Cecil Sirius Seaside

Hope everyone had a nice halloween! Seems whenever I walk into a store now it's all about Christmas. when did November retire? Weather is cooling down (slightly), Cameo in my lap = kitty hot water bottle. Am making good use of my Disneyland AP (and an app called Mousewait), and my new 20mm f1.7 lens. I want to go see Men Staring at Goats or whatever that new movie with Ewan McGregor is called. Am cursing Funimation for releasing all those anime box sets now that work is slow. (or rather, cursing my finding out about them now) (isn't that what credit cards are for? oh wait..)

it's weird not writing stuff in under 140 characters.

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P.S. - I'm finally finding out what Lost is all about.

1. work work work. i have a new part time job in a photography shop/gallery which is ace. i get to leave my house AND speak to people! i'm learning to use the colour printing machine which is exciting enough, but the thought of having all that control over the printing of my own photographs nearly makes me wet my pants. another part of the job is helping ot organise a photography festival which will be a challenge to say the least, but an exciting one that i'm looking forward to. all this plus i am still juggling freelance work in there, along with making lots of stuff for a christmas art market. not enough hours in my day!

2. i have been cycling to my new job & back. it isn't massively far but it is by myself and through the town centre [lots of scary buses] and at night and involves hills so i'm quite proud of myself. i can't believe it's taken me this long [6 months] to start riding my bicycle. i am a fool.

3. mmmm boys. for too long now my heart has been idle but finally i have a crush on someone. one of those butterflies heart pounding ones even. i'm so looking forward to bumping into him again soon.

4. fresh granary bread & butter.

5. tonight. the sky is getting dark, i'll have to switch my light on soon. i'm torn between venturing out of the house to somewhere with actual fireworks & a bonfire, or staying high up in my room and watching the whole city sparkle. hmmm. bonfire party tomorrow night, yay!

I'm curating a sumo-themed exhibition in January 2010. Details are here: http://marinaomi.com/callforart.html

Yeah!

writing from an internet cafe right now in barcelona.... warning to the men and squirmish women out there that there is some personal women business included.

so, i had a bit of weirdness because as of yesterday my period was officially more than 8 weeks late. which of course = missing two periods in a row. i´ve been keeping track since i went off hormonal birth control just out of interest and because i thought it might be helpful to have a sense of my natural cycle when we return and are ready to start trying for baby time. so, i have always been within a week of a 28 day cycle - it took about 6 weeks for my period to come when i first went off bc and i had one 3 week cycle and one 5 week cycle and otherwise have been within a day or two of 4 weeks. so this 8 weeks and 1 day thing suddenly seemed like something i should think about. so we decided that i should take a pregnancy test and talked about what would happen if i was pregnant. by the end of the talk we decided we would literally be equally happy either way. if yes - baby! but no more trip. if no -trip!!! duh. and baby later. and it turned into hilarity when i made our friends who live (some were visiting but used to live) in barcelona help me buy the test at the pharmacy last night when we were already hours into drinking (nothing like a posse of people i had met only hours earlier buying a pregnancy test with me) and all night as i drank they discussed my poor unborn baby and if a drunken seal breaking pee at 12:01 counts as a first morning urine.

anyhow, it was weird because even though i really knew i wasn´t pregnant- like i hadn´t even been thinking about it as a possibility or worrying about it (alcohol consumption ahem) - suddenly when i had the thought i might be and said it out loud to ian, it was all i could really think about. and i had to wait for my first morning urine to test.

so, we were down to the details - like how we would call todd (our friend and ian´s last supervisor who has been trying to get me to get pregnant for a year so ian wouldn´t leave/would come back) about how fast ian could get his job back and swear him to serious secrecy and about telling my family when we were in the states next week and getting our money back via our insurance for the rest of the trip and how ian might have to go to our friends´ wedding in australia in april without me and how sad it would be to not get our two months in tel aviv with emily and how we were glad that it would be now and not before we got to at least do the camel trek and europe.... etc etc.

anyhow, clearly i am not pregnant or that would have been a different blog post (actually it wouldn´t have been a blog post, it would be a crazy secret). but it was weird because even though we agreed we were happy to be and happy to not be (for different reasons, each) when i couldn´t sleep last night the last thing i remember thinking was something along the lines "please be yes please be yes".

so, ok. what does that mean? nothing really. i am super excited to finish the rest of our trip. but it also shows that in a moment of truth we were both willing to be happy to give up the rest of the trip to go home and have a baby. and that deep down in a moment of real truth, i was choosing that if given the choice. just sort of an intense moment for me.

anyhow, it´s nothing to worry about. i´m not depressed or feeling sad or worried about the rest of the travel. i am still a little worried about NOT being able to get pregnant when i want to. i am a little concerned about what the 2 missed periods does mean and am hoping it´s just a quirk of travel and not something that´ll mean a hard time when we´re actually trying to get pregnant. and i´m a little sad like a little bit i lost a potential baby.

and i am also acknowledging that we´re in weird point of the travel. we´re nearing the end of europe and about to be ¨"home" for a couple of weeks. i´m REALLY excited for the wedding and to see my family. and maybe that´s because when life is vacation (or at least travel) the
not travel part is exciting like vacation usually is when life is work and normalness. and also it´s easy to be excited when it´s just a stop on the way to more travel. but i think i´m a little road weary at the moment. which is and was bound to happen. i look forward to the rest of the trip which´ll be a little less frequently moving around. i also think morocco was a really intense part of the trip, so ajusting back to europe is weird.... especially this particular europe. granada was easy and great and a perfect transition. quiet and quirky and beautiful and peaceful and fun and unique. but barcelona is so sort of american. i mean it´s not. but it´s full of like fancy shops and tourist trap restaurants and young backpackers everywhere getting drunk and lookin´ for love. it´s charming and i really like it, but i would have liked it more before the week in the desert with just ian and two berbers and sleeping under the stars.

so maybe i´m going through now what i was sort of prepared to maybe go through when i was back in florida for three weeks. a sort of ajustment period to "real life" after intense travel. but the truth is florida is going to be a really happy time for my family and like i said above a nice break from travel, but also just a stop on the way. it´s not going to be like when i return to san francisco in july - a real true lifestyle ajustment. so maybe this time in this genre of europe is more of that ajustment after the intenseness of our morocco experience.

and i do have a long post i will post eventually about the moroccan experience but i am waiting until i am reunited with my computer so i can post the pictures along with the post.

so, that´s that. an update on the life and times of moi...

we´re about to siesta and then hit the picasso museum if it´s not too crowded. the city is really busy this weekend so we may just lay low and do the touristy things we want to do during the week and hide out in a out of the way cafe and read today. we shall see.

hope you are all smiling.