Photography Theme: Kids

Carmi's photography theme is: kids.
Okay, I didn't take these, but I'm in them-- and scanned them. Does that count?

"say it ain't so, joe."

I think it's sad when you can come away from that debate, like someone I just heard about, and make your facebook status "McCain-Palin or you're unamerican." Unless you're kidding.
I got some good laughs, but mostly I'm terrified. Sometimes you have to watch these things with the terribly liberal bias of MSNBC just to get through the evening. She did, indeed, put together words in coherent sentences, most of the time, and provided some information, but...but...she can't be serious. Surely, surely this is all going to turn out to be a joke, right? Right???

Photography Theme: Angles

Carmi's photography theme this week is: Angles

A lake near Les Gets, France


Cathedral detail in Genova, Italy


Hallway in the Vatican

Somewhere in Cinque Terre, Italy


Inside details of my favorite cathedral ever, in Siena, Italy.

ninety years

My grandmother turned 90 yesterday! She's not a big storyteller, so I don't know as many little anecdotes about her as I do about my grandfather, but little slivers of a full life slide out every once in a while. Stories about sneaking out of her house at night with her cousin as a child, going to New York with her best friend Betty Moose. Tiny little snippets of stories about her first husband, Mack, who was killed in World War II. And of course all of my memories of her throughout the past twenty-two years-- her house (popsicles, ice cream, toys, her amazing cooking over the years, thanksgivings and christmasses and so so so much more). Always giving my sister and me a present on each other's birthdays.

And I forgot to call her. I remembered when I was in class, I had it on my calendar, had it written in a couple of places. Have been talking about it for weeks, this, her 90th birthday. While it made me feel absolutely sick when I realized it, it made me feel even worse when I called her today and found out that...nobody called. Not just not me-- nobody. None of her friends from church, not the grandson she raised, not anyone. Not even her son-- she called him. This has been an awfully difficult year for her, with her husband being so sick and being forced out of her home, but I simply can't imagine.... We're all horrible people.

I'm going home tomorrow to do the real celebration, so hopefully that will be a redeeming thing. But karmically, I'm pretty low right now.

I'd forgotten what a rich live I've led

I could get into this whole photo-theme thing. This week's theme is nature-- ranking only behind Architecture in "Awesome things I take pictures of." Like Mamie, I could spend all night uploading and not be finished. I'm forcing myself.


On the way into Amalfi, Italy.

Cinque Terre, Italy (I can't remember which of the five)


Vesuvius


Sunset in Cinque Terre, Italy


Outside of Castelluccio, Italy


Sunset in Old Fort, NC


Garden in Huemoz, Switzerland
Sunrise in Kitty Hawk, NC.

Fog on the Alps in Huemoz, Switzerland.



Fog on the Sibilini in Casteluccio, Italy.

how I'd like to remember him

I know that it will be difficult to rid myself of these (presumably) last memories of him, of the sick him, stooped and drugged and complaining. I need to make sure that the "real" memories, of who he really IS, the war stories he told about stumbling across his brother in Hawaii, the long involved stories he made up for us about Charlie Squirrel who lived in the backyard, the turkey carving, the unbelievable faith. I always want my memories of him to be of that man.

since then it's been a book you read in reverse

Apparently the photography theme of the week is water.


Also, yeah, yeah, I'm still alive.

Started grad school two weeks ago, and discovered that all of those rumors about grad school are relatively true, about how you pretty much ought to be doing work all the time. When I'm not working, I find, I tend to be super productive with my procrastination-- buying coffee makers and britta filters and obsessively cleaning my room over and over because, try as I might, I can't just make it STAY clean and put things where they belong, but I also can't study with it dirty. I have also been doing things like hanging pictures and writing threatening e-mails to my ridiculous, filthy, irresponsible subletters from the summer who didn't clean my bathroom for two months and didn't pay me their rent and the utilities they owed for July until this past week.

Unlike the subletters who I am VERY glad to be done with, I like my roommates so far. And I like L's roommates a lot-- one was in the same city in France I was in the same year I was there! Luca and I have been trying to use our "veg" time more productively instead of sitting around and watching I Love New York like we did last year, so we've been trying to figure out harmonies to various songs by The Shins.

In between studying and cleaning, life certainly isn't calm. I have discovered that starting school again with all new people is just as scary as it was the first time, and the second and third times. Aside from some third-grade moments (who saves seats and won't let you sit by them in grad school? is neuroanatomy really the same as 8-year-olds in the lunchroom?), I like the girls in my program. We're all girls, which will means some cattiness is probably in store, but also at least there will be no departmental dating drama. Maybe.

Here's one amusing anecdote:
Wednesday, the day I bought a coffee maker and made coffee and got SUPER productive for five minutes (or two hours) before a high school friend called and explained that he had purchased tickets to the John Mayer concert in Raleigh for the girl he had been dating, but that she had dumped him and did I want to go? And despite the rain, tornado watch, fact that I don't like John Mayer, and copious amounts of reading, I said yes, because the only more pathetic thing than having to call an old friend to go with you to a concert (in the rain) that you were hoping to go to with your girlfriend is getting turned down by that friend in favor of homework. So I went! We drove all the way to the concert hall in Raleigh, made it all the way to the gate, were getting ready to walk in and WAIT! A text message from the fine young lady herself, saying that despite having said that she would pay for her ticket, she didn't think she should if someone else was using it. But would pay for it if nobody used it. So. Not really wanting to be an extra $50 in the hole, we debated, and....didn't go! Turned around, sold the tickets to a scalper for $5, and drove back to Chapel Hill. Madness.