I can’t drink alcohol. As a teenager in Istanbul, I used to be able to drink Safari and peach juice but only when I absolutely had to. Since I’ve been in the States, I get a weird sensation with every sip of alcohol. My whole body burns and I feel like my clothes are strangling me, especially my underwear. I’ve been known to take off all my clothes after a wine cooler.
I’ve tried many different forms of alcohol, anything from wine to beer to hard alcohol to wine coolers. I seem to be okay with shots mostly because they don’t sit in my throat for an extended period of time, so when forced (or let’s say strongly urged) I will do shots. I only drank lemonade at my wedding and hated the sip of wine I had to have as part of the ceremony.
Recently, I decided it was important that I be able to drink wine and possibly beer. In an effort to help me, Jake took me to a local shop and we bought a bottle of Chardonnay and a bottle of Merlot. Last night, we opened the white wine and poured a glass for each of us. Fully determined, I drank the entire glass.
If I said I enjoyed it, I’d be lying. But I did manage to keep my clothes on and I didn’t chug the glass, I sipped it slowly. I’m told after a few glasses, I might even start enjoying the experience.
I’ve always wanted to be more artistic. My mom can draw beautifully and at seventeen earned a scholarship to study art in Italy, but chose to marry my dad instead. I remember getting really upset when she told me that. She noted that had she made the opposite choice I might not have been around. Fair enough. It still made me sad that coming out of this creative and capable a mom, I couldn’t draw to save my life.
In my experience creative people are never creative at just one thing. They may have an area of strength, whether it be painting or sculpture or saxophone, but they just think creatively. They look at life creatively. My mom has had over ten unrelated creative jobs in her lifetime. She can look at an empty space and imagine something there. Her head is a box of ideas.
A desire to appear more creative was what originally brought me into computers. Maybe I couldn’t draw to save my life but if I could get the computer to draw for me, wasn’t that also creative? In high school, I dreamt of working in big art galleries in Italy, renovating masterpieces. If I got really good at computers, I had a chance getting in that environment. I craved that environment.
Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about my pull towards creativity. Creative people represent so much of what I am not. People who are expressive. People who are comfortable in their own skin. People who live life day in and day out. People who define their own life. At least, that’s how I see it.
For me, the difference is between living life and going along with it. I was browsing through the Burning Man installations and feeling utter joy at the fact that these things exist. That people create works of art. That they add to the beauty of the world. That they have the guts to do what they love. To explore. To express. I guess being creative represents so much more to me. It represents freedom.
A form of freedom I’ve always wished to achieve.
Looking good is all about feeling good. People who are self-confident and comfortable in their skin look much prettier and more attractive than people who display the conventional features of beauty. I wish there was a trick to becoming more comfortable in one’s own skin.
Walking around in my neighborhood, in search of Mars, tonight, Jake and I saw three deer and one rabbit. We saw a total of six cars during the hour-long walk. But, alas, no Mars.
Do you take pictures? Have you visited any of the 50 United States? Come on, contribute to 50 States. It only takes five minutes to email and you’d make me one happy person.
Happy birthday, Jake. I love you with all my heart.
So I got a part-time job today. The one main requirement for it being that I read Turkish fluently. On the way to the interview, I turned to Jake and said, “If I don’t get this job, I can’t get any job. I was practically born into this job’s requirements.” He told me not to stress and that one never knows. Well at least I did get the job. It appears I can read Turkish afterall. My elementary school teacher would be proud.
“I know you were very nervous, but you really need to watch the right turns,” she says, looking at me. At least, I think she is looking at me; I can’t see her eyes behind the mirrored sunglasses.
I never learned to drive until two weeks ago. In my native country, you need to be eighteen to take the driving test and since I was already in the US for college, I never took the test at eighteen. The summer of my twentieth birthday, my mom asked the driver to give me some lessons and made me work for the written test.
The written exam is very complicated in Turkey; you have to answer questions about traffic, engine and first aid. The driving exam, on the other had, is a joke. You get in their car, go straight, make a U-turn, pull over and you’ve passed. It’s not a huge surprise that Istanbul is full of bad drivers. Before the exam, the driver and I practiced a bit and I drove on my own around the block one time.
So, at twenty, I had a license. I went back to college in Pittsburgh and did not drive. I graduated and moved to New York City and continued not to drive. When we decided to move out of the state, seven years later, we bought a car and I promised Jake I’d drive as part of our all-summer cross-country trip.
And I did. I drove for twelve hours on my first day. The car was swerving a lot, but mostly under control. At the end of the day, my muscles were tight from stressing and my hands hurt from gripping the steering wheel. I drove several more times during the trip, in the farm roads of Texas and highways of Montana. All in all, I drove maybe for ten days.
California State allows a foreign licensed person to get a temporary license until she passes the driving test. I took the written exam with Jake and scheduled my test for two and a half weeks later. I told him that I would do the driving since I needed the exercise and I almost killed us on the ramp to the highway.
read more
I have longed to visit Antarctica for quite some time, so Antarctic Diaries – Life Behind the Science is my chance of getting a feel for it until I get to visit and make my own diaries.
