Moratorium: Wish List

If all our days are numbered...

I am trying to minimize EVERYTHING at the moment, and I request that you think of this when you decide to gift something to me. 

Most likely, it will come down to me keeping whatever you give me FOREVER (because I am a hoarder of sentimentalism). So, I ask that you'd choose your gift wisely. 

Words sure do mean a lot. And I'm not talking about a cutesy Hallmark pre-written and typed paragraph with your signature below. I'm talking about a heart-felt notebook or scratch paper letter of humor, wit, wisdom, haiku, personal requests, a bible verse (not just the reference), personal remarks and criticisms of the past three-hundred and sixty four/five (depends how you count it) that I have just lived. 

I always see a birthday as the one day in the year when everyone is obliged to make sure that they are nice to you. You can't get in trouble on your birthday - it's like you get off scott-free. You can eat breakfast in bed. The spotlight is awkwardly on you when they sing (we've all been serenaded by a chorus of beloved), and you feel like you've accomplished something, but you can't quite figure out what it actually is. You feel appreciated because everyone gives you a hug on that day, EVERYONE.

But I also always see a birthday as a guest book for a rude awakening. I know that you are so glad that I'm born (maybe you aren't or could care less), but tell me why. How, specifically, have I impacted you, and how can I impact you more? How I can be a better person. Tell me how I can reflect the actions of my savior better. Tell me the areas of my life that you see fit for a revival. Tell me what I could have done better. Tell me how I should give the glory to whom it is so rightly due. Tell me how you grow within 365 days. Remember, rude awakenings welcomed.

why do I keep counting?...

Screw New Year's. A birthday is the real marker. 

The thought, time, and detail that goes into a gift will not go unnoticed by me. The simplest of gifts can go a long way, even if it is a piece of tree bark with my name etched onto it and you took the time to etch. 

But, if you aren't too keen on any of the above, I would suggest the fleeting following:

laptop

non-Vera Bradley backpack for school

textbooks

earplugs by the bucket load (purple and 33 level)
figs and passion fruit

Moratorium: Dog Days Are Over, for now

Contrary to my previous disdain towards dog ownership, I would have to say that I quite miss those hounds. Although their hair floated in the air like smoke plumes dusting my food quite nicely, their need for attention kept me awake 22/7, and their unhygienic propensities and practices absolutely appalled me, a part of a vivacious personality possessed by these dogs is missing and has taken a toll of absence on my previous anti-dog life. I may not necessarily condone the mixing of animals and humans under one roof just because we don't even wear shoes in our own house, but that doesn't mean that I'm not willing to pursue the possibility of welcoming a dog into my life. It most likely won't be a dog that sheds in the least, but other than that, who doesn't want to share their day to day happenings with some goofy little creature of consistent loyalty... Calling all dogs...

Moratorium: Blue Screen of Death

My laptop has been giving me the Blue Screen of Death every day for the past two months. I have backed everything up, but I was still quite worried when the newest BSofDeath said "Wiping Hardrive" and "Dumping disk information." 

Bottom line is, I will not be having internet for the next few days, like it matters. But I would really like to have a working laptop when I return. 

I keep waiting for my computer to explode at my fingertips any day now. 

The line below the bottom line is: I need an affordable and appropriate for college use laptop. Help. Ideas. Reviews. And NOT a Mac. I can't spend my life savings here people. And it must be lightweight - my other one weighed roughly 8 lbs. Not fun hauling the first-world problem I seem to be having back and forth from the library ten times a day. 

Request:

laptop

affordable

college use

Good memory GB

Not a Mac

lightweight

has skype camera

CD/DVD drive

SD card memory slot

USB things

at least a 10" screen

preferably not the extra number keypad on the right side

now go, find me the best laptop. I've done all of the consumer reports and sales research. Now I want to hear from the general public.

Moratorium: Dog Days Aren't Over, yet

Insomnia....
What to do if you find that you have a terrible case of this: I found that I felt a lot better after walking around the dark creepy house holding my head in my hands and howling at the moon.

