:: p-dog ::

Good Things
Because rotting body parts was a little too grim to top my blog for two weeks.

1. I got back two A+ exams yesterday. Test scores are such a simple, comforting way of measuring your worth...
2. A book I need to write the 30-page term paper due next Wednesday arrived this morning, four days early.
3. PostHip is finally having her baby, not quite two weeks late. (congrats)
4. It's free cone day at Ben and Jerry's!
5. [updated 3:00] I got an internship! One that I really wanted, too--I'll be working in Oakland starting in June. Whee!

:: Leslie H - 1:29 PM - ::

Why I'm not posting*
(not now, probably not for the next two weeks)

I almost never have nightmares. Yet these were my dreams last night, horrifying mostly for how real they seemed.

1. I am alive, but my body is dead. While I don't lurch around, hungry for brains, I do try to conduct normal business without looking at my hands, which are black and blue and puffy with rot. As is the rest of me, being dead and all, but it's really your hands you see most of during the day. This goes on for some time.

[I wake up; I reassure myself that I'm not decomposing; I go back to sleep.]

2. I see three friends briefly (specific friends, but I won't name names), and we make plans to meet later. I wander around a theater looking for them for a while. Finally I find two of them, who explain they're late because they fell in a storm drain. Oh, and Friend 3 is dead. I feel shock and grief and ask the questions I probably would have in reality: how did it happen, do her parents know, etc, and generally try to come to grips with the fact that one of my best friends just died in a storm drain.

[I wake up; I wonder if Friend 3 actually is dead (no word on that yet); I go back to sleep.]

3. I'm in a cafeteria. All the food looks pretty bad, and the lines are confusing. I end up with some very sketchy enchiladas. I wander around, looking for a place to sit, but I don't know anyone.

[I wake up, grateful that the night ended on a mundane note. And that none of the dreams involved teaching middle school, which is still my most common nightmare set-up.]

Nothing horrible at all is happening in my life right now, but five major projects are coming to a head in the next 14 days. So I'm a little stressed. If you've emailed me in the last week and I haven't written you back (this applies to at least three of you), I apologize. Know that I am not singling you out for neglect.

Apparently, stress gives me nightmares. So in these next two weeks, I may delight you with more dream posts, or rants about how our IPA clients suddenly have HUGE problems with a chunk of our methodology that suggests their pet school isn't such a hot place for a K8, or yet more updates about the organizations that don't offer me an internship. Or I may just wait until it's all over. May 9.


*This one's just for Nicole.

:: Leslie H - 5:58 PM - ::

I spent yesterday with my IPA group, rejoicing that we finally got some useful data from the school district and building it all into a series of complex excel worksheets to track patterns in enrollment loss. It was AWESOME. When we'd figured out how to use an array formula to "countif" for multiple criteria and were giddy with nerd-love, I realized that I had found my people.

I woke up at 6:45 this morning after a long dream in which I sat in a restaurant, ate nachos, and explained Gavin Newsom's "Care not Cash" program, pretty much exactly as I would have in real life. (The service was bad, but the nachos were excellent.)

I fit here. It's comforting.

:: Leslie H - 7:13 AM - ::

I have several sorts of updates for you. I've been outlining shit all day, so I'm just going to go with it.

I. School
A. Chugging along at the rate of one exam every two weeks.
B. Some crazy big deadlines coming up at the end of the semester, which is, yes, one month away. Including:
1. Our IPA project - should WeConCo-USD transition to K-8 schools rather than traditional middles? Stay tuned to find out!
2. A 30-page paper on an important "public idea" for my ethics class - what will Leslie write about? Stay tuned to find out!
3. Finals, oddly the least daunting thing looming on the horizon

II. Internship
A. Still don't have one. Well, that was quick. (I could list the places that have rejected me, but I'm trying to hold down the stress/misery.)

III. Engagement
A. I think I've finally gotten the news out to everyone who needed to hear it from me. I enjoy that the only people who ask to see the ring are guys in the policy school with long-term girlfriends or fiancees.
B. I have discovered two important websites.
1. Here Comes the Guide: a very helpful listing of locations for weddings in the Bay Area, featuring pictures, descriptions, prices, etc. I think Bryan and I will begin scouting sites this weekend.
2. The Knot: a frightening look at the wedding industrial complex but some pretty useful tools.
C. We made our first foray into ring shopping on Friday, visiting an independent jeweler in the south bay who gave us a crash course in gemstones. Our plan is to pick a stone and sort of design a ring around it. It might take awhile; we left on Friday with pictures, notes, and no real idea of what we want the damn thing to look like.