By the way, Suzanne Vega’s story on how she learned to drive, made me feel a little about my current struggles and driving-school adventures.
Lately, I seem to be suffering from a problem that only occurs when I have too much free time on my hands. I get fleeting moments of inspiration where I want to work very hard and finish a task I’ve been putting off. I’ll be sitting in a movie theater and think that as soon as I get home, I’ll write that code I promised Jake, or that I’ll update parts of my site that are outdated. Or that I’ll finish the presents I wanted to send to people who hosted us throughout the cross country trip. Or that I want to sit and write. I make mental lists. For that fleeting moment, I feel that I can do all those things. I feel energetic and enthused about my projects. I feel driven.
And then the moment passes. I come home and read my mail and don’t really feel like doing much else. I take a break and read for a while, hoping the moment will come back, but it doesn’t. Not until a day later, when least expected.
When I’m working I don’t seem to have time for these fleeting moments. I am generally too busy for them. I run from one place to another getting things done instead of thinking about getting things done.
If you have any pictures of any of the 50 United States, please email me a link to your picture, the location (within the state), a link to your site, and the state. It’s for a project I’m trying to do. Only one picture per state, but you can mail several pictures. Fair warning: If you don’t want this picture online, don’t email it to me. I don’t plan to touch the pictures in any way and full credit will be given to you. The pictures have to be taken by you or someone who gives permission to have them posted, in which case, I’d like their name as well.
After a week of non-stop unpacking, our apartment is beginning to look almost normal. We still haven’t hung any of our pictures but all the computers are installed, so are the TVs and stereo, every box is unpacked except for two. You can even walk around without tripping over stuff. Part of me is happy to finally get to slow down and take some down time during the day, the other part of me knows this means having to finally get a job. That part wishes the unpacking could go on forever.
Driving isn’t going so well. I know millions of people do it and I know that technically I am capable of doing it, but it’s really stressful and quite painful. I hate feeling as incompetent as the car makes me feel. Only two weeks to the exam and I am sure to fail it.
Looking for a job is yet another nightmare. I haven’t truly interviewed since college. Transfering within Goldman didn’t really count as I didn’t have to sell myself so much. TFA didn’t count because it was a completely different ballgame. I’m really not looking forward to the hours of interviews and the thousands of resume renditions. Fun, fun.
It’s amazing how little we tend to enjoy downtime. We’re either busy with the job or desperately looking for one. Seems like a sad existence. No wonder I prefer to work for myself.
I seem to remember Heather having a post about dying her hair black that I should have paid much more attention to before I used the Nice’N’Easy bottle I bought yesterday. My brand new tub is now covered with black stains that threaten to stay permanently. I knew there was a reason to let the gray grow.
After a morning at the DMV, I am now the proud owner of a temporary California license, my very first in the United States. My driving test is scheduled for the end of the month and I am scared shitless.
I started unpacking my books yesterday and it’s amazing how happy the act made me. I love my books, just looking at the titles and the authors filled me with joy. It made the everlasting unpacking considerably more fun.
After five full days of trucking down all the major highways between Boston and San Diego, we made it back to our new home. One night at Audrey and Tom’s and another at Ashlie and Travis’ meant that we only paid two nights of hotel fees. Even including the gas and paying people to unload the truck, we still saved around 3000 over the price the moving companies quoted us.
On the fourth day, we even managed to take a side trip and see the Painted Desert and the Meteor Crater in Arizona, two sites we had missed in July. Besides the severe allergies to the truck, my body handled the trip quite well. The birdie played, ate, or slept the whole way. He did get quite a bit more anxious when the sun set and started climbing to the top of his cage. After four months of separation, he’s now with his family, in his new home. He should enjoy the attention and freedom until a dog is added to our family.
The last three days have been a frenzy of unpacking. Now that we’re finally here, I seem to have gone back to my usual rushing self and am quickly getting worried about settling down, finding a job, and such. We’ve already got our phone, cable and electricity connected. I’ve unpacked the kitchen, clothes, and bathroom. The TiVo is connected and merrily recording. Since my computer broke during the move, I even bought a new one last night. On the surface, our lives seem to have started.
Now, if only I could shake this anxious feeling in my stomach.
Right now, Jake’s driving down a highway and I’m reading my mail, finding the nearest grocery store and updating the site using my laptop and Ricochet. San Diego is one of the two cities where Ricochet is available in the country and the flexibility it allows is awesome. It doesn’t seem to work in our apartment all that well but it works pretty much all over San Diego and it’s really fast. It’s quite affordable and means I can work at the beach, by the poolside or any other attractive location. When we drove across the country, I was telling Jake that such a service should be available across the country. It would have let us lookup hotels or campsites along our route and made life considerably easier.
We’re off to Boston tomorrow to arrage our moving. We’re still waiting for info from one mover and otherwise we’re going to use Budget trucks. We figure we might as well get there and get started. I’m also planning to update my resume and order our utilities here in the meantime. In a week or two, we might actually look like we live here.
|
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
|
