Quick note

Fuck deadlines, family comes first. Will explain later, thanks for tuning in.

If You’re Not Scared for Your Life, You’re not Having Fun

It’s been a pretty interesting week. Where things left off, I was pretty bummed out. I appreciate all of the calls and emails of support. I’m sorry if I didn’t get my shit together to call you back. Monday through Wednesday was pretty routine and mostly involved cleaning up my apartment and getting ready for my brother to arrive. Thursday was the 1.5 hr drive down after crossfit. Met up with some acquaintances at some really weird bar that tried to be a biker bar and a Hard Rock Café while also being family friendly at the same time. It was really really strange but the music was good so whatever.

Brother arrived at middle-of-the-night-thirty and fortunately he drove us the hour and a half to “home”. Surprisingly, we talked the whole time. He’s trying to get out to Antarctica and I’m trying to get several things published. We still find each other funny and like similar things. It’s weird and pleasant to have my brother so present in my life for the first time in nearly a decade.

I was super dead at work on Friday but fortunately we had a lot of pushing small rocks through holes to do. Friday night, we tried some local food that consisted of fried squares of dough dipped in honey-whipped butter. It was most excellent. On our way back up to TLoTH, we stopped by a spooky but beautiful overlook. It has a nice cement platform with railings to overlook the river. Of course, we go on the narrow path that follows the narrow ridge of the cliff instead. It’s boulder-y basalt with TONS of millipedes and only a few places to put feet. I make little whining noises the whole time and Brother says:

“If you’re not scared for your life, it’s not fun.” Foreshadowing.

OK, cool so we have decided by this point that we are going to climb the highest peak in the state on Saturday by this point so we have to go buy food. Food shopping makes me exhausted but apparently it’s not acceptable to go to bed at 9:30 on a Friday night when friends have invited you out so we went to the bar. Brother met some of my friends here and that was about it.

Saturday morning, we did not get a very early start. We left around 7 am, which put us in the nearest town to the peak at 9ish. We didn’t get up to the base of the trail until 9:45. The plan was to hike the 6 mi trail to the crest, down 2 mi to a lake and meet one of my co-workers to camp the night. I didn’t quite have the right gear but it would work out if I had a tent I could crash in. (My ground pad was my yoga mat. I could almost hear it whimpering and saying it’s a domestic yoga mat, not an adventurous one.) Cool. Trail. Hiking. Very adventure. Wow.

The trail started as a horse trail. Horse trail means horse poop so there were MILLIONS of flies. It was forested and verdant and nice until the top of the first ridge. Then it alternated between beautiful alpine meadows and lush pine forest. The meadows had every wildflower I’ve ever seen in this state! There were purple ones and white ones and yellow ones. There were little scarlet ones that looked like raspberries. There were little glaciers with wind whipped patterns. There were waterfalls and creeks and moss. It was very beautiful and very happy and very quiet.

We didn’t see any bighorn sheeps but we saw a bajillion marmots. They may really odd noises, kinda like a baby crying while also trying to poop out a Lego. They’re fat and don’t look like they should be fast but they are. I guess they’re kinda cute if you like molting teddy bears?

The rocks were mostly metamorphic so there were lots of cool minerals and I think some rhodochrosite? Brother had hiked a nearby mountain a couple years ago so it was pretty cool to watch it come into focus the higher and higher we went. I started being more and more ok with silence as the hike wore on because I couldn’t breathe. We got to the peak around 5 pm unscathed, which was really a stroke of pure luck. It’s monsoon season here and we only got sprinkles and no lightening.

We descended down the path to the rendezvous. It was an unfortunately steep and bare talus slope. The best part was an adorable rodent with big round ears. Other than that, it was a treacherous and wobble-leg journey.

At the lake, I checked my phone and my co-worker had bailed. No tent, boo. It was already cool and it was only 7 pm. We ate some ramen, which was the best idea ever. By this point it was obvious one of us would freeze if we stayed the night. We asked some other hikers how far back it was to the road, they said “Oh, not far. Maybe thirty, forty-five minutes.” LIES. But we didn’t know that. We had at least 30 minutes left of sun so we figured, OK. Ten minutes in dark is better than freezing next to this glacial lake. We set out on the trail back to the road.

