Terror

This weekend, for my birthday, I went to NYC alone.  No kids, and no husband because he was watching the kids.  There were a lot of wonderful things about the trip that I'll try to remember to post later (though, let's be honest, my track record is poor at best), but one thing in particular happened that was terrifying.

I was on the subway heading back to Penn Station to catch the train home.  A young man got on the train, dressed all in back, wearing a backpack, his face covered in a white mask.  He walked the length of the car and settled in front of the door that was directly across from where I was sitting.  He fidgeted and hopped around, like he was psyching himself up for something.  He kept bending over and adjusting his mask, hiding his face, and generally looking uncomfortable and antsy.  Then he would stand up, mask in place, and blatantly stare at people on the car.  A few times he shifted so he was looking out the door between trains.

Now, this is NYC, so the chance that he was just a nut job, or weirdo, or even street performer, were all real possibilities.  Also, it's NYC, so the chance that he was a terrorist was also felt like a real possibility.  It was 9/11 weekend.  I was absolutely terrified at the possibility that this man was psyching him up to do something terrible.  I assumed there was a bomb in the backpack.

No one the train was reacting much.  Most people didn't even acknowledge him.  A few looked at him, curious.  Only one other person seemed even slightly concerned.  I could feel panic rising in me, but there was nowhere to go, and no proof that this person meant anyone harm.  I fought to keep my breath steady, to appear unconcerned.  I refused to look at him except when he bent over to adjust his mask, because I was positioned in a way that he wasn't hiding his face from me when he did so and I wanted to be prepared just in case something needed reporting.  I quickly decided that if he were a nutjob, I did not want to draw attention to myself by staring.  If he were a street performer, I did not want to encourage him to repeat performances terrifying people by engaging.  Not looking at him also help keep me from having a panic attack.

At the next train stop, he went to the open door, crowed loudly as if in triumph, and exited the train.  The people getting on sort of laughed, in that way that people do when they're trying recover from something out of place and feel reconnected with the herd.  I have never been so relieved in my life.

I still don't what his purpose was on the train, or how common an occurrence something like that is in the city.  I've lived in a metropolis long enough to have experienced many random and odd things on the subway, but this was the first time one has made me scared for my life.  It is not something I hope to repeat.  It's also not something that will keep me from going back to NYC and enjoying myself, because everything we do has an inherent risk, and the chance of this happening again seems small.  I am thankful that I have some grasp of my own continuous risk assessment of the world, because I can easily see how this one incident would completely shut down a person.

Speaking of Disaster...

Hurricane Irene was not nice to us.  Actually, I can't even blame the hurricane.  I never saw the winds get over 24mph, which DS and I experienced while walking around today.  24mph is not that big a deal as far as winds are concerned.  It rained fairly consistently, but it didn't flood; at least it didn't in my neighborhood.  I blame our little disaster on the guy upstairs and the maintenance people who told my landlord everything was fine.  The hurricane was just an inconvenience.

So here's what happened.  DS and I started getting rain from Irene early, around 1 in the afternoon.  We thought it would be a good idea to take photos of the view periodically.  That would give our families some  idea of how things progressed based visible distance and tree movement.  We took some videos.  We laughed at the balcony door (which is 10ft tall mind you) being hard to shut.  We remarked on the whistling noise around the door.  But most of the excitement felt had more to do with the idea that this was the start of a hurricane, and not because the storm was particularly exciting.  We've seen a lot worse from the thunderstorms that roll through here.

When we moved into this apartment, we had noticed evidence of water damage over the balcony door.  We alerted the landlord (who conveniently lives below us), he called the building manager, and masons were sent out to check on things.  I remember laughing because I had used my master degree training to hypothesize on the cause, and DS "pff"-ing me, and then the mason explaining the problem to me using my exact wording.  That was the last we heard about it.  Apparently these same people told our landlord the problem was fixed.

I tell you this so you understand why we did not immediately freak out when our ceiling started leaking. We texted our landlord, but didn't really expect a response since we could hear him having his own hurricane party downstairs.  We had been partaking of DS's latest batch of sangria ourselves.  I took some photos since we were documenting stuff anyway, threw a bucket and towel down, and went back to my video game.

