School is over. I celebrated yesterday by renting a movie in the middle of the day (Jean Cocteau's Beauty & the Beast) and fell asleep early on, napping for three hours. I was in a strange state of remaining slightly aware while napping, either from waking up occasionally or just dozing, so that the haunting music from the movie, combined with the eerie movie itself, made me feel as though I had entered the fairy tale itself in my dreams. It was that kind of dream where you are ill-at-ease upon waking, feeling as though you have just arisen from some great adventure, or escaped some fantastic end.

The gentlemen from Maple Hill Manor want to feature our wedding in their first ever wedding brochure. They say it was one of the most beautiful weddings they've ever had. Even taking this compliment with a grain of salt, I'm still pleased. It was my desire to imprint all memories of that day with a warm, camelot glow.

I hesitate to admit that the alpacas were one of the main reasons I wanted to have my wedding there... the house and grounds themselves were quite gorgeous ... but animals are my weak point.

There have been absolutely no good movies. With no big movies like LoTR to look forward to, even as each successive one was slightly less good, my year feels so incomplete...

It's been raining all day. I could sense it, even inside my little library cocoon smack dab in the midst of the windowless, cubicle maze. My knee was twinging. How odd that our bodies can react to something that we can't "see".

With summer on its plodding humditity-soaked way, I lopped 6+ inches off my hair on Wednesday. That always feels good. The hairstylist is always overly cautious: "Well... are you ready?.." and makes a big deal about wielding scissors while holding a long lock of hair. And all I care about is getting it all off! Everyone at work thinks it looks wonderful (even though I know Grandma prefers rapunzel-length hair--sorry Grandma!).

Last day of class is next Wednesday. I have to give a presentation with another girl on the metadata scheme of the VRA Core Categories. I hate it when the attention is on me. It doesn't make me quiver in fear, just embarrassed. Isn't that silly. It's not like I'm briefing the President on the state of things.

Looking ahead to summer, with its open-ness (no summer classes because nothing was available that would be remotely helpful), is like running through a meadow on a mountaintop: I'm free! It's such an alien thought that there will come a day when I will not have to worry about schoolwork or project deadlines.

The husband of one of my friends is quite against celebrating holidays of any kind, because he feels the celebration detracts from "the reason of the season", so to speak. He hurt her feelings when he stared at the Easter basket she lovingly assembled for him and said, "I don't want that. Easter isn't about Easter bunnies and candy."
She laid into him with a lecture that celebrations of holidays are good things, that they encourage children's imaginations and give them hope. It made me think: kids don't fully grasp the meaning of holidays, but they will notice how much care you put into making some days more special than others. Someday that will translate into some food for thought as they start to comprehend exactly why particular days are celebrated.

Last night Sue had us paint eggs, and she gave us baskets with jelly beans and peeps. It was quite enjoyable. Jenni and I, being more "artsy", tried to get creative with colors, with the result of some eggs looking like they'd been dunked in mud. Sue, on the other hand, fastidiously soaked each and every one of her eggs in one color each and they all turned out marvelously bright. It's like a rainbow in a box.

Why I like hiking:
1) I can pretend I am a hobbit on a journey
2) It makes up for my childhood distaste of sports.
3) I can walk to the grocery store a mile away and carry back 15 pounds of groceries without breaking sweat.
4) I learn that some periods of material discomfort (wet, cold, etc.) are quite manageable--nothing compares to that most basic feeling of being warm as when you've been hiking in windy rain in 50 degrees.
5) I can survey a range of big hills with a knowing, distant look, a la John Muir and Daniel Boone
6) Gooey pizza and crisp beer never taste as good as when you've just stepped off the trail after a 15 mile hike. Actually, just about any kind of cooked food, for that matter.
7) Hiking is mind-clearing, like a good sneeze that clears your sinuses
8) Sleeping outside makes you see things in nature that you've never noticed before.
9) It's okay to get dirty. A little bit of grit in your coffee is character-building.
10) I get to be outside.

