Driving Back to Stanford (aka BAD)

I went home for Memorial Day Weekend and in general, fun was had.  But that is a future post.  Today's post is on the drive back to Leland Stanford Junior University. (No it is not a junior university, it is just named after Leland Stanford Junior, thank you very much).

OK well first off, I hate this drive.  The drive from the LA area to Stanford is probably the only thing that I regularly do that I absolutely hate.  Well, I also hate exercising, but sometimes I kind of like it too.  This drive just sucks.

I have made that drive in the dead of night almost every time I've done it.  I have made that drive while trying to suppress the urge to throw up.  I have made that drive 11 times now, and 9 of those I was completely alone.  All of those in the last 9 months.  And more than once on that drive, I have shed tears and vowed never to drive ever again.  It is a cursed drive, I promise.

6 hours.  6 hours alone is enough to make me act a little bit crazy, but 6 hours driving is just really taxing on my soul.  But of course at the end of Memorial Day Weekend, the drive didn't take just 6 hours, it tool an entire 8 hours.  8 HOURS!!  Oh my goodness, the bad state of mind that I was into by the time I had finished the drive.

Right after the Grapevine (it's a real city, but you better believe my family makes jokes about things they heard in that area at every possible opportunity), there was an accident on the 5 which was actually cleared by the time I got there.  But because the accident occurred about 10 miles before a construction site, I was in stop and go traffic on a highway (with a speed limit of 70 mph, mind you) for one and a half hours.

Actually, this part wasn't that bad.  I spent the first half of the time being Ms. Grumpy-Car (my last name is Grumpy, and my husband's is car, but I'm sort of a feminist so I go with the hyphen), but then I decided that was stupid.  And since I discovered three cd's that I had forgotten about in Lolita (my car, who is now clean inside and kind of on the outside too), I decided it was time for a one-girl jam sesh.  Three minutes into that, a car full of 17-yr-old boys was next to me and decided I was hilarious.  So they started trying to attract my attention.  Which ended up with a few cat calls and kissy faces in my direction.  Which, you know, I will always take the ego boost.
But their mistake was to encourage me.  Because after they were safely out of sight, I decided to up the ante. There was like choreography and attitude in my ogjs (one-girl jam sesh, duh).  So I'm just doing my own thing and appreciating the fact that I can enjoy myself even when I am stuck in a billion (and I mean a billionnnn) traffic.  Then I realized the truck full of guys probably 5-10 years older than me on my left was taping me using their iphone.  Somewhere, there is probably a youtube video of my dance moves and insane vocal stylings titled something like "Girl stuck in traffic sings and dances in car"  or something else creative like that. When I saw them I was overcome with a fit of the giggles, which of course started the whole truck of guys in laughing.   At least I improved someone's traffic experience.

So yeah, traffic.  But as the hours wore on, my positive attitude was replaced with tiredness and loneliness (when did I turn into one of those girls who hates to be alone so much?) and the Dr. Pepper I had gotten at the gas station was almost all sparkling water and not very much of the syrup that makes it DP.  And I got sooo emotional.  It all just took it's toll.  I realized around 10 pm that normally I would be back at Le Stanford in my cozy bed by then and then around that time I came upon the second accident of the drive.

And it was a gnarly accident.  I'm pretty sure someone died based on the wreckage I saw, although I'm pretty sure I got there before the authorities did.  But I was so sucked dry from the drive, that I just started crying.  Like uncontrollably.  Ok, it was in control because I was still good to drive, but I just hated everything about that moment.  I don't really like crying, or most definitely admitting to crying, but it was just too much.  Then Green Eyes came on in my car and it made me feel sad in a good way and I listened to it about a billion thousand times.  Literally, 25 or more times.

Sorry for a long, wordy, complainy post, but you didn't have to read it if you didn't want to.  But there is hope.  Today is a new day, I am alive, and Lolita and I made it back to the Stans.

But I do have to make the drive one more time in then next 1.5 weeks, sooo.  If I have some sort of emotional breakdown around then, you'll know why.

Getting a Little Perspective

I really wanted some quiet on my Sunday.  Somewhere where I could just sit with my thoughts and enjoy a little down time.  Living in a dorm with over 300 people means I have basically forgotten what quiet sounds like.  

So I went to the balcony of one of the biggest classroom/auditoriums at my school.  I don't think it's supposed to be open on Sundays.  I even tried to be really quiet because I think there was some sort of janitor on the main floor for a while.  

It was really neat.  It's funny how I kind of hate living alone in the way that I do because I a rarely ever have people with me, and yet I still never really get alone time.  Time for just me to do what I want.  

