Christmastime with my family

Christmas day consists of me, mom and dad, my sister Nicky and her husband Brian opening gifts, eating (of course), and playing board games.  I only asked for one thing for Christmas (well, OK, two.. .I asked for that netbook, too):  That the family board game be one that can be played by more than four people, since there are more than four of us.  And there they are... playing Sorry!, which only accommodates four!  So I'm entertaining myself by writing a grouchy post instead of joining the hilarity that is the family board game.  Bah (humbug)!

Well, I'll get my revenge this evening when they have to spend time in my apartment, which, due to being halfway through a complete packing-up, looks like a bomb hit it.  They also have to eat my cooking.

In all seriousness, Christmas has been quite satisfactory so far.  I was tipsy by noon, got some good loot and ate some good food.  Christmas Eve (not pictured) was also fun, consisting of dinner and a tacky gift exchange at Brian's parents' house.  Thanks, Linda and Terry!

Merry Christmas from the Raggedy Ann Doll of Nightmare

She's been terrifying the children of Lakewood, Ohio for at least 31 years:

She dates the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man

Midnight run to Best Buy

Let me explain my penchant for explaining things that don't really need an explanation.  I like to do it.  I like to think about then talk about what motivates me, why I do things (or don't do things), why I like things (or don't like things) and why I make every mundane decision that I make.  Some people really like this trait of mine (maybe Anton, maybe Dave), but I know a lot of my listeners or readers don't care (my sister).  They just want the result.  They don't want to know why I'd rather eat sushi instead of italian... they just want me to make up my freakin' mind already and choose a restaurant.  Still, I am compelled to explain my several day absense from the blog. 

To start, I'm a bit lazy and since this is not a natural activity for me, it doesn't naturally rise to top of the list of things I want to do each day.  And then there's the fact that I haven't done anything too noteworthy in the past week or so.  Well, alright, I went to the Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony at the White House, which is one of thosethings I'm glad I did that I'll never do again.  But mostly, I've been getting in one last long fix of my current favorite hobby, the World of Warcraft, before I'm unable to play for several months.

If you browse my Hi Noon album, you'll see several days where my noontime photo is of "me" in the guise of a minotaur or an elf or a zombie-type skeleton.  Those are all my characters in the massive online game that has occupied an embarrassingly large chunk of my free time over the past five years.  But for $13/month, it's some of the cheapest entertainment around.  And being an online game, I've made several friends -- some of whom I've met in person, like my nerd friend Donnie -- and as I constantly reassure my mom, it's quite social.  "Demented and sad, but social."  Name that movie!

December 7 was a milestone day in the World of Warcraft, as the most recent expansion pack was released.  My friend Ken and I, not wanting to miss a moment of the new world, went to Best Buy way out in the DC suburbs at midnight to stand in line in the cold to buy our games.  There was already a line when we arrived:

And did I mention it was frickin' freezing?  Ken didn't bring a hat, the fool:

Finally we made it inside the store, where we stared with envy at all the people who pre-ordered the game and got to go to the front of the line:

About 40 minutes after arriving, Ken and I left with our games and free bonus posters, and I have playing nonstop ever since.  All I need now is one of those "Nerd" t-shirts that Donnie is wearing in the post below this one.

Strangely, I was not playing the game at noon the next day; I was at the cleaners/alterations shop (as evidenced by my Hi Noon photos).  But here's a pretty shot of the game, taken a bit later:

Travel plans and pre-conceived notions

In about 6 weeks, I leave for 4 months of international travel. Choosing where to go was challenging. There are so many places I'd like to see, or was told by people whose opinions I value that I “must see,” that I would never be able to see it all, unless I win the lottery and never have to work again.

To choose where to go I followed these self-made guidelines:

1. Places that are far away and hard to get to. That means no Europe, because it's a single flight away.
2. Carry-on luggage only, which means...
3. A single season of clothes. Summer clothes are smallest and lightest. I'll split my time between the southern hemisphere (in its summer) and equitorial regions.
4. A mix of “comfortable” places (ie, western or english-speaking) and “exotic” places (non-western or non-english-speaking, usually both.)
5. As a single woman traveler, nothing too far off the beaten path. So hiking along the Iran/Iraq border is right out.
6. No -stans.

Here's where I'm going (not in order), with pre-conceived notions about which places I'll like the best and why. The notions are based entirely on what I've picked up from books or the internet or movies, and what my friends told me. I'll return to this list at the end of my trip to see how wrong I was.

