Happy Turkey Day, everyone. I’m writing from you from Dallas, TX, where I’ve been celebrating with my Uncle Jim, Aunt Beth and various other family. Despite the slight cold I seem to have acquired (I think I blame my students!), this has been A Good Day.
Be grateful for what you have, y’all. So much of this year was fettered with loss and change, it would be easy for me to look back and just throw a good riddance to 2009. But…but. But. Here I am, surrounded by pies enough to choke a horse, feeling sleepy and uncomfortably full, and although I’m missing everyone—people far away and gone all the same—I feel glad in an uncomplicated way.
So here’s hoping you crammed your face with turkey and all manner of good stuff. I know I did, and when I wake up tomorrow, there’s not a soul on earth who can criticize me of listening to Christmas music now. IT’S ON.
Want to hear something embarrassing? It’s been so long since I’ve updated this blog, I forgot how to insert a picture. Shameful.
So, um, obviously, the whole “blog reboot” didn’t really pan out. Turns out? Grad school is totally hard, y’all. It’s no coincidence that my last post was a good old “ah, so here I am now!” post.
Thusly, my lack of updates is not so much borne out of a lack of things to say as it is a lack of time to put the work and craftsmanship (lolz) into these posts that I feel I usually do.
Which isn’t to say that (Zombie) Will Think for Food is shutting down…just that I might be directing your attention to my new tumblr that I don’t quite know how to use yet. Think of this blog as my home base (I do have plans for a revamp over the holiday break [which I have again! All hail the month-long hiatus from doing stuff!]) and the new tumblr as a sort of scrapbook of things I’m interested in.
So, perhaps all I’m doing right now is being the douchey noncommittal boyfriend (“Guuurl, I’m here for you. I ain’t going no where“), but hey, whatever. Frankly, I’d be surprised and delighted if anyone still is RSSing this poor dead zombie blog!
Hello from Tempe, AZ! Guess what? IT’S HOT HERE!
Yes, you’ve read that correctly: I’ve managed to poach a slightly inconsistent internet signal for God knows how brief or infrequent a time and I’ve decided to enlighten you all with the knowledge that it is hot in Arizona. Like, 115 hot, 90 at night hot. In this instant, I cannot fathom how human animals first decided to settle in a place this hot.
Whining aside, I’m well! Dad and I pulled into Arizona and its freakish time warp (I now write to you from the Pacific time zone) yesterday afternoon, and after some minor kerfuffle with the movers and some local traffic, my belongings, my father, and my self all rest under the same roof.
I can’t lie: actually getting to Arizona was difficult. Me moving here has been so abstract for so long, even through the 33 hours and nearly 2200 mile drive. Getting here was a real fact of how much my life will be different: this is a city, with tons of people and tons of road closings to confuse my GPS, and it all felt very overwhelming. I’m sure it will again, but tonight, Dad made chicken with diced tomatoes and we watched Pete & Pete on DVD. The apartment still smells too new to be mine, but as in all things, cooking (and family) helps.
The internet is too sketchy right now to post any more pictures, but I will when I can—we came through some truly incredible stuff in New Mexico and Arizona, and pictures of the apartment will follow once it’s presentable (well, as presentable as it will get, anyway).
My dear, dear friends, I write to you from another La Quinta (“La Quinta Otra,” as I’ve been calling it in my sad, stale Spanish) in El Paso, Texas. I feel like it’s appropriate to be ruminating on the idea of what that means: The Step.
Driving through the entire width of Texas looks a lot like I thought it would based entirely on popular culture: like a stunning rendering of the landscape from any given Roadrunner cartoon. Driving west from Dallas was fascinating—barren tracks of farms and oil rigs compressed by an unfathomable blue slowly starting to slope into rolling hills, prairies, and inexplicable mountains.
Between yesterday and today, after driving (well, riding shotgun—Dad still hasn’t given up the steering wheel, and I’m not complaining) about 14 hours through Texas, I feel like I’ve reached something just beyond articulation, something all wrapped up in spending a night in a place called The Step. I’ve gotten where I am one step at a time: there are no shortcuts in life, and just as each and every of the more than 1,500 miles of pavement on this trip traveled beneath the wheels of my Toyota Yaris, you’ve got to live every step.
6 more hours on the road and Dad and I will reach Tempe, where my new life starts. One more step. See you on the other side.
(Check out highlights from these last two days after the jump—click to bigafy!) (more…)
One day of travel down—a little over 12 hours in the Yaris and we’re officially a third of the way to Arizona. Check out some highlights from the trip after the jump. (more…)
