Diaryland Import: June 2002 Archives

after three days of updates, i'm going to out of touch again, this time for 9 days. tomorrow morning at 7:30 i'll be at the airport getting ready to board a plane to san antonio via houston. we'll spend the night at a ranch outside san antonio, and on sunday we'll drive down to reynosa, mexico. i'll be in reynosa all week, return to san antonio next saturday, fly back here to charlotte next sunday. no internet access in reynosa = no diaryland updates. i'm sure you'll all survive.

today got off to a great and late start...sleeping until 11:45. i feel much more rested today than i have in a while. i made myself pasta for lunch, had to make a return trip to walmart to exchange a few things, went running, and packed for the trip. mom made breakfast for dinner, one of my favorites. the evening became stressful, however, as i've just now finished packing for my trip. as such, i had to cancel my plans to have a drink with ginger and her friends tonight. geez, i always feel so angry about having to back out on plans i made in advance, especially if they involve friends. i don't know the next time i'll get to see ginger. grr. i feel so bad for having to cancel; i should have started packing much earlier. i didn't think it would take so long. grr.

i'm pretty nervous about this trip, for two reasons. one, i don't really know any of the other people going, and of the college group (with which i'll be spending most of my time), i'm the oldest. two, it is a mission trip, and i haven't attended church with any regularity since 8th grade.

we will be building houses in reynosa, so it's not like we're going down there to preach--we're just going to help some people in need, which is one of the reasons i'm going at all. i was looking for something interesting and fun to do this summer, this trip has been something my sister and brother have enjoyed in the past, and it helps people--those three things make it worthwhile. but still, the fact that it's a church trip combined with my lack of a church-going nature makes me nervous.

it's not that i don't believe in religion. it's just that i have always felt it should be a private thing.

not that that has anything to do with this trip...it was just more of a side thought. it is hard for me to put my thoughts on religion together into a coherent idea, and the thoughts are mostly private anyway. so i never really talk about it.

anyway. here's hoping it will be a great experience.

today was nice, and would have been nicer if i'd been able to sleep late. instead, i had the pleasure of getting up at 8:15 and going to the dentist, where my mouth was repeatedly poked by some freakish hygenist who i didn't like very much. lovely. anyway, the upside of it was that i was home by 10:30, and had the whole day left to hang out.

so i hung out. katie fixed me a yummy cheese quesadilla for lunch, and i read the sports page from cover to cover. i read the comics for the first time in months. la la la.

after lunch, mom and katie and i went to walmart to stock up for the trip to mexico. came home, unpacked the stuff. katie and i headed over to the rec wing and worked out, which felt really good after my having gone a month without running. (bad sarah, bad!) i rode the bike for a 24 minute hill cycle, did the weight machines for triceps and hamstrings, did the ab machine, then ran for 15 minutes at 5.5 mph and 5 minutes at 6 mph. i would have run longer, except the rec wing puts a 20 minute time limit on the treadmill. i felt pretty good; i'd been worried that i wouldn't be able to run at all after being such a slacker for the past month. but i did well, and i'll run again tomorrow, and the week after mexico. to motivate myself, i have signed up for the lunar rendezvous 5k in houston on july 20. my first race as a houstonian! we'll see how i handle the heat.

i'm sleepy.

(12:31 a.m.)

p.s. almost forgot one of the highlights of my slow quiet day. my old high school friend ginger read this diary yesterday, found out i'm home, and called me tonight. she's leaving charlotte in a big way on monday--moving to los angeles--and tomorrow night she's having a get-together with some friends and she called to invite me. cool. we recently reconnected with a couple emails after not talking for ages, so it will be nice to see her.

as promised, here i am. back in charlotte on june 26. i know you'll all be excited to see me again....right? ;) though i should warn any regular readers that i'll be disappearing again for another 8 days starting saturday as i head to mexico for a week, where internet access will not be a priority...or even available. anyway.

what a whirlwind week and a half! to summarize:

1 trip to the 18th green at pebble beach
1 night in monterey, ca
2 bags of genuine california nuts (pistachios and almonds)
1 box of fresh cherries
3 frantic phone calls to see if the space shuttle might be landing as we passed edwards air force base (we missed it by a day!)
1 night in kingman, az
1,000 cactii in the desert
1 crossing of the continental divide
4,000 feet to the other side of meteor crater
1 night in las cruces, nm
1 3x3 wooden board in the middle of the road
1 very flat tire after hitting previously mentioned board
1 trip to tire store to replace previously mentioned tire
2 miles of walking 800 feet underground in carlsbad caverns
500,000 mexican free-tailed bats in flight
1 very friendly and adopted bat named bernard
1 night in carlsbad, nm
3 laps around the riverwalk
1 night in san antonio, tx
6 flags of texas on display at the alamo
2,400 miles of total driving
1,091 square feet in my apartment
1 trip each to: target, super target, walmart, ikea (!!)
2 trips each to: star furniture, aaron rents, linens 'n things, state farm insurance
1 new texas driver's license
4 folding chairs with my dining room card table
4 nights in my new apartment in houston, tx

and now i'm home in charlotte for 3 nights. then mexico. then charlotte. then houston permanently. whew! it sort of makes my head spin, so i'm just living day to day. :)

mom's grand vacation--and my return road trip--was an unqualified success. my apartment in houston is wonderful, i'm slowing beginning to amass a few pieces of furniture to fill it up, i have enough kitchen supplies to get me by for the first few weeks at least, and to top it all off, i am now the owner of the cutest vacuum cleaner known to man. ha.

i took a lot of pictures, but unfortunately i didn't have internet access set up in my apartment before we left today to come back to charlotte. it will be ready when i return to houston "permanently" in the middle of july, and i promise to post many, many pictures then.

my room is empty, the movers have gone, my bags are packed, and my ethernet connection will be turned off in 10 minutes. i guess it's time to go.

it has been a good year at stanford. i now have the benefit of hindsight, and i have to admit that when i look back, i know that i made the right choice in coming here. i will miss the breeze and the shade and the ocean and the bay and the hills.

and i will miss the people. the good friends i made here. in this strange place where i wasn't really expecting to find comfort, let alone happiness...both found me.

i will be back, i know. i can feel it. i will be back.

for those who follow this diary regularly...tonight mom and i start driving, and i likely won't have access to the internet again until i get home to charlotte on june 26. see you all on the flip side.

someone, remind me again...why am i leaving?? where did i ever get the idea to leave this place, where i'm only half an hour away from this:

it is so incredibly beautiful here. today mom let me sleep late, then we headed north to the golden gate bridge, muir woods, and the marin headlands. every step we took, the view just seemed to get better and better and better.

at the top of hawk hill in the marin headlands, we overhead two guys talking. one said to the other "look at what you're leaving behind..." as they gazed out across the bay and toward the bridge and the city. it turns out he's moving to new york in two weeks to take a new job in magazine publishing. for five minutes, we commiserated about having to leave the bay area; we felt each other's pain.

going to the beautiful places--the bridge, the redwood forest, the wind-whipped headlands--was a good thing to do the day before i graduate. somehow, it was closure, a good way to say goodbye. goodbye...for now.

Dear Sarah Royston Graybeal,

I am pleased to inform you that your application to graduate has been approved for a MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics. You have satisfied all University and departmental requirements for this degree.

i woke up this morning to the above email. woohoo! what a nice thing to wake up to...confirmation that i will be graduating as scheduled on sunday. reassurance that i didn't waste my money on that cap and gown. ;)

mom got here right on time yesterday, and we drove into the city for the afternoon. we parked the car at market and powell and hopped on the cable car to fisherman's wharf. i can't believe i waited nine months--until i was about to leave the bay area--to ride on a cable car. the thing was completely touristy, of course, but also so much fun. we wandered around fisherman's wharf and ghirardelli square for the afternoon, then caught the cable car back to market and powell, where we walked around the union square area and looked at all the expensive stores. we came back to palo alto later and went to target to get an air mattress for me to sleep on last night, since i gave mom my bed.