Places I expect to like the most:

1. New Zealand, because it's supposed to be absolutely beautiful and because all the New Zealanders I've met have been super nice, except one redhead, who was not nice at all!
2. Ghana, because it is laid-back, friendly, and beautiful.
3. Sri Lanka, because Arthur C. Clarke, one of my favorite authors lived there. And he was right about so many things, he couldn't be wrong about Sri Lanka, could he?
4. Easter Island, because it's the place on Earth I've always most wanted to visit.

Places I expect I'll like, but maybe with mixed feelings:

1. Cambodia. I love old ruins, and the macabre, and Cambodia has both in the form of Angkor Wat and the Killing Fields.* But I expect I'll also feel slightly uncomfortable there, since the language and culture will be so different from what I know. That will be part of the fun, too, but I won't fool myself that it won't bother me a little.
2. Australia. Everyone says it's awesome, but it might be too much like the United States to really leave an impression on me.
3. Tanzania. If I ever get my safari booked (man, they are expensive!), I'm sure I'll be impressed with this country's beauty and the safari will be a unique experience. But apparently there are touts everywhere that mildly harrass the tourists, and the bathrooms are a BYOTP experience, which won't thrill me. I've heard Stone Town on Zanzibar Island is super cool.
4. Peru, home of Machu Picchu, which I expect I'll love, since it's a bunch of ruins. I speak a little bit of Spanish, so the language won't be much of a problem. But Peru is my last stop and frankly, I fear that I'll be tired and ready to be back home, and might enjoy the experience less.
5. Bali, because while it will be beautiful and have a lot of temples and things to see, it will be heavily touristed. Yes, I know I'm a tourist too, but I'm expecting this place in particular to be beach after beach of westerners.

Places I'm interested in seeing or they wouldn't be on my itinerary (well, most of them), but which I suspect will let me down:

1. Cairo. Wasn't originally on my itinerary, but I chose to stop for 2 days due to forced long layover. I don't expect to see more than the Pyramids and maybe a museum or two in downtown Cairo. I expect to be bombarded by touts hasslings the tourists and men hassling the women.
2. Singapore is supposed to be really nice and comfortable and clean, but that also sounds really boring. Since I had a long layover there, I decided to visit for two days. It won't be bad, just not as engaging as most other places.
3. Thailand, because supposedly it's become very commercialized. That could make logistics easier (language, getting around) but the experience might not be very authentic, if you know what I mean.
4. Chile. I have to be here because that's how one gets to and from Easter Island. Santiago sounds quaint, which I actually might like, but there's not a lot to it. Mostly, I just suspect I'll be missing the most interesting parts of Chile, since it will be cold in the places I'd most want to see (like the very southern tip).
5. Tahiti. This is the only place on my itineray I was not interested in at all but I must be there – for several days no less! – because of flight schedules to Easter Island. I expect it's going to be boring and expensive, with nothing to do but lie on the beach, which is something I'll do but don't love. Probably nice for honeymooners, and bad for single travelers on a budget. But beautiful.

* From the start, I've felt a little odd about visiting Cambodia, a country that slaughtered something like 2 million of its own people within my own lifetime. And I've felt odd about going to visit those places as a tourist. Then I remind myself that tourists went to Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, and I myself have been to the Dachau concentration camp, and it seems less odd to do something similar in Cambodia. But still...

Happy birthday Donnie & unintentional (?) porn

Today (Saturday, that is, I'm posting late at night/early Sunday morning) was my friend Donnie's birthday, so I took him on a tour of Dupont Circle and treated him to bruch at one of my favorite local places, Bistro du Coin.  This was also today's Hi Noon photo.

I'm not certain that I'll be leaving DC soon, but there is a good chance I will be.  The (possible) reality of that hit me today when we walked into the restaurant and I realized it might be my last time dining there.  The thought prompted me to order the large portion of my ravioli dish, and green beans too, instead of the smaller lunch sized portion.  Of course I couldn't finish either dish, but they still tasted good when I finished them at dinnertime.

