striving

...eek, carleton is coming too close to winning his bet if I don't get a new post up right away! this blog is MINE!

Okay, so it's mid july already...one could almost say it's late july. Lately the topic of my life has been 'work'. Finally busy in the office, I spend every day sitting at my computer cutting out photographs of books with the pen tool, then adjusting the curves, saving low res versions, and moving on to the next set. About 1000 pictures is all. Eek. This is an enormous project, and the deadline slips closer each day. Now though, I feel way more integrated at work, other people in my office are working on the same project, and what I'm doing feels important, no matter how banal.

I'm starting to worry that I'll get back and regret not having travelled more(I know heidi!!), but it's difficult and super expensive to fit whole international travel plans into the space of a weekend...and after taking a week off to go home I don't really have any vacation days left. Except one. I splurged and bought a ticket to take the night train to paris for a long weekend in mid-August. I get tingly just thinking about it. Paris is one of those places you sort of expect to make it to eventually...but now?! wow. And my dear friend Gaelle will be there at the train station to meet me. What a wild weekend we're going to have. I'm also loosely trying to plan a weekend trip to Amsterdam for sometime in August...

But really the weekends are filling up and the time is shrinking on my calendar wall. Next weekend I move to my new apartment which I'm guessing will be a refreshing renewal. More on that when I get there. Lindsay and I also just made the decision on a new roommate for the fall in Boston (like picking out a pet she said), 'we'll take him!' change is so reassuring, isn't it? You can lump up a whole pile of problems or worries and then say, oh, but this is going to change and then ALL of this will be better. Nice though, that I don't have a big lump of problems.

Europe is taking hold of me in its own ways though...check out those armpits! I haven't made it to a nude beach yet, but one of these sunny afternoons I'll get the guts.

The world feels sort of small though sometimes, when I think about everyone out there who might be reading this...Kate and Heidi and aunt Teri in Oregon, Jack in San Francisco, Brandon in Ohio, Lindsay and Carleton and who know how many in Boston, mom and dad up north, Jonathan in Puerto Rico down south, Steve in Turkey, Gaelle in France...

It's hot. The blueberries are ripe now. The pavement radiates. Time for as much swimming as possible.

And I have to get out of this office.

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Life continues here in B-townIII (I:Berlin, II:Boston, III:Bremen). Mostly I just wanted to share that it's cherry season in Germany. Cherries everywhere. At farmstands, in giant scoops at the grocery store, hanging from ears, smeared on chins.

Also, I don't know if you all pay attention to the international community, but I hope everyone will be watching the world cup final in Berlin this Sunday. Germany's loss on the fourth of july was almost a bit of a relief to me (shh, don't tell). The fans do remind me of good old crazy boston sports fans in all the good ways but in all the bad ways too. So much german patriotism is almost unheard of, and although I want to be an educated, objective, well-integrated, understanding visitor, excess waving of german flags and chanting and singing in german is a tiny bit unnerving. At any rate now we can sit back and host what has quickly turned into a European cup in the final match with France and Italy duking it out on the German field.

I heard today that Mercury is going into retrograde. I remember the last time that happened, gulp. Also Kenneth Lay died, just before he was going to get sent to 'jail' for the rest of his life (probably not but still). How bizarre. And they've finally started marketing a way to harvest cow farts says the new york times. Methane from feed lots turned to energy! Yes! Is something finally going to happen at Guantanamo? Or will we just forget about it again for awhile?

What the hell is Christianity? Who is MY God? Why does it all seem so silly to me to give God some sort of identity?

Do I want to go to grad school? when? where? with what money?

What's on your mind?

idea

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the way it is

So, as a rule, the less often I write the better I'm doing. It's been a pretty good couple of weeks. Amazing in fact.

6.28.06 upon returning back to germany from my week in maine for my brother's wedding.

That was quite possibly the best vacation ever. No wonder I'm crying. Today I arrived back in germany after a week I had been looking forward to steadily for two months. And it was everything it could have been. Only the shocking sweeping lifelessness of the party being over has got me now. But enough of that, let me tell about this week of bliss.

When I finally, finally, finally stepped through the sliding glass doors at Logan International I saw Brandon right away...standing in front of the railing, holding flowers from my mom and sporting a freshly-cut friseur. We embraced and he looked and felt all new, in an almost frightening way. Faced with the long lost physicality of the person whose been in thoughts and dreams so many days after another was one of those moments. lots of little realities against the real One. We drove to Revere Beach and sat in the sun and looked at each other's legs, now separated by at least sixteen shades of melanin. Walking into our apartment in J.P. was similar, everything looked right but, wasn't the sink taller? The light different? Riding my bicycle again, everything foreign and familiar and after such a short time of being away...a short time that felt so long. Catching Matt driving by on the street was the beginning of everything falling into place for us on that trip. A barbecue with friends and familiarity and exhaustion and then falling asleep on the roof and watching the sun rise over a boston summer sky. Pad Thai on the church lawn and talk about money and responsibilities and parking tickets. I rested Brandon's head in my lap as we discussed some of the hard stuff, and everyone walking by looked over at us and in their faces I saw repeatedly the glowing recognition of love. 'Aww, look at the happy couple' I could see them saying in their heads. We got this all week. Oh, just look at us.

Trader Joe's for camping snacks and then onto the road! The great American highway (or at least a little piece of it)! All the driving was perfect -- not far at all but enough to make it feel like we were on vacation -- going somew