this...just...happened...

Me: You like my new picture (it's a Dexter promo)
E: lol, you suddenly got a lot hotter
Me: You saying I wasn't hot before?
E: You know my present feelings about your hotness.
Me: So, what I'm hearing is that I have to look like somebody else to be hot??

Annnnnnd we're back

So, back on the rock (currently listening to LeAnn Rimes screaming "How Do I Live?" in my ear). It's rather apropos. How does one live here?? It is MUGGY, and my AC is raining... If all goes according to plan this should be the last three or so months I have to be here. woo for that! As usual I had my whine fest on Sunday. Everything was "BOO!". Also, sick and tired of childish drama involving three of my friends. Over it, and done. I'm going to try to stay away from them as much as possible. Just can't deal with the bullox. That's all.

I had a great break. I spent a few days in Phoenix and San Diego with Steele and Jules. I loved it. San Diego was so beautiful. It was also a bit odd feeling cold in August in Southern California. Phoenix was actually quite pleasant as well! Yuma and El Centro on the other hand...well let's just say that they're good for what we used them for -- gas and a drive through -- and no more! I met a few cool people while I was on break too :)

On the way back I got upgraded to first class at the gate. Woo, gin and tonics and wine. The flight attendant made me laugh, she asked if I wanted more wine. I told her, "You don't need to ask that again. Just keep it coming. I'll tell you when to stop!"

Almost there...

A former colleague of mine got married yesterday. Unfortunately I couldn't attend this one as I'm not quite done with finals yet. This whole geographic separation thing is a real drag...Thankfully I WAS able to attend Nasty's wedding in May. The same people were there, and that was a lot of fun. I wish I could have been there for AD's wedding. I, of course, sent my congratulations and she sent back with "We missed you and played You Spin Me Around in your honor". It's kinda nice to be remembered that way. Most of my friends at work know that is one of my favorite songs. We played it all the time in the lab, and danced to it all the time when we went out as a group :) Happy thoughts. It's kinda nice to be remembered for something like that. That was MY song, and it became OUR song. A QA geek thing! At Nasty's wedding in May it was the second song played and we were all on the floor in a circle, spinning around (duh!). It was our own little thing and it was fun. The guests there with whom I hadn't worked with were looking at us like we were nuts, but WHO CARES!! I wish I could've been there to dance around in a circle again.

Oi, where does the time go??

Like the title says. T-5 days until my plane (hopefully!) touches down in Atlanta. I cannot wait. I'm scheduled to leave THIS PLACE at 8:50 that morning. I've been obsessively checking my booking on aa.com as if it were some dream or shiny object that will be yanked away from me at the last minute. After landing and doing the whole delightful customs, immigration, and UDSA bag thing scan I have a four hour layover in San Juan. Not really sure what I'm going to do for that four hours as that's one of the decidedly more mundane airports to visit. It's nice, but the concourses are small, and you can walk all the way around it in twenty-five minutes or so. For a plane geek like me a bigger airport where I can look and see where everybody is going is much more fun. As a result, San Juan is boring. It's nobody's hub, so unless you walk to the one corner where American Eagle operates their puddle jumpers to the various islands, it's very easy to tell where the planes are going. Frankly that doesn't interest me because living here has dulled any interest or enthusiasm for visiting the Caribbean for the foreseeable future. For me, this takes all the fun out of looking around. US Airways?? Well they're either going to Charlotte or Philly. Yawn. United? DC or Chicago. Continental? Houston or Newark. American has a little variety, but only if you walk around after dinner, by which time I'm gone. So otherwise all their flights are going to Miami. Yawn. And Delta? Well, that's my flight, so I already know where that's going... Compare that to walking around the big hub airports like O'Hare, Philly, and of course my stomping ground of ATL. Walking around those airports I can look at the various gates and then I check out where the flight is going. Its exciting, all that activity. Ok wow. blah blah blah.

We're at that point of limbo where we have nothing to do BUT study, and frankly, it's annoying. I spend all day looking at the computer, and as a result I don't really truly get tired. The other day I played tennis for about an hour-and-a-half and I was a zombie afterwards, and basically went straight to bed and was out cold until 7 the next morning (yesterday). It was delightful! I was in Classroom 6 by 8:30 (usually at least an hour before I even contemplate waking up). It's amazing (and incredibly annoying) how toward the end of the semester the sleep schedule goes haywire. When I'm at home I'm almost always out before midnight and up by 830. When I was working I was more-often-than-not in the bed by 9:30 in la-la land by 10, if not 11, and wide awake at six. I do miss that regularity and sense of normalcy. Looking back though, I see that a lot of it was because I was simply bored and tired from the long day of work, and had nothing better to do than lay in bed and watch movies until sleep came. Toward the end of my time working I frequently found myself not even home until 8:30 or 9 as I was branching out a little. I found myself more willing to get home a bit later in order to see my friends, even if they were an hour away.

