thanksgiving was pretty successful, i'd have to say.
gregg cleans up alright, it turns out... despite all my worrying, he managed to come through and not just survive my family but even managed to impress them. Macallan scotch and being a closet Coug for the win.
all in all not a bad turkey day. 
and we're a third of the way through november now. past the midpoint between the equinox and the solstice, so more than a quarter of the way through the dark part of the year, and coming into the darkest. i kind of enjoy it, though, when it's pitch black by 5:45. except for the whole commuting in the dark thing... makes me glad i have good lights on my bike. (thanks in no small part to a certain someone who makes sure i am well illuminated.)
i've never been particularly prone to seasonal affective disorder; in fact, some of the deepest depths of my depression were during the summer. the lack of light doesn't seem to affect much other than my sleep schedule; however, with other factors at work on my sleep schedule these days i have found myself out of bed by 7:30 and out the door before 8:30 most mornings, instead of ignoring the alarm clock through 10 snooze cycles and bombing down the hill at 9:00, then pretending to be on time to work. plus, the mornings are still nice and light right now, so it's like i'm wasting daylight if i'm not up and at 'em before 8.
grad school application deadlines are rapidly approaching; i'm trying not to panic. they'll get done, i'm sure, it's just a matter of sitting down and writing. and filling out damn online forms. harvard wants not only a transcript, but also a form-based enumeration of all the classes i took in my major field of study, in related fields of study, and in mathematics. plus $90, by credit card, for the privilege of applying to their university. it is where i want to go, though, and i'm really excited by the research going on there, so I'll buck up and pay the fees. I'll just bitch and moan about it in the process.
it's a three day weekend, which is awesome, and which also means that my new sweetie and i will have a day off in common this weekend. this has never happened before; it should be fun.
and, completely unrelated, here's a picture from the latest episode in bicycle hooliganery:
so i'm here on the island of hawai'i, the big island, so big that all the other Hawaiian islands could fit on top of it. so far i've seen the town of kailua-kona, and the northern half of the island. 
the sun is huge here, especially at sunset. (the zoom lens doesn't hurt either.)
so are the waves.
the landscapes are so varied, within a half hour drive you can go from completely barren desert to lush green rainforest... 
there are so many microclimates on this island it's amazing. you can see many of them at once from some lookout points... and the sunsets over the ocean are always stunning.
so yesterday i hiked across the crater of haleakala, the volcano that makes up the east half of maui. it was a pretty awesome journey, 12 miles across the crater of a "dormant" (not technically, since it erupted in 1790, but dormant enough) volcano. "haleakala" means "house of the sun", and according to hawaiian legend, it was the place where maui, the demigod, went to lasso the sun so that his mother could have more daylight.
i'm in the process of uploading photos from the trip, but the internets are slow here at the hostel since it's free wifi, so it might take awhile. so for now, have a picture of the sunset on friday night, off my friend Cass's parents' lanai in napili, on the northwest coast of maui:
was the cyclist killed by the dump truck on friday. he had just moved here from colorado less than a month ago, and was in love with the city. he loved riding bikes, and fixing bikes, and was also an artist and a musician.
he was just a kid. this is so fucking tragic.
i spoke with his roommate last night, down at the crash site. she is also the girlfriend of caleb, the other cyclist. all i could do was reach out to her... i had no words. i cannot imagine the grief she must feel, and all of his family and friends. not having known him, grief is not part of my direct experience with this tragedy, though i do feel a sense of loss.
as i stood there and snapped pictures of the memorial, i couldn't help but feeling a bit guilty for capturing this moment of grief... as the young woman knelt to light candles next to a sign which read "BRYCE WE LOVE + MISS YOU SO MUCH", a tragic and painful smile on her face...
and stenciled on the street, in the bike lane on eastlake and the right lane on fuhrman:
my conversation with lauren did make me feel better about the slightly activist nature of the response to his death: his family and his friends are 100% behind our efforts to raise the visibility of this horrible tragedy. the more people know about what happened here, the less likely it is to happen again.
ride safe, boys and girls. cyclists and drivers.
please stop loving me
please stop loving me
i am none of these things
-the cure
trying to curate a show of my own photography is a good way to ensure that i decide my camera sucks, my pictures suck, my eye sucks, my light sucks, and my show is going to suck.
i think i have the pictures picked out, but i'm panicking about resolution. i want to print at least 1 at like 12x16, but due to memory restrictions i shoot at 3MP, which means 2048x1536 pixels. when the shot is perfectly in focus that is ok, but. my shots are not always in perfect focus.
gah. i really overcommitted myself for this month. i'll be glad when it's over, when i have everything done. then next month - hey, i haven't mentioned this here yet! - i'm going to hawaii. fuck yes.
there were a lot of people at critical mass tonight.
it was my first time, and it was definitely interesting... it's the one night a month when we just really fuck up traffic. 
and then there was... shenaniganery.
and imagery.
and this was how i ended the night: up the fucking stairs. with my bike. cyclocross boot camp, hell yeah!
(not even a harry potter related post here. enjoy, those of you who haven't finished the book, and read faster, dammit!)
in our bedroom after the war, stars
i bought this album last night off of itunes on a kind of an impulse. i'd logged onto itunes with the intent of buying the new polyphonic spree, but after listening to a few clips and reading a few reviews, i decided that i was not, in fact, in the mood for that exact album (though i will probably grab it eventually), and clicked, based solely on the name of the album, on this one. i'd heard of the band stars before, maybe even heard a track, enough to know that i liked their stuff, but i'd never really listened.
and now i've had 24 hours straight of listening, and i am in love. it's the best album i've heard since the crane wife, and though it's not quite as literary as the decemberists, or quite as amazingly catchy as the postal service, it comes close on both. and it stands up to repeated (at least up to 5) listenings in close succession, a definite sign of a good album (in my opinion).
best. impulse. album. purchase. EVER.
and now, more long-exposure madness:
and, one that should only be experienced in the largest size possible: the new frond unfurls
eleven hundred and eleven posts to this blog. holy crap.
it's been a good week. i found out today that i for sure have a job, with a high likelihood of it turning into a full year-long appointment with benefits and a salary and all that good stuff. :D
and then today i got a text from a friend i haven't heard from since january, saying she had a sick friend and an extra ticket to tegan and sara at the triple door tonight! woohoo! it is my lucky dayweek.
other really good things have been happening to me recently, but i'm not going to go into much detail here. suffice it to say i have met a number of amazing individuals over the past few weeks and have been having a blast. it's almost like a summer vacation should be.
on monday, it's back to work, back to science, but with a completely refreshed perspective. these past few weeks have done wonders for my mental health.
and now, have some pretty pictures:
so i still haven't gotten the ultimate thumbs-up from the Powers that Be on the job situation, so i've been basking in the glow of unemployment for the last few weeks. OK, more accurately, part-time employment. but today was an Unemployed day, and also the hottest day so far of the year (it hit 95!) so I hit the beach. Madison park was (predictably) packed, but lying in the shade of a huge tree near the water and occasionally dipping in the lake made the day much more bearable than sitting in my sweltering apartment. (I need to get a fan.)
kitty is stretched out to her fullest length (she can actually be quite long when she tries) and is so lethargic she barely bats an eye at things that would usually cause her to jump up and run off. 
the mountain was out at the beach.
and so were the butterflies.