IV. Miscellaneous
I have been wine tasting more in the last two months than during the rest of my residence in California, including both of the last two weekends. I updated the Saucy Spring album with pictures from the wine country and ring shopping. Also, I finally put together the Belize album in a more manageable format, deleted some of the less fabulous pictures, and captioned the ones that needed it.

:: Leslie H - 6:24 PM - ::

Big News

Bobbing on the big blue ocean, Bryan knelt down in a rented, hot-pink kayak, and asked me to marry him. He gave me a token ring (sapphire in white gold), which I'll wear until we find the official one together.


So I'm engaged! Good lord, that sounds grown-up! We've been trying on the word "fiancée" all week. The wedding will probably be next spring, here in California.


[The site itself. There are about 1000 more pictures on gallery.]

:: Leslie H - 11:43 AM - ::

Spring Break in Belize was fabulous; I am not quite ready for the real world that came crashing back on me when we got home. But I've decided that this weekend is still vacation, damn it, so I can ignore it all for at least two more days.

We spent the first two days on Caye Caulker, an idyllic little island featuring white sand beaches, mediocre restaurants, and all the water sports you could ask for. It's too small for cars--people too lazy to walk the mile-length rent golf carts--and is populated primarily by American/Euro/Aussie tourists. Incredibly laid-back, with a Caribbean, Rasta-sort of vibe. We ate, drank, swam, read books, lounged on various beaches and piers, and generally relaxed with a vengeance.

We did two scuba dives on Monday, logging sightings of a big nurse shark and a friendly turtle. The experience was only slightly marred by my violent sea sickness (I had never been seasick before and recommend you avoid it).

The next day I was a little wary of another long boatride, so we slept in, wandered along the beach, rented some kayaks and paddled along the mangroves on the western side of the island, and did still more eating and drinking. We spent the afternoon swimming at "the split," where a hurricane literally cut a swath through the island and now sits a small beach and a very chill bar (actually "very chill" applies to pretty much every place on this island). We watched the sun go down and then closed out the night with Italian food and red wine.

We left the island when we couldn't handle anymore reggae music, and headed inland. Boat-ride (nausea-free) to Belize City, a couple hours in shitty bars for cruise ship passengers, and then an express bus to San Ignacio on the western edge of the country. (Belize is a tiny place; it took us two hours to cross the entire thing.) With some help from friendly tourists, we found a place to stay for the night and had our best meal of the trip--and our first actual Belizean food--at Erva's. Not much to look at, but great food.

I was determined to see at least one pile of ancient Mayan rocks, so we got up early for a quick morning hike to Cahal Pech, a site about 15 minutes from downtown. (Again, Belize=tiny. San Ignacio is its second largest city, pop 16,000.) Misty, quiet except for the birds, and, as you might expect, utterly empty at 7 am. It is The Way to visit Mayan ruins. These were certainly not as spectacular as they get, but much nicer than their name suggests. Cahal Pech means Place of the Ticks. We checked our ankles thoroughly as we left.

At 8:30 we left San Ignacio to head back to the middle of the country for a tubing trip through caves and the rainforest. Not bad at all. We checked into the Jaguar Paw Jungle Resort there on the banks of the river, a thoroughly weird place started by two Americans about ten years ago, who thought that a hotel in the middle of the rainforest was just what the country needed. Rooms were in individual cabins, with paths just barely carved through the jungle, each decorated in uniquely odd ways--ours looked like your great aunt's cluttered guest room (rag dolls, cows, and quilts). We spent a lazy afternoon there, ate another decadent meal, and went to bed, as usual, early.

In the morning, Bryan and I got up for an early walk in the woods and swim in a beautiful cave-river-hole. We were joined by two german shepherds who live at the hotel; they followed us from the time we left, through our 20-minute walk, swam with us in the river, and walked all the way back with us. At first we were a little afraid--they seemed friendly but were still strange dogs often used as guards--but we grew to love them as they acted very much like our dogs, walking along with us, protecting us from birds, warning us about other people. And, as Bryan pointed out, they probably would have borne the brunt of a jaguar attack. So all kinds of useful.

After the swim we began our long trek home, arriving around 1:00 last night. Tomorrow I'll pick up life again; today I'm still on vacation.

Our trip gallery is taking shape at the usual place, with photos from both my camera and Doug's. We're having a little trouble editing down to a manageable number. Go visit, leave comments, etc.

And yes, I have left out a fairly significant piece of the story, but I think it deserves its own post. Coming soon.

:: Leslie H - 9:47 AM - ::