A Dad's-Eye View of "Emergency"

In anticipation/celebration of Father's Day:

I was talking to my brother on the phone yesterday and asked him how his son was. I'd seen my sister-in-law's status update on Facebook a couple days before saying that the kid had been to the emergency room, so I wondered what was up. Bro said it was "just a fever," and everything was fine. Then I heard him say -- and it sounded like this was more to his wife than to me -- "Well, it's not like he lost an arm or anything."

And, there you have it. It doesn't look like it's derailed Junior's future career as a professional athlete and astrophysicist, so it's all good.

I'm trying to remember one of the times I got hurt when my dad was the only parent home. They can't have been that traumatic if they're not coming immediately to mind, but I'm pretty sure there weren't a lot of offers to "kiss it and make it better." The help I got would have been more along the lines of, "Can you walk? How many fingers am I holding up? OK, then." Or, more likely (and I do remember this), "If you want, I can drop this shot-put on your foot to take your mind off that headache."

It's easy to say this is a Dad Thing, but I was actually thrown by an incident several years ago when I was visiting my grandmother. We were looking around her old attic, and when I stood up straight I sent my head right into a nail poking out of the ceiling, pointy-side-out. Impaled! Aaaaaa! Blood! Surely Granna would freak!

Nope.

She was all calm. I was kind of offended, really. I mean, what if I got gangrene and died? It's a head injury! I know I don't use my head that much, but it at least keeps me from bumping into things (nails excepted). Isn't this a big deal?

I think I may have figured out how my grandmother, who doesn't like me to go outside at night ever, and who wants me to keep my car doors locked while driving, is somehow unfazed by the nail-head combo: She's a farm girl. Her parents had a plane that they flew into town. Even when her eyesight was so bad that she was declared legally blind, she recognized an ancient piece of equipment on our property as a side-feed rake. Big-city dangers are strange to her. But if you get yourself injured at the homestead, then you drag yourself to the barn, improvise a tourniquet, and hope the hired hands don't eat all the dumplings before you hobble your way to the dinner table.

Honestly, I think it's good to have a balance of grown-ups around. One who feels your pain, one who tells you to walk it off and get on with your life.

And all of them to tell you, "If you ever do anything that stupid again, I'll kill you."

The Opposite of Lumberg

I almost forgot to tell you all: The meeting with my boss went well! I came right out and told her about my interests -- the real ones, not the could-be-adapted-to-an-office-setting ones -- and she totally got it! She grew up doing theater and musicals, and she likes public speaking, too. She's one of those nice people who's actually happy to see an employee follow their dreams, even if that takes that employee far, far away from the company.

She said that for as long as I'm going to have a regular day job, it may as well be one that suits me better than what I'm doing now. So if I can find a job opening within the company that fits that bill, she'll help me out.

She even understands that I'm unlikely to be here forever.

I don't know if there will be anything at this company that will suit me better. I'm not even sure how to determine such a thing, as the job descriptions are so buzzwordy and unhelpful (what does "developing and executing marketing plans and strategies to maximize sales" actually mean?). But it feels pretty good to come clean and be not just acknowledged, but affirmed. I don't have to be fake or obsequious. And I got an "I see myself in you," which is usually a good sign, at least from a relational perspective. Especially because she's not a "devil wears Prada" character.

So, while I keep up with the improv and the singing lessons and the blog and the public speaking and looking into local Shakespeare companies (haven't mentioned that one yet, have I!), I'll be keeping my eye out for company jobs that somehow put these skills to use. Methinks the Marketing Department doth require an serving wench.

Inflicting Myself on More People

I emailed my pastor yesterday. Among other things, I thanked him for the encouragement he gave me regarding my talk and said I was interested in doing more. Today, along with a response from him, I also got an email from an associate pastor inviting me to be one of four people from the speaking class (which had, I don't know, about 20 people?) to give our mini-talks to the whole church. Yay! That's a few hundred people!

