Curator of Receipts and Ticket Stubs, Part I

I wrote this first part, mostly, on the last night of my Spring Break, which was 123 days ago. Also, there are now websites whose whole job it is to tell you how many days it's been since something. There might be a part II coming in nearer days, if we’re lucky. If we’re not… you can assume Part II = I moved on to more consequential activities. 

That said: this is not important. It's a thing that is just long-winded thoughts, not really a story or anything. It's not a philosophical reflection or exploration of privilege or discussion of hoarding. It's just... a phenomenon that tends to occur when I resolve to make a lot of decisions in a row about accumulated things. 

Spoiler alert: I kept the phone.

Every time I do a major “clean out” I hit this exact spot, which for quick reference, we’ll call The Bog, about 75% of the way through. It surprises me and dismays me every time. I don’t mean like cleaning out a drawer or weeding through the pantry. I mean a Reckoning. I’ve embarked on a few of these in my life. This spring break was supposed to be one of them. It was supposed to be a legendary one. I’d been foretelling of it for months, prophesying of its comprehensiveness and swearing that I would not rest until it was complete. And now spring break is a few hours from ending. Rudely. Once I enter regulation weekend territory, it’s not technically spring break anymore. It’s the weekend. So. We have a few hours. And I’m sitting in the Bog.

The Bog involves a lot of sitting in the middle of disheveled piles and a lot of thinking about how ridiculous and frustrating it is that I have piles and what they mean, etc. At my childhood house, before I left for college, I sat perched on a stool in the bullseye of the upheaval, twirling my hair for days. Perhaps the reflections got channeled into some blogging, if we’re talking circa 2004 or later. Otherwise it was an email to Rachelle, probably several chapters long.

My mindset in The Bog is still the same as it was going in to the Reckoning; pare down. Minimize so I can breathe again. And up until this point, it goes swimmingly. The donation piles grow rapidly. Boxes are brought to light for the first time in years and several moves, their contents efficiently and quickly reallocated to Trash or No Longer Keep. I scoff at my hoarding tendencies and grossly underestimate the remainder of the task.

Then suddenly there’s the telephone Papaw gave me. It’s not particularly special. He gave me several things he’d find around if he thought it might interest me. The phone is one of many and I haven't even seen it since 2011. But it’s from him. To me. Will I ever use a landline again? Unlikely. But I will also never sit on the floor in Papaw’s living room again and wait as he goes down to his workbench to grab the phones he found (where? a garage sale? an auction box of random things?), which he will distribute to my brother and me, and on which I will conduct a large percentage of my middle school/high school phone conversations. And all of the sudden, no matter how much I want to get rid of the majority of the stuff I don't use or need, I can't make a single decision. 

It’s not even that this phone is the most special or only remaining thing I have from him. Not at all. I have far more important artifacts from Papaw. But this phone has just become the snag in the entire process, and it’s sitting right next to me as I type. After the phone (or the initial Snag Object, whatever it may be), every following thing gets heavier, the choices more impossible. So many things become links to a person who has meant something to me. It doesn’t even matter if this person is living or not, or living at a great distance or right downstairs working on his computer. The importance of these links grows exponentially, once discovered in the Bog.

So then I sit in the Bog with the phone. And the camera bag. And the notebooks full of organic chemistry and a postcard from my brother. The figurine of a girl holding a duck I haven’t seen in 15 years. The _____ (solve for x).

x = relic from (person I love) ^ every memory/fondness I have of (person I love)

There’s also the evidence, which I usually don’t even mean to keep, but it’s the seaweed and detritus that comes with the flow of time and gets caught in the branches of the rest of it, and when I run across it, it catches me in my tracks and then here I am trying to figure out if I should throw out a crinkled bit of paper or a wrapper or something. The unimportant but tangible bits that serve as evidence of the days in between those that are documented or photographed. Not important but now very weighty.

Evidence like receipts for a hundred Roommate dates at Pei Wei or a bike run to Elephant Café, or for “cocaine chips” and from when I thought a can of Pringles = a good dinner. The cellphone, which reminds me that this is the phone I had when I called people to tell them Jeremy proposed, or the one I used before texting was really a thing. Books of checks from accounts that don’t exist anymore, for a name I don’t have anymore, for an address where I don’t live anymore.

Granted, some of these things are obviously easy to part with, especially when I’m at the beginning of a Reckoning. I respond to them like a rational person and toss them and carry on.

