Preparations

Today I am making lists, ordering catering, sending emails, closing out travel reports and rerecording my phone's message -

I'm goin outta town!

But, not for fun. For school. Since I'm a "global" student here, I can do most of my work long-distance, so long as I come up to Northern CA for a week at a time twice a year and brave the chilly temperatures, solid-seeming fog and possible mountain lions (which seemed more than possible this time last year as I ducked out, alone, after a night class and had to walk across the deserted presentation center grounds back to my cabin. My hood was up because it was raining, and I couldn't see or hear a thing. That is the moment that you remember "oh, I shouldn't be walking alone, there are mountain lions. I'm the size of a small deer. And if there were a 3' tall cat stalking me right now, I wouldn't be able to hear nor see it. To turn around or not to turn around...crap..."). However, I'm still kicking so my friend the mountain lion(s) did not come out that night.

But I digress. I and T, who I'm dragging along (yay!) will be leaving at 6am in the morning and arriving up by San Jose in the early afternoon. The drive up through CA is amazing; you feel as though you pass through at least 5 entirely different landscapes - cities, countries even, along the way. Feels very European.

So that's where I'm going. And I'll try to post as much as I regularly do but, since you're basically in a bubble while there, there may not be much to write about. Unless y'all wanna hear about some indigenous spirituality stuff, then I'm all over it!

Hmm. Maybe not.

In other news, today there's a conference down the hall. Anyone who's spent time in academia knows that conferences = food, so as I went to make off with a delicious croissant, I chatted with the ladies who work in those offices. Right there at the end, when I had to go back to my office with my buttery and iced coffee cake booty, I just about caught myself saying "thanks, but I have to go take my teeth out before I can eat."

Read teeth to mean "invisalign trays". What started off as a joke has moved into common usage, and now saying that is something I do at least 4 times a day. T and I have gotten some very odd looks at restaurants. The last time it happened I made sure to smile at him, all toothily and stuff, on my walk back to the table where the nosy lady across the aisle could see me. Maybe it's vanity, but I had to prove that at age 25, yes, there are actual teeth in there.