While I was the university, I met the guy I would later marry. I shouldn’t have, but I did. We weren’t seeing as much of each other when I graduated since he lived in a different city. There were lots of signs that things weren’t right, but I didn’t really see them at the time. I guess I saw the problems, but didn’t see them as really big problems. So my first job out of college was in corporate communications with a really bitchy boss. I was fired from that job. Why? Well the boss hated me, but the reason sent to HR was that I couldn’t perform the job. And why? Well I had developed carpal tunnel in one wrist which made typing all day long and cutting photos for print painful and difficult. I was fired after the second occasion when the photos weren’t cut perfectly straight. I didn’t have the strength to hold those thin photo pages (not photo stock paper) and cut them with an exacto knife. Publishing was so different then. Now straight photo edges wouldn’t be problem. You import the photo into a box with perfectly straight lines every time. Anyway, the job sucked. Pretty miserable experience. After being out of work for a few months, I found myself pregnant. Yep, happens even to smart people who should know better. I didn’t want to tell my mother, and I didn’t until I couldn’t keep it from her. I remember writing a long letter to her before Thanksgiving. I would be going home then, and I was showing. I found another job that fall before Thanksgiving. Pregnancy was not much fun. I was sick a lot. I got up several hours before I needed to be ready for work. It sometimes took two to three hours to get ready. Sometimes I had to start over after getting sick. I went though a lot deciding to keep the baby and what I was going to do after it was born.

A few months before I was due, the father came back into my life and decided that he’d like to get married. I didn’t want to move back home with my mother at the time. I wasn’t sure how I would take care of a baby entirely alone, so I agreed. Biggest mistake of my life. Short version: We got divorced a year later. Well, it takes a year to get divorced, so officially two years later. So a couple of years and $20K later, I was divorced, living with my mother and going back to school to get a degree in chemistry. Oh, the cost of the divorce? Well, I couldn’t deal with all the crap I was constantly bombarded with by my son’s father. Letters every week. Legal bullshit. I had the attorney handle it. Although he probably overcharged. I didn’t get what I wanted anyway. Four long days in court listening to how awful I was. The attorney was overly confident and didn’t really do his work.

So back to school I went. I traveled 100 miles round-trip every day for two years to take undergraduate courses in chemistry.

This picture shows a few buildings. It’s a small campus. I had my classes in the white building on the right. My goal at the time was to get into graduate school and be a professor. I spent the entire drive seeing myself graduate with a doctorate. It’s the only thing that got me through, and most likely made the doctorate a reality. The courses were sometimes a bit difficult, but not too bad. Organic chemistry was not my strongest course. I got to do several semesters of undergraduate research in various projects. I went through graduation with my new degree in chemistry, packed up my things and my son’s things and went 400 miles east to graduate school. I specifically picked the school based on researching professors and my visit there. I began graduate school with my research group already picked out. In fact, I went there in the summer on a special program where I got paid for the months prior to fall classes and worked in that professor’s group. I worked with lasers like in “Real Genius.” I was excited. I had wanted to work with lasers back when I was in mechanical engineering and saw a group doing research there.

As promised, I am continuing the photos and story about college. I wish I had some really great stories to tell. You know…the typical college stories. I don’t. I was focused on school. I had to focus my attention on classes while in engineering. I had a few tough classes. I had joined a sorority as a freshman, which took up a lot of time. Friday afternoons were often pledge meet and greets. Our sorority and another fraternity would meet in the late afternoon, sometimes early evening. These meetings were a source of endless frustration for me. The favorite conversation starter was “What’s your major?” Once I told any guy that my major was mechanical engineering, I see a stunned look across his face. Sometimes the guys might try to make other conversation, but usually they disappeared within 30 seconds.

Not far from the tennis courts, there are four tall buildings. Those were dorms. There are some small houses just to the right. My sorority house was the one closest to the field. We were far away from Greek row. The sorority didn’t work out well either. It was fun as a freshman. Everything was new, everyone was nice. I had things to do on the weekends if I wanted to. Rush (the time when prospective members and members meet) made me think that this particular house was focused on academics. They pay lip service to it. Everything went sour when I lived in the house as a sophomore. My roommate was weird. The girls weren’t that nice. I was tired of the parties by then. And I was sick of being asked if I had a boyfriend and if he was in a house. I realized that all that mattered to most of the girls was getting married. I had bigger aspirations. I remember an occasion when I got dirty looks from the girls in the lunch line because I dared speak to a guy on the other side who happened to be in one of my classes. I left the house the same semester that I changed majors. Actually I left the house first thinking that all those activities were hurting my grades. There was some truth to that. But after a semester of the sexist professor and even more sexist interviews for internships, I marched into the engineering dean’s office and told them what I thought of their school. Writing appealed to me, so I changed over to journalism. It was fun for awhile, but then I began to miss science classes.