But then I hit this point. And the piles surround me, physically, and I feel claustrophobic in the evidence. I am sitting in my empty workspace in the middle and I sit suspended in the years, getting nothing accomplished as an embarrassing amount of time passes, and I cannot make a single decision without shouldering a very long contemplation about one hundred different things. All spurred by a Sonic receipt Meredith probably stuck to my dashboard on our way to see Rent for the 4th (and not final) time.

That’s where I am now. Incapacitated. Exhausted from doing something I am terrible at even in the most benign situations; decision making has never been my forte. And 90% of the chaos that surrounds me is valueless trash, not even donatable. Things I haven’t missed, haven’t known I had. But now I have to think and reflect, ad nauseam. 

And if I donate the phone, it’s unlikely I’ll ever wish I hadn’t. My memory of Papaw won’t be diminished. But.

February

This isn't going to contain writing. About 23ish days through February I noticed I had taken at least one picture per day on my phone. So I got a genius, novel idea to collect all 28 and post them here. If you choose to scroll down, you'll quickly realize that there are not 28 pictures here. Some were too dull. But this is what's left of that venture. 

Or it might have been Minnesota, according to an unnamed source.

When I was out with the dog yesterday morning, I recovered a memory I had almost forgotten. It came back surprisingly abruptly, for how old and nearly lost it had become. I actually don’t remember when it was exactly, but it must have been in the early to mid-nineties. I’m fairly certain I was younger than ten, but I could be wrong.

Not from that era (maybe close?), but this one's between perms, so. Obvious choice. (Indiana, 1991)

We were in Branson, Missouri. Not our Surprise Branson trip, which is forever showcased in photographs outside my bedroom at my parents’ house, but an earlier trip I almost don’t even remember. I’m not even sure we were in Branson for the sake of being in Branson; it might have been a whim/passing-through ordeal.

Our main event of the trip was a boat ride, and the details are a little shifty, but I’m sure I have the main point of the story indisputably correct.

The boat was like a pontoon, or one of those riverboat tours they have in cities with riverwalks. I assume the ride took us up and down the river, or it might have been around a lake, and I also assume it was one of those guided tours where someone talks about the shoreline and history while you ride along. 

I remember it was a fairly small boat and that my brother and I were the only children on board. From my memory, there were less than twenty people on this boat ride.

SIDENOTE: I just called my brother to see if he has any further memory of these events, which was unlikely, since if my timeline is correct, he would have been younger than five at the time. Probably three-ish. He can corroborate the main ideas, but we’re still in talks on the details.

Anyway. Upon boarding, or embarking, the captain distributed little non-descript tied-off canvas bags to several (if not all) passengers. Corbin and I each got one (I think). We were all informed that each bag contained a divvied-up portion of someone’s stash of very important gold, and that we had to hide it and guard it carefully in case the dreaded pirates of Branson were to board at any point.

I remember all of the adults knowingly chuckling at this, as adults so often knowingly do, because it was likely in the brochure, and I remember being aware that the bag was filled with rocks that I assumed (hoped) were at least spray-painted gold. I’m sure, if I was then anything like I am now, I spent the majority of that boat ride fervently hoping that whatever alleged pirate might board would harass one of the adults for gold, instead of approaching me. I’m pretty sure I hid mine in my white hip-pack, with jaunty little hot-colored beach items all over it for decor. I remember being so sure that on the off-chance I was approached, I would keep my “gold” “safe”. I pre-thought of ways to tell off a pirate, should one “surprisingly” find us.

Anyway, brace yourself for this reveal: a pirate boarded. He was a lone, decked-out pirate who (I think) even put on a cockney accent for his pirating in Branson. He hopped off his little piratey boat (which might have even had a "cannon" to get our attention?) into ours and began putting on a show of searching for young maidens and gold. He approached a woman, and she held out very well and swore she had no gold, much to the entertainment of the other passengers. I remember being nervous, unsure of which sassy comeback I might use should he badger me as extensively as he had these other patrons.

Here’s the main point: the “pirate” didn’t even have to casually cast his glance in our direction, much less start accosting us, before Corbin and I both produced and surrendered our gold.

I could go into great detail about how this is so stereotypical Jori, ducking an improv spotlight, or being too shy to humor the “captain” and protect the “gold”, or just doing my part in letting the action get itself over with so I could go back to quietly letting my thoughts drift, away from the crowd.

