Currently Listening Final Straw By Snow Patrol Somewhere a Clock is Ticking see related

Almost half a semester at Tech

I'm back.

I had to take a break from writing here.  My writing makes me cringe and I haven't felt too free to write what I please for a long while.  And I won't guarantee I'll write frequently from now on.  Most of my life is chronicled on facebook anyway.  It's amazing how one social site changed our present lives.

Anyway, now that I've lost most of my regular readers and probably all my family on this journal, it might just be ready for a revolution (ultra-blue).  I'm not going to have much time to dedicate to it, however.  School is harder than I originally thought, and I'm letting myself have a fun, normal outside life for the first time in a long time.

The desert plants are all blooming tiny yellow flowers, but admittedly I miss the midwestern fall colors.  But just a little...I miss my family the most.  Still, I don't feel I'm far from home.  I don't feel I've been gone for a long time, or that a long time exists between now and when I might see them again.

It makes me wonder about myself.  I have trouble staying in one place.  I can always return to that place, but I can't stay for too long before I've got to see somewhere else.  I know others have wanderlust way worse than I do, but I certainly have it and it's not going away.

Wanderlust makes me wonder about the first time I'll realize I'm sick of being here, ready to move on.  I'm happy here for the moment, and I still find myself staring at around the mountains. 

I hope that urge doesn't come soon.  Last week up in Los Alamos visiting the Valles Caldera, I was a little eager to get back.  The scenery was gorgeous and fascinating, geologically...and I also had a bad cold...but I was so damned happy when I saw M mountain in the distance.  It looks a little like the mountain in Lion King.  Socorro breaks my cardinal rule of 'home is where I am'.

It's midnight now, and I think writing is doing its job--it's putting me to sleep.

Bumming around town

I think I'm to the point where I've accepted the fact that I'll never see Lacey again in this life.  I still feel a hole in me that I don't think will ever really go away. 

After biking all over town again, I picked up a few thorns but it seems the air pressure is holding just fine in the new tubes.  I checked off another geocache near the sports fields on campus, but had to wait for a few people to go away.  It was in a location that my dad pretty much taught me about...under a streetlamp tin-thing.  Online, someone wrote today that there was a huge black widow spider in the cache location...which I did not see. I shudder to think I put my hand near one of the nation's deadliest arachnids...ugh.

I failed on two other caches--one being a very wide-open and small cache amongst a field of rocks, the other was me just being stupid.  I should pick that one up maybe tomorrow if I have time.

I'm hoping to catch my first First to Find geocache, with luck and will.  It's already been available for 5 days...I wonder if I'll be beat.  So far no one's logged it at all.  I missed another by a day, so hopefully this one will be mine.  And I'll have definitely earned it.

Last night my roommate, her friends and I went to the campus observatory to watch the meteor shower.  Most were what I've seen before--quick silver streaks--but there was one that was literally dazzling.  It streaked north to south in a bright silver glow for many seconds, and fizzled away to an orange-ish glow.  It looked so defined.

They're flipping the lights off and on in the library (I guess to get rid of all of us) and it's driving me nuts, so adios for now.

Moving on

I won't lie...I go to bed crying and I wake up in tears.  I can keep myself calm when I leave my apartment on rides, except when in a church apparently.  My grandmother Nani suggested lighting a candle in Lacey's honor, but no candles allowed in school housing.  I tried the San Miguel Mission since it's Catholic...but remembered it burned down in 1600-something when I read a sign inside 'No candel's please'.

Biking around town has been exceptionally fun.  I suppose because of the amazing vistas, it's not as boring as in Illinois.  I pushed my lungs a little too hard going uphill at the far west side of town and realized I'm pretty high up in elevation.  I've been picking up a few geocaches as well, though most are pretty small.  I think I saw a black widow spider at the Jumbo information sign--Jumbo being a 14" piece of metal crushed in the first nuclear blast, Trinity.  I was planning to get to a cache on the other side of the freeway in the Rio Grande bosque for a first to find win, but someone totally beat me to it today.  Oh well.

Yesterday I came out of a store to find my front tire totally deflated.  Thinking it was just the 101* weather, I rolled it home with ice cream in my bag.  I actually ended up plucking 10 thorns from both tires and repared the front tube.  My first time ever working on a bike tire...worked really well, I was proud.

