Went out and watched the Geminid meteor shower last night for about an hour. It was chilly, and I didn't drive far from my house - just down to the place where they're constructing the final leg of the 56 highway, which was at least an open space with relatively few lights, although the surrounding city at large still made for marginal viewing. I was only brave enough to venture a little ways down the construction truck road, before visions of transient psychos stumbling across my path and seeing a golden opportunity for some nooky and a new car made me stop at least within I-can-probably-crawl-there-before-I-bleed-out distance of the main road. I also saw a coyote on my way down, and wondered how hungry he was... I really have become a paranoid chica in my old age.
Anyway, it was worth the effort, as shooting stars were plentiful - I counted over a couple dozen. I made a specific wish on shooting star #14 - the number was auspicious because of the nature of the wish; but if I told you, it wouldn't come true, so there it is. I hadn't sat outside and looked up at the stars in a long time. Used to do it alot; side-effect of being a science fiction geek, maybe. I'd forgotten most of the constellations I'd once taught myself to know, so I made up a couple and gave them incredibly clever names, like "Stick Dude" and "Wee Tiny Dipper". Maybe they'd be more impressive in Latin.
Introspection being a somewhat predictable side-effect of stargazing, the view left me feeling a little... speck-like, I guess, compared to Everything Else Out There; but in a good way. Perspective is useful, in whatever form you get it. I wondered for the 800th or so time about whether any of the stars I was looking at were like our star, looped by planets carrying living, thinking things... critters who might also believe they're The Only Game in Town simply because no one's proved them wrong yet. "Contact" may not have been the best movie, but I admit to identifying with Jodie Foster's character, tirelessly tuning in to the music of the spheres out of what amounts to an extreme case of the same existential curiousity. Are we really a fluke, a lonely burn mark flicked by the Big Bang onto the couch of the universe... or have we just been living too far out in the sticks to know our neighbors?
The crux of all this being, I suppose, that I really am a core-level geek... and a bush-league philosopher at best. With a penchant for really bad metaphors, to boot.
Well then. Enough of my galactic woolgathering. What else...
More later, maybe.
Yesterday was action-packed. Wee and I got up way too early for a Saturday morning and got together with some of his coworkers out at the paintball course in Escondido. Carnage ensued; some pics of Team $4R in action are here (this is me). Bill's the one with the "27" on the back of his jersey (of course). I made a couple of good tags, though I'm sure my hitter-to-hittee ratio wasn't too impressive (at least, judging by the number of paintball-sized welts I'm sporting).
I have to remind myself that I've only done this twice and really can't be expected to be all that good yet. I tend to get frustrated and annoyed with myself if I can't do something well right away. It's probably the combined side-effect of being a smart chick and having a short attention span. I'm impatient with the process of learning to be good at a new skill... although I am a little more patient in learning something like a sport because I give myself far less credit for being physically adept than I do for being bright, and therefore have less potential ego-bruising to deal with if I don't do that great.
But given my tomboy childhood, I'm generally a little ashamed that I'm not as much of an action girl as I was when I was a kid. I was one of those girls with tangly hair, callused hands and a constant array of bruises on my shins. I'd much rather make dirt trails for Hotwheels in the backyard or take my Star Wars figurines out into the hills behind my house and pretend they were on Tatooine than play Barbies in the bedroom. In summer I was outdoors most of the day, every day. That's why it's been cool to do "action" stuff recently, like paintball, and riding the quads up at Adullam. It's really fun to get outdoors again, to run around and get all grungy. Not to be hackneyed about it, but it really does make me feel like a kid again. Paintball is cool because it reminds me of playing Cowboys & Indians or Cops & Robbers as a kid, and wishing there were some way to prove you shot someone when you said you did. Seeing a big splotch of pink paint in the forehead portion of someone's mask that you put there from 50 feet away is immensely gratifying. Even getting shot's not all that bad; it hurts, but not as badly as I thought it might - it'a usually no worse than someone flicking your skin with their fingers - and it's just part of the game.
