cshell

Berlin Sept. 11

Just testing with additional text entry. Please ignore... Then I went in search of food, and had one of my favorite meals of the vacation. I had doner kebap (chicken). It was amazing - spicy and salady and warm and yummy. (Although I'm not convinced that that wasn't what caused my later intestinal difficulties.) Since I still had time to kill after dropping off my clean laundry in the room, I wandered the nearby area and took some photos. The neighborhood was interesting - seemed like it was going through some sort of transition. There were lots of pierced/tattooed kids around, but also families (saw lots of folks out with the strollers and walking dogs). The graffiti in the area was cool too (this was a whole side of a building - I'm not really sure if it was graffiti or a mural, but it was colorful).

I'm testing the blog entry from Flickr.

Music

I had a conversation with someone about music recently. He listens to mostly classical. I listen to whatever, but prefer stuff I can sing along to and told him that. I then thought about this further (long after the conversation), and realized that I think I use music to connect. Lyrics (mostly, more than melody) connect me with an emotion or an event that the singer is talking about. (It may not actually be the real event or emotion that the writer envisioned as I may misinterpet the song, but it still has a meaning to me.) And not that my friend listens to classical music to disconnect (we didn't talk about it, so who knows), but I think that music has a different function for me that for some people. More...

I find that I listen to specific music according to my mood. When I was sick on the bus on the tour I listened to Sarah McLachlan because it was quiet and melancholy and felt strangely like home. And sometimes I listen to more upbeat stuff in order to get myself motivated to do work, or to help blow off steam when I have excess energy.

I'm sure you can do that with classical music too, but I don't have enough experience with that stuff to know what pieces to use for what situations. But I know what songs pop into my head when I want to feel sexy, and I know what songs pop into my head when I'm angry or depressed or happy and upbeat. It's like some songs are inextricably linked to a specific time in your life (the song that for a few months is on the radio every time you get into a car, or when you hear it you remember your first boyfriend, etc.)

Home ownership fun

One of the joys of home ownership is that YOU get to be the one to deal with crap that breaks or otherwise goes wrong. So my fun with dealing with crap today was wasps. Or yellowjackets. Or whatever you call the little stingy f*ckers. I had 6 wasps wandering around my dining room. I've managed to get one trapped in between the screen and window of the front window, and another trapped in the same manner on the side window of the dining room. The other 4 I vacuumed up. The weird thing is that in my vacuum you can see through the plastic, so I know the little f*ckers aren't dead yet. So I took it out to the garage until they die. Ick, the thought of them gives me the willies.

Home again, home again

http://www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger/Woo hoo!!! I'm home!!!

The weirdest things have popped into my mind since I've been back. Many of these can be put down to jet lag. Read extended if you want to know more....

...more...

It's fun to do normal things again. I made my own food and had to clean up after it to it today. I drove my own (filthy) car again. Had to remember not to speed. Remembered what it's like to be drunk again (haven't been able to drink to my full potential on the trip as I was either alone or sick - doh!). Watered my lawns (need to buy groceries - but I'll see how long I can put that off).

How funny is it that as much as I couldn't wait to get the fuck outta Dodge, I'm now sooooo happy to be back? I loved being away - learning new stuff, taking things in, doing new things, pushing my boundaries. But I'm also really happy to be home - I missed some of my material stuff, but also really missed my friends. It's nice not to be on good behavior (holding in the snarky comments, not saying every funny thing that came into my head). And I missed my friends - I want to know what dramas (minor and major) ensued while I was gone. I'm not looking forward to going back to work and so it's good that I'm not going back until Monday (and in the meantime I think it's time to look at other possible jobs - both inside of and outside of the company).

Oh, and stuff I won't want to blog in the other blog - observations and commentaries on other tour members. Given that I won't be cross-referencing the blogs, it's probably safe to blog about them here as long as I only use first names. Because I have some observations that I wouldn't want to folks on the tour to read, but at the same time want to share. But some of the photos and stories will make more sense when ya'll see them.

Favorite people on the tour - Christoph - fiance of the tour guide I had in Italy (Taunya). He was funny and smart and from East Germany and someone I ended up spending a lot of time with. He's cute (in a "he has a fiance" sort of way) - kind of like a brother (someone I'd sock on the arm and have snarky comments with) and he appears in a number of my pictures and stories). Kathy (my roommate) ended up being another favorite because A) she helped me out and didn't make much of a deal of it while I was sick, B) because she's a nice lady, and C) because she sort of reminded me of my mom (vaguely). And last but not least, Ben, our tour guide. He's nearish to my age, was funny and sorta geeky and cute. And he took me to the opera. And then made fun of me on the last night (as well as making me "dance" with him to violin and accordion music). How much of a dork am I for having a bit of a crush on him?

