Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart.
Life
When Words Fall Away
When words fall away, love must speak for us. I’ll always love you, Mom.
Till time shall cease:
Sleep that no pain shall wake;
Night that no morn shall break
Till joy shall overtake
Her perfect peace.{ from Christina Rossetti
The Mysterious Were-Bunny of San Antonio
So some of you may have wondered where Loba disappeared to this time. Some of you may have just been happy for the break from my insanity. Those some of you suck. Just sayin’.
To those who were curious about Loba’s whereabouts, I can finally reveal that I was on a super-secret, Mirror Universe assignment to glorious Texas. Yes, I was indeed deep in the heart of Du(m)bya Country. It was everything I dreamed it would be.
Okay, okay, I’m not going to crack on Texas now. Truth is: A) I know some pretty decent folk from Texas; and B) I didn’t really get a chance to see much more of San Antonio than the severely touristy-kitschy Riverwalk section. It’s hard trying to sight-see when you’re on duty from 6 in the morning until around 7 or 8 in the evening. So, really, what we saw consisted of the hotel, the conference space, site visit stops, and a couple of restaurants (sorry, no partridge in a pear tree this time). I did get a chance to see the Alamo, though. No photos, but I can say I was surprised by how very small it was. True, it was cold that night, but seriously, I thought everything was bigger in Texas.
The cool part was that we were there for our conference at the same time as San Antonio’s Fiesta Week. So there were parades, parties, costumes, and (as one of our conference speakers described it) lots of “drunken debauchery.” Loba may or may not have found said debauchery. I’ll let the flashing bunny ears speak my story for me.
Anywhoodle. It was definitely a long week, but it went very well, and we capped everything off with a relaxing trip to Boudro’s, which is a restaurant literally built from awesome. Definitely had the best guacamole I have ever eaten. The wait staff are all trained in how to make the guacamole at your table. Here’s our waiter, doin’ the do for us:
Seriously, if you love guacamole, you would love this recipe. I’ve never had guacamole this freakin’ tasty. You can download the recipe from the Boudro’s Web site, but you’ll need to log on to get it. Pain, I know, but it’s worth it. Actually, though, you could also just watch this YouTube video. I love how Sarah the waitress states that she doesn’t want to see this video on YouTube. Sorry, Sarah. Looks like they lied. Hope they tipped you well.
And here, finally, is the money shot of our waiter’s enviable guacamole skills:
So, there you go. Now you know where in the world Loba San Diego wandered off to this time, and you’ve gotten a tasty guacamole recipe for your efforts. And stay tuned for some book reviews as well as possibly a DVDreg review this week (although I’m mortified by this one and am having a very difficult time finishing up the special features). See? I always make sure to take care of my denizens, even when I hop off for other climes from time to time 😉
MIA? FLA!
Yes, dear denizens, it’s time once again to play “Where In the World Is Was Loba San Diego?”
(Thank you to those two Carmen San Diego fans who still laugh whenever I pull that one out of my hat.)
Snow wears you down, denizens. Wears you down and wears you out. If I have to haul another shovel-full of sludge, I might snap. So I packed up a ditty bag and rolled out for “The Happiest Place on Earth.”
North Platte, Nebraska.
I keed! I keed! I’m not even allowed in the state of Nebraska ever since that horrible corn husking accident back in ’87.
…
Where was I? Oh, yeah…Orlando! No, not Bloom. Florida. Home of Disney World, which ironically I completely circumnavigated the entire time I was there. Any place that allows the congregation of that much “little people” energy is as scary to me as a crib notes-free palm is to Sarah Palin.
POKE THE BEAR!!!
I was a work stowaway, sneaking in under the watchful eye of others who had to work while Loba was there to play. It wasn’t quite as warm as I had hoped it would be, but anything above the freezing mark is going to be a marked improvement. Plus…I saw grass! And sunshine!! And I now randomly emphasize my words to sound more like William Shatner!!!
There’s something so comforting about Florida. It’s home to so many childhood vacation memories. All I have to do is get a whiff of that sulfur-scented water and I’m right back at 10 years old, brushing my teeth at the latest Days Inn we’ve stopped at for the night (because at Days Inn, Kids Eat Free!), getting ready for bed but too wired to sleep because I know in the morning, we’re going to ___________________ (insert any random Florida attraction name in blank)!!