Then, at the Jumbo sign, I noticed a huge thorn sticking out of the front tire.  Before even thinking, I pulled it out to hear a quick hiss...and pushed the thorn back in quickly.  Luckily enough, the bike shop was just right on the corner.  And almost poetically, it's a Specialized shop.  Apparently flats are exceedingly common in Socorro because of the thorns; they're even running out of tire slime in the shop.  I bought two heavy-duty tubes and a replacement water bottle.

The hole wasn't that bad despite the size of the thorn, so I pumped up the tire as much as I could (I got smart after yesterday, had a pump with me this time) and got home.  Changing this heavier tube was a lot harder and I almost thought I wouldn't get it in...but I did, and it's all better.

...so the second day in a row with a flat tire.  If I get another flat soon, I'll try tire slime.  If that doesn't work, I'm just going to have to buy a heavier tread for $40.

Happy birthday me.  Eh.

Devastated

I'm here in Socorro, NM, getting ready for the fall semester at New Mexico Tech.  I spent the week exploring most of the state with my parents, visiting Gila Cliff dwellings, the Three Rivers Petroglyphs, Old Town in Albuquerque, the Valley of Fires, the Trinity detonation site, Magdalena, the Very Large Array (where they filmed 'Contact'), and many other places. 

We had to put Lacey in the vet's kennel while we were gone.  Yesterday, we found out she died the day before.  It crushes me to know she died without her family...and God will I miss her.  I've hardly been able to stop crying.  I keep seeing myself walking out of my apartments to where my parents were parked, when my dad walks out of the truck towards me--face red and bunched up in tears, wails, "Lacey's dead..."

The vet said they found her around 5:30 pm on August 9.  They've confirmed it was a peaceful passing and that she fell asleep and never woke up.  That, itself, is a blessing...we've all been telling ourselves.  It would have been ten times worse to have her put down.

It's just going to be really, really hard.  My parents had to leave for home an hour after we found out, and I called Nani and Auntie Ellie to break them the news.  They knew exactly what it was when I solemnly said I had some hard news to break.

They're going to cremate her and send me a little to scatter on the mountain that overlooks Socorro (ugh, every single time I say that or write that, I start tearing up...and I'm at the library).  M mountain is restricted access but they open it up every year to paint the M.  Maybe I could work something out too...or I don't know.  But I want to do that.

She was suffering towards the end.  Difficulty breathing, accidents all the time, vet visits galore, etc.  It's good she's finally at peace, but I still wish so much we could have been there for her.  We know she didn't just give up--we know she knew we were coming home for her and the vet was just a quick thing.

Memories of her keep flying through my mind, especially of how we first found her and took her home from Kay's barbershop on West Main.  I was just a 9-year-old kid who really wanted a dog.  And not just any dog--a westie.  It was fate that I should find her and bring her home.  Our house was her fourth and final home after two trips to the pound.  How anyone could abandon that dog, I don't know.  She knew when I was sad, and she'd come over and sit next to me.  She'd cuddle on the couch with us as we watched movies.  She'd watch my every move as I packed to go to New Mexico.  She'd bury her milkbones in my parent's dirty laundry.  Lacey happy-danced after going outside.  She'd chase squirrels.

Snaaaaaake

I saw something really amazing yesterday morning--an (unofficial at the moment) endangered species.  Right here in Illinois.  I saw a rattlesnake.  In Illinois!!!

Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake.  How effin amazing is that?? 

It was my first day of work helping garden and paint at a farm in the next town over.  As I was being shown around, we came to the organic debris pile, where immediately I saw a large, light tan and spotted snake slide away from under a plant.  I mentioned right then that I saw an unusual snake that *looked* like a rattlesnake, but I didn't believe me and neither did the groundskeeper.  He said it was most likely a garden snake.  I shruggled it off, thinking it ws a cool snake but probably not a rattler.  Later in the day, I mentioned to the boss guy and he had no doubt I saw a rattlesnake.  They're kind of like rumors here--you read about them every once in a while in the paper, but you never see them.  You don't even know people who've seen them.

The description fits it solidly.  The snake is shy, large bodied, light tan with dark spots, likes to hide under plants, and prefers marshland (untouched cattail marshland was a mere 15 feet away).

I'm amazed.  I wish I could have gotten a better look.