Driving to D.C.

It’s been a long time since I last posted. Everything is still relatively on track. Mia is running alright. The truly hilarious thing about the whole car repair situation is that it will be repeated once more. About a month after I got Mia back in my care I received a letter from Kia stating that my subframe was being recalled due to road salt deterioration. Ya think? Anyway, Mia has been taken to the doctor once again and will get a completely new subframe. And, I have sent in paperwork to get reimbursed for the other repair. I’m on a waiting list on both accounts to get this resolved. I prefer to look at this as a win win situation. I get a new subframe and I get my money back – I hope.

Knowing that my car is probably not the best to drive on long distances Alejandro and I chose to drive his car to Washington DC for vacation the first week of July. We debated about which city would be the most entertaining to visit that week. We had three options. We would take our passports and check out Toronto, a ten hour drive, or drive to St. Louis, a four hour drive, and Washington D.C., a ten hour drive. The appeal of crossing the border into Canada was quite strong. I asked Alejandro a week or two before we left which city he was most interested in going to and his answer was Toronto. We started our planning for the trip and I just couldn’t get the nagging thoughts out of my head that I have always wanted t o go to D.C. and it would be great to do that near Independence Day. So, we went.

It was a long drive, but we got to drive around a few more states than we had before. Alejandro’s car didn’t like the mountains of West Virginia or Maryland too much, but we got there. It was great to make the drive into D.C. and drive past CIA Headquarters, the Pentagon, Arlington National Cemetery, and other monuments. It felt like all of a sudden the pictures that I already had in my head began to be connected to one another.

We set-up shop in the Capitol Hill Suites, next to the Library of Congress and a couple blocks away from The Capitol building. We fit so snugly into the townhomes and the historical buildings that it was easy to imagine living in the area. For the next few days we walked, took the Metro, and drove to several of the sights. D.C. and its surrounding areas have an interesting character.

One of the things I noticed that wasn’t too surprising was the nature of the vehicles we saw most often. Especially around the CIA Headquarters and the Pentagon there were quite a few four door sedans that were practical, non-descript, and slightly expensive. Sometimes stereotypes are true. It made me re-kindle my love for the BMW. I’m sorry to say that Mia is a cheap version of the BMW and I lust for the real thing, among other cars of course.

Spy fantasies aside, it was a good trip. We drove back on July 3rd to be here in time for the family get together at my brother’s house. It was a rainy holiday, but we managed to blow a few things up by the time the weekend was over and it was good to see everyone. And now we must plan for our next vacation ….

The Track, Part III

It’s been about three weeks since I took my little Mia the Kia in to get some much needed life support. Since then 33 cars and drivers have qualified for the Indianapolis 500 mile race. This weekend hundreds of thousands of people will pour into the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to drink, eat, bake in the sun, and pack into hot, hard bleacher seats like sardines all for the “love” of Indycar racing. Does that sound like fun?

Since I have made this trip to the Speedway track many times I can’t say that it is exactly the most fun thing to be a part of, but old traditions die hard. I was going to go to the track today to witness the Carburation Day festivities, but even my Dad, the biggest Indycar racing fan I know, is bailing out on this day too. So, this morning I slept in ‘til 8:00, woke up, surfed the net, and finished reading a book. It’s a far better pastime than plopping my butt onto a hot, hard bleacher and getting a sun burn watching a couple cars zip past me over and over again.

Over the years I have come to understand that it is not the cars or even the race itself that makes a person want to go to this place. It’s the people. When you walk in to the 2.5 mile round arena that is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway you are thrust into a community that is larger than what you have experienced before. Several hundred thousand people all gathered in one spot to share the same experience gives you an awesome energy rush.

Once you take a seat on one of those hot, hard bleacher seats you need only look around you at the human eye candy to see just how small or large your existence is. If you look off into the distance and see masses of people rising, falling, and milling about like ants making honey you realize just how small and insignificant the life of an individual can be. However, if you look closer you can see perhaps a driver in the race, a white collar business man with an expensive beer in hand, or the roofer with his shirt off and sweat glistening off his deeply tanned back. The track becomes a place where you can disappear, imagine a different life, or simply celebrate a life through one of the largest communal activities known to man. It’s a place to reflect.

However, today I chose to reflect on life in a different way. I checked Mia out of the hospital yesterday and we are going to have some alone time this afternoon to get reacquainted with ourselves and one another. Ahhhh! Happy travels lie ahead ….

