I asked for pictures of the states a few days ago. It was for this. If you have pictures, please email me, I would love to post them.
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I have longed to visit Antarctica for quite some time, so Antarctic Diaries – Life Behind the Science is my chance of getting a feel for it until I get to visit and make my own diaries. Lately, I seem to be suffering from a problem that only occurs when I have too much free time on my hands. I get fleeting moments of inspiration where I want to work very hard and finish a task I’ve been putting off. I’ll be sitting in a movie theater and think that as soon as I get home, I’ll write that code I promised Jake, or that I’ll update parts of my site that are outdated. Or that I’ll finish the presents I wanted to send to people who hosted us throughout the cross country trip. Or that I want to sit and write. I make mental lists. For that fleeting moment, I feel that I can do all those things. I feel energetic and enthused about my projects. I feel driven. And then the moment passes. I come home and read my mail and don’t really feel like doing much else. I take a break and read for a while, hoping the moment will come back, but it doesn’t. Not until a day later, when least expected. When I’m working I don’t seem to have time for these fleeting moments. I am generally too busy for them. I run from one place to another getting things done instead of thinking about getting things done. If you have any pictures of any of the 50 United States, please email me a link to your picture, the location (within the state), a link to your site, and the state. It’s for a project I’m trying to do. Only one picture per state, but you can mail several pictures. Fair warning: If you don’t want this picture online, don’t email it to me. I don’t plan to touch the pictures in any way and full credit will be given to you. The pictures have to be taken by you or someone who gives permission to have them posted, in which case, I’d like their name as well. After a week of non-stop unpacking, our apartment is beginning to look almost normal. We still haven’t hung any of our pictures but all the computers are installed, so are the TVs and stereo, every box is unpacked except for two. You can even walk around without tripping over stuff. Part of me is happy to finally get to slow down and take some down time during the day, the other part of me knows this means having to finally get a job. That part wishes the unpacking could go on forever. Driving isn’t going so well. I know millions of people do it and I know that technically I am capable of doing it, but it’s really stressful and quite painful. I hate feeling as incompetent as the car makes me feel. Only two weeks to the exam and I am sure to fail it. It’s amazing how little we tend to enjoy downtime. We’re either busy with the job or desperately looking for one. Seems like a sad existence. No wonder I prefer to work for myself. I seem to remember Heather having a post about dying her hair black that I should have paid much more attention to before I used the Nice’N’Easy bottle I bought yesterday. My brand new tub is now covered with black stains that threaten to stay permanently. I knew there was a reason to let the gray grow. After a morning at the DMV, I am now the proud owner of a temporary California license, my very first in the United States. My driving test is scheduled for the end of the month and I am scared shitless. I started unpacking my books yesterday and it’s amazing how happy the act made me. I love my books, just looking at the titles and the authors filled me with joy. It made the everlasting unpacking considerably more fun. After five full days of trucking down all the major highways between Boston and San Diego, we made it back to our new home. One night at Audrey and Tom’s and another at Ashlie and Travis’ meant that we only paid two nights of hotel fees. Even including the gas and paying people to unload the truck, we still saved around 3000 over the price the moving companies quoted us. On the fourth day, we even managed to take a side trip and see the Painted Desert and the Meteor Crater in Arizona, two sites we had missed in July. Besides the severe allergies to the truck, my body handled the trip quite well. The birdie played, ate, or slept the whole way. He did get quite a bit more anxious when the sun set and started climbing to the top of his cage. After four months of separation, he’s now with his family, in his new home. He should enjoy the attention and freedom until a dog is added to our family. The last three days have been a frenzy of unpacking. Now that we’re finally here, I seem to have gone back to my usual rushing self and am quickly getting worried about settling down, finding a job, and such. We’ve already got our phone, cable and electricity connected. I’ve unpacked the kitchen, clothes, and bathroom. The TiVo is connected and merrily recording. Since my computer broke during the move, I even bought a new one last night. On the surface, our lives seem to have started. Now, if only I could shake this anxious feeling in my stomach. Right now, Jake’s driving down a highway and I’m reading my mail, finding the nearest grocery store and updating the site using my laptop and Ricochet. San Diego is one of the two cities where Ricochet is available in the country and the flexibility it allows is awesome. It doesn’t seem to work in our apartment all that well but it works pretty much all over San Diego and it’s really fast. It’s quite affordable and means I can work at the beach, by the poolside or any other attractive location. When we drove across the country, I was telling Jake that such a service should be available across the country. It would have let us lookup hotels or campsites along our route and made life considerably easier. We’re off to Boston tomorrow to arrage our moving. We’re still waiting for info from one mover and otherwise we’re going to use Budget trucks. We figure we might as well get there and get started. I’m also planning to update my resume and order our utilities here in the meantime. In a week or two, we might actually look like we