I took this picture, and I don't know what I even pressed, but my camera made it take in black and white. I kind of like it:

The only thing I don't like is that you can't see all the empty seats on the main level.  There's something about being in an empty room that was meant to seat 200+ people that makes you pensive.  

I was trying for a while to write down a few of my more profound thoughts, but I decided they were just on the borderline of profound, but not enough.  Let's just say that my brain in the course of an hour can bounce from the rapture to vanilla bean to going to the beach to what I want to be when I grow up to the lady at work whose blog is fascinating in a hippie-ish way.  Not in that order, of course.  

I can't wait to see my Pops this week.  He's coming to visit me here in Stan-land.  And I can't wait to go home for the long weekend!  It will be such a party. Let's go to the beach!

Just a (not so) little post

You know what makes me feel good?  Getting things done.  Also, having posts that don't suck.  I feel like my posts suck lately.  Should I stop trying?  I keep trying to hammer it out and hope something magic happens.  Should I wait until something truly blog-worthy happens in my little life?

I like to think that my life is little.  Is that weird?  I like to think that I have my own sphere of people and places that I know.  I like to think that little things can be important things too.

I think I keep blogging even though nothing of note happens to me because I like to think that little things in a little life can be important.  I mean, lots of big things are the results of billions of little things right?  Like molecularly.  Or take voting, for example.  I think little things have to be consistent in order to make a difference.

I like to have an end goal when I blog, but I don't really have an end goal with this little post.  And it's getting less and less little by the word.

But the point of blogging is that I take a little writing and I do it consistently and I become better at sharing little things.  I develop a skill.  Which is weird because I'm not sure if that skill is writing-involved or not.  I think that skill is maybe expressing?  I think everyone needs to learn to express themselves.  But in my case, I think I learn to express the right parts of me.  Like I said about choosing the things you love and making them bigger.  Making them a larger slice of the pie.

I love the little things.  I love chocolate milk with my family.  And words like "racist" and "holla".  I love singing in the car.  I love the toes of babies.  I love the sore feeling the morning after exercising. I love crossing something on a list out.  I love utility curves.  I love planning my little life.  I love notes on a staff.  I love the scars on my fingers.  I love words on a page and on a screen.

Was that a boring list?  I hope not.  I think little things are the things that make people interesting.  I think little things make it easy to fall in love.  I think pretty highly of little things, in case you couldn't tell.  Which is probably why I keep blogging even though nothing big is happening.

One little thing I do when I have the self esteem for it is themed photo shoots.

Remember the 80s?  I don't actually.  I wasn't alive.  But I remember parts of the early 90s, which are more or less the 80s.  Hence the following picture:

There are others, but I am too embarrassed to show them.  But I also wish I had a hair scrunchie.

A hair a scrunchie is a little thing that would have made a big difference.

Mwergh.

You know how I said that occasionally I have been known to flirt a little bit in order to get something from something from someone?  Well the opposite works too.  I don't quite mean flirtation, I just mean I can have pretty good customer service sometimes.

On Saturday I volunteered at a TED event.  TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design.  It's basically a conference full of speakers who are pretty good who talk about "ideas worth spreading."  I hear about TED talks all the time at schoolio.  People think they're really cool.  At some events tickets are $6,000, but at the one I worked at they were only about $200.

Anywho, the TED event was pretty good for me because I am good at smiling and answering questions.  Everyone was really easy to work with and it was great.
Mostly.

It bugs me when people think they are entitled to things.  Or think that they are more important than other people.  Ok, story time.

Because I worked at the event, I got to hear all of the speakers (until I decided I was exhausted and just ditched the whole thing three hours 4 hours before it ended - but in my defense I had already been there for 7 hours with only a 15 minute break for lunch).  But they were really cool talks so I had been taking little notes on my program.

After lunch, when the next session was starting, a few people had lost their programs and asked if they could have mine.  I told them where they could find more and people were generally ok with that.  One lady just wouldn't take no as an answer.  She asked for mine and I told her where she could find others and she still just wanted mine.  So I told her I had taken notes in it and she just said thanks and stuck out her hand.

WHAT THE HECK??  Just because I was wearing a red staff shirt and she had paid money for her ticket does not mean that she can take anything she wants from me.  What's next, does she want the jewelry I was wearing?

I don't know why this bugged me so much, but it really did.  Am I crazy?  I know it was my job for the day to help people, but I wasn't about to carry them to their seats or anything.  I'm probably overreacting, but it really got under my skin.  It made me not want to help people for the rest of the day.

I ended up giving her my program.  But I also flashed her a look that was both a smile and a dirty look at the same time.  I don't think I've ever really done that before and meant it.

And then, just so that there's a picture in this post:

A (crappy) picture of a dancer from Stanford's PowWow a couple of weekends ago.  

Getting in touch with my roots, yo.