Rhode Island Dreaming

Thanksgiving made for an absolutely amazing weekend. I had forgotten how wonderful it is to have family around. Family one gets along with, that is. I have a plethora of photos from my trip, all of which are currently languishing in my computer because I left my USB cord in Rhode Island. My aunt is mailing it to me, so hopefully I'll have it back and photos posted soon.

My cousins, Cameron and Devon, are the cutest kids ever. Two and four may be the perfect age, at least when you get to give them back. From intense and sarcastically competitive Scrabble games to walks on the beach to pumpkin cheesecake, all in a place I love, I cannot imagine having a more perfect Thanksgiving weekend. Not to mention the fact that I finally figured out where my sense of humor and some other major parts of my personality come from. And I was genuinely happy. More so than I have been in a long time.

All of this is enough to make me seriously consider moving to New England. Finding a job wouldn't be difficult, one of my mom's brothers works as a consultant in the biomedical field and offered to use his connections, I'd be close to family, my allergies are negligible compared to Austin, the ocean is right there, and the northeast actually has seasons. However, I don't know how much of that reasoning is my deep dissatisfaction with graduate school speaking and how much of it is really what I want. Nor do I think I'm ready to pick up and leave all of my Austin friends. It took a long time to find my support network and I seriously doubt I'll ever find a group quite like them ever again. Then there's my rugby team and the fact that Austin is finally starting to feel familiar. Really, though, all of this is pointless conjecture because unless I'm prepared to walk away from my degree none of this is feasible for at least another six months. But it is a relief to know there is somewhere I could escape to that I am happy.

thanksgiving

Less than an hour before I head to catch the shuttle to the airport. While I'm not feeling particularly enthusiastic about spending the next twelve hours or so dealing with air travel I am extremely excited about this holiday. I fly into BWI via Denver (wha?) midnight-ish and from there am heading north to Jamestown, RI with my mom and youngest brother. It's about an eight hour drive and there was no option for changing my flights, even with a hefty fine; it seems holiday travel really doesn't lend itself to changing plans.

There is absolutely nowhere in the world I would rather be this weekend than with this particular group of family in Hull Cove, Jamestown, RI. I'm probably going to have an interesting time explaining just why I'm mastering out my graduate program, but otherwise these are people whom, given the opportunity, I would choose for family and I haven't seen most of them since the summer of 2004. The cove has been a refuge for me all of my life; some of my earliest memories involve family vacations there surrounded by my cousins and my mother's siblings. I still hear the waves in my dreams to this day.

In four days I'll be back in the reality of life, hopefully with plenty of family anecdotes that don't involve being offered cheap whiskey by my grandfather (That was the other side of the family, last Christmas. This upcoming Christmas I'll probably need it.) Until then, though, it's comfort food, and time with a book next to the fireplace and waking up with the waves outside my window.

new links

I changed my links. What used to be my "Fabulous" section is now labeled "Voyeurism" and is a list of the various blogs not belonging to friends of mine that I keep up with regularly. I'm also bored with the template and starting to tweak it. I haven't decided whether major changes are in order or not yet, but with a long holiday weekend ahead this is a great way to procrastinate on the things that I ought to do instead of playing with my blog.

abomination

There are certain things that should not be allowed on the radio. Rhyming "marijuana" and "Tijuana" with "Mama" is just really wrong. As is the Rascal Flatts cover of "Life is a Highway." Now that one of my favorite older songs just came on, though, I'm really happy I was too distracted by writing a gripey blog post to get up off the couch and change the station.

clicking

Yesterday was an experience. A full-on physical, tough, exhausting, satisfying, oh-yeah-I'm-alive sort of an experience. I played a full eighty minutes of rugby and, had to take charge of the UT scrums. That was a little frustrating because I don't really have that much experience and most of our pack was brand new, including my hooker and lock. They did really well, though, especially considering that we didn't get to practice scrums at all in the three weeks I practiced with UT. I got to lift, which was fabulous, the pitches at A&M are beautiful, so much so that my shins felt fantastic the entire day. My playing is coming along well and things are beginning to click on the pitch for me. I'm not totally clueless anymore!

Plus we got to ride to College Station in Da Bus!

My neck and shoulders hate me right now. Not to mention that I have a bruise on my face from a boot and some fairly amazing ones on my legs. I love this sport. Despite walking off the pitch exhausted and dazed I was also totally satisfied. I collapsed in the back of Da Bus against the pile of kit bags and such, beer in hand, and as I lay there thinking back over the game the biggest grin spread over my face. I couldn't help but smile because I know that I rose to the challenge of the day and succeeded.

seeing the world

Today skies are painted colors of a cowboy cliche'
And strange how clouds that look like mountains in the sky
are next to mountains anyway
Didn't have a camera by my side this time
Hoping I would see the world through both my eyes
Maybe I will tell you all about it when I'm
in the mood to lose my way
but let me say
You should have seen that sunrise with your own eyes
it brought me back to life
-3x5, John Mayer

Early this morning I stood on the shore of the little inlet of Lake Bastrop we camped out beside for the weekend and watched steam rise off the water and for once everything in me was calm and unworried. Even those things in my life completely out of my control but on a blatant crash course to effect my life were out of mind and I could see that it really is all going to be okay. It may not go the way I have it planned out, but in the long run it will all be just fine. I need to live on the water, any water, and not in the city. Now I wish I had taken a photo to capture the quiet of the moment reflected in the water, but really it was a 3x5 kind of weekend. The camera didn't come out of my backpack once. I was fully taking things in, instead of living through a view finder.

background

White noise. I am sick and tired of all the noise I am surrounded by. At the moment there is a vent beside me, two minus eighty freezers and an air conditioning unit in the room with me making noise. In these buildings there is nowhere to escape the din. Every room has some piece of equipment running at any given time. Yet there are certain shrill sounds I can hear over it coming from the room next to me...

Camping this weekend will be a relief. A chance to get the hell out of the city for a while and reconnect with the sky and and myself and have some time away from everything cluttering my life with various forms of stress. The white noise makes an excellent parallel to all those things, actually. And yes, at the end of the weekend I will have to come back to them (and the constant white noise in the background), but hopefully with more clarity than I have now.

I haven't been blogging much lately, mostly out of lack of inspiration. Despite that lack I am, however, starting to feel a lot better about everything. I feel like myself more and more often and have occasionally even felt like belting out some inane pop song while sitting in traffic a time or two this week. Believe it or not this is, for me, a very good sign.

that's just how we roll

brilliant Valkyries

The Valkyries en force at Rachel's wedding. Aren't we beautiful in red? I am privileged to play with some amazing, strong, intelligent, beautiful women.

(Photo credit goes to Ashley Mefford, photographer and Valkyrie extraordinaire.)