But the parallels are obvious and don't require much more introspection (not that I couldn't do it because... come on). 

Instead, let's land here: today I was supposed to start a new job, but due to some administrative oversights, as I’ll call them to spare another story, it didn’t work out. I thought of this story yesterday, when the story was in the context of Tomorrow Is My New Job. Not really a new job so much as a new course to teach for my current employer. And I pushed the story out of my mind because, frankly, it would remind me of how I act in the spotlight when forced to perform. And performing in the spotlight is a lot of what teaching feels like on the First Day, I've found.

So instead of gearing myself up for that first day that was not meant to be, I guess, I’m sitting here trying to untangle an old memory or two, which is a little like trying to separate a spider web, intact, from a snarl of necklaces and other spider webs and cords. Or something. But anyway. That main point. That’s for sure.

Are we sure this one’s a Tuesday? Because it’s handling more like a Thursday.

One month ago exactly, it was a Friday. I went in to the paleobiology lab at my school, thinking it would be my last time ever in there. It didn’t feel like it; it felt very usual. I worked on work that I didn’t finish, which didn’t worry me because I have connections in the department and even though it was my last day (as mandated by the expiration of my key card), I figured I’d be back plenty to finish the project.

I left and didn’t think any more about it- the past two and a half years have primarily been set on that campus for everything from socializing (I know) to learning to working to having a warm/quiet place to run/read in the winter. I assumed I’d be back often, and I have enough friends and acquaintances roaming the campus and it’s close enough to home, so why not?

Today I went back to pick up my diploma. I have been putting it off for weeks. Part of the reasoning there was sheer unintentional inconvenience; I just haven’t been up that way during business hours over the last month.

But another part of the reason was subconscious denial? Maybe? The diploma meant the end. It meant admitting my program wouldn’t have a grand finale, so it was up to me to transition voluntarily. It meant that it was very much time to shelve this one and move on. I wasn’t aware of this (denial, being a key word here). But today I had a window of free time and figured I’d stop by before picking up groceries.

So I drove to the school. As usual. I spaced out on the very, very well-worn drive there. As usual. As I approached the last stoplight before the driveway to the campus, I snapped back. I was getting a headache, because I was clenching my jaw. I took a deep breath and realized I was also white-knuckling the steering wheel for no apparent reason. I wasn’t even thinking about anything in particular. Weird, but dismissible.

I texted a friend I thought might be on campus, and the light turned green. I made the left turn, found a parking spot and took the long way in on the off chance I’d run into someone. There are some good people I left on that campus that reside among the People I Will Go Out Of My Way To Run Into.

But I didn’t. I saw no one on my way in, past the doors to the big lecture hall, past the lounge, past the mailboxes and coffee machine. They had started new construction since I’d been in (one month ago) because of course they had. That just added onto the very unsettling gray cloud that was growing, hovering, but still unacknowledged. 

I got up to the Registrar’s office, where I’d never been before.

“Can I help you?” A woman’s face in a square surrounded by cubicle wall.

“Uh, yeah, I’m here to pick up a diploma?” Of course I said it questioningly, like I had wandered in to a back-alley deal to covertly and confusedly procure someone else’s blackletter document. I immediately preoccupied myself with irritation. At myself. For that.

“Oh, okay. Do you have your ID?” She seemed jolly and unphased, even despite my now-over-analyzed entrance.

“Not my school ID, but I have other IDs.” I started to rustle through my satchel. The white tentacles of my headphones had done as they do and multiplied to engulf every single scrap of paper and pen and suddenly my keys within the depths of my bag, even though I’d just dropped them and my wallet in there on the elevator up. As I tried to casually untangle, she said something that I mistook for “I just need to know who you are.”

“JORI” I announced very loudly, because I usually over-annunciate my name whenever it’s perfectly unnecessary.

In the middle of borderline interrupting her to stuff my name into her face, I realized she was just telling me it was okay that I didn’t have my school ID, she just wanted to make sure the names matched. 

She still didn’t seem too bothered as she checked my driver’s license, which I had somehow produced, and walked back to an empty desk behind her. I could see a single purple diploma case sitting on its top, and was surprised they were giving me more than a manila envelope in which to carry her home.

