Yesterday, we had a lab dinner, so I missed a call from Jon.  Listening to the voicemail, I realized Lee Mama had used his phone.  She said, “Your brother got you a little guitar!  It’s pretty cute!  Call back!”  Lee Mama talks in exclamation points.  I called Jon back to thank him, and the conversation was pretty usual.

Me: Hey!  I got mom’s voicemail.  Thanks!  [Yeah...I also talk in exclamation points.]

Jon: Cool.

Me: So, what are you up to!?

Jon: Just waiting to go back to Davis.

Me: Oh, ok.

Jon: See ya later.

Five seconds after we hung up, my phone buzzed, its screen showing a call from Lee Papa.

Me: Hello?

Lee Mama: Hi!

Me: Hi mom.

Lee Mama: I thought you were going to talk to me, but then your brother hung up.

Me: Well, I wanted to thank him.

Lee Mama: After he hung up, your dad got his phone out, but then he didn’t dial, either!  I had to call!

Love my fam.

…it doesn’t mean I don’t deserve it.

First, let’s get the prosaic out of the way.  Save the best for last, right?  At least, that’s my strategy for food, and I mean, you can’t go wrong when you apply food methods to field methods.  It’s raining ice here in the heart of it all, and I’m waddling around in an effort to avoid falling.  Some classes are canceled, people are soaked, and the sky is dreary.  But…

Let’s get to the beauty.

The ground shimmers at night, each pool of light shooting out infinite rays.  All the tiny droplets glistening made me wish I had the proper facility of photography, brush, or words to convey the magic I saw on those tree branches on my way home.  Snowbeds look like they have been shellacked–not a pleasant look for a lawyer’s hair, but quite surreal for my trek.  Finally, the sense of camaraderie that sparks in the air as you look around and accidentally make eye contact with others hovered precariously in the slick–magnetic (hopefully not with the ground).

I’ve been home for about a week, and although I didn’t bring much clothing back, I have come to realize that I could have brought NO clothing back.

1. I would have more room to take food back to Columbus.
2. My jeans from 7th grade still fit.
3. If all else fails, I can wear Lee Mama’s clothes.

As I was packing today, I tried to tidy up my room a bit, and folding some sweaters to put in my bureau, I realized that I wouldn’t wear them again for a year, if at all.  I will next be home in June for Erin and Will’s wedding, but June in the Bay does not usually call for sweater vests and *ahem* first kiss sweaters.  How lucky am I to travel, to see my family, and to have…once a year sweaters.

It seems to me that I shouldn’t have all these belongings that I only need once a year.  Lee Mama always tells me to clear out my closets and donate what I don’t need.  As I said, my jeans from 7th grade still fit, so I insist to her (and myself) that these things still have room in my life.  I might even argue that no one else would want my clothes anyway.

Normally, I consider myself pretty solidly middle class.  My coffers are not abounding in riches; my gadgets are not particularly fancy.  But, with the distribution of resources the way they are in this world, I’m sure that compared to many, my life represents incredible wealth.  In the coming year, I should keep this thought in mind when I am tempted by material sirens.  In 2011, I hope to fill my coffers with love and diligence; the gadgets should serve only to enhance my relationship with loved ones.

Before Thanksgiving, I’d only been to Kentucky once, and it was on accident (we crossed the bridge from Cincinnati).  This time, I learned that Kentucky is beautiful!  It snowed the first night I was there, which was beautiful, although that meant that the next morning saw my first snow-scraper experience.  Many more to come, I’m sure.

Varsha’s family had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner–major carb overload, so we didn’t even need turkey to put us to sleep.  I fell asleep around 5PM and woke up the next morning.  It was so nice.  Varsha and I got to meet up with a friend I know from an online forum, who took us to Wild Eggs.  They have an everything muffin–interesting concept; delicious execution.

I also got to unexpectedly meet up with Elyse and Alyssa, which I like to mention because a) the internet is magical and b) their names are similar-sounding.  Alyssa and I toured Buffalo Trace, where I learned a lot about bourbon, and which I must admit I only picked because their website has a buffalo running across the bottom.  It’s pretty cute.

