saturday, july 29

•••    I wish michael moore would stop telling people it's okay to vote for gore or bush instead of nader. it is not okay! and it is not just the non-voters who are annoyed with the two-party system, it's also me and the other five percent of the voting population who aren't supporting gore or bush. I find bush repellant enough that I voted against him in the republican primaries (see how much good that did :P), but I am extremely discouraged by the idea that any presidential election should be a measure of which candidate is least disliked. please don't vote for gore unless you really like his politics. if you're going to vote against something in november, at least vote against the demreps. honestly, we don't even have two political parties anymore - we have at best one and a third.

my current dilemma is whether to pick the person who is truly my favorite third-party candidate or just vote for nader as part of the anti-two-party solidarity show. but I think that's a lot better than deciding whether to vote for someone I like or just vote for gore so that bush will be kept out of office. (yes, this is my first presidential election, but I am not planning on losing my starry-eyed idealism the way my parents did.) voting out of fear of what might happen doesn't feel good. voting for something you believe in does feel good. and come on, don't all you americans want to get some sense of fulfillment from exercising your rights as a citizen? screw statistics and percentages - it is not throwing your vote away, as long as it means something to you.
6:18 PM +

•••    I am so ready to get back to cambridge.

the mountains are fun, and there are a few towns in colorado that I like to visit (boulder, for instance), but I really do not belong in the midwest. it's funny, because I don't think of myself as having a home, or being the product of any particular part of the world - my family moved around too much for that when I was little. we were unstuck in spacetime as well as socioeconomic class, bouncing from hell's kitchen to farmland to mill towns to cities, from no collar to blue collar to academia, back and forth all my life until college. there are only two places where I feel like I intrinsically belong: manhattan and especially central park, where I discovered the world; and now swarthmore college, where I discovered rugby. ;) as much as I love the greater boston area, I think of myself more as a long-term visitor than anything else. I am not a native of anywhere. still, whenever I stray too far for too long from either coast, I feel like a fish out of water. I am not comfortable in the middle of anything.

on the other hand, I have always said only partly in jest that home is where my computer is (it's not as pathetic as it sounds, really). so maybe I miss my computer as much as I miss the east coast. you can never tell with geeks like me, now can you? :)
5:35 PM +

friday, july 28

•••    half an hour ago I was nose-to-nose and hand-to-paw with a sumatran tiger (at ocean journey, paradoxically enough). it was very very very cool. I've never been that close to such a big animal before, and I've never seen a tiger swim before either. she was great, jumping all over the place and coming up to the glass to stare everyone in the face. her teeth were bigger than both my thumbs together (I measured).

we're always hearing about how there are only five subspecies of tigers left in the world, but nothing makes you realize how tragic it would be to lose even one of them until you look one of them in the face.
6:16 PM +

thursday, july 27

•••    my dad and his siblings (as well as most of us cousins) are all alike - little, energetic, and absurdly competitive. the last three days have been a whirlwind of activity up and down the rocky mountains. there's never a dull moment. as my uncle (the youngest of three, who I think has never really grown beyond twelve years old at heart) puts it:

plane tickets to colorado: $550 per person.
whitewater rafting trip: $60 per person.
waterproof camera: $15.
pulling your sister overboard: priceless.

(apologies to mastercard. expect pictures when I get back to my scanner.)
4:56 PM +

sunday, july 23

•••    all packed. woo! for some reason, on a random whim, I picked out candide for my light vacation reading (non-light reading is a theoretical physics book). hopefully I won't regret this, hm? (usually I go for late twentieth century stuff when I'm looking for leisure lit.)

it's too late to bother sleeping, since I have to leave for the airport in about three hours. but I am now going to say goodbye to my computer until next sunday. when next you hear from me, I will have climbed a new fourteen-thousand peak in the rocky mountains, ridden a new roller coaster, and hopefully not strangled any of my cousins. :)

expect me when you see me!
1:57 AM +

•••    I'm going to colorado this week. my plane takes off from logan airport in five hours. I have only just started packing. :)

when I pack, I realize three things about my clothes:
1 - at least eighty percent of them are blue. ten percent green, five percent purple. zero percent orange or yellow, unless you count the stripes on my socks.
2 - I don't have a week's worth of respectable-looking things to wear.
3 - I have more pajama bottoms than normal pants.
1:11 AM +