Highlights of my trip to Maryland--

I drove up last Thursday, and it's normally a twelve hour drive or so, but on an impulse, I detoured off of the main highway somewhere in southern Virginia (Fancy Gap, it looks like), and took the Blue Ridge Parkway for a few hours. I had no phone service (curse you, T-Mobile!!) and no physical map so after a while I started to get antsy and worry where I was going to join the highway. I stopped to take a lot of pictures, as well as to admire the views.

Friday night, Dan and I took the metro down to Adams Morgan to meet up with one of our friends for a few drinks. Hex was late, so Dan and I wandered a bit, in search of a bathroom, and found ourselves in Dan's Cafe. Adams Morgan has a ton of bars but this one didn't quite fit- the facade lacks windows and looks kind of condemned. I ordered a beer and Dan asked for a bourbon neat. The bartender pointed out that he could have a flask bottle for thirteen dollars, instead of a little airplane liquor bottle for five bucks, so Dan took the bigger bottle. The bartender poured the bottle into two glasses, which he pushed over to us with a bucket of ice, before spiking the empty bottle into a trash bin. Dan used the bathroom while I continued to marvel over all of this and came out a shaken man. I have since looked up Dan's Cafe on yelp, and almost all of the reviews mention the bathroom and how terrifyingly gross it is. Hex was still not there, so I helped Dan out with the bourbon. I'm a good helper. And my beer was terrible.

The rest of the night included the biggest slices of pizza I have ever seen, karaoke with a bunch of drunken college kids, and live music at Madam's Organ.

Saturday night, we met up with Hex again, this time at a sports bar in Leesburg, which seemed odd, except that the band playing there was The Reflex, and they are tons of fun live! The bar was giving out jelly bracelets and while some folks were there in jeans and a tee (including yours truly), other people were all kinds of dressed up- I even saw a totally hideous and hilarious zebra print suit.

Sunday morning, we drove down to Old Town in Alexandria, where we visited the Torpedo Factory, which is an arts space, and actually has exactly nothing to do with torpedos anymore! I really liked the neighborhood- it reminds me a lot of Charleston, in some ways- I guess it was mostly the old buildings and being close to the water.

Driving home Monday, I spent a lot more time on the Blue Ridge Parkway, starting at mile 0 and ending at Meadows of Dan, where I got onto a rural road and spent a lot of time praying I'd get to a highway before I reached West Virginia. I stopped a lot and walked around and took even more pictures. I even had a picnic lunch in the mountains! I didn't get home till 1 a.m., and I was still too wired to sleep until 4.

Well, hello!

I got my journal login from GVN, so here's the link: http://www.volunteerjournals.org/author/kwork/

Cynthia Sewell is a volunteer who is probably home by now, having just completed her rotation in Haiti three days ago. I'm going to quote from her journal here, since this was... just unbelievable.

Hi All, sorry so late with an update. My last day in Haiti and I finally have access to a computer. I’ll attempt to be brief with my summary of events which have unfolded in the past 2 weeks. Week 1 we arrived in Port au Prince and proceeded to make our way through the city. The sites confirming all that we have seen in the news media. Extremely overcrowded city decaying before your eyes. Most buildings reduced to rubble, rubbage and sewage everywhere! We made our way to Jacmel, on the southeast coast of Haiti. Arrived in a torrential downpour. Quickly determined our compound was not safe for habitation and infeasible to set up camp. We stayed in a nearby questhouse for 4 days until we could get our compound up to “living” standards. I use that term loosely. As the development team with were dropped in country with little resources and connections with other ngo’s. We had many false starts, but finally prevailed by week 2. We have created a community center for the tent camps surrounding our compound. We offer adult english classes, childrens’ art and recreation classes. The appreciation of the Haitians is heartwarming. We also formed a partnership with OIM to help relocate the displaced people of Pichonat, the largest IDP camp in Jacmel. Our first visit to the camp was met by a group of angry demonstrators chanting they will not leave. We aborted our mission that day as we considered the situation might ascalate. Unfortantely, I will not be able to continue my work with the relocation process. I also spend time with children in a couple of orphanges as well as a few schools. In summary, the needs are enormous! I accomplished what little I could in such a short period of time.

So, yeah, they built the whole compound from scratch, and it now has two pit toilets and some tents. It looks like more people were being redirected to Port-au-Prince on the previous rotation, probably because of the aforementioned incident at Pichonat.