ok, so we bought a cheap air mattress, and then bought a pump to inflate it with. the box for the pump said "plugs into car's cigarette lighter," which we thought was a cool additional feature. we didn't realize until we got home and opened the box that it only plugs into a car cigarette lighter. we had to drag the air mattress out to my car in order to inflate the stupid thing, and not only was the air pump not very powerful, it was also very loud. mom and i couldn't stop laughing at the absurdity of it all. needless to say, we will be exchanging it for a better and wall-outlet compatible pump today.

james thinks the counting crows song "have you seen me lately" is bittersweet, while carter thinks it is just bitter. my opinion has always been that the song is a combination of hurt and sad. though i think it sort of depends on which version you listen to. the electric, fast version sounds angry to me; it's the acoustic, slower version (which i usually prefer) that sounds hurt and sad...but also somehow calming. there was a period in my life when i had been powerfully hurt, and i listened to that song constantly because it made me feel better. for what it's worth.

anyway.

today is a day of errands. already this morning i have called the phone company and electric company in houston and set up accounts. the movers called me, so i didn't have to call them, which was nice. now i have to call nasa, and the dod. mom is currently over doing my laundry while i showered and finish making these calls. ;) what a nice mom.

dad sent me the neatest email yesterday. it turns out that my uncle steve is in the dairy showcase this month! hee hee. i am quite amused; i didn't even know there was such thing as "the mid-atlantic spot for dairy" and "local farmer showcase." but it's very cool. my dad said that of all the dairy farms that were in existence in 1942, less than 10 are left. in the entire country! and graywood farms (where my dad grew up as well before he chose not to stay in the farming business), under the expert direction of my uncle joe and uncle steve, is one of them. go read about the farm.

anyway. mom comes in an hour i'd better get ready to head to the airport.

i'm done. i am going to do very, very poorly in 271, but i'm done. you may now address me as:

i've said it before, and never think that i will say it again. and yet i always do. it gets to the point where it is almost embarassing. oh, there's sarah again, winding down, getting ready to leave again. look at her, she's an emotional wreck. everything is turned into some special memory, everything is filed away. she never wants to leave anywhere.

...but i don't want to leave...can't you see i'm having so much fun...please...don't make me leave...

"and they'll watch the game and it will be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. the memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces." (field of dreams)

markus and me in the mem aud fountain

kristof sneaking up behind me in the old union fountain

markus kicking my butt

tibor and me fooling around after dinner

tibor, nick, and me, 3/4 of the tuesday night cooking crew

petter, markus, henrik and david, "the swedes." i want to visit sweden.

maybe it's not the most appropriate thing to be making fun of, but this article from the onion really cracked me up.

(2:52 a.m.)

another late night, but a good one. i just got back from breakers, where i was making cheesecake for tomorrow night's dessert. i had to do it tonight, because tomorrow i have to study. yes, i could have studied tonight too, but i wanted to make cheesecake. yes, i know this makes no sense. i really can't cook well at all, but i keep trying. my cooking methods amuse alberto greatly (he's the manager of breakers), but i think he's impressed with my dedication. ;) tomorrow is my last day of cooking with nick and tibor. how sad. tuesday afternoons this quarter have been my favorites.

then earlier tonight i went out with tico and kate, to blue chalk, where we played shuffleboard and birkball and talked. we didn't stay long, as i had to come home to finish some homework (and then bake of course), but tico wanted to buy me a beer before i graduate. he's such a nice guy; i wish i had spent more time with him this year. it was really nice of him to want to get together one more time before the end of the year.

there's a skunk that lives under the wooden benches around the tree in front of breakers. i saw him twice tonight, scurrying into his little lair. i rode my bike away quickly both times. eek.

i'm sleepy.

this afternoon is one of studying, and working on the 290 paper. hopefully i will get a lot done, and have something much more exciting to do tonight.