Things I don't like about hiking:
1) It can make me cry.
2) It can knock my toenails off.
3) I have to wear tapered pants, which make my bottom half look like a middle-aged frumpy cat lady.
4) You realize how small you are when you are stuck on an exposed ledge with a lightning storm howling your way.
5) When the birds welcome the morning, I get an ache to be outdoors--like Legolas and the seagulls. Not fun when you're stuck inside on a listless day.

I watched a DVD about the Appalachian Trail a couple nights ago. At one point, they focused on hikers' feet and the brutal pounding they get on the trail. Peeling blisters, raw heels, fungus-infected soles, and black toenails. They focused in on the black toenails just as the hiker flicked his big toenail off. That was obviously done for stage effect.
Every time I've gone hiking, my toenails have taken a beating. I invariably end up losing some, particularly my big toenails. It's the descents, the constant scrunching of your toes against the front of your shoes, as you pick your way down the trail, adjusting to the new center of gravity your backpack has given you.

Jon's progressing along the trail at a good clip. He called from the Walasi-Yee Center in northern Georgia last night to say all was well and he wasn't being chewed to a bloody pulp by a black bear.
To keep pace with him, if only imaginatively, I've started reading Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. Bryson never fails to draw out a chuckle. A critic said he could make even dryer lint funny.
Right now, he's just completed the first day and is ready to die--to just be one with the lichen on the rock for a very long time. It makes me think back to when I first started hiking with Jon. Jon, bless his heart, always overestimated my abilities and took me to places with lots of steep climbing. I would always grow sullen about 1/2 of the way up, then downright mad 2/3 up, then for the last 1/3 of the climb, I would be weeping like a lost child, my limbs quivering on top of stumbling feet.

Howl's Moving Castle was a delight to watch. I don't normally like anime--watching it is like entering the head of a 21st century Napoleon Dynamite. Instead of "liger" and "tion", he would be creating anime.
Christian Bale was the voice of Howl, and he did that quite nicely. He has that odd quality of speaking quietly, yet making himself heard across the room. All the girls at work have a crush on him, so I guess that includes me. I even liked him in Batman, however flawed that movie was.

Spring can be stealthy. Blink and the world erupts in color. One day it was raining. I could notice a distinct difference in the pastures between the morning and afternoon--the grass was green. It was like learning the definition of the color green.

Behold the lion cut. Mojo had this done once, not for looks but because his fur was so matted.

Why does the hair on Pope freely leave his body in copious amounts--aloft on the wind, it flits aimlessly around the house--yet when we brush him, the amount we manage to get would be disdained by a bird as worthy nest building material?

I'm writing a paper on the VRA Core Categories, a metadata scheme that visual resources curators can use to describe their collections of art slides/digital images, as well as the original art works themselves. I keep thinking: "What's the point of writing this? No one cares. It won't be published." But Jon reminds me that the point of writing papers is to educate yourself, not others. So there.

I've been reading "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief" on my breaks at work. I don't usually enjoy fantasy infused with pop-culture--it's just too self-conscious--but this isn't so bad. It's lazy summer reading material, which is why I must have picked it up, considering that the Joseph-Beth building is entering its annual sauna season. It's about a boy who discovers he's a demi-god (like Hercules) and must go on a quest to find out who stole Zeus's master lightning bolt before Zeus zaps him out of existence. Sure.

It never fails to amaze me just how good a bacon, craisin, feta cheese spinach salad with lemon juice/olive oil dressing can be.

A memory from my spring break: one night over supper, conversation wandered into the job market. I said I hated writing resumes because I feel like I am perfecting the art of white lies in writing something that people never really look at. Dad said, "You know what you need to do? You should go in, say 'I'm hearing impaired. If you don't hire me, I'll sue.'"
This is particularly funny because I wonder if that's how some places would see me. Would I only be hired just to boost their employee ratio--you know, that minority, female, disability percentage? Would employers look for any possible excuse to not consider me because of my impairment?