The light only lasted 20 minutes but fortunately Brother had a flashlight and a headlamp. We lost all light after 40 minutes but fortunately we picked up cell signal so we could see how far from the road we were. I was babbling at this point, partially out of fear of bears and mountain lions and partially because I babble when I’m scared. It was noise, so it was good. I was walking even slower than my usual slow because I’d walked 13 mi already with 3500’ up and down. Also it was dark and I fall on paved road.

The small path we were on intersected with what must have been a jeep trail. It was slightly easier to walk but I couldn’t pick up the pace that much. Around this time, Brother says “was that a flashlight?” and I kinda pause.

“Hullo? Hullo? Is anyone there?” he says. He is standing still, looking at something across the clearing. ::heartrate raises:: Brother turns to me. “Look, you need to trust me right now and we need to get out of here as soon as possible. Just run.” Well shit. (My heart is racing as I’m writing this.) I run, which was not the best thing to do in this situation. But I had no idea what was there so I just blindly ran for my life. A couple times I couldn’t breathe but I pushed past it. We saw a structure, a large mess hall of sorts. Brother said “here” and we went inside. As soon as we get in he says, “OK, we’re going to stay here the rest of the night. That was a mountain lion.” I couldn’t breathe. I started having the most legitimate panic attack of my life. Brother gets me water and tells me to focus on my breathing; he is going to check the door. He goes outside, headlamp on and all I hear is “Hey! Hey!” followed by his headlight going out. I freak out worse and can’t breathe again. I walk to window and see a jeep outside, he had just gone over to talk to them. When he comes in, he says there’s a bar just 200 ft away and there will be someone there who can drive us back to our car (another 2 mi away).

We pick up our packs and go to the little bar. The bartended makes me some tea and Brother fills us all in on some details. It was a full-grown adult mountain lion, about 7 ft long and probably 200 lb of muscle. It was less than 20 feet from us, and lions don’t show themselves unless they want to. =pouncing distance.

Update: I found out much later my brother got a picture.

When we got back to the car I called PartnerPenguin and told him I loved him. Then we got ice cream cones and came back to TLoTH.

Comparatively, the rest of the weekend was dull. We hiked to some pretty cool warm springs on Sunday. They were beautiful and clear and had little fishies that ate off the dead skin on your feet/legs/back/hands/whatever was in the water. I’ve never been in warm springs cool enough to support macroscopic life so it was super cool to me. We followed this up with some good ol’ Chinese Food buffet (tasted generic). Then we got me some proper gear so we can do a two-night overnight next weekend.

In other news, I’m continuing to work on my TEDx talk. Pressure mounts, 8 days left to showtime. Worked with a volunteer for 2.5 hr today revising my script, which makes me nervous so close to go time. I think the theme of this visit is exhaustion and fear coupled with insanely beautiful views and catharsis of being alive.

This is about the only song relevant to this event. Mostly for the chorus.

Depression: Episode 1

As I may or may not have told you, PartnerPenguin is still in the Key Route City trying to pick up a new gig since his last job found a Thai kid who does about the same quality of work for $8/hr. Yay, the joys of being 13 hours behind your client! 

I’ve been doing a pretty OK job living on my own, in general. I haven’t tried since I was 19 so there are aspects that are rusty. Like putting my clothing in my room after it’s been worn; particularly in the dirty clothes bin. But getting in the room is enough of a win in my book.

I’ve been doing really well with food, only eating out twice or so because I didn’t plan enough food. I’ve mostly stuck to my cooking all my meals in one day and eating them the rest of the week. I’ve been pretty good about one western, one eastern dish. I’ve even had enough excess food that I’ve fed others. I’ve been consistent about exercising twice a week in Crossfit. I’ve tried to live up to my goal of socializing 5x/week outside of work, even if it’s been with co-workers.