One week to go!

Some links.

Via Andrew Sullivan, in light of my recent body painting adventure, in which I did have help (at least getting my back), which was lovely and rather relaxing:
Donald Johanson, a paleoanthropologist, believes, based on his time with the Masai in Kenya, body art predates cave paintings: "They were probably decorating one another, and this was like, in a broad sense, like when you look at non-human primates that groom one another, it was a way of developing social contact and social connectedness and cohesiveness. So the earliest art really goes back to Southern Africa [...] Europe wasn't really the place where the creative explosion happened. It came along with us into Europe and developed over time to the point where you have the first impressionists, twenty-five thousand years ago," by which he means the cave paintings at Lascaux. (That link leads to a 3D virtual tour of the caves, if you are interested.)

Kathleen Parker reflects on the growing sense of political unrest in the face of the fifteenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, which is today. "Is the political environment becoming so toxic that we could see another Timothy McVeigh emerge?

No one knows the answer, but fears that anger could escalate into action beyond the ballot box are not misplaced. Ninety-nine percent of angry Americans might be perfectly satisfied to rail at their television sets -- or to show up at a Tea Party rally -- but it takes only one.
[...]
Add to the mixture of organic anger and grass-roots momentum the heckling language of Beck, Limbaugh & Co., and one fears that volatility could become explosive. What's next, militias?

Well, yes, now that you mention it. In Oklahoma, un-ironic legislators are sympathetic to a proposal to form local voluntary militias to thwart unwanted federal initiatives and to preserve state sovereignty."

Scary stuff. Here's hoping that the Second Amendment rallies today stay nonviolent, though, and that all those guns are in fact unloaded and holstered!

Also scary, but less because of my fellow man- a veritable hit parade of the biggest explosions in our history! Includes Krakatoa, the unexplained explosion at the Tunguska River in Siberia that leveled over 2000 square kilometers (that's over 1200 square miles!) in 1908, and Lake Toba, which was a supervolcano in Sumatra that cooled the earth 70,000 years ago and may have contributed to a decline in the human population at that time!

Lots of things.

My housemate Sean says there are way too many things going on with me at once right now, and I guess he is right.

I drove over to Birmingham to visit UAB on Friday, and took a tour, and I love the campus. I love what I saw of Birmingham, and I felt pretty safe and comfortable there. I also really liked the department and think I might fit in pretty well. My contact person there was really helpful in answering questions about potential financial aid, and there's a possibility I may qualify for the Academic Common Market, which would allow me to attend for in-state tuition prices. The woman who gave me my tour is a first-year in the program and was very helpful and enthusiastic and directed me to websites to look up housing.

So for now, I am up in the air. I have to decide by May 1st, so that I can tell GSU whether or not I have chosen them, and I have no idea. I'm going to try on this idea of moving to Birmingham this week and see how it fits me. I'll be looking at apartments and thinking about when I would move, and use that to help see how I really feel about the idea of moving.

In other news, pre-POC went off pretty well. The property is quite nice and reminded me of like a family summer vacation type place- not super nice, but definitely not a dump. I was in a suite, there was a refrigerator, a stove and it was like being in a little tiny apartment. On Friday night, I was there alone, and I didn't feel unsafe. I drove out to Homewood to look around and find dinner and then came home and had a beer and relaxed and read.

On Saturday, it was like summer camp, almost. I was a lot more familiar with the property and was running around from building to building and then once more of my friends arrived, we were running errands to WalMart and Sam's in search of party supplies. Sean and I made jello shots before I crashed out for half an hour- I was feeling really sick and tried to nap a few times, only to be awakened by someone texting or my con-roommate coming in to the room in search of me. After the nap, I felt much more human, had dinner, and then painted myself green. It worked pretty well- but I have NO pictures! All in all, the weekend was very fun, and I got to see a lot of friends I dearly love and make more new friends! I'm really looking forward to POC 3 now!

I have about four hundred things to do before I leave for Alabama tomorrow morning so I will keep this short, but:

I GOT INTO UAB!!!!

I'm meeting up with a tour guide tomorrow morning at 10:30, central time. Details to follow!

Change of plans?

I don't know for sure, but I may be going to Bham a day early to look at UAB, which would entail me dumping a bunch of party decorations in my car and staying in the hotel where POC will be an extra night. The room would be fairly cheap, since I am told I can have it booked at the con rate now.