I have this annoying melancholy about me--the kind of "fatigue" that sets in about 1/2 ways through school, when you just want to do absolutely nothing (because when you're doing something not school-related, you somehow feel guilty for not focusing on your schoolwork).
I told Jon the other day I just wanted to go lay beneath a tree and ... listen to the wind, or something. Not out of nature-worship, but because there's something about being outside that allows you to do nothing without turning into a passive slug (i.e. vegetating in front of the TV for 5 hours).

I got a 99 on my Library of Congress Classification test (we had to assign LCC numbers to 10 different books), and my interpreters were impressed: "What a smart girl!" Which led me to thinking: graduate school, in some odd sort of way, has been easier than my undergraduate studies. I think this must be because I am in a field that interests me (and one can assume that you will understand that which interests you), so I have done well in my classes so far. It's been the same for Jon--once you can specialize in your field of interest, you start building on the base of knowledge that you established through all those years of school, instead of starting anew.

Jon will be leaving soon to hike a portion of the AT. He'll be starting at the southern terminus, Springer Mountain, and hiking north about 130 miles to the Nantahala Outdoor Center in North Carolina. I wish I was going with him!

The photo is from the top of Cheoah Bald, near the Nantahala Outdoor Center. Thru-hikers can see how far they've come (not shown), and where they are going next (this is the view north).

Well, it looks like the summer class that I could possibly take conflicts too much with my work schedule. I am going to take 2 classes in the fall, and will probably turn into a hollow shell about half-ways through the semester... But--I just want to be done with it all, so am only thinking of my longterm gain.
Thankfully, each class meets just once a week--Public Libraries on Monday afternoons and Internet technology on Wednesday evenings. Dr. Miller (internet course) is an excellent teacher who can patiently explain anything in a way that even the most technophobic person can understand. A stone-age cavedweller could understand him. Besides, as fearful as I am of the mysterious ways of computers, I am looking forward to learning more about the internet and how to design a webpage.
At the rate I am going, I just might be done after the fall semester of 2007. How about that! Only slightly less than 2 years to go!

"'Whoever heard of cats doing anything useful!'
'Except for staring at one in a supercilious manner,' said Strange. 'That has a sort of moral usefulness, I suppose, in making one feel uncomfortable and encouraging sober reflection upon one's imperfections.'"
-from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, p. 586-587

My apologies for the silence lately, I was at my parents' house where there is no internet (except in my brother's lair, and no one goes there), and that was quite nice.

Here is an icon of the Anastasis, or "Harrowing of Hell," in which Christ descended into hell and rescued Adam and Eve, and the Old Testament patriarchs, from death. He is shown in triumphal glory, seizing the hands of Adam and Eve, our forebears, and raising them from their coffins, from the darkness of death. The cross that he stands on is symbolic of his breaking the doors of hell, of the tomb. There is a sense of fierce joy about this icon, of the door that has been opened for us, showing the way to a new beginning.

Speaking of new beginnings, spring has a distinct smell that makes you want to go outside and do nothing but enjoy nature. It makes me want to walk into the woods and not return for the duration of the warm-weather season.

I checked this book out from Joseph-Beth:

Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican party)

by Rod Dreher

The title caught my eye, and I now that I have read enough to get a better idea of the author's views, I actually agree with a lot of what he says. Basically, conservatives need to re-learn the idea of "conserving", we need to re-establish the family as the basic unit of society, community is where it's at, we need to take better care of ourselves and the environment, we need to be more responsible about capitalism, we need to make fair trade actually fair, etc. etc.

The author is opinionated without being arrogant, and keeps returning to importance of community, of becoming involved in the place you are in, of actually spending time with your family rather than endlessly zoning out to TV. He even talks about the pleasures of eating organic food, not because it is in rebellion to factory farms, but because the food actually tastes better, and to buy your food locally means that you are supporting your community.

I got my eyes examined on Wednesday. I thought I was blind as a bat with prescriptions of -12 (L) -11 (R), but the doctor told me that prescriptions can go as high as -20. My goodness, I hope I don't go as high as that!
I tried on just about every pair of glasses in Lenscrafter, and they all made me look like a raccoon. My eyes are so huge, they filled the frames! Jon kept cracking up and calling me Dame Edna as I progressed to trying on glasses with larger frames (the granny styles).