After leaving the sorority, I moved back into the dorms I lived in as a freshman. I stayed there for a semester before finding an apartment off campus.

The tallest, narrow white building was the dorm I stayed in. It was co-ed by floor–half women, half men. Many of the dorms were co-ed, but men and women lived on different floors. I remember being asked a lot what I thought of having guys down the hall. It never much bothered me. My best friends have always been men since grade school.

I was often asked how I could be in a sorority because I was too nice. Not a snob. My answer is that I felt so out of place in high school that I thought this would be a nice way to meet other people like myself. I was so wrong.

I wish I could show you a photo of the apartment I lived in, but I don’t remember the address. It was much of a building anyway. I did live just a few blocks from the Capitol building. I could have walked there. This building is pretty unique. You can’t see the statue on the top, but it’s a man sowing seeds out of a pouch–”The Sower”. The craziest thing that happened at my apartment building was being awakened at 2 am by some guy screaming. Apparently he came into the building to escape being beaten by several guys for being gay. The words “fag” and “queer” were yelled by the others. Someone in the building called the police before I did because they were there in five minutes. We once had a homeless man living in the basement where we had storage too. I went down there one winter morning and rammed the door into a mattress with the guy on it.

After high school, I went to college about 90 miles away. I would have liked to go further away, however this way college was paid for, and I didn’t have to work. I worked in high school, and at times it definitely interfered with school. I wasn’t sure I wanted to work during college with the classes I was taking. I began as a engineering major–mechanical engineering. You had two years to get some of the basics out of the way to apply to the department. So the university campus is huge. I couldn’t get the entire campus into one picture.

Football was one of the most important things at this university. I had tickets as a freshman. I never went to game. My first semester I had chemistry lab on Saturday morning. It wouldn’t fit into my schedule at any other time, and I think all the other labs were full. The chemistry building is rather close to the stadium now. None of us really wanted to be there on Saturday morning. I didn’t get home much that first semester. Later years, I had a plan on how to avoid the football traffic and mob. The city became crazy on game days. It was best to lie low until the game started. Then you could run errands, but not too the mall. All the wives went to the mall during the game. The stadium has been updated. I can’t remember if they built a new one. It had to be made bigger to hold more fans. I think it’s one of the largest football stadiums at any university.I spent two years taking math, physics and chemistry classes. I got in a few engineering classes as well before the classes began to kick my butt. The sexist teacher who wouldn’t give women higher than a “C” didn’t help either. I wish I had known about him earlier because I could have taken a different class. So after my car committed suicide, I changed my major. My migraines were intense, and school just wasn’t going very well except for a few classes. I moved over to journalism. You can’t see that building anymore. I think it’s gone now to make room for the stadium.

This photo is a nice close-up of the library. You can barely make out some sort of reddish sculpture on the lawn near it. I don’t know why the lawn is brown. I don’t remember it being brown. Many students hated that sculpture. It’s a big red “K” made out of steel beams. It’s from someone famous. I think there’s one by the same artist in Chicago. I always thought it was cool. It was the only way I could pick out the library and navigate the aerial view. The rather tall white building is the chemistry building. I considering going here for graduate school, but I chose a different school. The library was rather interesting. Modern and old. The old parts were scary. Light bulbs hanging from wires. As a freshman, all women were warned about going to those parts of the library alone. Apparently, rapes occurred there. I don’t know if they did. I suppose it could happen and might have happened to someone. It also could have been a way to scare us. You had a greater chance of being raped at a party than the library. I wandered most of that scary library without a single incident. Sometimes the books you need are in the dark, dank part of the library. They seem to place the bound journals there, and these are necessary for research papers.Next: Where I lived on campus and off.

See the long buildings fanning out? The high school has these long wings. No second stories when I was there. In between the wings are little grassy areas. Nice to look at, but you couldn’t go there. The school had tons of windows. It would be a perfect school for California, but it was terribly cold in the winter. I suppose the teachers thought the windows were a distraction as well. If class was boring, you could easily stare out the window and watch the weather or birds. The wings were painted different colors. So there was a yellow wing, a green wing and a blue wing. We referred to them that way. The lunch room was in the area with the white roof. With only five minutes between classes, if you had to get from lunch to the yellow wing (the third one), you had to run! The school has changed quite a bit with large additions that weren’t there when I was there. The large building near the parking lot wasn’t there. That was the parking lot. The smaller addition with the dark roof wasn’t there either. I think that’s the gym. The track and field has always been there.