Not long after that, DS went to bed.  As he does.  I continued to loosely monitor the leak and play said video game.  To avoid Leak 2 from exploding all over the floor as the paint broke, as Leak 1 had done, at some point I pricked it with a pin and drained it.  Leaks kept appearing, all over the balcony door, and I kept rearranging the buckets so our wood floor wouldn't be totally ruined.

This is what I was doing around 11:45pm when the ceiling collapsed on my head.  I remember kneeling on the floor, moving buckets, and then hearing loud noise.  There was a sensation of being covered, like a bucket of water had been dropped on me, and also kind of like a sheet the way it clouded my vision.  Except it hurt.  And I screamed.  Not an "oh shit, you started me" kind of scream.  An "i'mdyingohgoddon'tkillmeMURDERER" scream.  I felt my glasses get knocked off my face.  I felt like someone dropped a book on my head.

My eyes were full of grit, and burned, and I was afraid to open them.  I'm not sure I could open them.  I held my arms out away from me, like you do on instinct when someone drops a can of soda at your feet for example, and I stood there and screamed.  At this point, I wasn't entirely sure what all had happened. It was really fast and I couldn't see almost immediately.  I was barefoot, in pajamas, and I could feel that I was covered in something and standing in rubble.  I was terrified.  My adrenaline hit so hard I honestly didn't feel any pain from that first book feeling until at least a 1/2 hour later.

I heard DS stumble out of the bedroom, yelling for me.  I couldn't stop screaming.  He's not very coherent when he gets woken up that soon after falling asleep, no matter what the circumstances, and the screaming doesn't help.  I know this from past spider experiences.  So looking back, I'm sure a lot of the noise I heard after that was him running into walls trying to run to me.  He kept telling me to shut up, to tell him what happened.  I remember thinking he should tell me and that it was probably obvious based on what my feet were feeling.  He can see without glasses after all.

I must have gotten out that I couldn't see, and I guess he realized I needed to rinse my eyes out, because somehow we made it to the bathroom.  He turned the water on for me, and I spent some time rinsing out my eyes while I sobbed uncontrollably.  Not even tears, just loud noises that sounded like sobs.  It was like my body could not help crying out in some way; pure panic noises.  I calmed down a lot when I could finally open my eyes.  I tried to get some of the grit out of my hair, but it was hopeless.

We went back out to survey the damage and were floored.  White fluff was everywhere.  There was a 2.5'x4' piece of sheetrock broken in half on the floor.  What looked like mud was covering everything within six feet of the door.  I immediately grabbed the camera and started taking pictures, because I didn't want to take any chances of later being told we had exaggerated something.  The apartment has a way of not getting fixed...  DS was on the phone, trying to get the landlord, even though I was sure he had heard the noise.  I found out that pieces of the outer brick wall had come with the ceiling, which explained why I felt like I'd been hit with them.

The landlord came upstairs right away, and his face held the same shocked expression I'm sure ours had moments earlier.  He asked if we were alright.  We said we were.  This is when I found out I was bleeding.  There was an inch long gash on my forehead and I didn't even feel it.  My landlord said, "You should probably put some ice on that.  You're bleeding."

Over the next hour, I attempted to clean myself up some more, administered some first aid, took a bunch of ibuprofen to fend off the pain I figured would come when the adrenaline wore off.  DS and the landlord worked on cleaning up the living room and attempting to tarp off the upstairs balcony to help minimize further damage.  We asked why the masonry problem hadn't been fixed, and the whole "it is/it isn't" thing mentioned at the beginning came out.  While tarping off the upper balcony, the landlord found out there's actually a hole in the outer wall of the upstairs unit and the dude never did anything about it.  So a lot of rain, 150 year old bricks, and a hole in the wall meant a leaky ceiling for me.  My landlord is super mad at that dude (this is a condo building, and the landlord only owns our unit and his own) and the maintenance people for basically lying to him.  I think he's afraid we'll sue too, but we won't.

Today we tried to clean up as much as possible and covered the hole since insulation (the white fluffy stuff) kept falling out.  I feel like you'd probably expect after having a ceiling and bricks fall on my head.  Thankfully, the cut is pretty minor all things considered.  Right now is the first time I've let the ibuprofen wear off, and I can tell it was a mistake.  There are a lot of sore spots on my head and shoulders.  I wish I had a photo of how I looked when DS found me.  Apparently he had a moment where he honestly thought I'd been tarred and feathered.  That image would probably provide some comedic relief about now.

