December in Houston

Hello all

I arrived in Houston this afternoon. It is snowing.

Yeah, that's why I left Oregon.

I am where I am because it's near a AAA office and I wanted some in-person service. So they got me one of the few hotels in the area, and they sent me to a mechanic that is AAA-certified and that they know. The latter item is why I stopped here and went no further. I really didn't want to try to get further into Houston with car that is acting a bit squirrelly.

At least the hotel has coin-op laundry units; it's just too cold to use them tonight.

Oh, and my hotel has few channels available, so I cannot watch The Mummy Returns on the FX channel tonight. I think I'll just pull the covers over my head and go to bed.

I just wanted to share.

-Skye

Deeper in the Heart of Texas

As someone who has lived all her life on the West Coast, I have shared my friends’ and neighbors’ opinion of “anywhere but Texas.” That’s where none of us wanted to live. Why? Because it was full of cowboys, which we all knew were uneducated rednecks, right? Bigots. Treated their women badly.

How terrible. To think that, to carry that opinion for all these years without ever checking it out. My aunt and uncle and cousins moved here and lived here the rest of their lives, and unfortunately they exhibited the behaviors and mindsets that I considered were Texan or Southern: teen pregnancies, never finishing high school, not marrying the other parent of their children, their own kids repeating this pattern.… But several of my cousins in California did that, too.

My grandmother lived in Texas for quite a while; she worked for a contractor to NASA. It is obvious that educated people live in Texas. And just because one wears jeans and boots and a cowboy hat doesn’t make one uneducated or a bigot or a wife beater. I think that is a conceit of early urbanites, of people who lived very far removed from animals and farming and dirt. Perhaps began as a way to distance oneself from rural areas, from tradition, from dirt and animals and subsistence. But I find I rather like cowboy boots and cowboy hats…I think I’d like some to wear for myself! (I already wear jeans—Levi’s 501s to be exact.)

What about racism? When I worked for a year at the City of Seattle, I worked with a group of analysts regarding the solid waste and recycling programs that were being initiated in Seattle that year. In a group of about ten people, two were Asian and one was African American. The latter analyst, Mozelle, had grown up in Seattle, but when she was sixteen she convinced her parents to let her go live with family in the South. She said that the big difference she noticed between the two regions was that in the South, you at least saw bigotry—where it exists—in the open, unlike in Seattle. One thing I’m finding about the Southwest is that there is far greater social integration among ethnic groups than I have generally seen in the PNW.

Sexist? I don’t know yet. But certainly I see gender issues everywhere. And while the US talks up greater rights for women more vocally than other countries, other countries were laughing at us during this last presidential election because we were making such a big deal over a potential woman presidential candidate and woman vice presidential candidate: even in countries where young girls are still sold into marriage, there have been women in leadership roles, including women leading those countries. I don’t see gender issues as being strictly tied to geography. Nor to education levels: there are plenty of people with recessive ideas of gender roles and capabilities in all levels of economic, social, and economic levels.

So here I am, in a state I never thought I would go to, challenging lifelong prejudices and thoughtless opinions, and I’m liking it—all of it. Suppose I decide to stay here? What will my family think? What will my friends think? ;) What will I think?

Texas is Big, Fast, and Hot: Oh Baby!

You’ve heard the phrase “everything’s bigger in Texas,” right? Well, there are a lot of SUVs and pickups on the road; I find I am actually experiencing truck envy! At the Fort Davis national park the other day, there were seven cars other than mine: a pickup, a van, a jeep, and four SUVs. But I’ve also seen small imports too, even some with Texas license plates. So I guess it’s also legal to be small in Texas. And I have not seen excessive portion sizes in the food, for which I’m grateful. The meals I’ve had, here and in Las Cruces, which is just over the border in NM, have been reasonable. A bit more than I needed, but reasonable. But there is definitely a lot of land in Texas. And to cover all that land, you cannot just poke along.