One interesting thing about this school is that not only did I go there, so did my grandfather, my grandmother, their family members, my uncle, my mother, my cousins, my mother’s cousins, and my sister. The class photos are posted in the hallways. I could pick out my relatives as I walked down the hallway. The school was new when my mother went there. It was a smaller building when my grandmother and grandfather went.

When I look at the photo, the one thing I remember is running around that track for P.E. Those mile runs we had to do and get graded on. It was never a problem for me to finish in the time for an A. I can’t say that about the rest of P.E. It wasn’t one of my strengths.

The best thing about looking at this photo is that I don’t have the reaction to it that I had to high school itself. High school completely sucked. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. The cliques. The snobbery. My last year as the senior section editor of the yearbook I made sure that everyone got into the yearbook–either pictures or quotes in the stories I wrote. I spoke to everyone. I got to know everyone. Anyway, I survived. My high school teachers did one good thing–they prepared me for college. College was a repeat of high school for nearly the first two years. Freshman year of college was easy. So next, it’s onto college.

Scott from Oregon posted some Google satellite photos of where he used to live and suggested we do the same and tell our stories. I did some searching, and I am very surprised by the clarity of the photos. Also, these photos were taken in the fall. I can tell by the brownness of the area. I grew up living on a golf course. The house we lived in is no longer there. It was rather old–over 100 years at the time we lived there. Victorian. It was once General Kearny’s home.

I had no idea that the lake was so large. I remember it being smaller. The tiny water line to the lake is a canal that empties into that lake. There were times when the canal was closed off so the lake would drain. It had the stickiest mud. Lots of clams and golf balls. We would collect the balls, wash them and sell them. My sister and I made quite a bit of money that way. I liked the clams. I had several over the years that I put into containers of water and took home. I once had a rather large clam–about 6 or 8 inches across that I kept as a pet. Yes, a pet clam. I refuse to eat clams to this day. You can’t eat what you name. Although I don’t remember any clam names.
I remember once when the canal was low and there were lots of fish swimming upstream. One of our dogs stood in the middle of the canal catching fish and bringing them up to shore. The canal was rather deep with steep sides. She must have caught 20 fish. She wouldn’t have stopped if we hadn’t dragged her away.

This second photo is a close up. The main building near the pool is where the house once stood. Yes, the pool is in the shape of a coffin. I remember my mother telling me that as a kid, but you can’t tell the pool’s shape when you’re in it. I spent every day of every summer from the age of 5 to 12 taking swimming lessons in that pool. My dad was the golf course groundskeeper. Yes, like Bill Murray in Caddyshack. A bit nutty like that too–particularly about ground squirrels. Ground squirrels cause serious problems on golf courses. Mostly I think by pissing off golfers when they lose their ball down the hole. We had a black lab who loved to catch squirrels. Dad would flush massive amounts of water down one hole and the dog stood at the other hole waiting for the squirrel to run out. The dog grabbed the squirrel and crunched him until his eyes popped out. I distinctly remember the crunch that squirrel bones make. I also remember the “ewww, gross!” chorus when the eyes popped out.

The pond just behind the white building was rather smelly. It had golf balls too, but it also had crawdads. Thousands of crawdads. You might know them as crayfish or mudbugs. Little lobsters really. With sharp pinchers. They were mean too. The fairway behind the pond was one I used to run on the most. The whole length. I think my parents wondered how I had so much energy to run and run. I don’t know either. I really don’t care to run now.
I did play golf on this course. I was on the golf team as a freshman. I played this course beginning at age 2. At 2, I had plastic clubs. We played on Mondays when the club was closed. You sometimes had to dodge the sprinklers. Later I had a couple of real clubs that were sized down for me. Then by the time I was 14, I had my own set of clubs. I still have them. Really hard to play with though. The club heads are smaller than men’s clubs today. The sweet spot is only dime-sized rather than quarter-sized.

Boy, the memories these pictures invoke. Wow!

I’ve been inspired by Scott to write about a past event. I will warn you that this story wasn’t funny when it happened, and although a long time has passed, it’s still not funny.

When I was a sophomore in college my car committed suicide. It was only 9 years old. That’s the only explanation I have. It caught on fire one afternoon when I was driving home from the university at spring break. I went to school in Lincoln, Nebraska. Yep, a Cornhusker.