For this trip, I went back to one of those attractions that my dad took us to that I don’t think I truly appreciated at the time: the Ringling Museum. Yes, the Ringling of Ringling Brothers circus fame. John Ringling, to be precise, and his lovely wife Mable. It’s a strange destination, I know, but my family has a special relationship with the circus (anyone cracks a bearded lady joke here and your ass is grass). Plus, in addition to circus museums, there’s a huge art museum, beautiful gardens, and the Ringlings’ house, C
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being
I feel like I’m stuck in a Forrest Gumpian storm right now.
We been through every kind of [snow] there is. Little bitty stingin’ [snow]… and big ol’ fat [snow]. [Snow] that flew in sideways. And sometimes [snow] even seemed to come straight up from underneath.
The entire state is under a blizzard warning. Wind gusts up to 50 mph. Not expected to stop until 7 tonight. Oh, and by the way, if you click on the photo to the right, look for the little black mark in the snow. That’s a park bench.
Needless to say, my office is closed again, as is the federal government. As is really most everything in the area.
I’m sorry to keep blathering on about the snow. I can’t seem to think about anything else. All this blinding whiteness has permeated my brain cells. All I see are glittery, flittery flakes. All I can hear is the cold, silent sizzle of snow piling on top of more snow.
I totally regressed this morning when I finally hauled my chilled bones out of bed. I made myself a bowl of Cream of Wheat. That was what my dad would always make me during the winter: Cream of Wheat, buttered toast, and hot chocolate poured into my special mug from Silver Springs in Florida. Home of the famous glass bottom boats. Also where six Tarzan movies were filmed, along with The Creature From the Black Lagoon and the television show Sea Hunt. Actually, quite a bit has been filmed at Silver Springs. Check it out.
I miss our annual family vacations to Florida. True, sometimes we went to major attractions like Disney or Sea World. But my dad had a proclivity for finding the places far off the beaten path. Places like Silver Springs or Cypress Gardens. Gatorland. Marine Land. My dad still has a collection of hats from almost every single place we ever visited.
One of the last trips we took together, we all went to Bok Tower Gardens, with their beautiful singing carillon tower and the tamest, plumpest squirrels I’ve ever seen. They’d skitter down the trees and amble over, waving their tail plumes in greeting as they came. Of course, if you didn’t have a peanut or two for them, you risked having one climb up your leg. Best to have some nuts for them.
I wonder what those squirrels would think of all this snow.
When I was 6 years old, my parents dropped me off at school. It had snowed the night before, enough to cause school to open 2 hours late. So at around 10:30, I climbed out of my dad’s Dodge Dart, the infamous “Yellow Submarine,” and headed into the trailer where my first-grade class took place. Only when I opened the door, the lights were off and the trailer was completely empty and cold.
I still remember that panic of thinking that I was about to be left all alone at my school. I remember jumping off the little porch to the trailer and running after my parents as they drove away, crying out for them to stop.
I also remember the patch of ice that I hit, and how said patch projectile-rocketed me about five feet forward and to the right of my dad’s car. Thank goodness it didn’t shoot me completely straight. I might still be sporting a Dodge symbol scar on my forehead.
My parents thankfully heard me, as did the teacher in the trailer two down from my class’s trailer. Seems that he was supposed to be watching for students and telling them to come to his classroom. Seems he sucked at his assignment. Such is life.
To this day, however, I have an innate fear of ice. Pardon the pun, but I freeze on ice. Feeling the terrain slip beneath my feet puts me right back at 6 years old, shooting across the parking lot in a panic as my parents drive away. It totally sucks.
Kind of like unending snow. Ha! Didn’t think I could bring this one back around, did you?
Yeah, I’m just going bat-shit crazy at this point. But I’ve just found a CSI marathon on SpikeTV. Looks like they’re playing good episodes from early in the series. The Grissom Years. Ooh, and this episode stars Kate Vernon, she soon known as Ellen Tigh to BSG fans. So I must jet. I’ll probably be back though. It’s not like I’m going anywhere else today…
There’s Something Flaky About Those Photos
Okay, break time from the shoveling. Although not really shoveling. Just sad, pathetic attempts to shove around a bunch of lumps of slushy snow without slipping and skidding onto my ass as I walk across the big sheet of ice that now passes as our parking lot. I have a strong suspicion that Sammy isn’t moving anywhere any time soon.
