It's not Nirvana, it's just life

Another gorgeous day in the Finger Lakes! The only metaphorical cloud on the horizon is that my landlady doesn't like my subletter and wants her to move out this weekend, so I'm having to pass on that uncomfortable news.

It still just feels really, really good to be here. It's like when I came back to campus last January - I feel like me again - the me I most want to be, when I'm here.

Happy Friday!

Yay, I'm in Ithaca! It's a beautiful, beautiful day and I got all my "stuff" done this morning. I have resolved to stay the weekend and just enjoy being here, relatively carefree.

Getting out of Dallas turned out to be harder than I thought - I showed up at the airport Weds. morning only to find long lines of very grumpy, tired people - many of whom had stayed the night in the airport, since a bunch of flights had been delayed or cancelled due to torrential rains the previous day. I tried to do the self-check-in, but the machine wasn't working right - so I got in line. I was in line for an hour and a half, watching the clock tick past the point after which I could no longer check in... I couldn't call Terry, because the cell phone kept cutting out... finally I used my credit card to make a pay phone call, only to find that I'd been inputting the wrong destination city! He had bought a ticket to Syracuse via New Orleans, NOT Ithaca via Atlanta!!! I was pretty mad until I made it to the check-in counter and found out that the New Orleans flight had been cancelled anyway.

Long story short, they put me on the LAST SEAT for a direct flight to Syracuse, the next day. So Terry came to get me and we had a little more time together.

The next day things went much more smoothly.

East and North

So my time in Dallas is almost up - I am short of where I wanted to be both in terms of knitting and in terms of reading, but I realize that the first week was mostly adapting to being here, and the second week was mostly gone to Wisconsin.

The conference in WI was really fun; we had a lovely hotel room and the people were all interesting. I had the opportunity to tour the college of the Menominee Nation, which was really cool and beautiful. The downside of the whole thing was driving 2200 miles (round trip), the return part overnight. By altering our route coming back, we ended up driving through seven different states (Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas). That's a lot of asphalt.

This past weekend we enjoyed a hike through the Cedar Ridge preserve, and a visit to the Dallas World Aquarium, both very enjoyable.

Wednesday I fly to Ithaca, then catch a bus Saturday to Harrisonburg.

Doing

So I have a bunch of new projects on the needles, but alas you will have to wait until I can download the photos. Right now Terry and I are at a conference in Wisconsin (community development - we'll see how much knitting I can sneak in without looking unprofessional! I think this particular crowd will be forgiving though.

I feel really good, being here. I realized that the past three weeks have felt like an odd sort of limbo - I kept wearing my Cornell t-shirt just to remind myself that, yes, I AM a student there. Not having structure yet feeling like good grief there's so much to DO, but I wasn't doing it, and there were no consequences for not doing it, really threw me for a loop. And yet, not so different from my volunteer days (vague, self-directed assignment, total lack of supervision and structure, and that continuous internal pressure to for God's sake DO SOMETHING!)

Here, to my great relief, I suddenly have a very clear script, role, and persona (think Goffman, if you're into social science) and Hallelujah, I know exactly what to do with myself.

Besides knit. :-)