Mom and Dad used to work at UAB so they know a ton of people and a ton of places and it is kind of awesome and kind of overwhelming. I don't know anything about Bham except that they have Dreamland Barbeque and I lived there for three years of my life. Oh, and I kind of remember going to a public library there as a toddler.

Anyway, I found a few more things I wanted to share. Be a nerd and get the painting of the First Cylon War that Adama has on his wall in Battlestar Galactica. I am still stuck on the third season, because I got distracted by Dexter and shiny things and probably Glee, but I still am vaguely disappointed that my biological mother isn't Laura Roslin. I continue to hang on to hope that my biological father who I haven't yet contacted is Bill Adama, though.

Also, the Library of Congress announced that they are archiving all the tweets publicly made since 2006, so that's exciting. The stupid stuff I text when I am drunk is definitely on the internet forever, and you would think that this would make me more likely to think before I tweet, but it probably won't; it will probably inflate my sense of self-importance, so that everything I write on twitter will be, to me, words of wisdom handed down to following generations. Here is some of my recent "wisdom" (and these are written sober!) in reverse chronological order:

My background check is gloriously boringly empty. Yay!
Made tuna salad at parents' but they only have wasabi mayo. Ow, my sinuses/Mmm wasabi. Just me, the dog, & the John Adams miniseries.
No, no, no, I do not want to be awake, no. Take this consciousness away, please, I will use it later, I swear.
Getting a background check on myself at the Sandy Springs police dept. For Haiti, not recreationally.
Ohmigah, you guys, I look like the Hulk. Ahahahaha.

Speaking of looking like the Hulk- I picked up new green paint at Eddie's, which is a costume and puppet and magic shop near my house. I thought they had sold me the wrong kind, since I thought I wanted water-based instead of a cream, but this kind is amazing. It stays pretty well, even without liquiset or whatever, and it makes me nice and green without looking like I got overexcited about smearing fingerpaint on myself. I really hated having my face painted when I was a little kid, and the Magicolor reminds me of that gross greasy feeling, while the new stuff feels lighter and more natural, except for the fact that it turns me green.

Link dump.

First of all, a column from Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post, who recently won a Pulitzer: America is neither left nor right but centrist.

Another movement percolating right in front of our noses seems to be equally invisible to establishment eyes. Independents -- neither right nor left but smack dab in the broad middle -- today constitute 42 percent of the electorate, according to a recent CBS/New York Times poll.

Approximately 70 million strong, these are America's new homeless class, people who are equally disgusted with both traditional parties and the special interests that control them. They're all ages, sexes, races, ethnicities, though younger Americans are crowding the front rows. Of those born after 1977, 44 percent identify as independent.

I'm still slogging through The Conservative Soul by Andrew Sullivan, which is pretty eye-opening. I just discovered Parker through Sullivan's blog, and I'm trying to add to my political radar more opinions that don't match mine. More and more of my friends identify as centrists, who Parker broadly defines as "fiscally conservative, socially libertarian-ish", and less and less of them feel represented in the media, much less in politics, where politicians continue to try to pander to the fringier voters among us.

On a sillier note, meet the Alot, from Hyperbole and a Half!


"The Alot is an imaginary creature that I made up to help me deal with my compulsive need to correct other people's grammar. It kind of looks like a cross between a bear, a yak and a pug, and it has provided hours of entertainment for me in a situation where I'd normally be left feeling angry and disillusioned with the world."
Allie is a funny lady, and you should go read her work, or at least look at the pictures!

Finally!

An acceptance letter! Georgia State University sent me an email to say congratulations and welcome to the program.

"Dear Admitted Student:

Congratulations! I am happy to report that you have been admitted to the MPH program in the Institute of Public Health for the Fall 2010 semester. Your official admission letter will be mailed shortly, but I wanted to take this moment to contact you about this decision so that you may plan accordingly."


I squealed, "Eeee, someone loves meeeeee!" and bounced on the bed and startled my parents' dog. Sorry, Tia!

Pockets.

I have long been in the habit, when I go out, of eschewing a purse entirely, and instead relying on a Man With Pockets to carry my ID, money, and car keys. (It’s always a man, and it’s not always someone I am dating. The only woman who has ever offered is Z, and that is because she is a gentlewoman and usually a Gentlewoman With Pockets, at that.) If a Man With Pockets is unavailable or is flighty and not to be trusted and will probably leave me somewhere, like many women I'd rather just stick said ID and debit card into my bra. This has led to some interesting contortions, bulges, and pinching sensations, as well as far too many conversations with strangers that begin, “Oh! I’m sorry, I was grabbing my breasts. Hi, I’m Katie!” as I try to alleviate the awkwardness by introducing myself.