I don't know if the invitation is a result of my inquiry, or if I would have gotten it anyway. I want it to be the latter. I wonder why that is. I think I want to know that I earned something by merit, not just because I was even a mildly squeaky wheel. There's a big desire in me to feel invited. This applies to just about any setting, and I think it's one of the main reasons I'm a more natural performer and was slower to take to social interaction. When you perform, there's an agreement between you and the audience; they're there voluntarily, and it's up to you to give them a good show. But in social situations, somebody could just be humoring you and wishing they could go home and play with their guinea pigs.

Either way, though, I'll take the gig. I want to be brave enough to speak up and ask for things, so I'm not sorry I did.

So, folks, right now it's looking like July 26 will be the big day. That should give me time to get nervous again.

Upcoming Meeting

Howdy-do, folks. Thanks for all the encouragement regarding public speaking.

I'm about to take another step in that direction. A couple weeks ago, my boss talked to me and a coworker about career opportunities within the company -- not specific job openings, but various paths that people have taken. I mentioned that I have a few ideas about what I'm interested in and might be good at. You all know that what I'm interested in is music, theater, performace, writing, communication, comedy -- stuff like that. My job involves none of these things. Unless you count writing witty little emails. Anyway, I'm scheduled to meet with my boss tomorrow, and I intend to bring up these various interests.

I realize that our company does not have a Vaudeville Department (does it?), but I figure if I need to have a day job (and I do) while I explore all the stuff I really want to do, it might be nice to have a day job that suits me at least a little better than the one I have now. It's not awful, but it's not great. So I think the public speaking might be a nice compromise. That seems like the kind of skill a corporation might need. The writing would be useful, too, but as I work for a publisher populated with English majors, I don't think that really sets me apart. However -- again, being at a publisher populated with English majors -- I may be one of the few people willing to stand in front of a crowd and yak away.

I have some backup on this from the fellow who led our workshops a month ago. I emailed him today, telling him honestly that if he thought I had talent that I'd like to be able to tell my boss that he said so, and he said yes. Okey doke, then.

There was a teeny crash after last week's talk, because every time I take step like that, part of me hopes that my life will finally change, and then I wake up to see the same landscape stretching to the horizon. But the excitement is up again today, both at the encouragement from last month's coach, and at the prospect of taking this initiative with my boss.

I am wary of getting myself into a job where I'm just comfortable enough to stop pursuing my real dreams. But I'm not exactly close to that point.

Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition

Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency...

Fear: My own. Surprise: Other people's. Ruthless efficiency: Getting in under time (hey, as far as I know).

My talk went well! I don't know if I went under time, but I have a pretty good sense for that and I think I was OK. It turns out the biggest reason they wanted us to keep the length under control is so we could get through all the speakers in one night without staying up till midnight. We did go one hour over, but that seemed OK. And I don't think it was my talk that did it. Unless you count the half-hour they spent lavishing praise on me ;-).

OK, probably not that much. But they did seem pretty enthusiastic. We were supposed to start the critiquing bit with Stuff We Liked, followed by Stuff We Would Have Liked to See More Of. But nobody seemed to have anything to put in that second bucket after my talk, even my pastor. Neato torpedo. The closest they came was telling me about stuff they almost had a problem with, but then I answered it later in the talk, so it was all good. Oh, and one guy said he was so busy being entertained that he forgot to listen for ways he could apply the talk to himself. But then he said that wasn't a bad thing, either, and the pastor agreed.

One guy in particular seemed surprised by me. I'm not sure what it was, but this has happened to me before, even as a trombone player. (I remember a guitar player, who had already heard me play in ensembles, was surprised when I pulled off a solo. And I think some folks were cheerfully taken aback when I, a girl, even knew which end of the horn to put up to my face.) I don't know if I still manage to come off as shy and demure in social situations (which, OK, I can be), or if people assume that I'm probably not going to be great at things, or what. Or -- here's the pipe-dream hope -- maybe I'm just so awesome that there's no way anyone could have seen it coming. Let's go with that. Anyway, the sheer shock of me in performance situations seems to really work in my favor, which is OK with me.