But spending this much time with myself has created some somewhat unexpected issues.

I depend on PartnerPenguin a LOT to keep me mentally balanced. I have quite a volatile personality and without a good grounding stone, my emotions resemble a roller coaster train wreck. I did something this week that made me ecstatic. In the same evening, I had a conversation that brought up so many sad tokens; I wished I could exchange them in for a stuffed animal. Yesterday I had a conversation that I literally could not recover from for the rest of the day. I cried for more hours than I did not cry. Yet I also washed every piece of dirty laundry, line dried it (saving money), did two loads of hand wash and vacuumed all the carpet in my apartment.

I also am discovering that I’m rubbish at asking for help. In some ways, I am paralyzed from the fear of not being able to trust anyone. I have had someone in my life almost every day for the past seven years whom I trust with my life. I am in a new place with new people who I have only known for two months. I have never understood how little trust I feel comfortable putting into new relationships. I know I was not always like this. And I’ve gotten hurt. Permanently. But I never knew it, or was able to acknowledge it in the same way as I am now when I have nothing else to do except introspect.

To some extent, it is easy to feel like you know me really well because I never filter what’s going on with me at that EXACT moment. But in all honesty, I can count the number of people who actually know what’s going on in my life on one hand. And I sometimes disappear from their lives because I can’t bring myself to tell them I’m in pain and I need them.

I am going to submit my next banner to an art show in September. It is going to say “Subtle like a LANDMINE.” I hope it sells, because that is the best description I’ve ever heard of my personality.

I don’t really have a point that I’m trying to make with this post. Sometimes I ramble. Today is one of those times.

Not everything this week has been bad. It’s just been amplified.

Oh yeah, I thought of something I’d like to speak my mind on. The topic of professors.

Three weeks ago, I reached out to a couple professors who I researched with at Big American University. At the encouragement of literally every scientist I’ve met at TLoTH, I am trying to publish my research from Big American Uni. Nothing big, just a poster. The grad student I researched with help me put together a jammin’ abstract and I sent it to the professors three weeks ago. I assigned them a deadline of July 10 so I would have plenty of time to pass through internal approval before I submitted it for a conference. In all of my emails, I offered the opportunity to MEET IN PERSON because I know they both respond better in person. I do not live in the same state as these professors, I was planning on taking time out of my holiday weekend to spend with them.

In the time between the first email and July 10 I received a total of three emails. One email (Prof 1) said, “Good abstract, add more of your work even though I don’t think it has a story to tell.” Second email (Prof 1) said, “Good abstract. I’m in a different country.” Third email, sent at 10 am on July 10 said, “Good abstract. ::asks question directly answered in my thesis::”

At least they both said it was OK to publish.

There were a lot of problematic things about this entire interaction. I set a clear deadline. I communicated my intentions. The professor out of the country had some excuse due to spotty Internet. But over the course of three weeks, the excuse wears thin. I have been quasi-homeless and made sure to check my email every day. The domestic professor, who might have been out of town, did not communicate that and therefore was just absent. Big American Uni has cut their phone lines to professors’ offices due to budget cuts so I was unable to call. I resorted to asking the secretaries to remind him if they saw him in person. I felt like I was stalking but I honestly had NO alternative for this communication.

By far the biggest disappointment of the whole experience was the grad student’s response. She was amazingly supportive through the whole thing and I give her tons of credit for being awesome. But she said something that disturbed me deeply. She said that professors are often like this and there is nothing to be done about it because they are, in essence, more important than us.

I replied thusly:

“I am sorry that you have had to become normalized to such shitty communication and disrespect for your time throughout your graduate experience. You deserve better. Not everyone treats their students in this manner.” They are adults. I am an adult. I deserve to be treated like one.

It hurt and made me so so sad that not only was this behavior accepted and normal, it’s what to expect in some fields of research. It takes a person who actively works through their own ancestral abuse to change the cycle but no one talks about cycles of abuse publicly when it comes to PhDships. Add in active discrimination or even microaggressions at any stage of the game and it’s not really surprising that diversity isn’t great in the ivory tower of academia.