After about an hour of comforting these precious dogs because of neighbors setting off fireworks far off in the distance THE DAY AFTER JULY 4th, I decided that if I could suck it up, they could too, right? I mean, they're only little doggies; I'm only a stranger in their house, and I'm not going anywhere for the next couple of days.... Days, people....

But I'm employed, so I will gladly accept this house arrest. Going to bed at 1am was the earliest I've gone to bed, but once I got there, nothing. There I was, stretched out looking at the ceiling fan spin in seemingly lulling circles. It wasn't until I reluctantly glanced at the clock in a daze that I exclaimed "are you kidding me!" I decided to pull out one of the books from the bookshelf that I put in my car. Thought I'd try to find this wifi, just to let the world know that I am alive. I might be going crazy talking to the dogs and watching the sun trade places with the moon, but at least, well, I might be going crazy.

This blog post is really just a glorified Facebook status. Most of these posts are; Facebook only lets you use a certain amount of characters, and I happen to be extremely verbose with my woes, pet peeves, reality checks, and human nature criticisms.

 Necessity is the mother of invention. Insomnia and boredom will spawn my inner prodigy. I will go memorize more pi - useless inventions of Alzheimer prevention . Perhaps it's my necessity that needs to change so that the invention is actually productive and useful.

Let's just say that memorizing the alphabet backwards takes two minutes, tops. What a great lonely cereal eating activity at five in the morning. I only wish that the alphabet was longer. But there are more languages...

 Don't worry, I brought plenty to do, I'm just whining / getting settled in / coping with the fact that almost every American household lives with animals. Talk about refined barbarism.

Ecuador:7: nickel-clad horse, Quito style

My first dose of Ecuadorian "culture" was that of the nickel-clad horse. What be this phenomenon?

Two balanced cobwebs of steel.
Perpendicular feature in rotating motion.
Human mechanics of direction versus gravity.
If you guessed a bicycle, then good on you!

The road was blocked for several miles making way for a Sunday of leisure. Hundreds of families, businessmen, teenagers, and serious cyclists alike participated in the phenomenon of the human-propelled machine. The graceful flow of bicycle traffic versus the rushed and chaotic automobile traffic was quite a sight to see! Participating in the automobile traffic was almost painful because I wanted to become one with the traffic, directing as I pleased rather than being carted around in a touring bus. I wanted the bicycle to conduct a jolting sense of oneness with the rickety pavement.

Every Sunday Quito encourages this communal participation, and I was intrigued.

Mark Twain's Taming the Bicycle comes to mind, and if you won't make time to read the incredibly simple essay that is very much worth the read, I've included excerpts that will draw you click on the link and read it in full anyways.

"There are those who imagine
that the unlucky accidents of life--life's "experiences"--are in
some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never
knew one of them to happen twice. They always change off and
swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side. If
personal experience can be worth anything as an education, it
wouldn't seem likely that you could trip Methuselah; and yet if
that old person could come back here it is more that likely that
one of the first things he would do would be to take hold of one
of these electric wires and tie himself all up in a knot. Now
the surer thing and the wiser thing would be for him to ask
somebody whether it was a good thing to take hold of. But that
would not suit him; he would be one of the self-taught kind that
go by experience; he would want to examine for himself. And he
would find, for his instruction, that the coiled patriarch shuns
the electric wire; and it would be useful to him, too, and would
leave his education in quite a complete and rounded-out
condition, till he should come again, some day, and go to
bouncing a dynamite-can around to find out what was in it."

"But we wander from the point. However, get a teacher; it
saves much time and Pond's Extract."

"...and I started out alone to seek adventures.
You don't really have to seek them--that is nothing but a phrase
--they come to you."

"Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live."

Ecuador:6: Quit-Oh

I had said my goodbyes in Dallas, Texas. There I was standing at the ticket counter having one of those pre-programmed conversations that humans tend to have as a much too common courtesy.

People fly all around the world, paying homage to each airport they pass through, and naturally I thought that the ticket counter agent would have been familiar with destinations around the world, I thought. 