Other observations and pictures to come…

Interruption of anecdote to include some self-centered “ethnic terminology” musings: As a scientist, I embrace and encourage curiosity.  As the sole yellow face in a sea of white (sometimes), I take umbrage at anachronistic assumptions that I must be from Asia simply because I appear to be of Asian descent.

Recently, a girl asked me three times in 30 seconds where I was from, appending “originally” to her question the third time after receiving the same response twice.  It’s 2010.  You can’t assume that only black or white people can be from Cleveland.  Or, you can.  You just ought not to.  I also ought not to end my sentence with a preposition.  Perhaps I’ll end this paragraph with a proposition.  Naw.  Californians have ended any hope of climbing out of deficit in this decade with propositions.  Har har I’m so political.  But, this stream of consciousness is digressing from what my original sidebar intended: to discuss ethnic terms and my personal preferences.

• What’s your ethnicity? This is a straightforward question.  It’ll elicit a straightforward response from me.  This is not to be confused with, “What’s your nationality?”  My nationality is American.  NB: there are those who have multiple ethnicities.  As far as I know, I just have one.
• Asian: Did you know that Asia is a big continent?  Not having been alive for most of the 1980s, I’m not quite sure when it became politically incorrect to refer to people (not just rugs) as “Oriental,” but I find that people often have trouble specifying what kind of Asian because we’re no longer supposed to use “Oriental.”  East Asian is fine.  It is also helpful to remember that not all “brown” people are Indian, and therefore, South Asian is a good term to use.
• Black: Because this is not my own race, I will happily defer to someone who is black if s/he has a preference, but in general, I like black.  African-American is a bit cumbersome to me, and I’m not sure why we must exist in a hyphenated society.  (Also, I fully acknowledge that we don’t exist in a color-blind society; hence, my POST ON RACIAL TERMINOLOGY.)  Pardon me for this truism, but aren’t all Americans…well, American?  If someone strongly identifies with the African continent, then sure, s/he is an African-American.  For many others, that tie is murkier and for more distant.
• White: I don’t like Caucasian.  Most of these people are not from the Caucasus Mountains.  And yes, so long as we don’t live in a color-blind society, color is still one of the traits we use to identify people.  Some people might identify with one particular country more than others, but for the same reasons I think African-American is cumbersome, I don’t think it’s necessary to refer to people as European-American.  And, again, I think that we use these terms to address color, not culture or country of origin.
• American Indian: I once read that this term is more popular than “Native American” among the communities who identify themselves as such, and so it is the term I use, again deferring to someone else if s/he prefers a different self-identifier.

That is the general theme here–I am the foremost expert on myself, certainly, but not on someone else, so how that person names him or herself is how I will follow.  During the World Cup, there was talk of how Cote d’Ivoire wants to be known as Cote d’Ivoire, not Ivory Coast.  Sure, one is a direct translation of the other, but if the nation prefers a particular version, who am I to impose my language on their identity?  (The who’s and why’s of their identity tying into a European language is a topic I am ill-equipped to discuss at this juncture.)

We now resume our regularly scheduled anecdote.

My boss jokingly bemoaned the fact that no one will be in lab next week, then admitted that he also wouldn’t be in lab during Thanksgiving.  I reassured him that I won’t be leaving until Wednesday night, at which point he asked where I’d be going.

“Kentucky, for an Indian Thanksgiving!”

“Uh, what kind of Indian?” he asked.

I explained that Varsha (hi, Varsh!) would be in Kentucky because her parents had moved there recently, so I was getting adopted for Thanksgiving.  Woohoo!  Indian as in South Asian

Caveat: I do realize that many people go to bar/danceclubs to meet a collaborator in a one-night stand.  It’s a hot dog and hamburger market out there, kids.  In knowingly going to a place like that, I realize that I am placing myself right in the thick of it.  That’s fine.  I just also reserve the right to accede to or deny a proposition, invitation, or condemnation.

