I know it’s been a REALLY long time since I’ve last posted, but I’ve got a new job, and so between that and the MUO internship, whenever I do get free time I’m usually so exhausted I can barely think. But I shall try to keep you better informed.
I found out Saturday night that my friend Correy is pregnant. She just celebrated her anniversary, too. She and Chad have been married for three years now, which means that they’ve gone longer without kids than my parents did (my mom got pregnant with me about six months after she and my dad were married; of course, Correy’s 25 and my mom was 34 when I was conceived, so that probably makes a difference). I think she and Chad had planned to wait just a bit longer (until Chad got his master’s degree and they moved back to the area), but they’re excited nonetheless. She’s not due until February and already she’s mulling over names (currently, it’s Alexander for a boy and Lana for a girl), but that’s Correy for you.
Yesterday my mom and I went out to a cemetery to find my great-aunt’s grave. I don’t remember her at all because she died soon after I was born. She was my mom’s favorite aunt but my mom never went out to her grave before. Well, the cemetery was much bigger than we thought it was, and we wandered around for an hour and didn’t find her headstone (plus, it was next to a very noisy oil refinery). We did find a couple families with ironic names, like Stiff and Bury. I also found a grave for someone with the same name as one of my story characters. He doesn’t die in my story, though at one point the main female character believes he’s dead.
I’ve decided that lack of mental stimulation is what’s to blame for the feeling of emptiness I sometimes get recently. Since graduating from Denison, there’s been nothing in my life to make me think (in a good, academic sort of way), so to try to alleviate that I’ve decided to indulge in a large bout of research. To that end, I’ve begun reading travel books, particularly the Lonely Planet series (which Darby swears by), even for countries I’m not interested in visiting (though to be fair, of the books I’m reading now, only one is for a country I’m not interested in). Currently I’m reading four travel books: Los Angeles/Southern California (Interested; actually, I’d like to live there), Britain (Interested), Czech Republic/Slovakia (Not interested, but I still read about it because increasing one’s knowledge about the world is always a good thing), and Bahamas/Turks & Caicos (Interested). I’ve checked them all out from the library cuz there’s no way I could afford to buy all these books, but I always stop by the library gift shop on my way out. They sell books withdrawn from the library there for about 50 cents to two dollars each, and occasionally the stock will include out-of-date travel books. I’ve already bought two Rick Steve’s travel guides there, one for France and one for Italy (although both are from 2004, so they’re not THAT out-of-date; the Britain guide I’m reading is still in library circulation and it’s from 2001). I haven’t had a chance to read them yet, though.
As most of you know, I’ve been kind of a volcano geek since I was nine years old, so of course last night I watched Krakatoa: Volcano of Destruction on Discovery Channel last night. Krakatoa was never one of my main volcano interests, since I tend to prefer more recent eruptions that we have footage of (and Yellowstone since it’s got the biggest destruction potential), but it was interesting to watch a dramatized version of it. It wasn’t as good as Supervolcano, though (I never saw Pompeii: The Last Day, so I can’t compare it to that). For a while, the Discovery Channel had a series called Perfect Disaster that had the same format as Supervolcano (a dramatized speculation about all hell breaking loose), and that was interesting too, although the acting was kinda bad at times (in Perfect Disaster, not Supervolcano; Supervolcano’s acting wasn’t Oscar-worthy, but it was good enough). There was one episode about a flood in London. All the characters were supposed to be British, but their accents sounded really fake. This was kind of weird, because the episode before it took place in Hong Kong, and everyone sounded British in that, and the episode after it took place in Sydney, and the Aussie accents sounded okay to this not-very-well-traveled American (so take my assessment with a grain of salt, but still…). The plot points were kind of silly at times too. There was one episode about a tornado in Dallas. The main character worked in the Dallas emergency management office, and near the end, as the tornado is approaching downtown, he has to go rescue his wife and kid, who are stranded on a freeway. He manages to get to them in time, but instead of heading to an area that the tornado has already passed, he goes to his house, which is RIGHT IN THE PATH OF THE TORNADO, making him a complete idiot.
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