In order to move quickly from one oasis to another, traffic moves quickly on Texas interstates, but so far not crazy-fast like they drive in California (I’ve heard that changes once you hit one of the cities). During today’s drive, I noticed that most people were simply driving the speed limit: 80 mph for autos and 70 for trucks and trailers. (It’s 65 at night for both—isn’t that intelligent? Why don’t more states have a lower speed limit after dark?) I have found that while my car shimmies a bit at 70 to 72 or so, it is smooth as cream at 80. And at 90, which I accidently hit a couple of times today. Oops. But the highway was so straight and long….

There is a lot of desert in Texas, which correlates to hot daytime temps for the most part. It did get pretty cold in Fort Davis yesterday when it was cloudy, which wasn’t so great for my cold; I stayed in during the afternoon and slept. The nights have been rather chilly; that may change as I get further into the state, or if I drive south. But mostly I have experienced sun and heat, my two prerequisites. And those warm, friendly people.

So far, Texas meets this girl’s needs!

Deep in the Heart of Texas

I’ve been in Texas for four days, I have had more beef than I usually have in two months, and I find myself inexplicably feeling rather Texan.

People I’ve met here—from the salesclerk in the Origins store in El Paso to the sweet 21-year-old waitress at the Hotel Limpia here in Fort Davis—have been warm, friendly, helpful. Happy to talk. Not in a rush. The food is great, but I now have to begin a serious exercise program because I feel I’m getting fatter by the moment.

Lunch the other day, at the Chuck Wagon in Fort Davis, was a BBQ beef sandwich (I tried a bit of all three sauces: sweet, original, and hot, all three of which I think were homemade and quite delicious), BBQ beans, fries, and coleslaw. And a mason jar full of sweet tea. Yeah, I’m going southern. I like it. But I may explode from food. Dinner was at Hotel Limpia: burgundy roast beef with gravy on the side, three buttermilk biscuits (with real butter, of course), green beans, corn, and cream cheese mashed potatoes. OMG! Excellent. And whew!

They do say to feed a cold, right? Because then I’m doing the right thing, because I am fighting a cold that just refuses to let go. And I’m sure as hell feeding it…. (Hmmm, maybe it’s “feed a fever….”) Maybe I need more jalapeños!

Did I mention friendly? Because this morning at breakfast, a Mr. Rueben Sanchez chatted me up and explained that I should move to Fort Davis. You see, he isn't married either.... I love Texas!

Closer to the Sky

On my trip, I have been in several high-altitude places: Zion National Park (4000 to 8726 ft above sea level), Bryce Canyon (9115 ft!), Canyon de Chelly (5500 to 7000 ft), Monument Valley (5200 ft), and now Fort Davis (5274 ft). Actually, it’s McDonald Observatory (6800 ft) that is the high point near Fort Davis. And all of these places have had little light pollution, or at least much less than I am used to. Even with the hotel lights. They have also all been deserts.

I feel lucky that I have been in an area where I could see the Jupiter-Venus-moon conjunction. It was stunning. Unfortunately, I missed being in Fort Davis on Tuesday, when the moon was still a thin crescent. When I go to the Star Party on Friday, the moon will obscure some of the fainter stars. (I had to put off my travel Tuesday due to getting a nasty cold. Thanks to Zicam, I am doing decently.)

The stars look closer. The sun feels closer. The sky looks bigger, wider, bluer. I feel transported to a foreign land; I guess I am. Because the American Southwest is a very different land from the Pacific Northwest. The racial demographics and interactions are completely different. The biogeography is different. The air smells different.

It’s good, this difference. I like being closer to the sky. Maybe I am moving closer to the Skye, as well.

Laundry in Las Cruces

I arrived in LC on Wednesday, around 3:00. I was tired and had been driving for over 250 miles. I wasn’t thrilled at being on a minor highway, especially when the AAA travel person had said the hotel was downtown. It isn’t. And there are train tracks on the other side of the minor highway.

But I fell in love with my room. I stayed at the Best Western Mission Inn, and it was done in Spanish Mission style, with heavy, carved wood furniture, plaster, and lots of tile. The entire wall behind the bed—king sized!—is built in, creating a tile-topped headboard and surround. The surround has electrical outlets built into the top; the lamps and phone are on the surround and there is plenty of room for laptop, books, water, small children and pets, etc. The ceiling has beams…and acoustical tile, unfortunately. The tile floor in the bath and dressing area is heated radiantly from below.