This was Sammy yesterday as the snow was still falling. Like his windshield wiper horns and his snowhawk? He’s now at least dusted off for the most part, but the snow drifts all around him come up to his windows. I’ve kind of cleared a path along his starboard side, but my muscles revolted at the thought of tackling the port side. Just like everything revolted when I fell into this snowdrift yesterday:
Yeah, I’m not a short person, so when you see me standing in snow higher than my thighs, you know things are going to be a bit shit. Kind of like Queen Elizabeth is a bit royal or curling is a bit Canadian.
Again, though, it is pretty to watch. From inside. With coffee and Rice Krispy treats and a feckin’ awesome telephoto lens. Here, then, are some highlights of the past two days. Then it’s off to have some lunch and back outside. The Bobcats have arrived to help dig us out, so maybe it won’t be too terribly bad. I just have to keep telling myself that.
The Great White Hype Reality
OMGWTFSNOW?!?
I actually miss the days when the meteorologists in this area were always wrong. Used to be, they’d start hyping a snowstorm, only to have the predicted snowy deluge never materialize. I can remember several ocassions in which school systems shut down the night prior only to wake up to the rude reality that they closed for no reason whatsoever. No snow at all.
The meteorologists are starting to get better…and that sucks. They started predicting this storm at the beginning of this week. And they kept bumping the numbers each time they talked about it. 12 inches. 24 inches. 30 inches.
The storm started yesterday at around 11 a.m. I went into the office that morning, but when the president of the company came around and looked at me like I was crazy, I knew that it was okay to leave when the first flakes started to fall.
The snow finally stopped around 4 this evening. It was so blustery at points overnight that we awoke to a blanket of white over all the window screens and a pile of snow on the sidewalk that stood almost as high as the banister. I haven’t actually measured, but I can tell you that the snow drift I fell into when I was trying to check the phone lines at the back of the house came up above my knees. I’m going to venture a guess and say that we’ve got almost three feet. Some of the areas to the west got even more than that.
Like I said at the beginning, OMGWTFSNOW!
The last time we had a snow like this, I was about 12 years old. Actually, though, even that snow wasn’t this bad. This is now recorded in the history books as the fourth worst snowstorm in D.C. history.
I will grant you this…it is beautiful. I’ve taken quite a few photos since the storm began. I’d upload them, but they need to be resized and my main CPU is now off. The power started fluctuating sporadically around 3, so all essential electronics were clicked off at that point. The DSL also went out around noon. Followed by the phone lines at around 1. Both just came back about 20 minutes ago.
And of course my first thought was to come here to the lair and let its denizens know the 411 on my own personal white hell.
Can I just say now how much I’m dreading tomorrow morning? Sammy’s in about 4 feet of snow right now, thanks to drifting. And this is a heavy snow, denizens. Heavy, wet, clumpy snow. We’re going to be digging for most of the day, I believe.
The bonus? I strongly suspect that the federal government will be closed on Monday. Possibly even Tuesday.
Damn it feels good to be a contractor.
Anyway, so that’s where things are at Chez Loba. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a glass of wine waiting to be drunk and a cheesy 80s movie waiting to be watched. So I’m off…but only slightly…
Hailing Frequencies Closed
My parents informed me last night that my magical, mystical doodle cat, the enigmatic Mr. Data, passed from this existence last Thursday. My dad said that he woke up that morning and went into the kitchen to make coffee. Data was on the counter where he had fallen asleep the previous evening. He looked up at my dad, meowed once, and was no more.
Always the gentleman, he waited until he could properly say goodbye and thank you before departing.
Part of me wasn’t surprised when my parents told me. Part of me somehow expected to hear this news when I called. I don’t know how to explain it, but somehow I already knew. Part of me regrets that I wasn’t there to say goodbye. Part of me doesn’t ever want to have to say goodbye to another pet ever again. It’s way too hard and, quite frankly, my soul is a bit weary of saying goodbye to those I love.
Still, he had a magnificent run at this life. He would have been 18 years old this June, which means that he was part of my life for more than half of my existence. I’d post photos of him in his kittenhood, he with his perfectly triangular head and skinny kitty body, but those will need to be scanned. Yes, he predated digital cameras. Came before my first cell phone, too. He even slightly predated my very first computer, which came into the house a few months after his arrival.
Obviously, he didn’t’ predate my Trek obsession. Poor little guy, stuck with a nerd name all his life. It was his own fault, though. His eyes were the most beautiful…most Data shade of gold imaginable when he was a kitten. There really was no other name for him. The gold metamorphosed and faded as he aged, but they remained beautiful. Just like him.