(2:25 a.m.)

well, the day pretty much held to its boring start. worked on the paper all afternoon. went to dinner, briefed a bunch of foreigners on the basics of how to play baseball. (sarah: "tibor, how many innings are in a baseball game?" tibor: "what's an inning?" sarah, banging her head against the table: "nooooooooooooo." )

after dinner, susan was nice enough to let me borrow her laptop, so i sat in nick's room and worked on the paper while watching bridget jones's diary. (colin firth. yum.) after that we watched the u.s.-korea world cup game and i pestered tunji with soccer questions. i've decided soccer is a sport rather like baseball...it seems boring, until you start to learn about all the intricacies of the game, and then it becomes quite a bit more interesting.

tomorrow: more work on the paper, hopefully to the point of finishing it!

sometimes my friends get me into trouble. i know they mean well, but...

today i'm taking a long study break and driving down to san luis obispo to meet courtney and barrett and hang out for the afternoon. i was supposed to go to l.a. for three days...but finals and final reports are taking much longer than i expected. i'm frustrated that i couldn't stick with the original visit-l.a. plan, but glad courtney was willing to compromise.

(12:09 a.m.)

san luis obispo was nice. i got to see courtney, along with the rest of her family. we had a nice lunch and walked around the downtown area and looked in the little shops, and then hung out in barrett's apartment for a while. the drive down there was lovely. three hours down, hang out for a while, three hours back. it didn't feel like i was int he car for six hours today.

california is such a beautiful place; the hills and fields and bright blue sky was enough to keep me going, along with the great music collection i took along. yes, i admit, i am easy that way. just give me music, a car, an open road, and a warm sunny day. when i have those, life feels perfect. :)

j.r. instant messaged me tonight...from new zealand. how random. james had given him my contact info. new zealand. {dreamy sigh}

i came home to a reassuring email tonight. it made me happy, and sorry that i missed fountain-hopping this afternoon.

so last night about 20 or 30 swedes showed up for dinner at breakers, in addition to the usual four of petter, david, markus and henrich. turns out they were on a field trip. yes, a field trip. they got to come all the way from sweden to california for a field trip; how come i never got to go to another country on a field trip?? oh well.

anyway, it turns out that yesterday was also sweden national day. sort of like independence day, but as markus pointed out, you can't celebrate an independence day when you've never had to fight for your independence. hmm. so they just celebrate national day, which is on the day that king really-long-swedish-name first moved into sweden like 500 years ago or something.

in any case, we peer pressured the swedes into singing the swedish national anthem, so they all stood up and looked at the new swedish flag that has been added to the wall at breakers, and they sang the first verse. it was quite fun.

i love swedes. they are so cool. and funny.

after dinner i harassed tibor for a while and got a much better picture of him than the last one i posted. yay.

i'm up early this morning to meet nick and go to the bookstore to get caps and gowns for graduation. oh, the excitement.

(3:08 p.m.)

just finished my ee106 (planetary exploration) final. it was long, but not too hard. the professor made me feel nice and guilty at the end though. as i was unlocking my bike, he was returning to the classroom with cookies, and he stopped to give me one. why does this make me feel guilty? because 1) i went to class only like five times, and hadn't been to class at all since the midterm, which was on may 1, and 2) because he knew my name. i went to class only a handful of times, and never asked any questions. i had no interaction directly with the professor, and yet he knew my name. how must more on-top-of-things can you get?? i appreciate professors who pay attention; they are so few and far between. now i feel sort of bad for not attending his class!

awesome! sooo many sporting events this weekend: french open, triple crown, world cup, nba finals, stanley cup finals, and of course my personal favorite sport is offering a weekend of interleague play (barry at the house that ruth built = cool). too bad i have to study, study, study.

all year i have put up with living next door to a big construction project (two new buildings of studio apartments), so i guess it figures that the last two weeks of the year would consist of the most annoying amount of noise coming from the site and disrupting my sleep. it's hot outside and we have no air conditioning, so i leave my window open at night. yet leaving my window open means being woken up at 8 or 8:30 in the morning when the construction begins for the day. i'm not sure what they're doing right now, but they're using some sort of machine that produces a sound similar to and only slightly quieter than a jackhammer. it sort of sounds like one of those tree-eating machines, you know, where you throw in the branch and it spits out mulch. or maybe it's a large and unusually noisy power generator. i have no idea. but it's annoying. i've been getting eight hours of sleep, but the last hour or so always sucks because i get woken up by the noise, then i get up to close the window to make it a little quieter, and then it just gets stuffy and hot and i can't sleep anyway. so then i just get up.

whine whine.

