~ a bivalve mollusk ~

Yesterday, I submitted all of the final application materials for the graduate program of my choice. What a long road this has been. I feel as though I have gone through so much just to get to this decision. The funny thing about it, ha ha, is that this is the very same program that I've almost applied to several times. I've convinced myself that it was necessary to go through all of this rigmarole in order to feel confident about my decision. ...Of course, today I have descended back into indecision. Christ Amighty!

Anyhoo, I had a rather epic weekend. It all began on Friday afternoon when I got off of work. This has been a crazy time at work, incidentally, and the only thing to say is "busy, busy, busy." Which may incline one to think, correctly, that I was happy to transition from work to weekend. And it was such a lovely weekend. It's fall, and the air quality has cleaned up, and I feel better about a variety of things. Josh and I had some lovely hanging out. Neither of us had much money to spend, so we found ways to spend the time that did not require many funds. On Friday evening, we went to see a band, Snowden, who were awesome. After the show, I simply had to purchase their c.d., which basically shot down the whole idea of not spending any money. It was fantastic.

On Saturday, Josh and I met at the M for a morning coffee experience. A bicycling dude and his girlfriend, with whom Josh and I are acquainted, were there having an intense conversation, to which I listened intently, about his needs to be with her more frequently. From what I have heard, this dude is kind of obsessed with sex, but as I was eavesdropping on their conversation (hey! they were discussing this while being adjacent to my person in a public place!) he came off as a tad needy to me. Then again, I sense that his girlfriend is totally cool and independent, so perhaps anyone would seem needy when placed alongside her. Josh later told me that if I was a pilot and gone most of the time, that he would be very clingy, which was kind of romantic in this strange way. After some time, we left the M and had a downtown-appreciation day. We walked all around, ventured through the free community gathering dealies, into the shops without buying anything, and then ate some much needed lunch. At some point, we decided to be productive, so we took all of our oodles of recycling to the recycling center and then went grocery shopping. Then we took some time to ourselves to arrange our respective lives.

That evening we met at the Egyptian to see Ted Rall speak about his new book "Central Asia: Silk Road to Ruin". What an intellectually-stimulating experience that was! Except that it was depressing and pessimistic and made me feel really super duper shitty about the world and the country in which I reside. God, talk about making me want to die. But, as I said, very intellectually stimulating!!! Josh and I have been making an effort to attend more lectures ; last week we saw a lecture about sex education in Texas, which was very good. Anyway, it proved good that I refuse to bring credit cards or checks around with me because I am always faced with temptations to spend money. Like, Ted Rall's book, for example. Oh, I wanted to buy it so badly. Actually, I want to buy all of the half-dozen books he recommended. So interesting! I cannot refrain from exclaiming! Also, it serves to reinforce my leftism, seeing Ted Rall, which I feel is important to maintaining one's sanity while living in Idaho, which is a state in the USA, both of which are lame. Grunt, grunt.

Caution: the following paragraph contains disturbing material which might keep you up at night. So if you are one of those sorts of people who lay awake at night, mulling over disturbing things as though they were the nightmare that happened to you, I would advise skipping to the next paragraph.
At some point during the lecture, Ted Rall began to discuss torture, and to bring his point home, he opted to show a photo of a man who had been boiled to death. While I thought his lecture was awesome, I felt it was insensitive of him to show this photo without any kind of advance warning. There I was, examining a map of Tajikistan (or Uzbekistan?), when all of a sudden this photo of an obviously dead body comes up and I'm left to stare in morbid fascination. Ted Rall left the photo up for a moment before saying that the person had been boiled to death - - apparently it was a man who had had the audacity to distribute fliers to the public containing his opinions about the country. As I said, I was staring, morbidly fascinated, at the photo. Then I realized the source of his injuries and began to have some kind of inkling about what a body would have sustained to die in such a way, and I became rather overwhelmed. Of course, because I am who I am, I laid in bed that night thinking about what it might be like to be boiled to death. And I had difficulty getting to sleep. I kept thinking about how, since the whole point of his death was torture, they probably didn't just throw his body into boiling water all at once. They probably dipped him in slowly so that he had the opportunity to feel his person cook. Can you imagine – being arrested for distributing your opinion, and then you're on a platter screaming as your toes are boiled, your feet, your ankles. 'Cause boiled toes never killed no one. A slowly boiled body...eep. Yea, so the photo also made evident several bruises that he had on his person. To me, they spoke of a massive amount of restraint being applied to him, likely while he was being boiled. Anyway, it was horrible and I am thoroughly disturbed.

On Sunday, we met for some morning coffee at the bagel place with cooshy couches. After Josh had gone to work, I made use of my time by designing a knitting pattern of a bicycle. It was fun and creative. I spent the day doing all kinds of things that I found awesome. When Josh got off work, we went on a mountain bike ride on a trail we've never been on before off of Rocky Canyon Road. We rode our bikes through the whole Shane's Loop area, connected with Rocky Canyon Road, rode up and up, and turned onto a trail for "Orchard Loop". I had a strange feeling of deja vue once on this trail, but I couldn't put my finger on it. At some point, we decided to connect with a trail that was branching off of the main trail, and it was this exciting exploration adventure thing. We didn't have a good sense about where we were going or what the trail would be like, but we just kept going. I was having difficulties with my gears, so we took more moments of pause than necessary. We made it to the top and began our descent, which was obviously on a motorcycle trail. I was getting super cold, my warming layers weren't quite enough to keep me warm after having worked up a sweat on the climb and then rushing into a descent into the shade on a cool fall evening. So I felt shaky. But it was quite fun and I felt that, if I wasn't preoccupied with my coldness, that I could have gone quite fast on the downhill. The loop came back onto Rocky Canyon Road, and we had quite a distance to ride down. Now, I do not ever want to be a party pooper, but I dislike riding my bicycle down Rocky Canyon Road. This is due, mainly, to the fact that I have a poor suspension system on my bicycle. My suspension gets me through most everything that I ride, and I tend to prefer less gnarly trails. But Rocky Canyon Road is a never ending washboard of jittering ricketty racketty rocky sandy plunketty plonketty jirating eee-aaa-eee-aaa-eee and I find it quite unpleasant to ride down on, on my bicycle with barely two inches of front suspension. Trust me, once I have the money I have every intention of investing in a better front fork, but I really have no money for that right now. And good lord, I felt that we were riding down Rocky Canyon Road for so long. And what made it worse was that my hands were partially numb from the cold, not numb enough so that I couldn't feel them, but numb enough so that a constant gyration against my carbon fiber handle bars was very very very very very very painful. I spent the duration of the decent with a look of pure agony upon my face. But see, I don't want to seem like a woosy who never tries. I have made it up the long hard road of finding some enjoyment in riding UP Rocky Canyon Road. As I tend to ride much slower during an uphill than a downhill, the gyrations against my lack of suspension are less bothersome. Anyway, twenty minutes after the ride, I was in the shower wimpering over my poor sore hands who were sadly abused.

Anyhoot, I am a very busy bee right now so I need to return to my buzying.

Posted by jennifer at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)