OH MAN!

I shouldn't be so excited about this - but I just discovered something utterly marvellous!  Yes, it's wormbase!  With all the information one could ever wish about C. Elegans!  Yes, genetic maps and gene profiles and wonderful literature about aging and expression and caloric restriction!  Thank god.

What has my life come to?  I am, however, looking forward to this evening's chamber music concert - I've been "pre-gaming" by re-familiarizing myself with certain works of Haydn, Beethoven, and Shostakovich.  Eee!

Right now, in really every arena of existence, life feels like

pretty, isn't it?  It has no particular purpose -

School is really hard.  Like, really really really really really really hard.  We're only a week into classes and none of my music things have started up yet, and even so - hardhardhardhard.

I was just flipping through my art history book and decided that this

is one of my new favorite pictures.

Perhaps it won't call out to you, but hopefully you will understand why this appeals to me so intensely.  There are some lovely shots of cats, Mr. Quinton.

Acadia, Monhegan, Penobscot, Schoodic, Desert Island, Isle au Haut - the names of places echo across the early morning still water with the plop of a drop falling of the tip of a rowboat oar.  Sound carries over water.

Blue Hill, Bar Harbor, Castine - Robert McCloskey writes of it!

I've been here!  (One Morning in Maine)

  And here too!  (Time of Wonder)

And of course here. (Blueberries for Sal)

E.B. White wrote of it, at the end of Stuart Little (so wrenchingly, eternally sad).  In One Man's Meat.

And so, very simply, I long.

Today I pretended to be a real grown-up person - I changed out of camp attire into jeans (my favorite pair! with cool enough exterior temperatures to wear! and I fit into them just fine, so there!) and a t-shirt, I found my purse, I grabbed my keys, and I headed out into the biting suburban world to face the ultimate task: shopping for dinner.

I failed, of course, on several accounts. In brief:

1. I simply cannot back down my driveway without running over/bumping against literally everything.  I suppose I should take small comfort in that no one, aside from my parents, can manage the s-curve death route with any finesse, but the magnitude of my failed attempts only seems to grow with practice.  I get stage fright, imagining all those disapproving neighbors shaking their heads in disgust.  And were it just dealing with the twists and turns and nasty curb and gaping ditch and broken cement, it would be one thing - oh, but no!, no not at all!  My mother decided to plant a patch of pachysandra along one side of the drive, a patch of pachysandra shaded from light and nurturing rain by the great overhangs of my 1907 house, a patch of pachysandra over which she worries incessantly, a patch of pachysandra which she waters, daily, with love and tenderness.  ...um...  Haven't run over 'em ...   YET.
2. I parked about three millimeters away from a neighboring car in the supermarket lot.  I absolve myself, however, because the other car managed to dislodge itself while I shopped, and I was centered in the spot anyway.
3. Shopping carts and I apparently do not get on.  And I thought getting my driver's license was a challenge - try making one of those damned carts turn down aisle three in a dignified fashion!
4. I got all flustered upon being handed my change (both bills and coins) and receipt.  How does one go about sorting everything into its proper place with any elegance?  The coins must go into the outer pocket, the bills into the in, while the receipt should be slipped into one of the brown paper bags.  Not enough hands!  Or time!  Or space, especially as the bearded fellow behind nudges his shopping cart meaningfully (aggressively, I tell you, hostily) so that he may check out his three frozen pizzas.

Well folks, looks like I'm not yet ready to be released into the wild.  Back to the mothership, for another three years!