live here. After four days of extensive searching, we signed the lease on a place that was way above our planned budget but we got an unbelivable list of amenities, including two pools, two gyms, free yoga and pilates lessons, and a movie theather that shows films twice a week with free sode and popcorn, oh and free coffee each morning till 11. And they let me get a dog, which is appearantly a huge luxury in San Diego. All this in the very complex we live. We figured we could love like this for a year and then depending on how the job and living situation works out we will adjust accordingly. At least we will have a home and a bed to call our own tonight. Cross your fingers. Next order of business is moving our stuff here, getting serious about learning to drive (this is just me as Jake is normal and drives perfectly. I have about 20 days under my belt and am not fully ready to make the progress to daily driving). Not to mention, I need a job. If you have any advice on whether to get a company or UHaul stuff ourselves, we are open to suggestions, and of course, if you have a job to offer, I am open for those too. We made it! Our amazing trip is finally over and we’ve now started the fun business of looking for an apartment. It will be followed by finding a moving company and a job. I suppose the vacation was bound to end eventually. Hoover Dam is on the way from the Grand Canyon to Las Vegas so we, invariably, stopped for a few minutes and took some pictures. I thought, as I knew I would, that it wasn’t that impressive. However, I am sure it must have been in the 30s. I had reserved a hotel, Treasure Island, using hotels.com, a night ago in Williams, Arizona. We drove in around 6pm and waited too long to check in. Since it was a Wednesday, the Cirque de Soleil show in our hotel, Mystere, was dark for both of our nights. We asked about tickets to the other show by the same group, ‘O’, which was sold out but we could go and wait for last minute cancellations. We rushed to Bellagio to get in line which already had 60 people in it. While Jake waited, I walked up and asked if there were any tickets for the next night and it turned out there was a cancellation so we walked out of the hotel, thrilled not to have to wain in the line. Neither of us being gamblers, Vegas didn’t promise huge excitement for us. We walked around to see the Mirage’s volcano erupt, we watched the magnificent lights of the Bellagio. On the way back, we walked into a casino, played for 2 dollars and won 45. We went to the hotel and slept. The next morning it was pouring so we took our time getting up. We visited a chocolate factory with a cactuds garden. We walked around, seeing the lions in MGM, the fish and tigers in Mirage, playing pinball, visiting Luxor, Mandalay Bay, Tropicana, Excalibur, New York New York, and went back to take a nap to make sure I’d be able to stay up through the night. The Cirque de Soleil show was breathtaking. I can honestly say I enjoyed every moment of it. We waited in the extremely long yet very fast-moving line to take a cab to Hard Rock. After dinner, drinks and winning 5 bucks we took another cab to Tropicana and walked into some more of the hotels, ending up in the same casino. An hour, drinks and losing all of our winnings later, we went to bed at 4am. A true Vegas experience. We arrived in Utah in the afternoon. We drove right to the Salt Flat and was awed by the uneding flat road. We were scared to take our little car onto the flats since the person at the cafe by them told us that many cars get stuck. But while we were standing on them, an SUV came up and drove right onto them. It disappeared into the horizon within seconds. If you’re a fan of speeding, that’s probably the best place in the States to visit. Not to mention it’s quite neat. We then drove to Provo where I decided I was too tired to continue so we spent the night in a hotel and relaxed and did the laundrey and logged in. In the morning, we took our time leaving and drove towards Zion National Park. On the way, we stopped at Marysvale around where we had read about two ghost towns. We stopped for lunch at this tiny cafe which had the best burgers I’ve eatned in quite some time. We then drove up to Bullion which wasn’t really a ghost town; it was an old town which was really no longer there. There was an exhibit with the mining equipment. It was interesting but not exactly what we were looking for. We then drove down tothrough Red Canyon to Bryce Park. It had started to rain and within minutes, it ppoured and started to thunder loudly. e saw several flashes of lightning. We drove anyway and by the time we arrived at Bryce, it was trickling a tiny amount. The shaved and cony mountains of red, pink, yellow, white and orange covered miles and miles. I was so awestruck that I couldn’t stop taking pictures. I thikn it might be the most beautiful sight I’ve seen on this trip. An hour or so later, we drove to Zion Park and got there throught the east enterance, which turned out to be interesting but a bummer. The winding roads took a long time to get through and by the time we were in the park and got on the shuttle (you can’t drive in the park, you have to take the shuttle) it was already 8:30pm. We went up to Weeping Rock and walked a trail that was only a quarter of a mile long before it got dark. We made a note to definitely come back to this park as the huge mountains that towered over us in multicolor fascinated Jake and he wanted to do some of the longer and steeper hikes that we hadn’t had the time to do. A truly inspiring park. We drove to St. George for the night and plan to take the quicker, though by no means quik, route to the Four Corners, Canyon of the Ancients and then Canyon de Chelly.We’ll see how far we’ll get. Utah, albeit hot, was amazing and we haven’t even seen half of it. Lodging: La Quinta Inn, Provo @ $62.10 , Singletree Inn, St. George @ $41.50Car’s Mileage: 16,110 Gas: $11.87@1.69 & $14.07@1.78 Roads: 80 to SLC, 15 to Provo, 70 and 89 to Bryce and to Zion, 15 to St. George Sites: Bonneville Salt Flats, Provo, Bryce National Park, Red Canyon, Zion National Park |
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