I even forgot once while I was in Baltimore overnight that I had stuck everything in my bra, because I had pockets, but I wanted to keep my ID safe from, well, me, since I had lost it earlier that day in the DC area, leaving it in a chain restaurant in a mall in Virginia, where I had only stopped in for an appetizer and to mooch off their free wifi. Fortunately they had found it and gave it back to me, after my host and I took a long detour into Virginia on our way to Baltimore. I panicked completely, thinking I had lost everything AGAIN or at least left it in the hotel room, and in the process of frisking myself, I finally found it all tucked into my bra, on the same side where I always put my ID, etc, and laughed hysterically and then drove off in search of a drink.

I share this here because I was just getting up from the couch, ready to go to bed, when I found that the bracelet I was wearing earlier was no longer on my wrist. I thought I’d probably absentmindedly dropped it into my purse, or stuck it in my jeans pocket. When I went to change into pajamas, I found it! In my bra, same side as where I would have stored my ID. I’m not sure how long it was there, or why I put it there, but from now on when I lose stuff, I am going to check my boobs first.

Green.

Some friends of mine run a convention in Birmingham, Alabama called PlayOnCon, which is having a free preview this coming weekend (April 17-18). The theme for the party on Saturday night is just... Green. Because my friend wanted to have a St. Patrick's Day redux, I suppose, a month after St. Pat's itself.

He and I were chatting, and he said he'd thought of a future costume idea for me: "You should be an Orion!"
I didn't watch Star Trek as a kid- I was more into Star Wars, because there were muppets and less talking, more shooting. So, I googled, and found a wealth of pictures.



For those of you who also don't watch Star Trek (or live with a buncha nerds), Orions are an alien race, whose females were trafficked as slaves because of their sexuality. In the most recent Star Trek movie, Kirk hooks up with an Orion at the Academy, whose sexuality is framed as in her own control, instead of being commoditized outright- she's Uhura's promiscuous roommate. (There's a lot of stuff I could address there, and perhaps I will at a later date.)


I was more than a little taken aback, but I wasn't asked to be a slave, just an Orion, which is easy- a bathing suit and some green paint, right?

Have you ever tried to paint yourself green? I painted a friend gold last weekend, but only his hands, feet, and face, but that was easy. I bought a bottle of Ben Nye MagiColor and some make up sponges and went to town, doing half of my face and part of my neck. It's all smeary. It leaves streaks, unless I saturate that particular point, which seems wasteful. I wish I had an airbrush, but there's no reason to get my own, unless I am going to use it over and over. I will be looking for another brand this week, before my roommate and leave for Birmingham on Saturday morning. Anyway, it will take some time to actually get myself fully green, and I will share the experience here, but in the meantime...

Convention--

I've been negligent, I'm sorry! I attended a science fiction convention in Atlanta this past weekend, and the preparations for it ate my life.

I didn't make it to anything con-related, which was a shame, but I was always incredibly busy or recovering from the busy-ness, helping out with Play On Con/Infirmary's party and also my housemate Dustin's Secret Agent party to some extent.

I picked up my landlord on Wednesday night from the airport, so that Thursday afternoon, he, my housemates, and I could all load up the vehicles and transport everything down to the hotel. We also had transport help from a few other friends, because there was a TON of stuff. This is my room full of random CRAP.

That night, I hung out with some old friends and some new friends and then got dressed to go to the Coffee, Tea, Or Me? party in the Presidential Suite. I bounced around in my white wig, dancing and seeing more people I hadn't seen in a while, and then I ran into my friends Sabrina and Wendie, who invited me to wander with them for a bit. We hit a private invite-only lounge, which was a great break from the hectic pace of the other party. My wig was driving me insane, so I headed to my room and took it off and returned to Jonestown's party to find my date who had been roped into tending bar, where I ended up pretending to help (but really just pouring punch and making conversation with people who ended up hanging around the bar). We ended up running out of booze! I don't know when I went to sleep, but I think it was around 3 or 4, and my twitter account says I woke up at 8, which is terrifying.

