Pollen Nation

On Being Social

nobody@vox.com(Elisheva Chana) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:33:40 -0500

My husband and I have similar temperaments when it comes to what we want to do in our "off" time. We are inclined to stay at home and relax with our books/computers before cooking dinner than go out and do something. We're homebodies, I suppose, and we treasure that time to sit and talk and recharge. There is such a thing as too much relaxation, however, and yesterday we slipped out of our habitual introversion to go hang out with some friends.

Our buddy Eric had mentioned recently that the local Dick's Sporting Goods had an indoor rock climbing wall. I loved going to the climbing gym when I went with friends back in college, so I asked him to let us know the next time he was heading out there. Last night was his usual night, so M and I drove out there to meet him and some of his friends. After filling out the requisite waiver and strapping into the harness and putting on the slightly too-large shoes (definitely going to have to get my own if this becomes a regular activity), I attacked the "easy" wall.

I made it to the top and pushed the button to set off some silly siren without any real problem, which thrilled the heck out of me since I hadn't done any climbing in years. Never mind that this was the kind of route tourist kids could handle, I made it to the top without falling off! The staff member on belay dropped me down wicked fast, which was a little disconcerting, but something I'd been prepared for since I'd just seen her do the same thing to Eric. M went up the same wall and also got to hit the button at the top, so I feel pretty fantastic that we both managed it.

After our climbs, Eric and his buddies said they were going to watch a hockey game in which another friend of ours was playing. M and I, having done our social activity for the day, might have easily gone home, but we were feeling adventurous. I'd never seen a hockey game before, and I figured seeing the husband of one of my good friends play would be a good way to start. It was actually a lot of fun to watch. Norah, the player's wife, even had an extra sweater and a blanket for a dork like me who showed up to an ice rink in shorts and a T-shirt (hey, I dressed for rock climbing; the hockey game was not initially on the agenda!), so I was even warm enough. Fun times.

Every once in a while, I guess we just need a reminder that it can be extremely rewarding to get out and do things with friends even if we face getting up early the next day. It's worth it, even for introverts.

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Culture QotW: Can't Wait to Read...

nobody@vox.com(Elisheva Chana) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:59:01 -0500

What soon-to-be-published book are you excited to read?

The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman's books are always weird, wonderful, and a special pleasure to sit down and ~~attempt not to~~ plow through.

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COD pr0n

nobody@vox.com(Elisheva Chana) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:33:03 -0500

Don't worry, it has nothing to do with fish (even if Troy McClure might prefer otherwise). I was spending some quality time browsing YouTube for videos of the plane my husband will be flying, and I felt the need to share them with (or inflict them upon, depending upon your level of fascination with airplanes) my dear readers.

This first one is of a trap, or carrier landing. Man, the COD is a big hoss.

VRC-40 C-2A Greyhound lands on USS Theodore Roosevelt

This one is a montage of video and photos of the COD set to music. It's certainly no "Pump It," but there are some fairly cool shots.

C-2 Greyhound Video

And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming, already in progress. My regularly scheduled programming involves cleaning the kitchen and/or unpacking more boxes, so I'm sure you understand why a YouTube break was so appealing.

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QotD: I'm Not Telling

nobody@vox.com(Elisheva Chana) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:05:29 -0500

What question do you hate being asked?

Your Guess is as Good as Mine

It's really a set of two questions that go together: "How long are you going to be here, and where are you going next?"

The answer to each is a great big "I don't know!" While we might have our guesses and probablies and maybes, the all-consuming Needs of the Navy are no constant thing to be depended upon and planned around far in advance. I am slowly--and not always gracefully--getting used to dealing with the big ("Where will we be living after this assignment?") and little ("Will we find out about tomorrow's schedule at five o'clock tonight, or will it be delayed?") uncertainties, but I know it can seem bizarre and unstable to some of my civilian friends and family.

For instance, we just bought our first house. We did so not knowing whether M will be stationed in the area for four years, as will be the case if he gets assigned to an East Coast squadron for his first sea tour, or if we'll be sent to California or Japan after just a year here. Here's the kicker: we will not find out whether we're staying or going until just before we would have to leave--we'll have a few weeks' notice if we're lucky. Thus, while we are hoping to stay put, we still have to plan as if we will be packing up and moving out next summer.

A dear friend of mine from high school was understandably boggled as to why we would choose to buy a place when we have maybe a fifty-fifty shot of living there longer than a year. Why not just rent, sign the year lease, and wait and see about buying once we knew where we'd be for the next three years? There are a lot of reasons we wanted to buy instead of continuing to rent, many of those likely familiar anyone looking to become a homeowner, but even discounting those, our timing made sense to us. Waiting to buy would certainly eliminate one worry, but it would also guarantee that we'd have to move in a year even if we stayed on this coast. I'd rather take the chance that we might be able to avoid a move for four whole years. The mere possibility that we could have that kind of geographical stability after moving three times in our first year and a half of marriage is extremely appealing.

Also, we have always planned to use our house as a rental property when the Navy inevitably sends us to another duty station. If we waited until we had a guaranteed stable location for multiple years, we'd be locking ourselves out of homeownership for the next twenty years. Even if we have to move earlier than we'd prefer, it doesn't upset our plans, it only moves up the timetable a bit. Sure, there are complications that wouldn't exist if we had more control over where we lived and for how long, but I'm stoked about how we're handling them. We're thrilled to be living in a home that belongs to us; it feels great to know we have that degree of control as well as the additional responsibilities. All we have to do while we spend this year enjoying our awesome house is do some research and make sure we're as prepared to look for tenants in one year as we would be in four.