After lunch, Donnie and I continued our tour of Dupont Circle, where I made a point of showing him my favorite local unintentional porn (near the Spanish Steps and S Streets, for those of you who want to see it yourself):



No invasive airport pat-down for me :(

I flew from Cleveland to DC's National Airport today and hoped to experience the inappropriate groping and molestation procedure now in effect in airports across the country, so I could write about it and maybe file a complaint.  Sadly, all I had to do was walk through the plain old x-ray machine and head to my gate.  No fuss, no frisks, no drama.  :(  Yet somehow, we still made it to DC without disaster striking.  Our safe landing made me kinda sorta suspect we don't all need to be groped or viewed buck naked in black-and-white in order to be safe.

The line for security in Cleveland seemed a little longer than normal, but it went fairly quickly and didn't strike me as odd.  The line at DC where I disembarked on the other hand... OMG!  It snaked through the entire rope obstacle course and extended far beyond the "enter here" sign.  I've never waited more than about 3 minutes in the security line at National Airport, so it was clear something unusual was going on.  My guess is it involves nude photos of children and fondling of elderly people.  I shudder to think what that place will look like next week before Thanksgiving.

Typing from the coffee shop

This is my first blog entry done via free wifi at The Root coffee shop in Lakewood, Ohio, something I expect will happen scores of times in 2011 if not before.   At multiple and currently unknown coffee shops, that is, not just this place.  Today I'm:
(1) checking that my computer functions (no wifi at mom and dad's!)
(2) practicing typing on this small and flat keyboard (I have to look at the keys, something I haven't done in 25 years!  But the upside is the screen is so close to the keyboard, my eyes don't have to roam too far.)
(3) downloading anti-virus software, which should have been number 1, but I was too excited about this to wait, and
(4) cursing dumb old McAfee's free trial period because it's interfering with the installation of the anti-virus software I really want to use.  Which means I will add to my list:
(5) remove dumb old McAfee.

I also took the opportunity to practice quickly moving photos from my camera to my computer, then posting them here.  So I asked yet another stranger to take a totally boring picture of me doing whatever I'm doing, which you can see here:

Urine luck

Do you know how Google will scan the words in your Gmail and (I just discovered) blog posts and will insert ads it thinks you might find alluring, based on the words it finds?  This add popped up for me while I was doing some blog maintenance:


Remove Urine Odor
Guaranteed urine odor removal. Read reviews here.

www.SCOE10X.com/Urine-Odor-Removal

Maybe I can forward it to that really nasty farm down the road...

Moving the sheep

Today's big activity was moving the sheep from one pasture to another.  Sheep are a little intimidating, at least to a city girl like me.  They seem to be afraid of me, but they are also really curious.  When I went into their pasture a few days ago to pout water into their bucket, they all gathered round and tried to assimilate me! 

Then one of the sheep started to gently chew on my shoe, which of course made me freak out on the inside.  It turns out the fellow was harmless and curious, but I wasn't about to turn my back on THAT guy as I left the pasture.  Anyway...

We first rounded up some temporary fences from other parts of the farm to create funnels to channel the sheep to their new pasture.  The goal was to make the sheep keep running to the new pasture and not be tempted (or scared) into running off course.  Next we set up the outside perimeter of the new pasture.  The most fun part, which took three of us, was running the sheep from the old pasture to the new.  Anton gathered the sheep around him by shaking the grain bucket, then sprinted to the new pasture.

Gary and I stood on the side, to keep the sheep together in case any of them broke from the herd.  It turned out neither Gary nor I had to chase the sheep back onto the main course, which I was looking forward to.  Instead, we sprinted after the sheep and then stood around mildly intimidating the sheep while Anton completed the fence around the new pasture.

Speaking softly, and carrying a big stick.

Also, I milked the goat again, with more success this time.  She didn't kick the milk bucket over half-way through like the first time.

From barn to belly

WARNING!  Not everyone will enjoy this post; it's about my trip to the chicken slaughterhouse.  

Today 19 chickens left the Terra Vita Farms, which is a small working farm owned by my friends Anton and Gary, and headed to the chicken slaughterhouse.  I "let" Anton catch the chickens and crate them, but I helped move the crates (heavy!) up the stairs, out the door, and into the pick-up truck.  One of the chickens kept screaming.  Don't be too sad for them; until today, they lived with their momma hens, ran free, ate well, and slept in a warm barn.

At the slaughterhouse, which was a family-owned and operated business, including at least one pre-teen (is that even legal? lol), the chicken's first stop was in the beheader machine:

Although the chickens experience a moment of, um... discomfort as their throats are cut, it was a very quick process.  The only creepy part was that they'd twitch for up to a minute in the machine after their throats were cut.  I've surprised myself at how non-creeped out I've been on the farm, especially considering all the poop and animal bits and interesting smells.  But thank god those chickens were trapped in the machine.  If they actually ran around without heads, I'd have freaked the hell out and gone home.

