back from the blogout. yes, I'm an addict.

I got back Sunday night from my trip to Boston. While in Boston I had essentially no internet access. I did get online 2-3 times for around 5-10 min, but that was only to check essential stuff (confirming a work interview thing and checking my plane times). So I experienced a myspace and blog and email blackout for 6 days. (those of you who've sent worried emails or have felt neglected, it was the lack of internet access).

It was interesting to watch my mind around the whole thing. The first night I wandered around the BFF's condo with my laptop desperately looking for wireless that wasn't password protected. Alas, there was none. Looking at myself walking around trying to find a connection helped me see how HOOKED I am on this internet thing. Hello, my name is Jennie, and I'm an internet addict.

It was also interesting to get out of the Boulder bubble. I know I live in a bubble, I do. But I forget just HOW different Boulder is from other parts of the US. Maybe it was being on the east coast, maybe it was being with the BFF, probably both things. It was good to get out of Boulder and remember that not everyone is an olympic athlete, 97% of the population is NOT white, many people don't recycle (and there are places where you can't even find recycle bins if you want to recycle), local & organic foods are not as easy to find as one might think, what we think of as expensive real estate in Boulder is laughable compared to some other cities, and wow, I really am liberal.

For those who were wondering about my sister, she ROCKED those boards and she's now an official nurse. Yes, us Hyatt girls are Pretty AND Smart.

Spending time with the BFF was SO fun. It was so good to reconnect and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. On my arrival day, I got there in mid-afternoon, and we talked for 7 hours straight. We did some touristy stuff (whale watching, clam chowda eatin', downtown walking, more seafood eatin', going to the planetarium, and going to see Laser U2). We talked and talked and talked. Ok, we talked a lot. The BFF is such a good mirror for me...I see what my life could be if I had made some different choices. I see that my choices have taken me on a path that has helped me express parts of me that have always been there. I see in her the best (and sometimes the worst) in me. She helps me remember that I'm smart, I'm capable. She reminds me of the things I've done well, and reminds me of my patterns. I also see in her things I wish I could be...

And I've been dreaming a lot lately. Dreaming of friends that I miss, dreaming of people that I care about. There have also been worrying dreams too. An apocalyptic dream, another dream where one of my students dies (someone I saw today at a work meeting, so I know he's alive). Maybe I need to finish the book I'm reading that has a lot of world ending stuff in it.

And back to the BFF visit. My nerdiness quotient seemed to skyrocket...back to old patterns, I think. At the planetarium show, they did a demo and the person leading it made an incorrect statement calling the part of the moon that is in shadow the "dark side". The dark side of the moon is the side of the moon that is never facing the earth. For those not up on their astronomy, the moon rotates in such a way that only one side of the moon ever faces the earth, the other side is the "dark side". So I grumbled about that. And before the laser show, they had some info about lasers in a slide show, and one of the slides said "the laser is made of Argon and Krypton gas"...really the slide should have said "THIS laser is made of Argon..." because lasers can be made of a wide range of materials, not just gasses. There are semiconductor and even solid state lasers. grumble, grumble. LASER, by the way, stands for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. whew, now my brain is spinning off remembering the time in grad school when I started asking questions of my profs (he was a chemist). He had talked about lasers in class, and some of the info he gave didn't make sense to me...it seemed he explained some things wrong. he wasn't convinced that I was right...turns out I was and he made corrections in the next class. Yup, Hyatt girls are smart and pretty.