Getting back to the QotD, while I may get tired of hearing questions about where we're going and how long we're going to be there, it's only because I wish I could give my family and friends a more satisfying answer. It must be frustrating to hear me say, "I don't know, and I don't know when I will know, either," like a broken record. I'm not actually offended by the questions, because believe me, I have the same ones for the Navy!

The Navy ain't talking, though, so I guess we'll all wait and see together. Semper Gumby, right?

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You Think Your Commodore 64 is Really Neato

nobody@vox.com(Elisheva Chana) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:51:37 -0500

NetRacer

http://home.ica.n...

NetRacer is a simple racing game written to demonstrate the potential of multiplayer games over the Internet with the Commodore 64. It builds on our earlier two-player effort Artillery Duel with realtime gameplay and the addition of a server.

I have extremely fond memories of my dad's Commodore 64. In fact, it's not like those memories are exactly distant, since he still keeps it up and running. it seems that others have the same penchant for keeping old technology chugging along, because now there is an online multiplayer game for the machine.

I love geekdom!

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Cable and CODs

nobody@vox.com(Elisheva Chana) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:05:52 -0500

A vital step in the process of getting settled in the new house has been completed: we have high-speed Internet access. Compared to the hoops of fire we had to jump through to accomplish this back in Texas, getting connected here was a breeze. Score one for Cox; we'll see how the rest of their service stacks up.

C-2A Greyhound by Todd Lappin

Having said access allows me to do exciting things like share the news of what M will be flying as his fleet aircraft. We found out this morning that he will be a C-2A Greyhound pilot. The Greyhound is the COD, which stands for Carrier Onboard Delivery, meaning that he will be flying cargo and people and what-have-you to aircraft carriers. I plan to tell new acquaintances that my husband is a Greyhound driver and watch them try to puzzle out what on earth a bus has to do with Naval Aviation.

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And All We Had To Do Was Sign Over Our Firstborn

nobody@vox.com(Elisheva Chana) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:33:52 -0500

We are homeowners! This home that we own is filled with boxes in various states of unpackitude and I may or may not go crazy--in a very happy way--before we get everything situated. We won't have reliable Internet access until next week sometime, but I just wanted to tell y'all that we're alive and still largely in possession of our mental faculties after two months of not having a permanent address.

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QotD: Rise & Shine!

nobody@vox.com(Elisheva Chana) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:49:03 -0500

What are your first thoughts upon waking?
Submitted by Cher Cabula.

This morning, my first groggy thought was something along the lines of, "Mmph, I'm cold." The second thought was about how magnificent that chill felt, considering that it was still about 85° F in the room when I went to sleep. The A/C guy had indeed come yesterday evening and (temporarily) fixed my folks' air conditioning system, but it took the night to bring the temperature in the house back down. It's hot again today, but that's a lot easier to deal with when one can escape inside--or to one's grandparents' house, which is what my brother and I did yesterday afternoon. Mom came over to cool off for a bit, but she had to go back and wait in an oppressively warm house for the guy to come take a look at the system. Let's hope it stays working until a more permanent fix can be implemented.

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Good Thing I Didn't Bet on Cool Stuff Happening

nobody@vox.com(Elisheva Chana) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 11:15:19 -0500

Boy, what a weekend. The horse I hoped would win the Triple Crown came in dead last and the air conditioning crapped out last night, probably as a delayed result of the power outage earlier in the week. Today's projected high temperature: 99° Fahrenheit. That's 37.222° for those of you who speak Celsius, or 310.37 Kelvin for the scientists. Since the A/C guy is off enjoying the wonderful world of general aviation (bah, I know too many pilots) until late this afternoon, my mother, brother, and I are heading over to chill--quite literally--at my grandparents' place.

Hope the rest of you are staying cool and hydrated and all that good, non-heat-stroke-inducing stuff.

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QotD: Homes Sweet Homes

nobody@vox.com(Elisheva Chana) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:53:34 -0500

How many houses have you lived in? How is where you live now different from where you grew up?

If we're not counting college residence halls, the number currently stands at four. I'm about to make it five when M and I move into our very first real, owned-by-us house towards the end of this month. Closing is in about two and a half weeks, and we have the movers scheduled to deliver all our household goods, which have been in storage since we fled Texas at the end of April, the next day. This is by far the most attenuated move we've yet experienced, and we are very much looking forward to having a place to call our own again--and this time, it really will be our own!

We'll be living in a different part of the same state in which M and I were raised, so it's a lot closer than Texas was in both feel and distance to where I grew up. The flora and fauna feel right, and the neighborhoods had an instantly familiar vibe. I'm really looking forward to getting established in our new place, and I do hope that the Navy sees fit to keep us on the East Coast for M's first sea tour. If not, we could find ourselves headed to California or Japan after this first year. We'd deal, but it would be positively blissful if we could take a break from PCSing until this decade is out.

On a side note, I'm itching to whip up some change-of-address cards, but I'm superstitious enough to hold off until after closing when all the paperwork is signed and the keys are in my hand. Of course, then I'll be too busy getting the house put into some semblance of livable order to do it, but that's neither here nor there.

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