The rain stopped earlier, but not the wind.  We chanced it anyway and walked around a bit outside with camera.  My neighborhood seems to have been really lucky.  We didn't find any real flooding, or downed trees or anything.  The last of the clouds should be gone by 7pm, and the winds will drop under 20mph then as well.  We're supposed to hear on Monday when the masons and contractors will come fix the ceiling.  Thankfully, the 10 day forecast is rain free, so more leaking shouldn't be a problem.

I'm going to take some more painkillers and chill the rest of the day.  I hope your hurricane experience was better, and that my story will be the only scary thing you hear about.

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Six Flags Great Adventure

DS and I spent the weekend with our friends Matt and Sam.  The Matt who married us.  They live in NY, which had its first Maker Faire.  It seemed smaller than the SF one we went to last year, and DS and I got there late in the afternoon so we didn't have a lot of time.  Still though, it was cool to go, and ARC Attack was AWESOME!  I recommend finding some video of the dudes themselves, because it was so cool.  Though maybe you've heard of them?  Apparently they were on America's Got Talent?  I have no idea, I don't watch TV...

Anyway, we had a lovely dinner, delicious chocolates, and good conversation.  Then on Sunday we drove Sam out to Six Flags Great Adventure in NJ.  It's been at least six years since I've ridden a roller coaster.  I have a serious fear of heights.  Well, not so much of heights, but of falling.  If I think I'm safe, I have no problem whatsoever being high in the air.  Roller coasters were something that took me some years of concerted effort to be comfortable with, to trust that they wouldn't kill me and accept the fear so I could enjoy the adrenaline rush.  It's a skill that requires practice to maintain, and so I was excited about Six Flags, but also horrified...

There were six of us altogether, and we split a Flash Pass so we wouldn't have to wait in line.  (so worth it!)  We started off with the Batman coaster, which looked about on par with the types of coasters I really enjoyed back in the day.  I've looked up some point of view videos on YouTube for you to ride along.



Not too high, not too fast.  Easy peasy.  Also, shoulder harnesses, which are an important part of me feeling safe.  So then they all insisted we do Nitro, which is the second highest coaster in the park, with the first downhill going past vertical.  Yowza.  According to Wikipedia, you can see Philadelphia on a clear night from up there.  There aren't even shoulder harnesses.  I was freaking out.  I closed my eyes for the lift hill, because contemplating falling to my death is less forceful when I can't see it laid out before me.  Surprising myself, I opened my eyes as we crested the hill and let go.  It was exhilarating.  Watch.



That horizontal helix is just the right length so that you just start to feel your vision fading, then those little snake hills would have me giggling from the blood still stuck in my head.  Probably not good for you to do all the time, but several times a day once a year seems like a good plan.

Other notable experiences:

 El Toro, which I think is supposed to make you feel like you're riding a bull. And as such, there's little to hold on to, and I was lifting out of my seat quite a bit.  Also, those rails always freak me out, which is oddly one of the reasons I love wooden coasters so much.  And hooray for banked turns!  That's something wooden coasters have seriously needed.

Kingda Ka gave me a panic attack just looking at it.  DS loved it, and I sat and tried not to think about him failing to come back to me...

Superman would probably be a lot of fun for me, except that the cars invert you so you face the ground like you're flying.  Staring straight down at the ground as I plummet towards it was a little too much for me visually.  Though with my eyes closed, it didn't feel all that crazy movement-wise.

Bizarro is actually a fun coaster, but it has this music that plays right in your ears the whole time that's loud and static-y and completely annoying.

Skull Mountain reminded me of Kentucky Kingdom's old Starchaser, and as such had me laughing through the whole thing.  Also, they put a giant foam jack-o-lantern at the bottom with a spotlight on it.  SCARY!

After at least six hours of this, we were exhausted.  DS and I made the short trip home (about an hour, and some of that was because we took a wrong turn; though we ended up getting home toll free because of that wrong turn, so I was happy) on our own.  We made a frozen pizza, checked the interwebs, and then crashed as the pitiful hour of 8:30.  Even me people.  Me who is currently up at 3am.  I slept 14 hours last night!

This was my third separate theme park, the first two being Kentucky Kingdom and King's Island.  I have to say it was a lot of fun.  Sometimes terrifying, but overall, fun.