I bought this car when I was in high school. It was a 1979 Plymouth Horizon. Like the car at the bottom of the picture. It was white with red trim. Manual. Boy, did I love the control and power of the manual transmission. I haven’t had one since. The car began breaking down more often after the first year I bought it. Little things at first, like the clutch. When I went to college, I never knew when I’d arrive at my mother’s or school.

The car liked to break down in the middle of nowhere. But really, anywhere between Grand Island and Lincoln on I-80 is the middle of nowhere. The car had a knack though for dying somewhere between exits. The next exit might take you to a very small town about 20 miles off the highway. With all those break downs I accepted rides from anyone who could help (truck drivers to police) and then had the car towed. I never thought about how unsafe that could possibly be at the time. I never had a problem.

On this particular day, it was unseasonably hot for March. The car broke down just before I was halfway home. I got the car to a garage. I called my mother because the mechanic told me it would be hours before it was fixed. They fixed it in about 45 minutes. I left the shop and passed my mother on the way. It’s a good thing she was following me that day.

I noticed something funny about 30 miles from home, which meant less than 25 miles from the shop. The engine light came on again, but when I pulled over, I had no brakes and smoke began to fill the car. I parked the car on a pole. You know those poles on the side of the road. I didn’t want to have the car go onto the grass. It was dry and would have caught fire. Luckily I wasn’t wearing my seat belt. It always stuck. The smoke was thick almost immediately. My mother stopped and a truck driver stopped. The guy ran with a fire extinguisher, but it was too late. The three of us grabbed my stuff out of the car and watched it burn.

The police finally showed to move the cars over a lane. The fire leaped into the second lane on occasion. Before the police came people just kept going, using both lanes of the highway. The fire department from the local small town took 45 minutes to get there. During that time, we watched the glass pop, the tires explode (tires sound like guns when they blow) and the nosy people hanging their heads out the car. I found that the most annoying. It seemed to me that people wanted to see a body.

The car was burnt to a barely recognizable version of itself. The chrome on the wheels was gone. Not in a puddle on the concrete. Gone! Evaporated. After the fire was out, we opened the hood—all the aluminum was gone. Evaporated. All that was left of the tires were the steel belts.

I had nightmares for two weeks after that. This time I was caught in the fire. When I got back to school, I failed a test in a class I had an “A” in. I got a “C” by the end. I felt lucky to not have been hurt, but it took a long time to stop thinking about it. It was several months before I had another car.

I was lucky with all the problems with that car that nothing ever happened. I’m not unique. I’ve met lots of people who have had near misses. They are all thankful for a while, maybe even change a few things in their lives. Then they go about business as usual. So have I.

R did call this afternoon, but it was too late for me to go to San Francisco. Another guy is there as well from graduate school. Remember R is staying in a “gay-friendly” hotel. I guess to save money the two are sharing a room. R said the desk clerk did look at them funny when they requested 2 beds. I don’t think he believed me that it was a “gay” hotel. I wish I could be a fly on the wall. Neither one of them is ready for SF.

Here we are again talking about R. You’ve got to hear the latest.

I suggested we meet for coffee on Saturday afternoon. The response I got back was “how about Sunday night?” No, not a reasonable excuse like “I will be tired” or “I need to rest.” My suggestion wasn’t unreasonable either. He’s supposed to arrive at 1 pm, so I suggested meeting at 3 pm. Two hours should be enough time to get to the hotel and checked in—even if the plane is late and you have to pick up luggage. It’s only 15 minutes from the airport to downtown San Francisco.

I mentioned this to a friend, who wasn’t surprised. When I asked why, he said that it’s easier to get naked at night.

Now, I ask you—particularly the guys out there—is it easier to get a girl into bed at night? Does the time of day really matter? If you think you are only capable of getting a girl into bed at night, what does that say about your seducing techniques?

Time of day doesn’t matter to me if it is something All these questions remind me of another friend’s opinion that the women decide whether or not any sex will occur and that if she has decided that it won’t, there is nothing you can do to change that. There are women who resort to tricks to keep themselves from jumping into bed with their date, like not shaving their legs, wearing ugly underwear or super tight and overly difficult to remove clothing. I can’t say that I’ve tried any of that. I guess will power is enough for me.

Anyway, I would say R’s response says a lot about what he has in mind. There’s still no mention of being married. I will bet that he wouldn’t mention it all. I may not find out if he’s going to insist on meeting at night because I’m not going to do it.

