neonleonb

I'm currently in Tennessee, after a last-minute trip to Boston. In case you hadn't read it on my mom's health blog, she died on Tuesday night shortly after we'd all arrived. We didn't really see it coming--she'd been in the hospital with a fever before, she'd had infections before, but this time the combination of cancer and pneumonia overwhelmed her. None of us realized it was so dire until the last minute, and we arrived at the hospital just in time to see her. She, however, was not awake, and she probably never realized that this was the end.

Her funeral is on Tuesday. After that, I'll be back in Berkeley finishing up my dissertation.

In 7th grade, I asked a girl out. I said, "Will you go out with me?"

She responded, "Where?" and laughed at my confusion. I had just wanted her to indicate an interest in me; the details of spending time together could be worked out later.

I still have that attitude, that disconnect from the way most others think of dating, to this day. I'm not so worried about finding someone to spend time with; my days already fill themselves. I just want attention, respect, love. Find that, and the rest will work out well enough.

In other news, I'm completely single again. Whee.

God freaking dammit. I have had a series of hassles in getting a GSI (a.k.a. teaching assistant) position. First, they mistook my preference for TAing the undergrad AI class as a demand, so they weren't going to give me any work. Just yesterday, though, they found a graphics class for me to TA. However, today, they sent me the forms for it and I found it was a 10-hour position. That means I'd be paid half as much.

I could live off my savings for a semester, and maybe the reduced work would help me finish my thesis, but I'd really rather not go there. I mean, I'd even checked in midway through the summer to make sure they knew I was requesting a 20-hour position, and they said "oh, yes, we know." And now they screw it up. Dammit, this is really annoying, especially with class starting on Wednesday.

We (a bunch of mostly grad students mostly in the 4th year) went on a hike to a waterfall on Sunday. It was on the North peninsula near Stinson Beach. (I'm familiar with Stinson Beach since that's the landing zone for hang gliders launching from Mt. Tamalpais.)

It was a pleasant hike with greenery and little lakes/ponds with no streams in or out. I presume they're groundwater-fed. At the end, we had to climb down this steep crumbling rock face.

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Alex, who broke his arm hang gliding a few months ago, also attempted the climb. Here you can see him:



Seconds after I took that picture, the rocks under his feet slipped, putting weight on his left arm, which was apparently not fully healed, and fractured it again. Amazingly, he didn't do any of the things I'd have done (e.g. screamed, yelled for help), and simply said he'd broken it.

Unfortunately, this accident occurred at the very farthest point of the hike--it was another 4 miles or so back to the car, and then an hour and a half back to Berkeley. Alex held up amazingly well. When he wasn't thinking of all the hassle this accident would cause him, he was downright cheerful, and he scarcely seemed to feel any pain. He set a comfortably brisk pace back to the car, without any of the whining I'd have done. Zach made a very nice makeshift sling out of Jessica's long-sleeved shirt (I wanted to do something of the sort, but I had no idea how).

Alex went to the ER, where they took X-rays and put a splint on his arm. Today he's going to go see the same doctors who fixed his arm after the hang-gliding accident.

This all seems rather matter-of-fact, but that's more or less how it played out. Alex stated what happened, Louis helped him negotiate up to stable footing, we arranged a sling, and walked back.

I've scheduled a trip to visit Kate in Prague in a week (!), for a week. But the problem is that although I tried to book tickets via a low-end travel website/travel agent called Travel Enterprises (for hundreds of dollars less than anyone else could do), Lufthansa is saying that I'm only standby on one of my flights. I've contacted the Travel Enterprises people, and they say that they're clearing that up.

But I'm quite worried. I can't exactly get completely ripped off, since I paid by credit card and can have Discover not pay them if they don't provide me with the tickets they agreed to (I think). But I've passed the point of getting decently-priced tickets from anyone else, so I'm pretty well fucked all around if this doesn't pan out. And I'm really looking forward to going! So right now I'm pretty anxious. I may have messed up in a big way by going with this tiny website to book my flights. Also, if this doesn't pan out, I don't relish the hassle of canceling the useless tickets and getting new ones.

EDIT at 11:15am pacific: They said Lufthansa doesn't accept Discover cards, so they asked for a second credit card. That's a red flag, but dammit my hope leads me on. They'd damn well better get me some plane tickets!

EDIT at 12:45pm pacific: I HAVE CONFIRMED TICKETS! WOO-HOO, I'M GOING TO PRAGUE! I'm excited. After all my doubting and worrying, it's all working out okay.