Thursday, November 25, 2004

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

It doesn't seem real but I'm flying out to Baltimore tomorrow morning. I'll be staying with Sandy and Scott in Baltimore. Then later I'll be in NY seeing the sights and meeting up with new and old friends. Lucky me! I also got a round trip ticket for $233.41! So I can't stop bragging about that!

Hopefully, sometime soon I'll make time to reflect on the family Thanksgiving meal with its joys but also its frustrating post-election political discussions.
:-0

Sunday, November 21, 2004

i can't believe this. i'm typing with only my right hand as we speak. why? I was peacefully chopping up veggies to make some vegetable juice when the plump carrot that i was about to hack into rolled over and instead I chopped into my left index finger.

oh yes. My first thought was, "Ahhhhhhhhh!" My second thought was, "oh crap, that is too deep. Ahh, i don't want any shots!" (i have a deep aversion to shots) I ran out to my grams and unc with a reddening napkin around my finger. At first I thought i might have to go to the emergency room but Dr. uncle and grams helped me wrap it with band-aids. It stopped bleeding and we decided that would be okay with a couple band-aids and disinfectant.

But the last half an hour I’ve been walking around my house with my left index finger in the air like I have a great idea or something. (It starts to pulse if I don't hold it up and it's gross feeling not to mention probably not healthy.) After our little emergency died down my grams looked at me walking around the house with my finger in the air and said, "All you need now is a light bulb above your head." Haha, very funny.

Suddenly something as simple as putting my hair in a bun has become a task. This is going to be interesting. Hopefully it will heal quickly.

Ironically, out of nowhere i've also started sneezing in combination with the sniffles. Look now, i'm starting to sound like a certain hypochondriac prof. at Handong. (hehe pohang girls know what i'm talking about)

Sunday, November 14, 2004

Growing up is a weird thing. I just came back from my mentor's 50th birthday party. She and her family were a major part of the wallpaper of my teenage years. Those were tender, vulnerable years. I was awakening from the deep slumber of a shaky, unstable childhood. Yes, trying to find my way. Would I survive the perils of teenagehood without a lot of parental guidance? Thank God, I did. I've turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. :-)

My mentor had a lot to do with that, so perhaps that's part of the strain I feel when I hang out with her family and the people that filled that time in my life. Maybe when a butterfly immerges from a cocoon it doesn't want to remember that it used to be a fat, vulnerable caterpillar.

Most of the people there were part of the legacy of the OB years. I remember that humble beach house packed with visitors and teenagers on that extremely wide street. I used to just go over there randomly and grab the key off the nail in the community laundry room. I would let myself in sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, wake up my mentor to talk about life and my worries.

At the party I was talking with a girl from those years. She's now in her 20's but I remember when she was half my size. She and her mom lived down the street from the OB house. She was deathly quiet back then. I could tell that she was much more outgoing now but that it was easy to sink back into "quiet Tracy mode" when she was around this crowd. I could relate to her. That's the weird thing about growing up. Even though my mentor's son is now a foot taller than me it's hard for me to not see him as the 5 year old that kicked me from under the kitchen table.

And perhaps some people at that party looked at me in a similar way. Yes, as I looked around that room I felt the tugs of my ill-fitting past. It’s that residual memory that makes the growing up process weird. Being reminded of who you are in a historical, cumulative sense when you see yourself through the eyes of others and then comparing that with what you see when you look in the mirror.


Wednesday, November 10, 2004










They say a picture is worth a thousand words. So I figure, "hey, let the pics do the talking." This is a picture tour of my last two weeks. In a couple days I'll write and fill in the gaps.

:-)

























Wednesday, November 03, 2004

The Morning After
I can't believe George Bush won! A relief when it comes to some domestic issues but a nightmare for foreign policy!