Least favorite people on tour - James - he was just odd. I kind of think he has Asperger's Syndrome. He's a short, bald guy. He was sort of lacking in social skills, but obviously read a lot and was very smart. I'm not sure if I got this right, but I think he taught himself or took it upon himself to learn German and Russian (and the histories of those areas). But he had never been out of his hometown area (I think near Boston). But he seemed sort of rigid in his ideas and his ways of thinking about the world. He was just odd and different - like a square peg in a round hole. He wasn't a bad guy - you could tell he tried to engage in conversations as he understood the rules of them, but he didn't reallllllly get how conversations should go (there was no empathy or sympathy - it was like he'd seen how conversations should go but wasn't sure how to actually emulate that).

Another person that I thought was odd (ok, annoying) was Barbara. She only annoyed me occasionally and more toward the end of the trip. I think that maybe she annoyed me in some sense because I saw something of me in her actions and hated it. Basically the reason I didn't like her is that she seemed to have this sense of entitlement about things, but then seemed passive-agressive in that she wouldn't do anything to get those things she felt entitled to, but she'd piss and moan about not getting them. I think her roommate (they had known each other from before the tour) seemed to try to talk sense into her (along the lines of saying "maybe so and so didn't mean that" or "did you talk to so and so about your concerns?"), but it didn't seem to work. And it's like this stuff festered and built as the tour went on. One of the places we stayed she actually knocked on the door to my room and complained that my roommate and I got a suite and bigger bathroom than they did (it was a tad bigger, but not significantly so, and I don't think she brought her concerns to the attention of the guide or co-guide). And then there were various other similar complaints as the tour went on. So it got under my skin. But I did sort of feel like there was some building up of resentment over the course of the trip.

Another person that was odd to me was Marlee. She was an older lady but she had her hair dyed black and styled in a slightly Mary Tyler Moore flip. She always seemed to wear black but with a dash of color on a scarf around her neck (and she had bright red fake nails too - but tastefully fake). She seemed eccentric but moderately normal. But near the end of the trip she seemed to snap. I heard her sort of lose it at the last hotel when she told the guide that she was pissed that at no point on the trip had she and her roommate gotten a tub. She said she'd told the co-guide and never gotten a tub. My personal theory is that A) all the tubs were given to the couples because it'd be weird for non-couples to bathe, B) that there were no real tubs known about in the co-guides information (i.e. while the general sizes of the rooms were listed, the specifics of tub or shower were not listed), and C) she should get over it as at no time was anyone promised even the suggestion of a tub being included. Again, I think she was different but fine for 98% of the trip, but she lost it when we hit the last city (Vienna), and then didn't attend the dinner on the last night. I don't know if she was tired or sick or sick and tired of all of us or pouting or what, but I think sucked that she wasn't there the last night.

The rest of the folks were pretty normal and/or cool or at least flew below my radar. Jim and Bonnie from Texas were sweet and fun. RIchard was funny - always a funny comment and/or interesting observation. Warren was fun and funny and interesting to talk to. Bill and Judy (that Kathy was traveling with) were sweet. His nickname is "Grumpy" (but he was really kind of a teddy bear if you didn't let the gruff exterior fool you). Judy was sweet and seemed so happy to have a new audience that hadn't heard her stories before. Joe and Lois were nice folks. Eric and Elaine sort of took me under their week (they live in the Bay Area as well), and I really liked talking to/hanging out with them. Marsha was interesting - a former vet who just sold her house in Hawaii and was going to travel until Thanksgiving - who made me think she was a bit of a former flower child (Birkenstock-style person). Lanny and Maria I didn't talk to much, but seemed fun (I think they were the ones most in search of good beer). Bill and Cheryl were fun (although I didn't get as much chance to talk to/hang out with them as I would have liked as I started to realize that Bill had a pretty sarcastic sense of humor). Gerry and Elizabeth were nice folks (he was a professor and seemed strangely impressed by me), I enjoyed conversations with them at various folks (including the last day I saw them - officially the day after the last day of the tour).

Ok, with that general information as background the photos and blog entries on the travel blog will make much more sense. I'll update this cheatsheet with more info as I think of it (probably in italics).

Travel blog

Since I don't necessarily want all the folks that I want to update about my travels to know about this blog, I decided to create this separate blog (as I already had it created from my other trips). So you guys can go there for updates. Not sure how often I'll get to update the blog from the road, but I'll update it (and Flickr) when I get back.

http://travelingirl.blogspot.com/

I'll see you all with many stories and pictures in October.