Future Job Hunting

So DS has job offers.  Probably more than is good for us, because now we'll have to make decisions and negotiate and all those things provide opportunities for future "what ifs" and regrets.  Here's hoping we make the right choice... Who would have thought that being successful would cause more stress?  We are very excited about the future though.  In fact, next weekend, meaning the 8th, we'll arrive in Chapel Hill to see how we like the place.  I'm assuming DS will be talking shop with the school as well, and apparently we'll be meeting with a real estate agent?  oy.

All of this has me contemplating my own job prospects.  I've spent a large part of today on Craigslist for the cities with offers, as well as filling out surveys intended to help me find my calling.  So far, I've discovered that I've most likely wasted my six years of higher education on degrees that are useless...

So I'm asking you, the collective mind, what I should do with myself, because I honestly feel like a failure.  I have a bachelor's degree in art history, where I attempted to focus my studies on architectural history.  I also minored in mathematics.  I went to graduate school for historic preservation, though I never wrote my thesis, so I don't technically have a degree.  The majority of my actual experience is in lowly sales positions, but I did spend a wonderful two years at a healthcare IT company doing user testing on medication software.  I have mad test plan writing skills, but no coding knowledge.  I can tell you that I prefer working with my hands, and thinking things through, and coming up with creative solutions to problems.  I like to see some sort of finished product or goal, so that I feel like something was accomplished with my time.  I like my work to benefit society in some way, even if indirectly.

Whatever job I've held, my reviews are always good, and if it's possible in the job, I'm promoted quickly.  I can be trained to do just about anything, in my opinion.  The problem is that I want to do something I enjoy, and I haven't the slightest idea what that is.  I'm terribly afraid that my two year stint at the software company will be my only fulfilling job, and that the rest of my time will be spent in whatever minimum wage gig is currently hiring.  The idea of going back to school to get another degree only to find out that the jobs are either undesirable or seemingly impossible to find is terrifying.

I still have my craft business, but here I am working less than 10 hours a week at my current job, and I have no real desire to go into the craft room.  It's not that I don't like it.  Probably more that I've had the business for 4 years and still average 1 sale or less per month.  It's hard to keep doing something when it seems like no one appreciates it.  I think I would like to do commissioned work, where someone has a general idea in their head of what they want.

At the risk of sounding like a pity party, I'm starting to feel stupid.  I used to think I was smart.  I think the combination of being surrounded by PhD scientists and my decreasing ability to find engaging, fulfilling work is wearing me down.  And the longer it lasts, the harder it's becoming to find the inner strength to find a way out of this.  Worse, I'm finding myself incredibly jealous, almost resentful, of DS's success.  Aren't I better than this?  I used to know I was, but in the last year and a half, doubt has eaten a hole in that confidence.

I'm floundering.. drowning.. and I need help.  Preferably in something other than empty reassurances, as nice as those are... God, I hope I feel better tomorrow.

Professor Science for Real

Every time I talk to real people, I spend the next three or four hours feeling like I said something wrong, but I have no idea why.  It's very troubling, and makes me think it's a good thing that I'm a hermit.

That being said, I love my book club, and it's one of the things I will miss when I leave Santa Barbara.  Which, by the way, will before the fall semester, because my husband has a job offer.

Every time the universe delivers a solution to a problem of mine right as it's close to spiraling out of control, I sit around waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Right now though, we're still in celebration mode. Say hello to PROFESSOR DRAGONSLAYER!

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Professor Science?  Remember when I bought him this shirt?  The one I had him wear under his suit for his PhD defense??

What?

It's been over a month since I last posted? Hmmm... that means it's been over a month since I last took any photos off my camera. In that time, I have had visits from my bestest good friend from Madison, Luke, and my mother and her husband (not at all at once). I sewed 8 panels of curtains for my living room and an entire baby quilt (I'm pretty proud of that quilt). And I decided to quit my job.

The idea of course was to get a new job. A full-time job so that we could maybe do fun things like visit friends in the other places we have lived. However, the getting a new job part is not going well, and it's been long enough now that my current employer thinks tomorrow is my last day. *cry* I am so freaked. Why did I think it was a good idea to let him know I was looking for a new job? I can't help but feel I should have stayed quiet until I had a job, except that would have really screwed up the office. When it's just two people, planning is important. Stupid responsible-ness!!!