As for the praise -- and absence of real criticism -- my pessimistic and fearful brain naturally looked for the faults, or the chinks in others' compliments. But the fact is, I was the only one they didn't have criticism for, and it's not because they thought I was too fragile to take it, because they were happy to throw jokes my way (always a compliment in my book), and there was another girl, far quieter than I, to whom they did give constructive criticism. Their lists of compliments for me were long and effusive, something they weren't so much for each other. And their observations were consistent with what I've heard from other people, and also feel to be true myelf: I have lot of energy when I speak. Also, I've spent so much time analyzing my own thoughts that I'm effective in expressing them, and letting people into my thought process seems to impact them in positive ways (good to hear, because my process can be pretty brutal to my own heart).

It's kind of a big deal for me to dispense with the false humility and come right out and say that I think I'm good at this sort of thing. I do hope I get more opportunities to do it. It's scary, opening my brain for others to see. It's scary even when I do it in my blog. But I've been stockpiling musings for 34 years now, and they've got to go somewhere.

Tonight's the Night

I guess I can't help myself -- lately I'm all about the the suggestive blog titles for posts that are ultimately completely innocent.

Tonight's the night we all give the 10-minute talks we've prapared for the public speaking class I'm taking. I've mostly just gone over it in my head, and I always go over time, but that could be because I get distracted and sidetracked by my own mental meanderings. When I ran through it for my roommate last night, he timed me and I did it in seven minutes. Woo! Of course, I was talking kind of fast, and he said he missed some of what I said because he wanted to pause and think about the last thing I'd said. That's a good sign -- I must have said one or two things worth thinking about, then. I just need to pace it a bit slower instead of trying to squeeze things into a short span of time.

I don't plan on using notes, which wasn't my original intention. But I wasn't sure what to put in those notes, and I might feel pressure to cover everything. I have a few points in my head, and those are memorized, so I'm going to go noteless. That may sounds reckless, but I'm not a reckless person and I'm actually confident about my decision. I've also spent the last two weeks preparing, so it's not like I'm winging it. I have something to say, lessons I've learned by living through them, and I'm OK with each run-through being different.

I was already starting to plan what I wanted to talk about when we were given choices of topics. Fortunately, one of the topic choices was kind of related to what I'd been thinking about, so I made the twain meet. My talk will be called "God Cares about Your Work," a title we were assigned. (The other choices were Psalm 23 or something to do with your job or whatever situation you need public speaking skills for, but my job has nothing to do with public speaking and I was already preoccupied with the idea of careers and dreams, so "Work" it was.)

Because it seems a little mean to tell you about my talk without telling you anything about my talk, here's a skeletal synopsis of my points:

* I've had to let go of the dreams I'd had since I was a girl, and several years later am still in process in the career department.
* For me, work and dreams are inseparable, even when they're miles apart in my day-to-day life. According to Psalm 37:4, God cares about the desires of our hearts. (The verse itself says, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.")
* There's substantial biblical precedent for long periods of waiting between having a dream or getting a promise from God, and actually seeing it fulfilled. That waiting is part of the growth process that comes with being human, and though it feels like a detour or even a complete derailment, it's actually getting us where we want to go.
* We can be overwhelmed with questions and uncertainty and fear of making mistakes. But I'm learning that mistakes aren't an unfortunate byproduct of this process; they are the process. God isn't teaching me not to make mistakes, but how to make them.
* I used to torture myself by obsessing over all my questions (e.g. "Are all the things lacking in my life the result of things that are lacking in me?"), because I thought grappling with the questions would get me answers. It's hard to get through a workday this way. Eventually I realized it wasn't getting me those answers, and that I was just torturing myself. It was simply unhelpful, so I gave myself permission to stop. It took practice to stop that circular negative thinking, but, interestingly, torturing myself less has led to my feeling less tortured.
* Looking back over the last 8 1/2 years, I can see purpose in what God has been up to. Having music out of the way has made room for God to dig up dreams I'd shoved aside and forgotten when I made the decision at age 12 to pursue music professionally. And that rediscovery process has been fun. It's like getting a dream upgrade. I'm excited about my future, and that wasn't the case for a long time. I'm getting glimpses of what might be in store for me, and as I allow myself to be jazzed about those possibilities, I find I'm delighting in the God who's making it happen. Hey, was I just finding God delightful? Isn't that what the Bible verse talks about? In the greater context of the Psalm, I think God is basically encouraging us to hang in there with Him, so we can be around as He proves Himself faithful. And I'm looking forward to watching how He does it.