(3:39 p.m.)

best news i've heard all day: there is a possibility that i can get nasa to pay back my student loans under the office of personnel management's federal student loan repayment program. it's not guaranteed, and the program is fairly new so nasa might not even be a participant, so i'm trying not to get my hopes up...but if this thing works out, i swear to never, ever, ever again complain about being a civil servant.

"Could the United States have gotten off to a better start in the World Cup? The only way their opening 3-2 win over Portugal would have been sweeter is if Landon Donovan had captured Osama Bin Laden during one of his runs."

so the u.s. soccer team pulled off an upset this morning. that's cool. now i can tease tunji and robin about soccer, i mean football, since nigeria and france both lost their first game.

it's been sort of interesting to see the buildup to the world cup this year, because for the first time, i have many international friends who have been pumping themselves up for weeks in preparation, while i sit around going "huh? world cup?"

i wonder how the u.s. missed the world cup bandwagon. why don't we ever pay attention to soccer, when in every other country in the world, soccer has a massive, public, government-encouraged cult following? i don't think there's any sport in this country that gets people as worked up en masse as soccer does elsewhere in the world. i mean, americans will get excited about football or basketball or baseball or even hockey, but not to the extent that they camp out at the stadium days in advance, and start chanting hours before the game even begins.

i think the whole world cup thing is kinda cool.

and then of course in other sporting news there is last night's carolina hurricanes victory over the red wings in the first game of the stanley cup finals. i'm still amazed. my sleepy little state--the same one that just said sayonara to the basketball team that brought professional sports to north carolina in the first place--has a hockey team? a good hockey team? a hockey team that's vying for the stanley cup?

pretty cool. for the next few weeks, i'm going to add hockey and soccer to my list of interests. :)

(3:47 p.m.)

today, because it is 88 degrees and because it is very sunny and because i just feel like it, i am wearing a skirt. it's purple with small flowers on it. according to molly and bill, by wearing a skirt on a day when i don't have a presentation to give or a dinner to attend, i am betraying my engineering roots. to that i say HA!

(12:57 a.m.)

it is at least 10 degrees warmer in my room than it is outside. outside it is cool and lovely. in my room, it is stuffy and hot. i'm never going to get to sleep. i have been spoiled by air conditioning.

last night when i set out for my first run in two weeks (not running has been making me quite antsy, and my ankle finally feels healed), i looked up in the sky and saw scorpio. it is my favorite summer constellation. summer constellation.

i saw it shining up there and thought "that's odd to see scorpio this early in the evening, i thought it was a summer constellation." i took two more steps. then realized that it's june, hence that means it is the summer. (and you wonder why cayce calls me the "dumbest smart person" that she knows.) of course scorpio is in the sky, i mean, stars don't generally appear in places that they're not supposed to.

it just made me realize how quickly this year has passed. the last time i noticed scorpio, i was standing with ron and phil on the patio of our apartment in houston. we were just hanging out, drinking beers. i can't believe my time in california is coming to a close; it seems like only yesterday that my dad and i drove up palm drive for the first time.

recently, the thought of moving to houston has started to unnerve me. for the first time, i'll be going there indefinitely. for an unknown period of time. no fall semester on the way, no university waiting for my return. i find that a little bit scary. i know things will be ok. being scared and stressed is just the way i react to impending change, and i've accepted that...almost.

(10:13 p.m.)

it has been brought to my attention that not only is tibor my favorite almost communist, but he is also damn sexy. in fact, he may just be the sexiest guy in all of breakers. ooh ahh.

i posted some pictures from the wedding here. {sigh} one day i will make my webpage pretty again. until then, it has become not much more than a depository for photos. ah well. i'll add it to the list of things to do once i get to houston and theoretically have tons of free time.

it's gonna be a busy week.