So anyway, we played a full day's worth of paintball, then came home and, in a total shift of pace, got ready for my company's Holiday party. The party didn't turn out to be as fun as last year's, though. (OK, all I want to say about last year's party is that the parts I remember were lots of fun; there were some latter-night debacles that I've been told were decidedly less pleasant, but thanks to my notoriously faulty memory in times of extreme intoxication and an extremely forgiving husband, I am able and very inclined to afford those bits very minimal acknowledgment). We were both pretty tired out. Our table was right next to the dance floor so we couldn't hear much of anything conversationally, and not too many of my work friends were there; the ones who were there were off doing their own thing and just didn't cohese into a fun group the way I'd hoped. The most entertaining note of the evening was that one of my coworkers smuggled in a bottle of Cuervo 1800 Anejo and was distributing shots at their table. I accepted a couple purely out of bravado - tequila isn't my bag anymore, and the biggest payoff for me was a sharp little headache when I woke up this morning. But the smuggler in question is a pretty mild-mannered Turkish guy, so it was intriguing to see him all loopy from the contraband hooch. More than that, I found it hilarious to see some of the other, older gals in our department tuck back a shot or three without so much as a wince. They're both Latina, however, so I'm sure it's not the first time the Elixir de Agave has touched their lips. At any rate, we left sort of early, but I was kind of glad to have a more sedate holiday party experience to counterbalance the extremes of last year. My party karma is now in balance.
So today is a day, I think, for sitting on my tuckus and getting some stuff sorted out around the house. Christmas is in two short weeks - ah, that thought just shot a little spike of panic through my heart. I have a lot to do! So I'd probably wrap this up and get to it. Right, then... Off in search of wrapping paper.
Here's a ditty I came up with to describe this day (sung to tune of "Camptown Races", but slower and more dolefully):
Campfire cocktails knock one knot, doo dah, doo dah,
Head is pounding, eyes bloodshot, oh I rue this day,
Had some fun last night,
Now I gots to pay,
Wishing I were home in bed, oh I rue this day.
Work. Hangover. Not a nice combo...
As if turning 30 this year wasn't hard enough on my aspirations for eternal youth, this week I've had to face up to another of life's sad little transitions... receiving my first pair of glasses.
Ever since I tested as 20/15 in high school, I bragged about my good vision, and always just took it for granted. I used to pity those who weren't as blessed with visual clarity as I was; I'd think about how frightening I'd find it not to be able to see everything clearly and having to rely on devices for good sight. With a dad who's worn glasses since he was a preschooler, though, and a mom who's worn them since before I was born, I should have known better than to be smug about my eyesight.
And sure enough, over the past few months I've come to notice the telltale blurring of words on a page, or a feeling like there's a film over my eyes keeping me from seeing clearly. For a while I dismissed it as fatigue or eye goo (What's that Mark Twain said about that river in Egypt...?), but after I found myself always leaning over to the phone list on my office wall to make out people's numbers, and skimming over magazine articles because it was too much work to focus on the small print, I finally 'fessed up to myself that the problem wasn't going away, and I paid my first visit to the optometrist.
The verdict: affirmative - the warranty on my peepers is slowing expiring. I'm 20/32, mostly farsighted, with a dash of astigmatism for good (or not so good) measure. The Dr. said I was pretty young to be heading down this ocular slippery slope, called presbyopia (which sounds more like a term for a moderate Christian perspective)... It's usually more of a middle-aged thang. Then again, the sprinkling of silver that pops up along the crown of my head when I'm between dye jobs already proves that I'm a precocious little minx where aging is concerned. I find this ironic, since I was about the last in my class to lose my baby teeth and get my boobs (such as I got, anyway). Ah, the regrettable brevity of my salad days!
So anyway, I gots me some progressive lenses, which are essentially blended-in bifocals for vain people. They're tough to get used to. Walking around in them, I seem to be up to my ankles in sidewalk. It's like I swapped bodies with someone who's about 6', but my brain's still stuck at 5'8". However, I have to admit that things at my desk look much sharper now - I didn't realize before how just fuzzy they'd been looking to me.
Still, I feel like this wearing glasses business is just something I'm fooling around with, like some sort of temporary fashion experiment - instead of something I'll always need, for the rest of my life. I'm having trouble accepting that this is how people will see me from now on and that one day people may even think my face looks odd when I'm not wearing them, like my parents' unbespectacled faces look to me. It's strange, but I'm so used to seeing my parents with glasses that I'm almost embarrassed to see them unspec'd, as if their bare faces are too intimate or exposed for public viewing. I'd prefer not to look that way to my kids. Of course, I could just decide to not wear the things and deal with blurriness... but that's kind of silly.
Several times throughout the day, I get annoyed with the process of getting used to them, like having messed-up peripheral vision due to the curvature of the lenses, and I think it's not worth it and that I'll stop wearing them. So I take them off and try to read something. Then I quietly put them back on.
Getting old's a bitch. I really do not approve.