I found this song a little while back; I feel it’s oddly appropriate. Warning: song does contain some harsh language, including the n word.

Update: I went over a friend’s house and actually told her what’s wrong and she listened completely and compassionately. NEVER underestimate the power of compassionate listening. 

And now for something completely different:

Procrastinators Unite!!---Tomorrow.

As today’s title might inspire your imagination…I am a little tardy writing this post. I still intend to publish every Sunday, but I had an extraordinarily busy weekend. And I am human. And I am tired.

This weekend I went to the Key Route City, which is where I’d been living for nearly 4 years prior to coming to TLoTH (The Lab on The Hill). For those of you just tuning into my blog or didn’t know this particular detail, PartnerPenguin and I kept our apartment in Key Route City. We’d previously been sub-letting it to Good Panda but she is off being fancy again so PartnerPenguin is living there for right now. I cannot describe how happy and relieved I was after 12 hours of travelling to come HOME. We have this chandelier that has caused us much trouble over the past year but damn was I glad to see that stupid light fixture. Being in bed with my loved one proved some of the best sleep I’ve had in weeks and I already miss it.

Thursday was the day I flew. Ended work a bit early so I could drive the hour and a half to the nearest runway that passes for an international airport. After flying out LAX, PHL, SFO, PHX and OHare for so long, I forgot that small airports exist. Ugh. Anyway, I had a layover. No biggie. We board the second flight and everything’s groovy and we’re out on the tarmac and… one of our engines failed. I thanked every deity that it happened on the ground so I can complain about it instead of being dead. So anyway, I got into my destination so late that I had to take a taxi. I don’t recommend it.

Friday PartnerPenguin and I kinda spent the whole day on a date. We walked and talked and walked and talked and then sat on some grass and people watched. I think the biggest difference about the Key Route City and TLoTH stood out to me while people watching.

Mixed race couples.

Couples and families. Lesbians. Gay men. FRIENDS. It seemed almost that every group of people we saw go by were heterochromatic in nature. And no one gave a flying fuck. Everyone was enjoying a lovely sunny day by the lake. Ethnicities from the world over were represented in the passerby, and most importantly: it wasn’t a deal.

I came of age in Philadelphia and there are certain things I can’t shake about leaving that magnificent, smelly, cobble stoned city. I feel most comfortable in a city when people who look different surround me and I can learn their stories. I have a very difficult time in segregated environments where xenophobia and classism prevents me from regularly interacting with different types of people. This weekend, it hit me hard that I cannot sustain long-term residence in a place like TLoTH. I take it like a very long field season with fabulous accommodations, but this place is not and cannot be my home.

PartnerPenguin is brilliant and we took the bus instead of the train (which runs in a tunnel underground) into The City. The old bridge is almost gone and the skyline is changing faster than an instantaneous orogeny. New and shiny rich people colonies are sprouting out of the ground like beanstalks, but with the giants guarding treasure on the inside instead of high in the skies. I wonder if Jack and the Beanstalk was really a ridiculously prophetic tale about a kid who time travels into the future and meets several tall Googlers. Then PartnerPenguin took me out to dinner at a grilled cheese place because he knows how to please a woman. Then we went to shul and hugged our friends and sang “Adon Olam” to the tune of “America the Beautiful.” For those of you who aren’t familiar, “Adon Olam” is the most versatile Jewish prayer and can be sung to literally all pop songs common in Western civilization.

From there we used a niche taxi service to take us to the other end of the City. Because you don’t hail cabs with a hand out in the street anymore: it’s subtler and involves smart-phones.

We spent the rest of the evening with our favorite triad. For those reading who aren’t familiar with ethical non-monogamy or polyamory, this isn’t that uncommon in The City or even the Key Route City. In this case, our friends are a woman and her two men. She is a role model in eloquence and her husband is a fabulous photographer. The other friend is a fastidious programming nerd with a bajillion books. Both men are from India and always give excellent insight on their experiences of being brown in tech in America. Around 2 am, I had a really important insight. We were talking about all of the informal research I have been doing to create this talk. And then it clicked.