The hotel has a restaurant: the Blue Agave Café. It wasn’t busy most evenings, so I had lots of time to talk to the waiter. He’s in school, studying to be a special-ed teacher. Nice guy. He said he wished he could be someplace where it rained. The next night, I had thanksgiving dinner at the café. It was quite busy and the servers were jumping. It was raining lightly when I went in to dinner, then slightly harder, and my waiter from the night before teased me about bringing the rain; I proudly took credit for it. Then it started to pour outside and everyone—patron and server—stopped to look. I’m sure they don’t usually get rain that hard.

I did my laundry Friday, in a Laundromat. Most of the machines were running and there were people in and out of there—Hispanic people, Caucasian people, mixed ethnicity people. The attendant was a Hispanic woman, maybe a bit older than me. She was warm and friendly and talkative, and the two of us had a great conversation for over half an hour. She had a big Thanksgiving: her husband, her kids from both marriages, friends from the Laundromat who had no family to be with.

She loves Las Cruces. But some of her family have no jobs right now. So when they all get together for a birthday or something, she said the ones who are working pitch in to cover the ones who aren’t.

I haven’t done laundry in a Laundromat in so long I don’t remember how long it’s been. Mostly I’ve had in-unit or in-building laundry facilities, when I didn’t have my own washer & dryer. The machines here were clean and they work very well. The building was clean. It was a comfortable place. My comfort zone has expanded a couple of notches.

I also shopped for groceries, for books, for another cell phone (my friend Steve put me on his plan as an additional line in the hopes I will help him use up some of his enormous amount of rollover minutes and not go over what seemed like enough minutes on my other plan: if you want my new number, email me), and then got an oil change (over 3,000 miles since my last one, a week or so before I took off).

Las Cruces is very nice and I liked it. But it is too small to give me the kind of work I’d like and it is too sleepy for me. I need somewhere more energetic now, after 7 years in a very sleepy place.

Stupid Blogging Tricks

Well don't bother leaving comments folks. I cannot seem to comment on my own blog. I looked up all the various and sundry help things and am not the only person who cannot do this. The one "expert" seems to mostly be pushing his own blog of how to and his instructions are esoteric and highly involved.

So screw it. If you have questions or comments, feel free to leave them. I will email you. You can email me too. But don't hold your breath about seeing any comments back from me.

What Do You Spread On Your Bread?

I was fairly young when I learned something shocking: not all households use mayonnaise. Some use Miracle Whip. And some households use a different kind of mayo than Best Foods, which was my family’s spread of choice.

As I am traveling, I am reminded of this. My stepsister’s fridge contains Miracle Whip and a dark mustard. Mom still uses Best Foods and Dijon mustard. I use Kraft mayo and whatever mustard currently interests me: Dijon, yellow, stone ground, etc. And my stepsister’s fridge has Swiss cheese, rather than the cheddar I keep.

People have different kinds of tea as well. Many people have no tea in their house at all…luckily for me I haven’t spent much time at those houses, for what would I drink? And among those who do keep tea, what kind(s) do they have in their pantry? One set of friends in the Bellevue WA area have a huge pantry and have many teas in that pantry and in a drawer—one of them drinks only herbal or decaf and the other drinks mostly black. Unfortunately for me, the black tea drinker likes mostly Earl Grey and strongly flavored black teas. Ugh. My stepsister keeps a small variety of herbal and simple black teas, quite drinkable but unfortunately for her not as much as I am used to drinking! I promise to not drink all of her tea. And I can easily go out to the box in my car that contains my tea and my tea pot and make a small pot of my customary tea, which would fill my tummy and provide comfort.

I think that having a bit of the familiar—a favorite tea, some cookies, or a pillow—when traveling can provide a stable ground; traveling makes me feel quite unstable, like I am standing on an ever-changing slope…or quicksand. I think that that instability is part of what provides the challenge and the stimulation of travel, the part that makes you grow.