The cubicle woman handed over the puffy purple folder, and I thanked her quickly and tried to smile pleasantly (which, as usual, came off as very fitting punctuation to the whole interaction), and she congratulated me and I thanked her again over my shoulder. I was trying to decide if I should go find my old library comrades in the next building or just get on to the grocery. The only thought I gave to the diploma was that I felt really conspicuous carrying it around.

I took the elevator back down, and tried to mentally move on the grocery list, but the gray cloud of Something was still hovering, still very unsettled. I took the short cut back to the parking lot, to my spot, and pulled my keys (and headphones and several pieces of paper and a green pen) out to unlock the doors.

And when I got in and started the engine to leave is when the gray cloud descended. Finally and fully.

I had tossed the folder onto the passenger seat, but I picked it back up and opened it for the first time.

A paper that equals two years of Work. Of tears and money and sweat and lost sleep and arguments, etc. etc., plus the preceding year(s) of indecision. I snapped a picture of it and sent it to a few people. It seemed bigger than the other ones I have. In a few obvious ways.

And then I sat, and felt things I had no idea I would even consider feeling. Especially at receiving a piece of paper.

They’d cancelled our graduation ceremony (because the non-clinical classes were too small, but we might still be invited to the 2015 ceremony?), and forced us to file Pick Up Diploma under Things To Do, along with get groceries and go to the bank and count preserved cats. So that’s what I did, without much thought to the weight of it, but for a few jokes about maybe wearing my college cap and gown to go pick it up.

That gray cloud ended up being pretty weighty.

It made me feel and think some things, out of nowhere, that I very much was not expecting. Some seriousness at closure. Some bewilderment that I forgot to realize another transition. 

And because it’s one of my top skills, I filed the gray cloud away, as I’m wont to do, to be dealt with at a later time. Filing doesn’t always work immediately (or eventually, I guess), but it’s how I do.

I had other Things To Do today. So I moved on and did them.

What did I do today: a very short picture essay

All that pecan shelling down the drain. When they burn, they burn fast. 

I am still not tired of working on bones. This one was graciously given by a moose.

Our dog-food-buying trip turned into bookstore tour.

Our bookstore tour turned into let's draw this afternoon out.

Let's draw this afternoon out turned into let's call out our friends and make it an evening. And include their busy cat. And then go home and fall asleep to House, as usual. 

An escalating cycle of shame

With each cycle, each step is dramatically emphasized.

Things like this have been discussed (or even drawn out) before. With Rachelle. Maybe by Hyperbole? Not sure. But I couldn't find (i.e. didn't search for) a graphic that already existed for it. So I worked really, really hard on this world-class infographic, which I should probably copyright for Pulitzer reasons.

Long story short, I have a terrible, terrible stay-in-contact problem that leads to computers bogged down with image files, email draft folders bursting with very old news, and actual physical items that need to be mailed via real-live post but the post office is literally over 1.1 miles from my house and there are hills and the parking lot there is mildly confusing.

Someday I may overcome. I am not hopeful.

(This problem manifests very visually in this very website, obviously.)

Now that I am truly, truly done with graduate school (save for some lingering work here and there, but the degree has been fully earned; the extra stuff is strictly for-fun and for-dollars), I am feeling the weight that has built up on my delayed correspondence. Grad school is a wonderful disguise for the TOO MUCH TIME PASSES step, as illustrated above.

So if, for some reason, you are reading this, and I have not communicated well with you lately or if I owe you some form of communication or photographs (I could list people but I'd feel too awful), I'm sorry. This is my weak excuse.

As a consolation, here is an introduction to how Tiberiuses ride in cars:

I'm still here

I am now existing in limbo. I am waiting to hear if I legitimately earned my master's degree or if I have to endure more testing. It's a weird place to be. No celebrating yet. Very tentative and pretty guilt-laden resting. Very, very weird.

I intend to be a bit more writey in the nearish future. But for now, just a note. Still here. In an unfamiliar state, not yet daring to look forward to the very unknown.

I think they call it virtual coffee date.

Alternate title: today we're talking about furnaces.

There's this trend going around (maybe. does it count as a trend if I have seen two posts like it over the past year?) where you make a blog post as if you're sitting down to coffee with the reader. We could make it more real by having this be a Skype situation, but I'll spare you the trouble of signing in. This is what you'd see on your screen:

Me. Without my face on, as it were, wearing gloves, etc. I don't want to put words in your mouth but you'd probably say something about the bundling overkill. Then I'd sigh and you'd actually see the sigh manifested as a burst of steam and you'd get it.