He was a rescue kitty, found crawling out of a gutter by my aunt. Filthy and flea-infested, he was hardly recognizable as feline. So she took him home, bathed him and gave him food. He thanked her by voraciously consuming said food and then pooping in her plant box. That was pretty much when I fell in love with him. How could I not?
Eighteen years is a long time to remember, too many years and far too many joyful memories to fully encapsulate in the space of this post. But to say simply that he was a wonderful, beautiful specimen of felinicity seems somehow insignificant.
He was Data. Hinja-Doodle. Prettiest Kitty in the World.
He outlived both of my dogs. More significantly, he survived Jodie’s puppydom. He also survived a poor decision on his part to consume part of a fake Christmas tree. Plastic pine needles are not good for digestion. He traded in one of his nine lives to learn this truth.
In his twilight years, he became a country king, moving with my parents to the Tarheel State. He was technically my kitty, but, as I wrote previously in my Angry BloggerTM days, he and my father shared a special bond, perhaps borne from their solitary maleness in an estrogen-heavy house. Who was I to tear that bond asunder?
I don’t really know what else to say. My doodle cat is gone.
Au revoir, Mr. Data. Je t’aime.
Waking Memories
Loba plans and the Prophets laugh. I had places to go, people to do today. Instead, I’m sitting inside, watching as the “one inch” of snow that the meteorologists said we were going to get has transformed into multiple inches. I know a lot of girls who would get excited over more inches than originally promised. I’m not that girl.
I’m also apparently incredibly dirty-minded. I do apologize. However, I never said that Loba’s online lair was kid-tested and mother-approved.
So I remembered another dream. Not that big a deal to most people, I’m sure. However, Loba very rarely retains memories of dreams. For a long time I thought that I didn’t dream at all. Then Dr. Crusher and Data explained to me that if Humans didn’t dream, we’d go crazy. That was when I knew that I had to dream…I just never remembered any of what I was dreaming.
I realize now that I only remember the dreams that I wake up during. Like this morning. I was having a dream about something that actually happened. It was my final semester of college. My classes were over for the day and I was walking to my car when I ran into someone from my high school graduating class.
This probably doesn’t sound like that big a deal to most people. You go to a state university located fewer than 30 miles away from your high school, you’re bound to encounter a classmate or two on campus, right? Maybe if you went to a normal high school. I did not. The number of students in my graduating class didn’t even reach into the double digits. So this was a pretty big deal.
In both my dream and in the real experience, I remember the awkwardness of the encounter…the surprise on both sides, the slight joy mixed with discomfort. I can’t speak for my classmate, but I understand now that my discomfort was based on the fact that encountering him forced me to come face to face with a part of my life that was slowly fading, as was the person I was during those days. College is a time of reinvention and discovery, and while there were no external signs of any major transformation on my part (no pink hair, no tattoos, no piercings…I’m insanely vanilla in my appearance), inside I knew I was different from the person he once knew.
I think he could understand this truth as well. While he still looked the same as he did in high school, he had changed his name (and in fact seemed quite flustered when I called him by his old name). He was in a state of reinvention as well. So there we stood, two people identifiable to each other only on the outside, still in a state of flux on the inside. Not really all that into being reminded of those people we were trying to leave behind.
There wasn’t really anything more special than this about the dream, just like there wasn’t anything more special about the actual encounter. In reality, I think we shared about 10 minutes of conversation in which we caught up with what each of us was doing, and that was that. No offer from either side to exchange numbers or e-mail addresses. Just a smile and a goodbye. That was more than 10 years ago now. It was the last time I ever saw anyone from my graduating class.
I think this memory resurfaced in my dream world because recently I ran into someone else from my old school. It completely threw me off because: A) I didn’t recognize her at first (she was barely a teen the last time I saw her and now she’s a grown woman); and B) she so quickly recognized me. Again, insanely vanilla in appearance am I that I can still be identified by someone who last saw me when I was 17 years old. But though she recognized me on the outside, I was acutely aware that the person she saw on the outside was no longer home on the inside to the person she remembered from those days. The foundation is admittedly the same, but the rooms have been cleared out, given a fresh coat of paint, and completely redesigned.
I’m not really sure where I wanted to go with this post. It was just something on my mind as I sat here in my geek cave, watching the snowflakes tumble and twirl from the sky.
Please Don’t Call Them Resolutions
Back at work for the first time of the new decade. W00t is in order, I suppose. It’s always so very difficult to get back into the work mindset after the holidays. It seems particularly difficult this year, what with the snow breaks and all. I knew, when we got 2 feet of snow before winter even started, that we were in for it but good this year. Snow flurries are expected tonight, and oh but it’s hella cold. Still in the upper 20s with an expected high of 32. These would be lovely temperatures if I was in England. Being in the States, however, I’m none too keen on them. I’d like to regain feeling in my toes at some point today.