Friday was epic. It was all about acquiring cardboard and mixers and prepping for my group's party. Because there was a mix-up at the hotel with the party room, Dan and I didn't get to leave as early as we wanted to pick up some lights from IKEA and the cardboard from freakin' Duluth. We had to get ten nine-foot-tall pieces of cardboard and a big spool of corrugated cardboard, which was all used to line the walls of the party's "back room", and to build Fort Spreadeagle around the bed. Here is my car loaded up with cardboard!

The pieces on top were tied on and Dan tried to hold them on, but they tried to fly off once we hit 30 mph, which was unacceptable. There was no way we could drive 40 miles at that speed with him trying to hold the pieces down, so we pulled over and folded the nine-foot-pieces in half to put them in the car. That was fine, except that we had tied the doors shut and were climbing in and out of the windows until we could cut the twine with my car keys.

After a quick break, I headed back down the hall to the party room, where there was MUCH more setup to be done. This is the stuff we had out front:


A buddy and I headed out to Walmart at around 9:30 to get orange juice and stuff for the bar, as well as duct tape, and a few things for me, like tylenol and metatarsal pads and lipstick. We got back around 10:15, and the party had been set to start at 10, so we were all feeling slightly stressed. I ran to get ready, and kicked my friends out of the room- they said I was fairly nice about it, fortunately. My roommate kept making quiet unobtrusive trip to retrieve stuff from the pile o' crap there, and friend came back with hairspray and helped me out with costuming.
I think it turned out pretty well, considering I came straight from Wal-Mart and didn't have the time I wanted to work with my hot rollers!


I had the best time at the party, dancing and doing photo ops. Someone walked by in big boots and crushed my big toe, cracking part of the toenail, so I had to go track down the only person I knew who had bandaids and swear and bleed in my bathtub for a bit. Ow! I decided to ignore the blisters I'd acquired a few days earlier and put my shoes back on to keep the rest of my nails. I felt responsible later when con security came by to ask us to keep the folks in the hallway quieter and then to shut the door. I like to feel responsible, especially since the security guy was a face I remembered from the Whose Line events at my very first Dragon*Con and I got to finally talk to him. It ended up being a very late night; A few of us stuck around cleaning up the room until the sun came up.

It was also a relatively early morning- I think I was awake a little before ten. I lay in bed for a bit, went swimming and hung out in the hot tub, and then ended up having a late lunch/early dinner and taking a nap. That evening, I went to WalMart AGAIN, to buy stuff for my housemate Dustin's party.

We got a lot of weird looks.


Dustin's party was lots of fun. I got there late, because I was painting my date's hands and feet and face gold- he wore a gold bodysuit and went as the Goldfinger victim from the movie of the same name and won Best Bond Girl. I broke out my black catsuit as a nod to Emma Peel. Another friend I hadn't seen in a while showed up as well, and we accidentally made a modern Peel/Steed team!


I was also presented with a Party Judge badge, which was freakin' awesome. You guys, I had an excuse to run around to everyone's parties and drink their liquor and eat their food. Aw, yeah!

On Sunday morning and early afternoon, I babysat the Presidential Suite while all of Dustin's party detritus was cleared out. The decision was made to keep the hotel room an extra night, and a bunch of us went out for the traditional post-con Mexican meal. Back at the hotel, the pool and hot tub were FULL of people blowing off steam. Someone brought water guns and we had pool noodles, and water fights ensued, with my date pointing one end of the noodle at people's faces while I blew air as hard as I could into my end. And people kept letting us get close to them! You'd think they would learn! A pool noodle is not exactly a ranged weapon. Finally the pool closed, we all changed into real clothes or pajamas and headed to some friends' room for drinks and games. I was definitely feeling the love, and I had a very VERY good time.

To sum up- I had a great time this year. It was much better than last year for me. Unlike last year, there was no drama. I missed seeing a lot of people and I want to do more con-related stuff next year, but I think I struck the perfect balance for me this time. Plus, I avoided the con crud! Win!

I was really reminded why I loved conventions in the first place and have thrown so much money and time at them over the last seven years. I love my friends in the scene and meeting new people and seeing people package themselves as the people they either wish they could be or that they are on the inside, when the real world doesn't interfere. I love being part of people's support teams, I liked tending bar, and I love the building and costuming and planning that goes along with party throwing. Even at my lowest moments this past weekend, such as when I was trying to get ready for the party and was hurting so very badly, I was having a blast, and that is priceless.