some pictures of california; a moving update, and the status of school

i'm reading tom jones. can you tell? i figured now that school's started and i've been back in boston for over a month, it's time to recap my trip to california.

the stables where i used to ride (now all closed up):




a series of pictures of the beach as seen from the great highway (where chris isaak lives), taken from the driver's seat of my rental car (totally not safe, but i was listening to dick dale and feeling pretty happy to be home):









this is a picture of my horse with a bunch of birds on him. it must be hot in california, because normally he would never settle for that.



my mother's cats:



diesel.



willie.



cleo hates having her picture taken.



a sign i saw when my mom and i went to the women impressionists exhibit at the palace of the legion of honor.



my dad's dogs, bella (the princess) and bart (the rugby player).



this is a picture of me with my dad's cat on my lap. you can't see it, but bart is licking my face.

school is pretty good so far. i've only taught one class, but i've taken two - i was a little worried about one because on the first day i looked around and realized everyone in there has different academic interests than i do, but i've started thinking that that's a good thing. i need a little breadth. and my other class is going to be awesome i think. also i'm working a few hours at the desk at the learning center (great coffee), and i got a job at the library, which has one of the most impressive irish collections in boston (which is really saying something). but, this blog has never really been about california or about school, so that's all about that for now.




this is the last picture i took of the view from my old driveway. it looks directly down the street my grandmother grew up on. i'll miss that view, the blue walls of my room and the breeze that came directly in my window, but now i live in an apartment where i hope both zeppelin and i will be happier. more on that later.

i went to the cape recently, where my high school friends martin and jon came for their annual weekend vacation. we played king of the raft and mini golf and they got along very long with howard. my family is doing very well.

i won't be going on the boat cruise this year. i'm going to a party and then to see jamie t instead.

i'm not sure if formal events turn out this way for everyone or just for me

last night was the winter ball and i have this haunting feeling that i made some bad impressions, but when i look over everything i did i can't think of anything too out of control. except for one thing that i said but i'm pretty sure she didn't hear me. here are the things i think about when i think about what happened at the winter ball:
it began pretty auspiciously. i tripped over my own cowboy boots and skinned both knees. they bled. a lot. everyone asked me if i wanted a band-aid. i didn't. i cleaned up my knee in the bathroom while carolann curled her hair with the provided curling iron.
somehow i got two extra drink tickets. i put them in my dress and handed them out later. i actually didn't drink anything at the winter ball. not even water.
i guess i danced some. i'm pretty sure i did more talking than dancing. probably more like yelling, actually. the music was pretty loud and not that awesome. but there are some pictures of me dancing, so there's that. a lot of them are pretty terrible. i was way into my dress when i put it on but i untagged myself from about eight pictures when i went on fbook today.
i did remove a balloon someone had tied to someone else by cutting the string with my teeth. was that uncouth?
around eleven i wanted to go home and even went as far as to put on my coat. i was bored and pretty tired. this is when things picked up. i made several new friends, a few offensive comments, and slow-danced with carolann. apparently we slow danced with a lot of encouragement in the middle of a large circle of people. i think carolann remembers this wrong. she says we were the life of the party and that everyone loved us; i'm pretty sure that either i was relatively quiet the entire time and no one noticed me except for the fact that i was a little bloody, or we were the center of attention in kind of a bad, ridiculous way.
then we went to a bar where there were some nachos and they were playing chris isaak. i ate a bunch of james king's fries but he wouldn't be mad about that, his impression of me was set a pretty long time ago. also i'll buy him pizza to make up for it. i guess we did make a bad impression on the waitress there because she talked some smack to us and we didn't really know why, but then we spent ten minutes outside talking about taking her and some asian dudes were pretty impressed and blasted jackson five for us to dance to in the street. so that was pretty much the night. nothing seems too embarrassing or out of control, but the human memory is a fickle thing. only fbook will tell.