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Life on the Mothership.
This morning I woke up nauseated and discontent, fully expecting the day to stay on that level; all it took to improve my mood to where I was genuinely cheerful was a cup of peppermint tea and a bit of conversation with someone else in the lab. Funny how little things like that work out so nicely.
Work was good, with some new cases fitting together nicely after double-checking the boards were cut at ninety-degree angles, and a lunch with a friend working in a different department and two other lab workers who spend their time with old mine maps instead of circulating books. When I got back to the house in the afternoon and got tired of hanging around, I decided to head to the Phipps conservatory for the last Agave Night event. And then it started to rain. Really rain. Thunderstorming rain, the sort of stuff that I think of as coming around in December as extreme winter weather.
And so I decided I'd walk over. While it was raining. I didn't think too much of it - it'd let up a little bit, and I had a raincoat and an umbrella with me - and in retrospect it wasn't that bad, since everything that got wet, from my shoes to my socks to my skin, could dry off once I got back to the house afterwards. And I really do think it was worth it, since I've never walked through a thunderstorm before. Seen them, but never interacted with one in person, as it were. Just being outside made it much more intense, and looking up at just the right moment to see a flash of lightning and then counting the seconds to the thunder as the rain kept falling down was more than enough to make me not care my pants were getting soaked.
When I finally got to Phipps, I saw the friend I'd had lunch with was there too, along with a lot of other students in the library program. I guess it'd reached critical mass or something. After I said hello, I ordered a margarita, which would've been tastier with less salt, and a small salad plus some freshly fried potato slices with roasted garlic dipping sauce. When that was all over, I walked over to the agave plant and took some pictures because I could, and then met up with the rest of the group while we walked through the rooms and looked at orchids and chocolate trees and goldfish. There were a few unsuccessful attempts to explain the local thing of "Italian ices" to me. When everything was done and we left the greenhouses, it'd stopped raining so my friend and I walked back to my house. Now that sunset is something where I should've gotten a picture: the clouds rolling on and making a new horizon for the sun to spill out from, a little window to frame the most intense colors and letting everything spill out to make the world look new and fresh just after the rain.
We hung out and chatted, ate chocolate and coconut sorbet and drank tea, and then parted ways, with her walking back to her house - about the same distance from Phipps to mine - since the air was still so beautiful and rich.
It's days like this that always make me wonder what's going to happen tomorrow.
Work was good, with some new cases fitting together nicely after double-checking the boards were cut at ninety-degree angles, and a lunch with a friend working in a different department and two other lab workers who spend their time with old mine maps instead of circulating books. When I got back to the house in the afternoon and got tired of hanging around, I decided to head to the Phipps conservatory for the last Agave Night event. And then it started to rain. Really rain. Thunderstorming rain, the sort of stuff that I think of as coming around in December as extreme winter weather.
And so I decided I'd walk over. While it was raining. I didn't think too much of it - it'd let up a little bit, and I had a raincoat and an umbrella with me - and in retrospect it wasn't that bad, since everything that got wet, from my shoes to my socks to my skin, could dry off once I got back to the house afterwards. And I really do think it was worth it, since I've never walked through a thunderstorm before. Seen them, but never interacted with one in person, as it were. Just being outside made it much more intense, and looking up at just the right moment to see a flash of lightning and then counting the seconds to the thunder as the rain kept falling down was more than enough to make me not care my pants were getting soaked.
When I finally got to Phipps, I saw the friend I'd had lunch with was there too, along with a lot of other students in the library program. I guess it'd reached critical mass or something. After I said hello, I ordered a margarita, which would've been tastier with less salt, and a small salad plus some freshly fried potato slices with roasted garlic dipping sauce. When that was all over, I walked over to the agave plant and took some pictures because I could, and then met up with the rest of the group while we walked through the rooms and looked at orchids and chocolate trees and goldfish. There were a few unsuccessful attempts to explain the local thing of "Italian ices" to me. When everything was done and we left the greenhouses, it'd stopped raining so my friend and I walked back to my house. Now that sunset is something where I should've gotten a picture: the clouds rolling on and making a new horizon for the sun to spill out from, a little window to frame the most intense colors and letting everything spill out to make the world look new and fresh just after the rain.
We hung out and chatted, ate chocolate and coconut sorbet and drank tea, and then parted ways, with her walking back to her house - about the same distance from Phipps to mine - since the air was still so beautiful and rich.
It's days like this that always make me wonder what's going to happen tomorrow.