I am sacrificing 8 hours of study/research time today to stay home and wait for the furnace guy. It's been less than 24 hours since we heard the reassuring rattle of the heat blasting through the vents, but it turns out that heat dissipates rather quickly in the present tundra.

So it's hilarious if you think I'm doing anything besides having a Game of Thrones day with the kettle staying at the ready ALL DAY. Sure, it's highly possible to study from home, but I'm already off track by blogging instead of reviewing the different types of cartilage, so it's probably too late to start now. It's past 10 AM.

What do you want to know about, on this, our virtual coffee date? I'd offer you a snack or something? I don't know how that would work.

I'll tell you a little late that I was a guest writer over at BowlCutsAndChippedTeeth.

And speaking of Rachelle... she and I have a long-running joke about going into survival mode at the drop of a hat, e.g. even at the most benign power outage, jumping to the most apocalyptic conclusion and springing to the most drastic action, involving lots of forging and makeshifts. I'm happy to report that when we noticed the furnace was out last night, Jeremy did that very thing. Within minutes we had pots of boiling water, every candle burning and every blanket gathered and all poorly insulated rooms sealed off from the main living area. We were instantly prepared for a night without heat and (bonus) for someone from Little House on the Prairie to go into labor. So he's cut from the same cloth, it seems.

If this were a real coffee sit-down, we could spend a long time doing hypothetical jokes about survivalism.

I'm suddenly very afraid that I'm being a bad virtual coffee date. The only thing on my mind has to do with the dropping temperature. The last time we had a repairman to the house (the upside/downside of renting) he was like if Gomer Pyle was a very jolly, very talkative conspiracy theorist. A real gem, disguised in coveralls.

Update on my non-furnace-goings-on? It is my last semester of school. The dog loves the snow. I am grateful that we can afford a home where an out-of-service furnace is unusual. I have been thinking about Indiana Jones because I rewatched them all over the course of the past week. I have had NPR on all morning but haven't paid attention to a single story. The dregs of my coffee have gone glacial.

I guess I will end, because I started this without a real plan and now I'm wandering. I'll end in the same vein, then, by sharing a quote that has been brewing in the undercurrent of my mind for the last few years, and I'd like to keep it there. I'm still of the mind that I'm not the resolution sort, but this is kind of one? Maybe? It's such an obnoxious cliche, but for some reason, it's pretty solid, I think. Probably because I am a Master Procrastinator.

And I'm going to try to make it less annoying and more confusing and more practical by hiding the quote on a pictorial recipe for delicious vegetable/chip/pita cracker/everything dip. You're welcome.

I'm going to go see how good the imaginary barista is at chai.

WebRep

currentVote

noRating

noWeight

#NoFilter

November 10, 2000

I recently fell into the vortex that is Reading a Pile of Old Journals. This particular set of journals represents the semester I was required to journal daily for journalism class and the following semester I kept it up, giving us almost a year's worth of 14-year-old Jori thoughts recorded for posterity.

This kind of feels like it could be a Learning to Love You More project, but it was actually spurred by a thing I found here, which is based on this increasingly popular movement. Who knew.

Basically the writings I found are general analyses of days, seemingly measured against the following criteria:

1. Who did I see at school?
2. Did I have to go to school?
3. Did I a) get the house to myself after school, or b) have to share it with my brother?
4. Did I have to interact with anyone? 

If the answer to No. 2 or No. 3b was yes, the day was evidently automatically categorized as dumb or boring, which I emphasized by repeating myself multiple times per page. Who needed Honor's English when you could articulate like that?

Obligatory photo evidence of the Jori I've been reading. Not the best representation, but I couldn't find a Beatles-shirt-wearing-braces-donning woefully dramatic photo in my own archives. 
Left: a guy of whom we were stealthily trying to take a picture. Right: ME & BFF, at the time. 

Other highlights include:

• a seven-page summary of my thoughts and apprehensions about a New Year's Eve party I had to attend 
• multiple mentions of and detailed accounts of how tragic it is that I'll probably never end up marrying a doctor I met (kind of a Kiefer Sutherland + Prince William fellow? At best?)
• the MOST EXTREME RAGE and FURY FILLED WRITINGS about my brother*
• songs I had to remember to record on cassette the next time they came on the radio because I wasn't allowed to buy the cd
• running countdowns for various cd releases, school holidays, and Saturday Night Live

My general response 13 years later = wait, what?

