how things change

After seven years of living in California, including three years of drought (and actually driving by a freeway wildfire this summer), my sun-loving self has finally caved, and I'm excited that we're having a little bit of early rain. Me, excited about rain!

namibia in depth

Two weeks of pure awesomeness on what Boyfriend has declared to be the best trip we've ever taken!

• Windhoek
• showing up and finding a firepit in the room
• Okonjima:
• eating granola with yogurt and fruit every morning, and bacon (I don’t usually eat a real breakfast, but I also don’t usually get up at 5 every morning)
• discovering the joys of having hot water bottles in the bed at night, and a fire in the fireplace
• watching a baby leopard play while its mother ate a warthog on our first drive
• taking an extra day so that we could go on a second leopard drive and a second cheetah drive
• going into safari trances on the road and getting a lot of thinking done, and having some good realizations
• and some smaller realizations, such as how much I really like to pee on dives and game drives
• giving up on FitBit, because it registers too many fake steps on bumpy roads
• not being online
• Ongava
• watching the sun set and the moon rise at the same time
• seeing mother and 3-4 week old baby rhino at watering hole on first sundown drive
• taking a hot shower (super-hot, heated by a wood stove) in a cold tent after a dusty day never gets old
• watching a huge orange full moon rising
• seeing a herd of elephants with two babies at the Okonkuejo watering hole in Etosha, drinking, bathing, playing, and taking a dust bath
• watching rhinos and elephants at the watering hole during second dinner
• seeing a mother rhino and her older baby on our last morning drive, and walking near them
• squeezing extra life out of my camera battery when it tried to give up a few times near the rhinos
• Onguma
• getting in before sunset and not having anything to do the rest of the night
• staying in a warm room and a fancy lodge is so great after a cold tent with a basic lodge -- so glad this was after Ongava so we could really wallow and appreciate it with no pressure to go do things
• seeing the Milky Way from our house
• listening to roaring lions the first night
• going into Etosha and feeling no pressure, since we'd already seen everything we'd really wanted to see, so everything else was just a bonus
• getting back from Etosha by noon and having the rest of the day free to relax, read, write, and think
• taking a 2.5 hour nap on a sunny bed after a week of waking up before 6 a.m., and on this particular day, waking up at 6, going on a walk for an hour and a half, then having breakfast, then getting back in bed before 11 a.m. to have a dream within a dream within a dream in a sleep that felt like I was in an underwater cocoon
• coming across a fat, sleepy male lion on night drive
• having a super helpful manager who fixed our wheel well and got our car washed
• starting to figure out manual camera settings for sunrise, sunset, stars
• eating the best food of the trip (the food was good in general, but particularly good here, and we discovered that all those antelopes are delicious -- oryx and springbok are good, but kudu is the best)
• Windhoek
• after seeing the room they were going to give us, asking for our first room back and getting it
• Sossusvlei
• having the front seat in the plane
• making it up the biggest dune (Big Daddy) after much huffing and puffing
• gliding back down the steep face of the dune after some doubt, making the sand sing like a cello and then like a tuba or trombone
• spending another morning at the dunes -- two fun descents, and a long photo session at Deadvlei
• going horseback riding into the sunset, which was startling when we were galloping but exhilarating
• getting two massages, one of them outside!
• getting a late afternoon flight out of Kulala so we could chill for the day
• spending the last night under the stars
• sitting in the cockpit again, just by asking

And generally:

• I don’t usually keep this kind of schedule when left to my own devices, but it was amazing to see sunrise, sunset, and stars every day, especially when there was so much sky.
• I realized that one of the amazing things about dive trips or safaris is that you just show up, and then you can turn your brain off, because there is no planning to do and no decisions to make. They tell you when to wake up, when to eat, where to go, what to see, and you can just enjoy yourself without worrying over whether you’re doing the right thing at the right time to get the most out of the day.

new/old york

Hitting some of my favorite restaurants that I've been going to for fifteen years, catching up with friends from work, Switzerland, college, and law school, and walking and taking the subway everywhere. Today, we had soup dumplings and bubble tea in Chinatown, walked to Nolita, took the subway up to Harlem, walked all the way down through Central Park, cooled off in a fountain in a playground, had ice cream and listened to a busker, and hopped back on the train only when we got down to Columbus Circle. Quick break in the hotel, and then walking down to the Village for Ethiopian. Love this city.

stranger things

I never thought I'd like rain, after years of living on the East Coast and Europe, but after a three year drought here in California, every time it rains, it makes me happy and a little bit hopeful.

itinerary

Next two New York trips booked, one with a weekend in DC for a wedding! Working on nailing down Namibia details (including a crucial layover in Zurich to see friends, grill at the lake, and buy gummy candy), looking into another DC trip for another wedding, and maybe a weekend in Portland or Vancouver? Probably one more New York trip, and then Vietnam and Cambodia are so far in the future that they're just pleasant shadows, but what a year!!

jealousy

Oh, to live in a place with good public transportation, bath houses, and delicious food in small portions...