OK, that's not so skeletal.

But hopefully it'll take less than ten minutes. I'd hate to be a diva ;-).

Busy Bee

Hi Everybody,
I know, I'm not posting a ton at the moment. I've been quite busy! Some fun stuff. It's just that it happened to come together in a big clump, at least temporarily. So you can be happy for me with all my neat activities (and perhaps have a good chuckle at the thought of me trying some of them), here's some of what I'm up to:

Public speaking class at church
Singing lessons
Improv (you knew that one already, though)

See? I'm pushing on different doors to see what happens. And there's other stuff in my future. I'm doing a movement/dance/physical theater camp-for-grown-ups kind of thing for a week in July. And I'm thinking some regular, dramatic, non-improv acting classes could be really fun.

So, basically anything that involves an audience is intriguing to me. Well, not everything. I probably won't try pole dancing anytime soon. But it's pretty obvious that that falls into a different category: activities that would actually make me some money.

Lunging Buster

Buster is the pudgiest pug I've ever seen. He's quite the little sausage. You can hear him breathing from the other end of the house. Poor little guy.

My roommate Maria is dogsitting this fellow for the foreseeable future, and she's taking it upon herself to restore him to fitness. As Buster is not a big fan of walking (and you know a dog is out of shape when it doesn't want to walk!), she's applying her equestrian background to getting him some exercise. You know how they'll tie a horse to the end of a long pole and let him trot around in a big circle for a while? Apparently that's called lunging. And Maria's contrived a way to do this with Buster. She attaches his harness to a curtain rod, and holds the rod while sitting in a swivel chair in the middle of the living room. Then she makes Buster walk in circles for 15 min. every day. That's fifteen minutes of serious wheezing, and a few attempts to sit down. But Maria's pretty good at the tough love with Mr. Pudge.

Depending on how much help I can wrangle from my roommates, who are technologically more sophisticated than I (surprise), I might see if I can get some recordings of the Sausage making his various noises and post them here. In spite of all my literary pretensions, I am unable to convey these sounds in words.

Misunderstood

The actual lyric: "Look at the frequencies at which I vibrate."

What my roommate heard: "Look at the freak, she says, "Which end vibrates?"

And Speaking of Monsters (because I'm all about the segues today)...

I went to my first Red Sox game two weeks ago! They lost in a big way to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, but I ordered a hot dog from one of those guys who sells them among the folks in the bleachers, so the day was a success for me.

Baseball parks are an experience, and I soaked up the smells (ballpark food!), sounds (swearing women and little kids learning to say, "Get that idiot ump some eyeglasses!"), and sights. Fenway has a big wall known as the Green Monster (or "monstah" in Bostonian). This has led to the Sox having a mascot named Wally (ha!) who is himself a green monster.

I thought about the whole mascot thing. It's probably hard being in that suit on a 90-degree day, but as I'm colder than most people, I imagine I could bear the heat more easily than most as well. And what else might be involved -- hugging children? doing goofy dances? hamming it up for a camera?

Fit the skill set of any bloggers you know?

So I decided I want to be Wally. I mean, I want to be the guy in the Wally outfit. I got really excited at the thought, though that could have been the caffeine-filled migraine pill I took hitting my system. One of my coworkers, sitting next to me, said that her roommate used to date the current Wally's brother, and that the job probably pays around $30K a year. Um, not to give y'all more info than you wanted about my finances, but if they give you benefits with that, then that wouldn't necessarily be a step down for me.

I even looked it up online. I'd thought maybe this would be the sort of thing you'd only have to do from Spring Training through the World Series, giving you several months off in between to do other fun stuff and earn more money. But I think Wally makes appearances at a lot of functions and charity events, visiting children's hospitals and such, and that probably goes year-round. Makes sense. Even so, I may check in every once in a while and see if that spot opens up.

I've already begun imagining what kind of dance moves would work in a big round suit.