1. My friends and I were on the dancefloor when a muscle-y man in a hat approached and try to insinuate himself into our group.  I gave him a couple minutes, then made fun of his shirt and his team.  We had a football game against his school yesterday in which we beat them resoundingly, which was the expected outcome anyway.  Sidebar: it’s very interesting to me that at this kind of venue (multiple bars + patio + dancefloor), you’ll see people hella dressed down (football jerseys and tattered jeans), people in “picnic wear” (I was wearing a sundress), and people in glitz and glam (men in ties, women in gowns), all in one place.
2. A friend of the muscle-y man from above was dressed in the uniform of Bros everywhere from Park St. in Columbus to the Marina District in San Francisco: khakis and a sky blue polo.  He was all up on me (yeah, that terminology is required.  Please.), so I shot him a skeptical look, to which he asked me, “What?”  I patted his shoulder and said, “Well, it’s cute that you tried.”
3. Two of us were dancing when a young man/boy approached and tried to dance with us.  Avoiding any sort of eye contact with him for 5 minutes, we just danced and enjoyed ourselves without any sort of acknowledgment that he was in our presence.  Nay, he was not in our presence. A melodramatic statement has to be italicized, ok?  He slunk away.
4. One of my friends almost ran into someone, so I made a surprised/apologetic face at him.  He said, “Oh, come on now, you gotta make a better face than that!  Show me your best face!”  I told him, “Please, you’d have to be much better to see my best face.”  While this could be prelude to flirtation, I ignored him thereafter so he finally had to stop talking.  Later, when I was sitting at a table with one of the girls, he tried to approach again, but my friend humored him a little, so I didn’t make him cry any further.
5. While sitting at the table, a guy from the same group as #4 came over.  I mentioned the Bro uniform earlier.  This group was all wearing plaid shirts.  True story.  At any rate, this guy leaned in and asked conspiratorially, “Why aren’t you ladies dancing?”  I asked him, “Why are you talking to us?”  He tried to say something about a friend and a birthday, but I looked past him so he had to walk away.

I don’t tell these stories to “show off trophies”–I don’t even really feel like they’re trophies.  It is rude of me to treat other human beings this way, and I fully realize it’s bad dating karma.  These small interactions here and there do give me small measures of inner satisfaction when I can giggle and think, “Zing!”  Furthermore, none of them actually cried.

Fucktard of the night: Some girl in an LBD took a beer bottle and whacked it against the side of the table repeatedly until it broke.  Then she giggled.  Five minutes later, she was doing it again while her friends watched.  WTF, are you 5???  We had a lab barbecue yesterday, two little girls (roughly 16-months old) came, and I would have expected that kind of behavior from them, but not at a bar!  (Well, not this kind of bar.)  Another woman went off on the beer-bottle-wielding girl.  It was a musing.

The one boy I didn’t make cry asked permission to sit down at our table (near the dancefloor) while he was waiting/looking for his friend.  He seemed a little befuddled and completely out of his element, so I didn’t mind talking to him a bit.  Eventually, the conversation turned toward Jack Kerouac and Buddhism.  Right.

Yes, so the above is why I don’t have a boyfriend.  Which I’m not okay with these days, incidentally.  Er, it’s fine to repel the uninteresting ones.  But, I find myself seeking more long-term companionship these days, I’m frustrated that I can’t just rely on myself for my happiness, and I’m even more frustrated that I have chosen to get involved with guys who were a) pretty upfront about being unavailable (no, they’re not married–what do you take me for!?) or b) not someone with whom I felt tingles.

It’s a process.

It’s humid, but as I walk along the street, sometimes I feel the fleeting fingers of air conditioning beckoning from doorways, and it smells like Taiwan.  That’s the not only reason why I feel like I’m in Taiwan, though.  It’s the g-d mosquitoes!

I ate dinner on my friend’s patio last night, resulting in a multitude of bites.  Today, I have red blotches all over my body reminding me of the blood loss.  There are three on my right shoulder alone.  It’s like the time I was in the mountains, and despite my efforts to keep moving and avoiding the hordes, I amassed 17 bites in 1 hour.

Just like Taiwan.

1. Lee Mama’s favorite: I have bad posture.  (Quite true, usually, although I have my days, which is why Ben told me I had the best posture he had ever seen in high school.)
2. I’m thin: I am generally perceived to be “small,” so that applies to my height, too.  But, tall and thin people are often perceived to be taller because they are thin, so I don’t get it.
3. I turn to U2 for this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxcDTUMLQJI

There was something else I wanted to write about re: my public perceptions of me versus how I feel inside (ugh, how New Age-y), but I can’t remember, so this will have to be updated another day.