god

a post from clackamas, oregon

[above: not clackamas, oregon]

all of you but max and mercedes (i.e., tara and micha) have received lengthy, overly lengthy, overly boy-centric accounts of my mexico vacation. so here i offer a brief synopsis with pictures and commentary.


i went to mexico


with liz cartozian and karolina puk


and two dudes i haven't been sent digital pictures of yet.

i am wishing i were writing this blog using iweb, with which i now have a .mac account, since that would be going much more quickly and easily. but alas, due to problems of remote access, i am here now with blogger.

moving along....

we went to a beach in mexico at a town called "san felipe," which, contrary to reuben's belief, is in fact very much a tourist town.



we got suntans and sand chafe and salt in our hair and eyes. we bought a large inflatable crocodile on which liz, karolina and i paddled out to sea like ducks in a row, and a boat came toward us, and in it i recognized the large white boots of a rather creepy man who had approached me in the women's bathroom the night before, and we declared an about face too abruptly, and fell plummeting off the crocodile. and then we laughed and laughed and laughed.

we met a large group of mexican boys/men and adopted them as our boyfriends, and they made us a large delicious meal and brought coffees and said we were pretty. we now have an extensive and somewhat discouraging email correspondence with these boys.



when i returned from beautiful mexico i was at first quite taken aback by the puking and diarrhea i suddenly experienced, as well as the dread and horrors of the professional social nightmare i experience daily. however, i Have Since Adjusted, and the Monster Next Door is Acting Human, and Everything Will Be Just Fine.

just you wait, enry iggins, just you wait

http://www.myspace.com/nagemarat

more reflections, plus resolutions, this time with pictures

yesterday i gave my boss one year's notice, saying that i would most likely be leaving this job in march of 2008. this is because i will hopefully be going to gambia with taya and others in march and april of that year, and because i am not happy here.

i decided leaving any earlier wouldn't be smart because my resume needs me to stay here for a respectable amount of time, and i need a good reference, and i'm terrified of unemployment, and i need to be saving money, etc. and i have great benefits, blah blah blah.

[below: me wanting a good reference]

(my boss was her usual unmovable, dry, blow-offy self about my announcement. reminded me of how important i am to her (not))

so, this is good. on the other hand, it does mean that i actually have to be here for an entire other year. tara is under the impression that my snappiness/easy-to-irritateyness of late is work related, since i usually have crappy days and come home feeling frustrated. i hope that this is true, because otherwise i might just be a snappy/easy to irritate kind of a person. but max visited last week, and said that i seemed to have "hardened" a bit since the time when we were close... and i think maybe i do remember being brighter-eyed, nicer, softer.

[below: al franken hating hip hop]

so... i'm going to try to be more cheerful, less negative. complain less and try to judge others less. be less annoyed by people's annoyingnesses. also, maybe even curse less? i'll have to think about that last one.

we'll see how it goes... i may not be as committed to the project next week as i feel now, since sometimes it's just easier to go through the world in a sardonic and you-can't-touch-me-i'm-too-tough mode, rather than a dewey-eyed, benefit-of-the-doubt-giving mode. my work environment requires sundry and complex defense mechanisms.

i think things have been a bit hard for the whole friend group recently. there is a general impression that people feel stuck in ruts, like our social interactions are predictable and repetitive, nobody likes their jobs (tara and sheila are also miserable at work) people's idiosyncrasies and neuroticisms are annoying other people's idiosyncrasies and neuroticisms, and maybe it's all weather-related. we need to get out more, do more stuff, remember why we all like each other so much.

[below: yeah!]

this all makes it sound like i have been going around acting like a snappy jerk all the time, and that all of our social interactions are lame. this isn't true of course, i'm (for better or worse) more snappy with tara than most people (she's so available for that kind of thing) and you know, i'm my usual self, really. and dork club continues on, laughing is to be had, fun is around, etc. it's just that everything could be a bit more awesome, given our awesomeness resources.

in other news, i converted my desk into a standing desk, and am standing right now, and my feet kind of hurt but i'm into it! overall.

[below: this is how we do it]

i'm excited about many things, including visits and springtime and travels! here's to a bright new future!