standing in my own power. Wow. Yeah. That hit the spot.
So with that in mind (and the Tom Petty lyrics "I'm taking control of my life right now" playing right on cue) I suppose now is as good a time as any to give some answer to the question I've been asked by so many this year, and increasingly often the last couple of months. I'll leave the over-arching question of "What do you want to do with your life" for another time (I don't think any of you actually expect an answer to that from me any time soon) and address the more immediate and specific question of "Are you coming back to Stanford in the fall?" No, I am not. I haven't figured out yet exactly what is right for me to do at this stage in my life, but I have figured out that Stanford isn't the right place for me to be. I think I've known this for quite a while, but it's been hard letting that grow from a gut feeling to an actual concrete decision. It's that "standing in your own power" thing. I'm working on it. Anyway, I can still take up to one more year's leave of absence and go back any time if I change my mind (it just gets harder after that because you have to apply for re-entry). So for those of you who are concerned about that sort of thing, you don't have to think of it as "dropping out." I'm working on finding somewhere else to finish up some sort of education, but more than that I'm just sort of letting things play themselves out and watching what happens. I'm not really in a hurry to figure things out. I'm pretty happy where I am in life right now, so I'd like to enjoy it for a while before rushing on to goodness-knows-what. Maybe my life line will find some foundations along the way.
Mmmmm..... strawberries...... We got the most amazingly wonderful delicious heavenly strawberries at the Farmer's Market today. Every one is a is a close-your-eyes-and-savor-each-molecule experience. We bought a mixed half-flat, half strawberries, half humungous plump juicy blueberries. Oh, so yummy! We gorged ourselves on the trolley on the way home, then I washed and put most of the rest in the freezer to keep for smoothies and pancakes and things -- yum!
Oh, and Renegade Rose danced at the Farmer's Market this morning. This is obviously secondary to the strawberries in my book, especially since I was not personally involved in the dancing. (Side note on that -- my knee is still giving me trouble, but I'm going to get it checked out as soon as my new health insurance starts up next month -- I'm finally getting benefits at work!!! Okay, enough of side note.) It was a grey day, with spatterings of sprinkles interspersed by bursts of sunshine which conveniently just happened to coincide with the times that we were dancing. And I'm not kidding! It was drizzling, and it cleared up and got sunny when we started dancing. We took a break and moved to a different area and it got snotty again, then the sun came up when we started dancing. It was quite convincing, and we made almost $30! :) Mom's drum made its debut as an implement of morris, and was well appreciated and highly complimented. Thanks, Mom!
I bought my copy of the new Harry Potter book today -- while I was grocery shopping! They just happened to have a whole table full of them, at a reduced price. I figured I wasn't going to find a better deal, so I just grabbed one. Boy, that thing's thick! I think I'm going to wait on it a little bit until I feel like I have some solid chunks of time to devote to it. But I have it! :)
Monday, June 16, 2003
I have comments now! And side-bar spiffy-ness! Hooray for helpful brothers! Maybe I'll actually post again one of these days...... By the way, most of the dotPhoto albums listed are currently incomplete at the moment; I'll let you know when they're actually functional. The one that is all done and look-at-able is Miscellaneous May.