Monster in the Making

My last post was partially about the joys of being away from one's desk during the workday. Well, last week I got to have that twice! My company brought in a fellow to give some day-long workshops on giving powerful presentations, and I signed up for both Levels 1 and 2.

I don't give presentations at work. I barely even interact with people. It's a wonder I can physically speak at all anymore. But I've always been drawn to public speaking, so I signed up with my boss's blessing.

It surprised me when I first heard that more people fear public speaking than death. But in a perverse way, I find this encouraging. I figure it means that if I think it sounds fun while the rest of the world thinks it sounds scary, then maybe it's one of the things I was born to do. And I don't have as much competition to worry about ;-).

That doesn't mean I don't get nervous. I do. But people say even that is a good sign, because it means you care, and some adrenaline, when well channelled, can keep you on your toes and make you more effective. I experienced this as a musician, so it's not utterly foreign. Always good to be reminded that nerves don't have to be a bad sign.

The guy who led our workshops was nicknamed Meech, and he's had a career impressive in its levels of fun. At least, I was envious. He'd been a radio DJ, and then he interviewed famous musicians on TV in the early days of VH1. He's chatted with BB King, Sting, Eric Clapton and Phil Collins! I wanna do that!

Can I share my excitement with you? Meech was positive with everyone, but I don't think it was all in my head that he was especially effusive in his compliments to me. He said that someday I could be a "monster" and "a force to reckon with" in the public speaking department. Golly, I'd like that.

Furry Holly Monster like public speaking. Rowr.

I Feel Healthier When I'm Away from My Desk

My company is changing health insurance plans. This happens a lot. It's the third or fourth time that, for various reasons, I've had to research and sign up for a plan in the space of about 2 years. While I find this mildly stressful (will I get sick this year? how do I know?), the company did a good job of making things fun by holding a Benefits Fair today. It got me away from my desk, which is as welcome to me now as it was when I was in second grade and we got to go to the gym for an assembly about fire safety. Any change in the routine is happy.

They had nifty goings-on. First, I went to a seminar about how what you eat affects how you feel. A lot of it was obvious: Sugar is bad, unprocessed foods are good. Kinda knew it, but what was helpful was knowing some of the facts behind it. Like, unprocessed (or "whole") foods work better with your body in the breakdown process, whereas processed foods (e.g. refined sugar) actually force your body to hand over the nutrients it got from other foods, like some kind of digestive mugging. I doubt this will stop me from eating chocolate -- OK, who am I kidding? it won't stop me at all -- but depending on my financial situation, I may be willing to spend a few extra bucks here and there for unprocessed items. Any step in the right direction is a little victory, right? I'm all about the positive motivation, having previously driven myself to the unproductive depths that guilt and obligation lead to.

The next thing I went to was a half-hour session on yoga moves you can do at your desk, and even in your chair. Neato! I feel like I'm still way at the beginning of the process of learning to use my body more and my head less (in my journey to become a well-proportioned human being, and not some kind of bobble-head), so even short classes like this feel like a big deal to me.

Then there was the kicker: Chair massages! How can you pass that up? Way to butter up the workforce!

I also stopped by a table set up by one of the local gyms. They were clever, in that they had a device you could hold that would, when given your height and weight, measure your body-fat percentage. Silly, cocky Holly, thinking that being narrow would give her a good number! I should have realized that I'm not necessarily thin because I'm low on fat, but because I'm also low on bone, muscle, and probably the size of my internal organs. So when you go to percentages, my loose clothing the heeled boots don't give me an advantage. The girl at the table, who may have been trying to be nice, said there was an error margin of 5 percentage points in either direction. The device said I was 25.8% body fat, which I thought was good for a woman until I looked at the chart they had. Apparently it's only "fair," which is isn't so great. Less than "good," in fact. Rats. I don't like bad grades, even when they're for fitness. I should probably start drinking raw eggs and pumping lots and lots of iron or something. Except I won't.

But I do like a nice distraction from work. And when you look at the big picture, isn't avoiding work really what it's all about?

Who Lives in a Pineapple?