This journey of mine is not only physical but mental, and part of the mental journey involves stretching my comfort zone to encompass much more than the confines of my own walls. Different spreads and alternative cheeses and plain versus fancy teas may not seem like much, but to someone whose world had constricted to the size of a 1300 square foot house, they represent a foreign country (only one much cheaper and easier to get to).

At least I don’t have to learn a new language to read the street signs.

It's Not As Easy As It Looks

Thursday night, the night before I took off, and I was still packing and sorting. And doing a bit of revision. My friend H came over after work to see me one last time. My mom and grandma were watching TV and overseeing me. H wanted to know if I had set up my tent yet—I’d had it for a couple of weeks by now.

“Nope,” I replied. “No time. Busy packing and all that stuff.”

H chided me and ordered me to set up the tent NOW. Mom ordered me to keep packing. After ten minutes or so of this from the two of them, like antiphonal choruses in a Greek tragedy (or maybe it’s a comedy, I’m not sure), I went to the other room that had stuff to pack and worked on that pile.

After I finished packing, at least to my mom’s approval (yes, I really am 47, but I know what fights I will not win), I went outside to see about setting the tent up on the deck. In the dark. (There is one small outside light there.) And not only is it drizzling lightly, but the roof of the deck leaks here and there, so I would be setting up the tent on puddles.

“You’ll have to set it up on damp ground when you camp,” H informed me.

Not bloody likely, I thought. If it’s wet out, I’m getting a motel room.

“Okay,” I agreed politely.

I’m glad he was there to help me, because I was so tired and so overwhelmed and so stressed I’d have cried when I realized I had no idea what part was a “door” and what was a “window” and whether or not the tent was even right-side out! When we finished, I was so proud I took a picture.

And I still stayed up until just after midnight, winding down.

I Gotta Get Out of This Place

Friday, November 7, 2008: I was aiming for a departure time of between 9:00 and 9:30 am. We hadn’t packed the car yet; as of last evening, I hadn’t yet even opened my tent, much less set it up. (See next post.) Mom woke me at 7am and after 2 mugs of tea, PB on toast, and a shower, my mom and I proved to be a major force in physics: we got everything into that car first time, more or less. No major repacks, just one or two tweaks. I finally accepted that I will not be a stealth traveler: the car looks more like I am moving than that I am on a vacation for one or two months. I have to wonder how much of this I will discard over the next few weeks.

I drove away from Mom’s at 10:15 am.

But I still had one or two things to do. I had to return the other air mattress and pump (I finally decided to live with the slow leak in the Aerobed until I could find another Aerobed and return the first one). I needed a flu shot. And I needed to change my address at the DMV (and they will be sending me a sticker with my new address in the mail…which is so very helpful; why can’t they print it right there and be done with it?).

It took 5 minutes to return the bed and pump. It took 40 or 45 minutes to get my shot (same place, too). I still don’t know why. I have been working on my arm all day in the hopes that it won’t hurt tomorrow. We laugh.

I finally called friend John to tell him I’d be a wee bit late, given that I was on the order of 2 hours late already. And I still had to stop at Best Buy to return the digital voice recorder: it wasn’t until I got the package open and looked inside the manual that I discovered that it didn’t support Macs. I considered buying a more expensive one that said PC and Mac compatible, but I had questions and the line to the Computer Services desk was too long. There was that little matter of 2 hours behind that was bugging me.

I want to learn that life isn’t Pass/Fail: that it is okay to be two hours later than planned on vacation if there is no flight to catch.

I didn’t do too badly. I arrived at friend John’s place about 2:15. It was great to catch up for almost 2 hours! The only problem was, that I didn’t get to Ashland (my chosen resting place for tonight) until after 7, thus after dark. And I really didn’t know where I was going. I am so surprised that I found one of the motels I’d picked from the AAA book!

Now, it’s a 2-star motel: inexpensive, few amenities, older. The first room they gave me smelled kind of funny, but I can live with that. And when the water came out of the faucet all rusty, I knew I could just let it run and it would most likely clear. In a while. A longish while.

I didn’t expect the water to grow warmer. From the COLD water tap.

Maybe the taps are reversed? I thought to myself.

I turned on the one labeled “H”. It got hot too. I wondered if I had somehow been assigned The Haunted Motel Room.