Anyway, I'm rambling. This is me being incredibly thankful that we only have one day of finals this semester (as opposed to THREE last semester). That, combined with only one semester's worth of material to cover makes it much less stressful.

Rediscovering Old Favourites

Since I spend a lot of hours staring at the computer (admittedly a few more doing nothing than I'd like) I listen to a lot of music. Usually it's just to have something to drown out the background noise. I've found myself listening A LOT lately to Patty Loveless, one of my favourites growing up. (Yes I'm intentionally misspelling "favorite"). I think as I've gotten older I'm appreciating more her ability to wrench your heart out with a mere syllable. This is one of her more upbeat tunes, but still one of my favourites.

Break us down by our elements and you might think he failed

We're not copper for one penny or even iron for one nail

And a dollar would be plenty to buy twenty of us

Until true love is added to these handfuls of dust

Handful of dust handful of dust sums up the richest and poorest of us

True love makes priceless the worthless whenever it's added to a handful of dust

However small though our worth may be when shared between two hearts

Is even more than it would ever be measured on its own apart

And our half what it could be is now twice what it was

When true love is added to these handfuls of dust

Handful of dust...

Handful of dust...

Rain

We have entered the rainy season in Dominica. Indeed, the name says it all. It has literally poured throughout the day for the last few weeks. This week has been particularly wet. Monday I was looking forward to playing tennis with Steve. We had just warmed up (including that delightful filmy layer of sweat) when the bottom fell out of the sky, drenching the court, and us. Sweat and rain do not a pleasant combination make. Well Sheisse! I've also had the pleasant fortune of having the bottom drop out of the sky seemingly every time I need to step outside. It's pretty annoying because it's almost always windy and therefore it rains sideways, rendering that ever-so-useful umbrella much less useful...

Last night I was watching Dexter and eating dinner at E's place. Of course it started to rain (HARD!) as I was just leaving to go to her place...and the sky everywhere was black. Growing up watching squall lines come through I could tell this wasn't going to be a short storm. Indeed I was right (I mean of course I was! :P) and it ended up thundering and lightning for over an hour, and raining very hard for almost three. My road was almost completely washed out, and I was dodging puddles left, right, and sideways as I was walking home. But at least I didn't have to fool with umbrellas and horizontal rain!!

Caribbean English -- a language unto itself

I had a conversation this morning with a friend with regards to one or tow professors who hail from the various parts of the Caribbean that went something like this.

Me: he just tears up my nerves!
E: lol, you'd better stop watching him before you implode!
Me: I have such a hard time figuring out what he's actually talking about. I can understand what he's saying perfectly well
E: you just don't click.
Me: there's something about the Caribbean prosody that just makes no sense to my Anglican brain
Me: the musicality of the words just don't flow
Me: give me a Brit and I'm fine. Germans, cools. Indians (some accents aside): ohne problem. Russians, meh. Caribbean -- forget it
E: lol, I understand. I'm the same way. I can barely understand when I call for KFC...
Me: they speak in clauses and phrases instead of constructed sentences. TANGENTS. OMG
E: yeah, their brains go places mine don't

Even though we all speak "English" there is something incredibly distinct about the English here that at times can make it nigh impossible to decipher what someone's words mean. Understand the words usually doesn't present with a problem, but there is a huge gap in prosody and phrasing between the English that I grew up speaking and hearing and the English I'm finding here. I very rarely have problems understanding non-native English speakers, especially those from Europe and India. That makes sense when one considers that a) British English is what is taught, and American English has its foundations in British English and we have a lot of British influence in the media and other places, so were used to the phrasing b) most of those people learn English separately from their mother tongues and as such learn it as English. I get the impression that frequently the local island languages are just translated word for word into English and that results in the odd-ball phrasing. The wording is often completely backwards from what one would expect to hear.I would imagine that as most of the European languages are from the same group (Indo-European) the phrasing and "mindset" of the languages have a lot in common. Here, however, much of the local langauge, Patois, is influenced by African and Caribbean languages the phrasing and rhythms were brought over. To my ears they don't tango with English. And that's all I have to say about that!