So yeah... I don't know where the last month and a half went, but there you have it. Hopefully I can do some back posting at some point to fill in the gaps, but for now, it would appear I'm on full time job searching patrol.

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P.S. Apparently, Zemanta saw the word day in my post and decided that my post might be about Felicia Day. Which, it could be, as I am certainly in love with her and secretly hope she'll notice me following her on Goodreads and Twitter and instead of being freaked about it think, "she looks like a cool gal, and we live relatively close to each other, let's be friends!". But alas, I meant the normal kind.

P.P.S. If you ever wanted to pay me to make you something, now would be a good time.

P.P.P.S. The wind is blowing so hard I would normally think it's about to storm here. Except it never does. Ever. Just like it never rains. California sucks.

It's Scary Here

DS went to Pittsburgh Sunday morning for APS, which is, from what I can gather, a big conference for super nerds. Maybe even bow tie wearing nerds... I don't know. I've never been. All I know for sure is that there's like 10k people there, and the talks are only 15 minutes each. I don't even know how you could say anything useful about science in 15 minutes that you'd fly across the country to say. But he did, and he's gone. He'll be home tomorrow night.

But I digress. The point is, it's scary here. And not because he's gone. He left me in Madison all the time and I survived just fine. SB though... I don't know man. This place is like spider heaven. Also known as SG hell.

As an example, today along I killed 8 spiders. I'm not kidding you. 7 of them were in the two windows in our living room. 1 was in the shower. The most disturbing thing was that one was in the shower.

You see, the spiders appeared about 2 or 3 weeks ago. I had been living here, fearing tarantulas (because apparently those are in the hills), but feeling pretty okay about my actual apartment, for like what? 2 months? The BAM! The first week I found 3 in 2 days. This was kind of the worst week, because I wasn't ready for it. That, and one of them was found as it dropped out of the pajama pants I was putting on. Yeah, that's right. I put on my pajamas, and a spider dropped out of the leg. I screamed. DS was asleep. He cursed me as he stumbled into the bathroom, where I was perched on the toilet seat, and he even called me Jaime (his sister) in his stupor.

The day I found two on the screen door right after bumping into it with my back to open it (cause I was doing laundry, so my hands were full), I decided that was enough. I went to Home Depot and got some of that whole house spray that is supposed to keep bugs out for a whole year. The heavy duty toxic stuff. Since it is toxic, I started with the half of the house I could close off from the cats fairly easily. This included the bathroom. I soaked all the windows, and everything around the windows. Even the screens. I also followed the directions and covered all floor edges out to a few inches. Until today, I had not seen a single spider in that half of the house (though I did find 6 while using the spray).

Now there's one in the bathroom??!!?? A whole year my ass. It hasn't even been 2 weeks!

Also, this morning as I was walking to my car, a spider was running in my direction from across the garage. All I saw was black and a hint of red before I jumped in the car and slammed the door and prayed he wasn't tagging along. I'm trying really, really hard not to think about the fact that I was nearly run down by a black widow.... I might spray the garage tomorrow for good measure.

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*For those of you that know me, you know I have pretty bad arachnophobia. Like, bad. Like, I have nightmares about spiders and kick DS so hard while sleeping that he wakes up and finds me crying in my sleep. I know it's irrational, and I can't help it. One time I tried to think about ways I could get over my fear, and I got so afraid that doing so would make me feel okay about coming in contact with spiders that I couldn't sleep for a few days. One nice thing about being here is that Sam is on the same page as me on this topic. We both know that a spider will attack you if it sees you. And that if you don't kill it and immediately get it out of the house, it could come back to life and come after you when you least expect it. Seriously.

So, with that in mind, notice that I said I killed 8 spiders today. I did that! And yeah, DS might laugh as I get out my little can of Raid and jump backwards in fear at each spray because if I'm not careful, the spider will use the spray to crawl to me, I'm at least doing the killing now. There are parts of the apartment I can't go back to at the moment, because I'm afraid of spider carcasses as well (see above for resurrected spider revenge)... I'm not able to actually get rid of them. Just spray them from a distance and watch in utter fear with goosebumps all over my body to make sure they stop moving. Then run.

Baby steps people.