The next step is a hot water machine that circulates the dead chickens and loosens their feathers.  Then they go into what I'll call the "spin cycle machine."  It's a cylander cilander cylender big empty tube like the inside of a washing machine that spins all the feathers off the chickens.  Finally, the child laborers cut off all the unused parts of the chickens, and they are bagged and returned to the farmer.

Most of these chickens were for sale, so they were weighed and delivered.  Anton and Gary kept a few for themselves, and Anton cooked one for dinner, where it went from the plate into my stomach.  Thanks, Anton!

Early thoughts on blogging

Most of my days this week, especially at the farm, have been interesting.  Yet actually writing about my days does not flow naturally from having experienced my days.  Granted, Anton is one of my best friends and I'd rather chat with him and have fun than write about chatting and having fun.  So I haven't written as much as I could have.

And there's the element of telling a story to people about something that was "really funny at the time" but isn't really funny when you tell the story to others.  Like driving past that farm down the road that just spread manure all over its fields; its both horrendously awful and hysterically funny at the same time, but only if you're there to catch a whiff of the urine-soaked cowpaddies (something I hope to never smell again!).  Maybe writing would work better if I could somehow do a running commentary throughout the day, which might capture more of my wry observations about stuff.  That at least might come more naturally when I'm traveling alone for 4 months and need to talk to someone, anyone, even if it's just me writing to myself from a cafe somewhere.  (Is this where someone will suggest I tweet, which I have never done?)

I'm also conscious of the fact that I'm writing this all pretty quickly, without taking care to get it just right, and I have no idea who my audience will be.  Well actually, I know that much... it will be my mom lol.  So I have to become accustomed to writing without worrying about whether it's great literature or whether it's complete rubbish.  Or caring too much what people think.  I had to become accustomed to that in a physical/looks sense with my Hi Noon project.  Because I sure don't look that great everyday in my noontime photos (see, e.g., the day I'm riding the Metro after dance class and the day I'm in my bikini at the YMCA).

Time to go... I'm helping Anton take the chickens to the slaughterhouse.  Another new experience for me, which I will write about later.

On the farm

Today I'm on Anton and Gary's farm, about 40 miles east of Columbus, Ohio.  They raise chickens and roosters for eggs and the slaughterhouse; rabbits for food and fur; sheep for wool; goats for milk.  They have a lot of ducks, which also for eggs and (maybe) food, and have a couple of apple orchards.  There's probably more going on around here, but that's what I remember.  So far I've feed some chickens and ducks, milked the goat, and moved a sheep paddock.  The animals are surprisingly calm, although I was too afraid of the rams to get close enough to see if they are as calm as everyone else around here.  Poop is everywhere.

I really like the idea of living on a farm; having lots of outdoor space and food at hand.  Not sure I'd love working 7 days a week, and (unless you hire help) never taking a vacation.  Or waking up at 5am to feed the livestock.  But it's a nice place to visit.

I brought my camera but don't have the means of uploading photos, so the most interesting ones will be posted in a few days.

Hi Noon: An Introduction

This blog is primarily to document my travels and to maybe possibly someday if I'm not too lazy get a sponsor for further travels (to be revealed in a future post!).  But I wanted something to focus my writing until I actually start travelling.  Something a little more interesting than a litany of what I did all day.  So I've been taking a photo of myself at noon each day (since September 8).  Like today, taken as I did some yoga after my jog:



Notice one of my fans watching from a pot on the mantle?

So far, people think it's a neat idea to record what I'm doing at noon each day, but most days I'm not doing anything particularly interesting.  Probably most people aren't.  I just happen to record it.

For good measure, here's yesterday's photo, take at Rozi's Wine Shop in Lakewood, Ohio.  Sometimes I have to take my own photo; other times someone else does.  I'm leaving a string of strangers in my wake, probably wondering why I want to be photographed doing the dullest things. 

Don't read this; it's embarrassing

This is my first official post on my first official blog.  On the off chance that you're reading this, and only this, you are looking at one blank and boring blog!  But I had to start writing sometime, and one day this post will be buried so far down in the archives that I won't even be embarrassed by it anymore.