I want to avoid the scenario he’s trying to create. I also have a hula workshop on Sunday, which lasts most of the day, so I need a good night’s sleep—in my own bed. R forgets that he was such a weasel more than 5 years ago. He’s a schmuck to think that I would want anything to do with him.

What I wish is that people would be upfront about what they want. Why isn’t that possible? The worst are those who lie—and you know they are lying, but they will argue until you give up in exasperation just to avoid being caught lying. I have an amazing BS detector, and little tolerance for dishonesty.

Technorati: hula, San Francisco, schmuck

Since I agreed to meet an old “friend” from graduate school this coming weekend, I had to find out where this guy was staying in San Francisco so I could find a coffee house. Well, once I found out I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

Anyone who knows San Francisco will understand. But I don’t know it that well, so I will explain. The conference is at the Moscone conference center, which is near Market and Mission, putting it in the Mission district. Although a visit to the Moscone center website says it’s in the downtown district. Whatever. It’s near Mission, which is near Market St. Why SF is divided into “districts” I have no idea. They aren’t real districts–marked on a map–just convenient ways to say where you live within the city. It’s a bit like a secret code that only San Franciscans know. You say you live in Nob Hill and people nod and seem to know something about you. Nob Hill means you probably have more money than the person speaking to you. And of course there’s Haight-Ashbury, which has turned into yuppie-ville. The hippies can’t afford to live there anymore and haven’t been able to for some time now.

Anyway, Market and Mission Streets have a unique atmosphere. Anyone who has visited SF will know. Although if you get up to Castro and Mission, it gets even more interesting.

Now, this guy is from Missouri. Hasn’t been outside Missouri much. Missouri doesn’t have the various ethic groups that we have here nor does it have the peculiarities that SF is known for. I have to give him some credit for living in a suburb of St. Louis, so he’s familiar with larger cities. But St. Louis is nothing like SF. There is no city in the world like SF.

I hadn’t heard of the hotel he said he was staying at, so I had to look it up. It’s obviously one of the cheaper hotels in the area. R teaches at a community college last I heard. They make less than professors and much less than teachers at either type of college out here. He’s probably lucky to afford the trip.

My internet search on this hotel turned up some interesting information. The building is from 1909. Not everyone who has stayed there has been very happy. It turns out that this hotel is recommended by a gay travel site as being very gay-friendly, and it is run by a gay man. R doesn’t know this. I am sure he doesn’t know this. All of this will make a very interesting stay in SF for him. I can hardly contain my glee over seeing this homophobic nitwit’s reaction when he finds out where he is staying.

I have tried to talk another friend of mine into coming (to take pictures and act gay—just to mess with his mind), but he won’t. But he’s soooooo good at it. I’m sure there will be plenty to disturb R on a Saturday afternoon on Market Street without any help. Small-minded people like R are so much fun to mess with.

Right now, I don’t have any particular coffee house in mind. It’s Market Street. If I can’t find one, then I must be blind. When I mentioned to a friend that I wasn’t all that interested in meeting R while he’s in SF, he wanted to know why I was. Well, I hate going back on my word. But now it is like a train wreck just waiting to happen, and I have to see. I must bring my camera and actually remember to take a picture or two.

Technorati: San Francisco, travel, St. Louis

I have recently had the chance to think about graduate school again, the group that I hung out with, and the things we did. I was surprised by an email from a guy who wanted to get together when he’s in San Francisco for a meeting. It has been almost 6 years since we left school, and I haven’t heard from this guy at all during this time. Apparently, he Googled me and found my address.

So a week from today, R will be in San Francisco. I said I was available on Saturday—no real commitment to meet. I have a pretty good idea what he really wants (I’m sure my readers do too). We have a history, but he was such a moron that I truly hoped to never hear from him again. R said some spiteful things behind my back to my best friend, who didn’t particularly care for his behavior.

My best friend from graduate school and I have kept in contact for years now. R has also kept in contact with him. My friend told me that R recently married (2 weeks), which is something R has conveniently left out of his emails. By now, I’m sure you’re thinking the same thing I’m thinking…the guy has sex on the brain, thinks he can hide it, but it’s obvious to everyone.

In the R’s last email, he was super eager to meet. I can’t imagine why, nor can I figure out why he thinks I would really want to see him or do what he’s hoping I’ll do. I think it’s worth meeting just to see what has happened to him. I really haven’t changed much. I probably shouldn’t drink though. I tend to be completely honest and thus might call him the harebrained, cheating man-slut he is.

I would love to hear some creative suggestions on how to deal with his bumbling maneuvers.

Technorati: graduate school, friends, San Francisco