In a smiling face, "And what is your destination?"
In an equal amount of smile response, "Quito."
"Quit-oh!"
Haha, yeah, I'm so excited.
"There's a place called "Quit-oh?"
Oh, it's pronounced key-toh. Quito, Ecuador.
"Ecuador! Where's that!"
Oh dear, um South America, which is South of North America, here, and it's on the Equator.
    ---did you take 8th grade geography
"Well, have a great time in KEY-TOH!"

    --- if only I had my world map on standby like it usually is. She was not well-versed in what I thought was common knowledge, or familiarity, and I was not well-prepared to help humanity. I expected more and wasn't prepared for this dismay.

I only hope that her personal intrigue is strong enough for what she needs to participate in this wonderful thing I like to call basic observations and facts - they can get you far if you are driven enough.

I mean, geography may not be her forte, or even the oil drilling crisis on the environment, or even yet the changing of one hemisphere to another, so I mustn't be too harsh.

Nahhh, I'm totally bashing where bashing is due. I'd like to be told or informed if I was missing something, a key piece of, well, awareness. Bless her and many others who aren't curious enough to do a simple wikipedia search, or something. Exhausting. Though, I might just be hyper-strung out on random and expect others to share with equal appreciation... says the girl who wanted to be a cartographer in 5th grade.


Just for the record: 


It's neither quit as in wit, 
nor quite as in right. 


It's qui as in key
and to as in toe
Now that wit is quite right!

Ecuador:6 Wake-Up Call

It was a little after 4am and we had shaken on Sickness Pact #1. If one of us got sick, the rest of us would too. That meant a collaboration of the highest order.

We said our "goodnights" and "sleeptights" and wondered out-loud the possibility of being murdered in our hostel room. It was a pact after all, so it would have to be a murder of the highest order. The sky was beginning to glow ever so faintly, and we decided that if we were to be murdered it would be best if we were in a deep slumber. So we set straight to the slumber.

A little after 5:15am, the most terrifying sound jerked me out of my "rock-like state." I had only experienced this terrifying sound once before when I was at a sleep-over in sixth grade at someone's house that literally backed onto the train track. The whole house shook. In this second instance, I believe that fear itself was shaken right out of me.

I quickly yanked back the poor description of a curtain just in time to see the wheels of a 757 aircraft directly overhead. The aircraft was so close, in fact, that I could see the individual grooves in the wheels. My first thoughts were "is this even legal?" "We are about to go down." "But I haven't been murdered yet, so there's a sure sign!"

Thrice more did this terrifying situation repeat itself. And thrice more did I exclaim, "Hey! there's a mountain!" I was out of bed around 6am, and down to the breakfast I climbed, the most 70-ish style of stairs I have ever seen. I clumsily busted through the kitchen door, staggered a moment holding the doorknob, and intently tried to process what my gaze had fixated itself upon, which was a pan of boiling milk on the stove. "For the kittens? I presumed." 

A man suddenly appeared, "Cafe?" I asked
"Cafe con leche?" he asked.

Ah, "si, con leche," except I said "com leite."
My first Ecuadorian breakfast was fantastic. Cafe con leche, fresh fruit from the trees outside, a delightful fruit juice, and bread that I stuffed in my pockets for the road. More cafe con leche for me, and then I wandered over to the bookcase. Had no one been there, I would have helped myself to a few  hundred of the incredibly old Spanish literature of the greats.

After I faced this sad reality, I found myself climbing out our bedroom window, hoisting myself up onto another odd concrete staircase, and awkwardly greeting a woman who was doing her laundry just above. After two hours of intense observation, I had a running commentary on all of the surrounding building rooftops. Apparently 8am was the time to hang out the laundry. I took my first "Penny" photo, and pondered what down below looked like, for I had only seen the rooftops.

I was absolutely giddy from excitement and the running total of four hours of sleep over the past 48 hours. After my fourth cup of coffee, I was beginning to wonder what was propelling the shaking. I decided that it was the altitude after all, and wandered off to find that several others had joined in the observation of "a morning in the life of surrounding rooftop happenings" display.

Rooftop #1

The Mountain, yes, the foot in between the staircase and window was a squeeze, especially after breakfast. Worth it.

The Penny