(5:39 p.m.)

if everyone in the bursar's office dies painful deaths, it was me, ok? i admit it right now. grr! anyway, today's frustration isn't even worth complaining about. suffice it to say that the bursar's office has screwed up...again. and of course, as my luck would have it, the people who i need to talk to don't work on mondays. grr. i will go on the bursar rampage again tomorrow.

my dasani bottle that i fill up every morning says that "dasani is filtered for purity, using state of the art treatment by reverse osmosis." what is reverse osmosis? hmm. i'm suspicious that dasani has strung some scientific-sounding words together to make themselves look cool. yes, i know osmosis is a a real process, but i have never heard of reverse osmosis. i'm going to have to look it up.

geez. i'm a dork.

my flight back yesterday was uneventful. i flew from charlotte to detroit to san francisco, and in the process i read "divine secrets of the ya-ya sisterhood," which i had picked up at barnes and noble yesterday, from cover to cover. it was a decent read, had some poignant moments and plenty of funny stories. and it was nice to find out that i can still plow through books with the best of 'em. ;) the guy next to me from charlotte-detroit was reading john grisham's "a painted house." carter just finished reading that too. must be a popular book or something these days. i haven't decided what i'm going to read next, but i've asked mom to bring brian's copy of "into thin air" for me to read on the drive from here to houston. i've been wanting to read that for a long time.

i think they must have done a lot of work to the detroit airport in the past year, because it was much nicer than i remember it being last year when i went to ann arbor. they even had this cool tram thing running up in the ceiling from one end of the concourse to the other.

anyway.

jes and don's wedding yesterday was beautiful. jes looked beautiful...it's funny how we always see each other all dressed up at weddings. jes was always much more--and still is--like me in the sense that we never really got dressed up for anything; we instead preferred to wear what was comfortable. seeing her with her hair done up and in her big white dress...well, she was just beautiful.

i think we bridesmaids looked nice too. ;) jes did a really good job of picking our dresses. the color was great--a dark purple--and the cut was flattering on everyone. and the location--up in the mountains--was ideal. everywhere we went, from the rehearsal dinner to the church to the reception, was very nice. i took a lot of pictures, but since i'm still in charlotte i haven't been able to download them yet. perhaps i'll post a few when i get back to stanford tonight.

i'm starting to wonder who will get married next. i mean, i've been in a wedding in may/june for the past three years--cayce, leila, jes. i've got a streak going! somebody's gotta get engaged really soon, so i can have another wedding to go to next summer. ;)

as we left the wedding though, the oddest thing happened. i'm walking towards amanda's car when i hear "sarah?" behind me. i turn around and see this skinny guy in a t-shirt and cut-off khakis, baseball hat, scruffy goatee, birkenstocks. he says "do you remember me?" i stare for a minute. "jonathan wash?!?" it was jonathan wash! i was great friends with him when i was in 9th and 10th grades. he was a year ahead of me in school, but we were both in marching band together; he played trumpet. i hadn't talked to him or heard about him, much less seen him, in at least five years, probably longer. it was totally random; he was in boone for another wedding to be held today, and happened to be driving by the inn as we were leaving the reception. he said he saw me and thought "that has to be sarah," so he stopped. i think he was shocked to see me in a dress with my hair all fixed up. ;) the funniest thing about the whole situation for me though was a little inside joke i had going for myself, something i knew that nobody else did:

i had the hugest crush on jonathan in high school. oh man, did i ever. we never dated, but he kissed me once. tee hee. hugest crush. lasted for a year and a half, until i finally gave up on him and moved on to matt, the guy i worked with at godiva. tee hee.

anyway, random, eh?

between jes's wedding, catching up with my old high school group, seeing my family, and randomly running into jonathan, it was a really great weekend. i'm glad i came home.

yesterday was katie and brian's birthday, so we all went out to dinner. only david couldn't come, because he was working. it was a nice time, even if brian does still like to contradict every little thing anyone says. ;) we came home afterwards for cake and ice cream, and then i watched harry potter on dvd and headed to bed.

the twins turned 19. i can't believe my "little" brother and sister have only a year left of their teens. i guess now is the point in my life where i start to wonder where the time went.

i fly back in about four hours. i'm gonna go have some lunch. mmm.