The Track, Part II

I was going to make a larger than usual payment on my credit card this month. It’s a three paycheck month and I didn’t have any other big expenses to deal with. I was so excited. The idea of being able to get even further ahead on my debt payoff schedule makes me, hmm, not happy, but fervently anxious. As it is, my schedule right now is about 8 months ahead of where I originally planned it. Not bad. But, it’s still not fast enough for me.

Why am I doing this at an accelerated pace you ask? I want a house. I want to diversify my investment portfolio and live someplace that doesn’t share walls with the neighbors. I can’t even begin to save for a house until I have paid down some of my debt.

Getting rid of debt and buying a house is like a car race. First, you must qualify for the race. I’m still in the qualifying stage. Like most rookies I am still learning how to deal with setbacks. This month my car has broken down and it is currently getting the attention it needs to survive hopefully another year or two. I need it to survive. Buying a new car is not a good option for someone who has a decent debt load and wants to get into the real estate circuit. So, I’ll get the most mileage that I can from this car.

I have a good track record though. My credit history is good and all I really need is a down payment. Once a chunk of the debt has been paid off I will begin saving for the house with Alejandro. If all goes well, we will be searching for sponsorship that will help us get a good home at the end of 2010 or 2011.

Probably the biggest challenge I am likely to face in the coming years of this race is to think about the long term. I was raised in an environment that thought only of the short term. However, somehow I have learned to dream further and think about how to travel farther. Let’s hope we make it to the finish line.

The Track

I’m on track to get back to travelling, but it’s going to be a long road to get there. For the past two weeks I’ve been carpooling with Alejandro. It’s been a little exhausting. At the end of April I began noticing that my tires were squealing in turns where they shouldn’t squeal. Alejandro thought it might be the alignment seeing as how I have never knowingly had an alignment service performed on my car. Deep down though, I thought it might be something else.

Sure enough, it was something else. I took my little Mia, the Kia Optima, to the doctor and found out that the “subframe” was rusted out and on the verge of splitting in two. It was just a tad dangerous to drive, even though the doctor is not “authorized” to use that word. To be honest, I don’t quite know what a “subframe” is, but I do know that a picture frame is pretty much a square and protects the structure of a picture. So, it’s a pretty good guess that a “subframe” is pretty vital to the well-being of a car.

Seeing as how my little Mia has been through so many accidents since she was born in 2001 I thought it might be time to put her to rest. But, I’m not quite willing to add a car payment to my list of monthly bills. So, we googled the “Kia Optima Subframe” and voila, we have a used part and a doctor who is willing to perform transplant surgery. After shipping the subframe to Indy and acquiring a couple other parts I should have Mia back by the middle of next week I hope.

In the meantime, I must suffer the strain of getting up before dawn to travel with Alejandro to work before going to my job for a long ten hour work day. My body aches from lack of sleep and I’m grumpy because I am working extra hard to get major projects off the ground at the library. Stay tuned for more venting ….

The List

About a week ago I remembered a list I had made long ago of the things that I wanted to do before I died. I found it. It’s a bit amusing to be honest. I made the list while still a virgin and most likely fresh out of high school or soon to be.

I wrote that I wanted to do such things as naturally, have sex (as all teens want to do), but also I wrote down simple, less complicated things like riding a roller coaster or go to Jazzfest. I’ve done all of those things now, but there are still several that I still want to do and a few that I don’t have an interest in anymore.

My list looks a little bit like this now:

Run the Mini-Marathon
Skydive
White Water Raft
Scuba Dive
Go Sailing
Fly A Plane
Make Photographs in a Dark Room
Kayak or Canoe Alone
Go Dancing with Alejandro
Go on Picnics
Travel to Many Places
Learn Gardening with Patience
Learn to Cook with Patience
Go to Disneyworld
Take Part in Mardi Gras
Go to the Theatre
Experience a Hurricane
Go Storm Chasing
Drive Across Country
Experience Weightlessness
Ride the Bicycle Again
Write a Newspaper Article
Learn A Self Defense Philosophy
Get Married
Buy A House
Have Babies
Adopt Children
Adopt More Animals
Start A Business
Write in Different Formats
Learn Spanish and Italian
Learn How to Make Pottery
Learn How to Make Baskets
Paint
Knit Scarves

It’s a long list, but I know I’m not done adding things to it. I don’t know why I am alive or why I will some day die, but I do know that I will make the best of the life that I have.