I think I talked about hating school so much because of the company I was forced to keep therein? and maybe because I needed to cover my tracks for actually liking the schoolish parts of school.

*It was also kind of surprising because I forgot that my brother and I weren't really friends at all for a good 10ish years of our siblinghood.

Among the rundowns and summaries of my daily goings on, there are a few real heavy-hitters that I labeled "the real entries". Thus, I present:

JOURNAL AUGUST 22- DEC 31 2000:

A dramatic reading of those selected samples.

To create context: recently-turned 15-year-old Jori, writing a weekish or two after an appendectomy performed by THE doctor. To set the mood: Sarah McLachlan music, probably.

WebRep

currentVote

noRating

noWeight

fashionably timely*.

*not.

Cuchara is a beautiful, beautiful place and I am so grateful that we were able to spend some time there. I dragged my limping camera around (more on that later, perhaps) some of the time, but most of the time was just good for watching, and listening, and reveling in good company. 

Not pictured: I climbed a sand dune that is 2% the height of Mt. Everest, but don't let that pittance fool you for one second- it was a beast. I saw a bear up close, in the wild, but it was pretty chill so we all carried on all right. I saw a snake and deer and antelope and smoke from wildfires (unfortunately) and ate fresh trout and hung out with some pretty premium toddlers, truth be told (actually that part is pictured, above).

It was good. And again, I am grateful.

the Day of Mothers post

You know I am thankful to my parents for so many things. I am grateful for the big things, the things that sound cliche when written out or said aloud, but they are really the most important things.

But I am also increasingly thankful for the little bits and pieces.

To my mom, I am thankful for:

-the introduction to yoga
-the Reading Gene (probably a little from both parents, but still- I've watched her devour many a library stack through the years)
-her teaching me to karate chop before folding. I still do it.
-her making me a cup of herbal tea and letting me watch Frasier with her one night a long time ago when I couldn't sleep (this was both my introduction to a good cup of tea and its power beyond an intended bedtime)
-all of the (probably hundreds of) walks
-her teaching my brother and me that it is perfectly acceptable to bust out a British accent even if the occasion doesn't call for it
-her drawing a picture of a women's slip for me to take to my teacher when I lost a permission slip once
-her love of a good motorcycle jaunt (which, to be fair, is majorly my dad's arena, but I love that she's usually down for it) or bicycle jaunt
-her invention of the best lunch ever when we were in Canada (related: her love of a good city market)

I feel like I'm selling her very short by ending the list (which is a mere fraction of exhaustive) there. I could go on and on. And then I could start a list of all of the other mothers I know and appreciate. Maybe I will, at some point. But for now, know that this is but a sampling of the unmatched character of my mom, to whom and for whom I am grateful, and from whom I have learned much. To put it briefly.

Cheers.

Nothing to do with anything

The Soundtrack to my Last Several Days:
Devendra Banhart's newest

Where Do I Wish I Could Have Gone?
A real live comic con. That one, specifically.

A Thousand Continuous Paper Cuts.
Is what dry hands feel like, in case you were wondering. When I was little, we tried everything to make them feel better. Hint: never Clinique's "unscented" lotion. Never.

March 6.
I usually make my brother a pie or cake for his birthday. Like on this March 6. Or this one. Or this one, even though the cake isn't pictured. He is too far away right now for that to be practical. I miss his company terribly.

A Better Note:
My Jeremy will very soon no longer be a long-term substitute, but a regular old teacher. A sigh of relief was heard 'round the house. He also recently bought me a bunch of seeds, so I can try my hand for the 39th time at herb gardening. My last efforts (with basil seeds from Rachelle) went so well and the basil leaves smelled so good that Tiberius tumbled the pot and lovingly licked them all. And that was the end of that.

Before I left for school yesterday, I ran up the attic stairs to get a picture of the constant state of snow flurry. This (naturally) doesn't do justice but there you have it: my dutiful contribution to the midwestern IT SNOWED documentation (weird yet true: this is a color photograph).

12 and 13

Twelve Things I Did in 2012. 13 days late. In 2013.

1. Moved to Iowa

2. Had quite a few visits from dear friends and family, including but not limited to a Roommate of Old (in OK) and a Grantford (in IA)

3. Acquired a brand new niece

4. Biked many miles in the woods

5. Helped my husband and brother and Casey from Craiglist move an antique piano across a vast expanse of rugged terrain in extreme heat.