hands up

New York really comes together in tough times. 9/11 was a bonding moment for all New Yorkers, and walking through the streets in the aftermath of the Eric Garner grand jury decision was like that: a sad time, with both protesters and drivers and passersby and people in windows all coming together. New York puts the heart in heartbreak.

january in california

Highs in the 70s.

happy new year

Happy, indeed. The last couple weeks had lots of frabjousness:

• A last-minute failed test and successful resuscitation of a cranky old underwater camera strobe, just in time to take it on the trip
• A three-star meal at Sushi Mizutani in Tokyo: uni that made us forget why we don't usually like uni, needlefish, otoro to make your mouth weep
• Another three-star meal at Ryu Gin, also in Tokyo: resident owls in the waiting room, an introduction to cod milt, perfectly cooked mackerel that tasted nothing like mackerel, a tangerine dessert that was the love-child of pop rocks, sherbet, and pie
• Two nights at the Four Seasons in Tokyo, which may be the best hotel ever (lovely rooms, excellent staff, and they even bring you and your 150+ pounds of dive gear and luggage to the train platform)
• Baffling but funny ads on the train
• Two nights at the Ritz, where we could watch the sun set behind Mount Fuji
• Reunion meals with my host sister from Japan, a law school friend, and a friend from my Zurich days
• Hot ginger ale in a can from a vending machine, both strange and delicious
• A reprieve from winter, complete with swimsuits, flip flops, and sunscreen
• 20 dives in Palau, where we reveled in being in the water again (has it really been over two years?), saw mantas on our first dive, lost count of the sharks, and saw the strangest crabs on our night dive
• Stars in the sky, phosphorescent plankton in the water
• A hilarious Christmas Eve with the other guests, including attempts to translate joked from English to Chinese to Japanese and back, an impromptu sumo contest, and experimental drinks made with sriracha
• One of the oddest people we've ever met, and will remember forever through a series of catchphrases
• Not a single episode of puking, despite taking minimal Dramamine and going on the boat every day
• Zero email access for over ten days
• Island puppies who loved to lick the salt water from our dive gear
• Lots of reading (twelve books in eighteen days), bringing my year-end tally to 114
• Upon returning, a dog completely overwhelmed with joy and excitement, and parents who have decided that they love this new dog
• A couple of light work days, to ease back into the idea without too much strain, then a weekend to forget about it again

contrast

A day or two of Utah winter really makes California "winter" seem like a joke.

greener

My town recently started providing compost pickup on recycling day, and stopped requiring that recycling be pre-sorted. It's getting easier and easier to be less wasteful, which appeals to both my lazy side and my environmentally guilty side.

crickets

We're having a heatwave after several months off what has been a relatively cool summer for the area, which means that I've been leaving the windows open at night, leading to my accidental reacquaintance with the sound of slow suburban summer nights. I had forgotten what dozens of crickets sounded like -- after years of city and apartment living, even solo crickets seemed surprising and out of place.

yesterday

Part of my day yesterday.

compare and contrast

It got up to about 70 degrees and mostly sunny today, and I was momentarily annoyed at the "bad weather," until I realized that it's only bad when compared to the 80 degrees and brilliantly sunny weather we've been having for the past two weeks, which is coming back on Friday. In most of my former lives, 70 and mostly sunny would have counted as good weather.

forecast

Dare I say that summer has made it to California, just in time for Memorial Day weekend (and a random picnic tomorrow)? It's a little bit late this year, but today was absolutely gorgeous.

burbs

I'm more of a city girl, and coming here was my first foray back into suburbia since leaving for college. Although I rail against the parking lots, the weekly trash pickups, the humdrumness, and all those other suburban things, I secretly do really enjoy a few things about the suburbs.

(1) I've never had so much space to myself before. And every room has windows and skylights.

(2) It's so quiet. Any noise I hear is the noise I make.

(3) On Friday nights, I don't feel pressure to do something exciting. If I want to go home, wear pajamas, and watch TV, that's OK. Or if I want to go to a big, suburban cineplex and watch a mindless move like Ironman 2, that's OK, too. It's the suburbs.

flower power

I love that the climate here permits flowers to flourish riotously, and I love that my company takes advantage of that fact.

gps

I usually have no sense of direction, and use GPS for everything, and it doesn't bother me.

In New York, however, I can see how it feels to have a sense of direction, and it feels good. It's one of the things I miss about this city. The numbered streets and grid system make navigation easy, and it all just makes sense. I love that even if I don't actually know where I am or where I'm going, I can still figure it out really easily and feel like I'm in control of the situation.

oldies but goodies

I'm in New York, and I always love coming here. Out of all the places I've lived, New York is still the one where I felt the most at home, and even six years after leaving, visiting still feels like a homecoming of sorts. Many of my good friends are still here. My favorite restaurants, the squealing, rocking subway, the ebb and flow of people, the interactive movie of walking through the city streets with headphones on, it's all still here, and it still gives me that same feeling of belonging that no other place did before I lived in New York, and no place has since I left New York.

spring training

I love being in a no-car-necessary city again. Public transportation is perfect for a person who likes to daydream and listen in on other people's miniature dramas.