It could be worse, I know. I heard on the news this morning that somewhere at the very tippy-toppy of Minnesota hit -33 degrees. I tried to process that information, but I think I pulled a muscle.
So, what’s the point of this post? I suppose to give a preview of things I’ve been thinking about doing here at the lair. I’m not calling them resolutions. I think those are silly. These are just things that I’d like to tackle this year. I like schedules and deadlines, and the beginning of the year seems like a nice place to start, no?
As I already mentioned, I’m not going to be doing the 50 Book Challenge again this year. I’m still going to be reading constantly, but at whatever pace I find most comfortable at the time. My main goal this year is to read only, or mostly, books that I own but have never read. I went through my shelves this weekend and collected about 40 books that fit this description. There are still others on the shelves like this, but the ones I chose are the oldest of the bunch. Some I don’t even remember buying.
Sigh.
Anyway, I went through last year’s list and discovered that of the 51 books I read, I own 30 of them. Of those 30, I’ve tagged 4 to be donated to the local thrift store: Resistance, One on One, The Road, and Before Dishonor. That might not sound like a lot to some, but for this book geek, that’s a huge milestone. If I can do the same thing this year, I’ll feel extremely accomplished.
I’m also going to do something similar with my DVD collection. I’ve got a disgusting number of DVDs. If I count all my special editions and television series, I think I’m well over 500 at the moment. I love movies almost as much as I love books. But I must admit that there are several DVDs in my collection right now that scream WTF. I haven’t watched them since I bought them…or I haven’t watched them at all. It’s time for a little culling of the DVD herd, so to speak. Time to target all those impulse buys from the used CD store or the various bargain bin buys I failed to resist. It will be a thorough review, not just of the movie itself but also of all the special features included on the DVD. It’s only fair to give the movie as fair a chance as possible to stay, right?
I plan on continuing Flashback Friday on a weekly basis. I know I missed last Friday and my Christmas post, while dealing with a favorite movie from my childhood, wasn’t tagged as a flashback…so I missed two in a row. I promise to fix that this week. I also plan on reviving my Poster Picks and Gaming Glory series. I don’t have a schedule for either, but I do have a few entries for each that I hope to tackle very soon.
The only other things you should expect here at the lair is a continuation of my geekery (life without Star Trek is not really life, IMHO), more PhotoShop phun, more silliness, more surliness, and more things that make absolutely no sense. I hope you’ll continue to visit. I do enjoy watching you all come and go through my tracking software.
Real world “things to come”? I suppose there are a few. More fun writing, of course. I’ve already started working on outlines for two short story ideas. Not sure if I’ll use either, but it’s nice to be thinking about them, to be thinking about writing again.
Also, I need to get back into my workout routine, which was completely derailed since Thanksgiving. I haven’t worked out for a solid week in a ridiculously long time, and I feel rather like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man because of this. It also didn’t help that the holidays bring with them all variety of culinary sins. So less sugar, more fruit. Even less rum and more water. EEK.
And more walking during the day. I’m already walking more anyway thanks to a parking garage shift, but I also think I’m going to start walking up the 11 flights of stairs to my office again. Not every day like I used to. Maybe every other day. Or at the very least, once a week. Definitely on any day that I’m not wearing my Janeway heels.
Yes, I own these shoes. I know, they look ridiculous and nothing like the comfortable Docs I prefer. But…well, I like how Amazonian I feel when I wear them. I easily graze the 6-foot mark when I wear these puppies. Yes, it’s silly. I’m already taller than most women in my office. But I like giving some of the guys a run for their money as well 😉
[Trek Tangent: As ridiculous as these shoes are, at least they aren’t as completely out-of-place in my working world as they were in Major Kira’s and Captain Janeway’s worlds. I never understood the logic behind putting Nana Visitor or Kate Mulgrew in the heels they wore with their uniforms. Even more ridiculous? Jeri Ryan’s heels. I’m surprised she never broke something when bouncing through the corridors or planetside. No wonder she’s in her fuzzy slippies here!]
YaY for TrekCore and their rare photos section!
Okay, I’ve prattled on enough for now. Time to get back to work. I’ve got miles to go before I sleep leave. Hope you all are off to a wonderful start to your 2010!