I can, and should, be doing this for money. I am an excellent communicator of my science and I do an OK job at communicating science in general. I am uniquely skilled and might be in the perfect position to be an instigator of discussion and effective change in diversity in STEM academia. And best of all, I may not actually need a PhD to do it.

This is a freshly hatched idea so please be respectful that it is fragile. Please do not knock me too hard before I fully form and put into words what exactly I’d like to do. But also, please do not hesitate to use this opportunity to connect me with people. I would like to see what a professional in this field does, and whether it really is something I wish to pursue. I work best talking to people and investigating things in an in-person kind of way.

* * *

The rest of the weekend was full of lovely interactions with wonderful people. I attended a proper 4^th of July BBQ and ate too much food like a good American. But some of it was gelato, does that still count if it’s produced here?

Anyway, we had a get-together at our place in the Key Route City. Friends from near and far came by, which is odd because no one seemed to see my invitation on Facebook. Ah well, fuck Facebook anyway. I bought ALL THE SUSHI for dinner and mainlined Miso soup all night while alternately shouting “FISH EXISTS!” and putting more sushi in my mouth. Good times. Everyone else ate Dinobuddies and cupcakes that turned your teeth blue. I think I got the better dinner. I think more hostesses should close their parties the way I did: “Y’all look tired and I need to get laid. Go home.”

* * *

Sunday was totally fun-day for PartnerPenguin and me. We got to watch The Little Bear for the middle of the day. Two things surprised me about this 1:2 set of interactions. One: She was extraordinarily emotionally expressive, even by adult standards. She is sad and angry and very angry about having to move. She doesn’t know where all of her stuffed animals are going to live. She is worried about how her new living arrangement is going to be, comfort wise. To be honest, if more adults could be as precise with their emotions followed by specific followup on why they were feeling those feelings, I think the world would be a much better place. But it was a small exercise in compassion to quietly sit on a bed with a young child and let her feel while assuring her those feelings were valid. I truly appreciated the experience.

The second surprise was her lecturing us about flushing after only peeing because there’s a drought and that’s not good for the environment.

She’s four.

I have a little more hope for humanity.

We took her to a street fair where she went on rides and got her face painted. After a fashion, we returned her to her parents and then got to go explore the fair. I could not have wished for a more concentrated event that perfectly summed up all the things I love about living in the Key Route City. There were local and state politicians, many many chiropractic, massage and tarot booths, ethnic food stands of at least 20 nationalities, a stay-at-home-dad who designs baby and kid clothes, a guy who salvages and reprints random old photos from 1910-70, several gourd instrument sellers and free art for kids. The live stages had performers including aerial artists, ska/reggae/rock cover bands and live rappers. I love this city so much. I have so much love in my heart I cannot bear it sometimes.

* * *

Monday was only a morning in town. I had breakfast with my boss from my previous job. I feel the best way to describe our work relationship was that another coworker tagged me in a picture on Facebook but when I visited the page I was a picture of him eating a cake made with chocolate I donated. We talked about science, his retirement, my career trajectory, and commiserated about certain people who make our lives more difficult than they need to be. It was in a restaurant owned by a famous person and the music was a direct emotional link to my 15-year-old self. It’s astounding how different and same of a person I am, ten years later.

A last quick mini-date with PartnerPenguin brought us to a bank-turned coffee shop with an espresso repair shop behind what used to be the tellers’ counter. I got some espresso for co-workers who caffeinate me in the morning, like I will need tomorrow after writing this.

Oh and one thing I forgot to mention. I GOT A PIN UP CALENDAR OF ACCORDIAN PLAYERS WITH AN ACCOMPANYING CD WITH ALL OF THEIR MUSIC. That was out of order, but you needed to know and be jealous.

And with that, I’ll sign off with a song that just so happened to start my day on the road on Monday. I could think of no more perfect traveling song.