My nephew's party was the perfect mix of kids and adults -- enough of each for people to be able to hang out with their peers. The kids (except for my nephew, they were all older, like 8-ish) could entertain themselves in the backyard without a ton of entertaining or supervision, and they didn't have to listen to the boring conversations of the big people. My brother had also planned a water balloon toss, which the kids could do with their parents. Wow, are water balloons popular with kids. This was that really hot weekend we had, too, so it was the perfect setting for getting wet.

Now, I knew my brother was pretty good with kids. What I hadn't realized was that he may be the coolest grown-up ever. The kids figured this out pretty quickly, and paid him the compliment of making him the focus of plotting, scheming, and connniving. It started with extra water ballons, which they wanted to focus entirely on him. So he headed outside and made a show of bending over to look for drinks in the cooler: "Hmmm, let me get a beer. Here I am, looking for a beer..." The kids were so well behaved that they didn't pick up on the opportunity and were patiently waiting for him to finish. I waved them in, "Get him in the butt!" Boy, they didn't need to be told twice. But the balloons weren't breaking easily, and as they followed him around the yard throwing, the shots kept bouncing off him like bullets off Superman. Eventually he tried putting them in his back pockets and sitting down, and it still didn't work. Weird. But a valiant effort!

Next, they tried to give him a candy that was sweet and most definitely not sour at all, which he obligingly fell for.

The part that impressed me the most, though (perhaps because it veered into a skill set that I appreciate) was when he sang the complete Sponge Bob theme song, word perfect. In that Sea Captain voice.

It should be noted here, especially as we just passed Mother's Day, that my sister-in-law pulled off impressive feats of her own. She made Martha Stewart cakes! I didn't know people could do that. And the woman has gone without cheese for over a year-and-a-half because my nephew has had a problem with dairy, which I think should qualify her for a medal or something.

Wicked Ink

Whaddup, peeps. I know it's been a while since I've posted. I've been a busy little bee. Oh, the irony: The more I do, the more I might have to blog about, but the less time I have to do the blogging. So I have some catching up to do! Let's start with my nephew's fire-themed first birthday party, which included tattoos! Here's me and my dad looking all tough with ours: I know we're hard to tell apart, so I'll help you out: I'm on the right. My dad wanted me to be sure to tell you all that the picture cuts off part of his arm, and therefore does not fully capture the massiveness of his bicep.

If I Only Had a Brain

I have the song We're Off to See the Wizard running through my head. When I ask myself why, the answer I keep getting is because, because, because, because, becaaaaaause!

He'll Look Adorable in a Hat, if They Can Get Him to Keep It On

The parents and I are heading down to New Jersey this weekend for my nephew's first birthday. It all seems oddly familiar somehow. I think we were down in that area about a year ago this time. Wonder what that was about.

"It's a question of lust, it's a question of trust..."

Actually, it's not a question of lust at all. I just wanted to use that lyric as a title. Here's a more accurate title for you: "Trusting Arvo Part." The a in Part should have an umlaut (those double dots, like in Motley Crue) over it, but I don't know offhand how to insert that kind of character into a blog post. I'm no expert in Estonian (heck, I'm no novice), but if it's at all like German, Part with an umlaut would be pronounced kind of like Pehrt.

Anyway, Arvo Part is an Estonian contemporary classical composer. I love this guy. Hard to explain why I love his music so much, but I think it's because it combines what I love best about ancient and modern classical music. And there truly is something ancient about his sounds. I hear his work and I'm in a great stone church, where the light comes in from windows high overhead, and you get dizzy from looking up and turning around to take it all in. Yet he's not afraid of dissonance, and leans into it and lets it sit, like modern composers do. Love it, love it. It's probably not for everybody, but if you're at all curious, I recommend his work wholeheartedly.

And did I mention that that I find it hauntingly, achingly, dumbfoundingly beautiful?

I first heard his music my second year in England, when the family I lived with had some of his CDs. Maybe I trusted their judgment. But somehow, that trust transferred to the composer himself. While my taste in classical music is more developed than my taste in pretty much everything else, I still reach a point every once in a while where I'll ask, "Was that good or was it cheesy?" I don't know when or how quickly it happened, but I came to the point where I trusted that if Arvo did it, Arvo meant it, and Arvo knows what's what. I might be suspicious of some of these sounds if I thought they were written by another, but I trust Arvo. This positive judgment about the composer fills in a gap left by my judgment about music.