Turns out the remodeling that is supposedly going on messed up the plumbing. I say “supposedly” because it is dark and I cannot see if there is anything going on. I should consider working on that paranoia of mine, too.

They gave me a different room. It doesn’t smell. It’s not freezing cold. And the plumbing works just right. As I'm feeling a bit like Goldilocks at this point, I wonder if there is porridge in the continental breakfast in the morning?

PS: There was no continental breakfast! Bit of a mis-communication. Probably. Or just the overall aura of that odd place....

What Does The Blog Title Mean?

The title refers to the email I am using in conjunction with this blog: ForteanSkye. Which itself refers to Charles Fort, an interesting and somewhat obscure writer and information collector from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Many of the news tidbits Fort collected referred to things falling from the sky---weird, unexplainable things. Such as rocks. And odd-colored sands. And frogs. He occasionally postulated the existence of other dimensions and interdimensional ships from which these odd things originated.

So, there are unusual and somewhat inexplicable things in Charles Fort's sky, or perhaps they are only so if one doesn't have the appropriate perspective. I think the same applies to my mind and my spirit.

So, what things are within Skye?

Who Am I and Why Am I Blogging?

As of this writing at the beginning of my travels, I am 47 years old. I am a caucasian female with a couple of undergraduate degrees, and a long career in high tech that I abandoned during the high tech crash in 2001 when I went to live near my mom and grandma on the Oregon Coast.

I have hit a wall in my life: what do I do next? A many-year contract editing scientific reports for a government department ended and I found myself uninterested in and unwilling to simply return to high tech, perhaps in Portland OR, which would be a simple choice for most people. And I finally wanted to put in some very real time and effort on my own writing: can I do anything of my own? What do I want to write? Can I make anything of it? I am finding that full-on mental clarity and serenity demand that I write.

So I decided to take time off, to travel. My early, grandiose dreams of a year in Europe finally spiraled into a one- or two-month road trip in the US. I decided to pursue warmth and sunlight. Even though it is now November, the southwestern states will be warmer and sunnier than even the central Oregon Coast was this summer!

I sold and donated large portions of my belongings and finally ended up with two 5x8x10 storage units. (One of them is stacked to the rafters with boxes! I will have to hire movers because I am not taking them down myself.) I had hoped to end up with just one, but that’s how it goes. I imagine I will sort more things out to sell or donate once I am not hell-bent on getting underway!

My constant traveling companions are a black sheepskin teddy bear named Tobias (Mr. Tobias Bear for long, “Tobe” for short), a baby Aloe Vera plant which is currently unnamed (“Al” seems so trite), and a tiny black plush cat who is keeping her name to herself so far. The Aloe is the 5th or 6th generation of the same plant I started with about 15 years ago.

I am taking this trip to get away from my usual life and see who and what I am when I am not surrounded by people who know me in one way. I need space and time to write where I don’t have all the things that I ordinarily let distract me. And I need to be warm, to have sunlight. After 31 years in the Pacific Northwest, 29 of it in the gray and rainy parts, I can no longer stand the gray and rainy parts. Besides, I’ve never been to Arizona and New Mexico and Texas, and a whole lot of other states.

I am writing this blog to keep my friends and family up to date (so I don’t have to write the same things to each of them in email), to keep myself writing something on a regular basis, and to learn blogging (I want to return to at least some of my high-tech roots).

Perhaps, if I am fortunate, I will also be able to use some of the entries as part of my portfolio when I am ready to return to the workforce. My one fear in this arena is that potential employers will look at my 7+ years away from writing as meaning I cannot write any longer. But writing isn’t like being current with the latest software; writing is a skill that you keep, like riding a bicycle or blowing bubbles or reading a book. And editing—for a writer—is a very good way to hone one’s self-editing and rewriting skills. I think a smart employer will know this, and I want to work for a smart employer.

You will find that I use complicated grammatical structures and a wider variety of punctuation than you find in most written pieces. I like playing with them. And my language and tone tend to vary widely depending on what I am writing. I’m not sure if this means I have yet to find my voice, my voice is highly flexible, or my voice has multiple-personality disorder! We shall see.