6. Did not run any races for the first time in many years

7. Finished my first semester of graduate school with a decent GPA

8. Had an extremely memorable Christmas (ask me about it. it's a whole story that involves firetrucks and ambuli).

9. Took many a road trip on a limited segment of I-35 (between Iowa, Kansas, and Oklahoma)

10. Took a plane trip to Atlanta

11. Euthanized many mice for the good of medical research and still feel weird about it

12. Made my first ever of my entire life Year In Review List and ended it with a total cop-out item*.

And this would be a great place for resolutions. Or intentions. Or a To Do list for the year. I used to take these very seriously, write them down on December 31 and roll them up and slide them into a Pringles can that would be extensively taped up and packed away with the Christmas things and not opened until the next December 31. I did that for several years but I think I abandoned it in 1999, or shortly thereafter. 

So anyway. I tried to think of resolutions this year, for the first time since I dropped the Pringles can tradition. I went back and forth between really annoying ideas that could feasibly double nicely as cross-stitch pillow fodder and ideas that aimed really low, for an esteem boost. The whole ordeal annoyed me so I dropped it. No resolutions, no To Do lists. 

Except poaching an egg. I want to learn to poach an egg well, but I feel weird about having two egg posts in a row.

*I made this list a few weeks ago, when I was supposed to be studying for finals.

I know I swore off Food I Made photographs but this is a little different

This is a miniature public thank you to my dad on his birthday.

He has probably inadvertantly passed on a great many things to me (my mom has, too, naturally). One of the more trivial things I long aspired to pick up was his ability to nonchalantly throw together a plate of literally perfect scrambled eggs. Weird and potentially uninteresting yet true.

This isn't terribly signficant in the scope of things I could thank him for or mention at all. But it just occurred to me this morning.

Happy birthday to my dad, and thank you for unknowingly teaching me how to make a pretty delicious plate of food.

it was an accidental monument

For some reason this board had the same ink on it from 2009 to last Sunday. Spring 2009, when I was putting in the final throes of biochem studies and creeping round the corner to a long spring/summer/fall of job hunting. Recording my running times on the board and seeing this fellow who brought me coffee in the mornings and went on long bike rides and grilled vegetables for us in the evenings (it worked out).

I wasn't exactly attached to the writing on my white board... I just kind of forgot about it and kept moving it from place to place with me. And now I've erased it and I'm studying... the same things. Again.

I promise I'm not trying to be majestic. It was just a monument to the recent past that took me by surprise when it was unearthed. It kind of reminds me of this project... (which I'm not entirely uninterested in emulating, at least tangentially) but I'm unwilling to do an accompanying self portrait.

That's all. Be well.

What Has Been Up (According to My Phone)

This is the Jori History of the last month according to my phone. It tells of the most important things, I guess (If I had a fancier phone, they'd be fancier images. As it is, they're pretty rough. Forgive me.)

Anyway. This is a tour of my last day of work (commemorative Western blot) (it's GAPDH, in case you're curious), moving my brother in with us, moving ourselves hundreds of miles, acclimating our dog to the journey, toasting the Grand One Year at our favorite burger/shake joint, Tiberius's first canine houseguest (and unrequited love), and exploring the new territory Jori/Jeremy style. The snake and bikes-in-Jeep photos warrant their own narrative, trust me.

Welcome to carpet, Tiberius

Where the whole room is your blanket.

I could post about our 500+ mile move, or about any of a number of timely things, but now that I've been a Stay At Home Jori for two whole weeks, all I can think of are about nine different posts exclusively about my dog, who is currently without his collar and thus: Stealth Puppy.

titanic

This was a post I wrote a couple weeks ago and accidentally left in draft mode, so it's a bit late. Sorry! 

There are probably rules against shooting food in black and white, but as my brother and Jeremy both pointed out, actual Titanic pictures would have had no choice.

Anyway. Special thanks to Corbin (a lifelong studier of the ship and its sinking) for inviting us to join him for a first class multi-course lunch, complete with hors d'oeuvres and Titanic/iceberg shaped ice, on the hundredth anniversary of the tragedy.... which suddenly sounds morbid, but it wasn't. He made food that they actually served on the Titanic! And made it one hundred percent vegetarian! Cheers to him.

On a separate, but more important note: who would like to make me these and deliver them to my lab? Slightly chilled, please.