Realizing this gives me some empathy for people who appear to blindly follow a popular artist or performer. Maybe they're not mindless; maybe they simply trust the person. Maybe that's how we all learn and grow: by choosing to trust and follow the expamles of other people, using what little judgment we have to choose whom to trust. Then, as we gain experience, we learn to make artistic and creative judgments for ourselves. But hitching your critical wagon to someone else's brain, while it can go too far, is a natural part of the process.

If I'm going to be hitched to a musical brain, I'm quite happy for it to be Arvo Part's.

Observation and Normalcy

I've been hesitant to talk about my European trip with people because I don't know what to say. I'm not sure I quite expected a heightened experience, as I'm not prone to those, but perhaps I'd hoped for one anyway. Most of you probably hope I have fun stories about what I did and what I saw. I did try to be open to things as they came my way, rather than cling rigidly to plans, and I think I did that passably, though nothing all that big came barrelling my way.

I've posted a list of things that happened, because some things did. But that's not really what my trip was like, because I'm me wherever I go, and my life takes place inside my head. And that means that my ten days abroad were basically normal life in unusual locations. It wasn't surreal. It wasn't completely different from anything else I've ever done. It was more like a birthday that involves a few nice messages from friends and family, but otherwise is like any other day. I spent most of my time working not to analyze or let myself sink into the sadness that I know I'm prone to, and was rather pleased at how successful I was.

I did notice something about myself: I go into Observation Mode when I'm in situations I don't understand. I see this in improv class, where it's not particularly helpful; you need to get in there and DO, and don't have the luxury of just watching the way the audience can. And I see this in social situations. I've always been cautious, and in the past have berated myself for being so cripplingly shy. But when I was in Brighton, around people I'd met before, I realized it wasn't quite shyness that was holding me back. It was awareness that there are thousands of ways, big and small, in which communication and interaction differ from what I'm used to in America, and I wanted to figure it out. So I was quiet a lot. One-on-one conversations were OK, but in groups, I watched and listened.

I can be very snarky (duh), and I didn't want to plunge into trying to make jokes without having some idea of how to get them across effectively. The result was that England didn't really see the sarcastic Holly whom you all know and lo-... well, whom you all know.

But the Observer is me, too. And the sad girl who got philosophical and lonely and teary as she sat on a bench up on the Eiffel Tower. And girl who wandered into town to buy giant Cadbury bars just as she'd done when she lived in England nine years ago.

So, if you want to know how my trip was, the answer is that I was me. And I'm me now that I'm back home. And that's both as hopeful and as disappointing as it was before I left.

Anybody Have an Rule or a Opinion?

Does anybody know what the rule is when it comes to using "a" or "an" before a letter that's spoken or written by itself rather than as part of a word? For example, if I were leading a cheer, would I shout, "Gimme an M!" or, "Gimme a M!" I think I'd use "an," because when you say it aloud, it sounds like "em," and that's the whole point of having two articles to choose from, isn't it?

It seems to me that this should be based on pronunciation instead of spelling. You'd say something is an honor, not a honor, even though honor starts with H, right?

I think this is on my mind because I Can Has Cheezburger: A LOL Cats Collekshun has come out recently, and when I saw the title I wondered if the people behind it were stupid. Not to be an arrogant a-hole about it. But really: Would anybody say that out loud? Even if you were in the habit of intentionally misspelling things for the sake of cuteness? It's just so awkward, "A LOL..."

OK, brainiacs, I know y'all can weigh in on this intelligently.

Lost Marbles = Beer Goggles

I stepped onto the subway the other day and was immediately greeted with, "Damn, you're beautiful! But you probably knew that already."

Of course, the guy turned out to have "psych issues." He proceeded to mention his many millions of dollars and the fact that he likes to drink booze. I have myself a drunk millionaire!

The next group of passengers was greeted more critically: "Crazy-looking mother fuckers." A man next to me observed, "That wasn't nearly as nice as the welcome he gave you. You got off easy."

Indeed I did.