What's the point?

I have lived my life reading book after book and seeing movie after movie and the one thing that has remained constant is that there is always a beginning, middle, and an end to every story. Every struggle needs a conclusion and every story needs a beginning. In the past couple days I have had one question in my mind – what is the point of living and dying?

My Papaw has decided that it is time to die after struggling with a number of ailments in these past few years. The dialysis that has been allowing him to live is something he no longer wants to do. So, now we must say goodbye and let his journey come to an end. Why? What’s the point of living if you are only going to die in the end anyway? Why do we struggle to learn, work, make money so that we can feed ourselves and maybe have a little fun if our end is already written before the beginning has even begun? Why must all good things come to an end? What’s the point of the end?

I asked this question of Alejandro and he didn’t have an answer that I could accept. That’s ok. I don’t think anyone has found the answer to this question – at least not completely. Some may say it is the middle of the story that makes the end meaningful. I cannot deny that living a life masks the pointlessness of the end a little bit, but I still do not understand the point of death.

Why does there have to be a point?

The Indiana Mask

As I look out my window I can see a winter wonderland of white floating down to the ground. I love snow drifts when they’re perfectly formed and untainted by car tires, plows, or the muck of activity. In the past weeks I have enjoyed the simple sites of bird or cat footprints in the fresh snow. Today we have accumulated far more inches than we have all winter. Finally! It’s not winter in Indiana until you have a big snow storm.

The snow is coming a bit late though and this morning I have found myself browsing online for Spring clothing. I saw a few pictures of new outfits with a tropical backdrop and was reminded of Costa Rica once again.

How can you forget a place like this? It is so naturally beautiful with plant and wildlife that it needs nothing to dress it up. One of the first things I noticed when I returned to Indiana was how much we decorate and landscape our lives in the United States. When Alejandro and I first stepped into our apartment after the trip I felt a bit strange. I have a nicely decorated apartment, but I don’t really “need” all of the decoration.

I noticed this even more the day after we returned and visited a doctor to check up on an eye infection I contracted in Costa Rica. The hospital and doctors office was painted with soothing tones and had comforting stale pictures on the walls. It was all designed to make the patient feel comfortable when they’re really not. I had the same exact eye appointment in Costa Rica in a simple building with no soothing paint and art on the walls – and it was cheaper.

We’ve been back from Costa Rica now for about 4 weeks and I still feel like I must return. We weren’t there long enough. I was there long enough to realize that the people of the United States spend far more time and energy trying to create false ideas of comfort than they do actually enjoying and participating in raw reality. However, I haven’t figured out how to break myself out of that false sense of comfort. In fact, I’m part of the engine that creates it.

I like the mask, but I think I need to take it off. Until I can figure out how to do that I guess I’ll enjoy the site of snow covering the harsh cold turf and think about my next excursion beyond the US border.

2009 Goals

I hate making resolutions. It's my feeling that when you make flippant New Year's Resolutions they rarely ever come to fruition. So, I make a list of goals. I rarely ever achieve all of them, but at least I accomplish some of them. My list of things to do includes:

Class 1 Priority:
Pay Down Debt
Get Extra Cash
Write More
Increase Technology Skills
Save For House (Be ready to do so by 2010)
Learn Spanish
Learn and Make New Recipes
Go to Chicago with Mom
Do Family Tree Book

Class 2 Priority:
Decrease Waist Size
Volunteer Somewhere
Take an Arts Class

Class 3 Priority:
Go To Costa Rica
Marathon
Go to Las Vegas
Go to Rome
Dance Lessons
Knit a Scarf

I'm trying to rank them so that I know what is most important. As I was looking at the list I was trying to figure out how I can kill two or three birds with one stone. For instance, I want to learn Spanish, volunteer somewhere, and go to Costa Rica again. If I volunteer in Costa Rica I can learn more Spanish. I need to think more on this. Obviously, the most important goals are money related. I need to figure out how to pay down debt quicker than what I currently can. Any suggestions?

Water Pressure

It’s been a week since I returned from Costa Rica for the second time. Apparently there was an earthquake there early this morning near Volcan Poas. I wonder what sort of terrors I would be putting my brain through if it had happened a week ago on the day we left. We still don’t know what the impact has been on the family. I hope we will hear soon.

One of the first things I noticed about Indiana and the United States after we came back is that the water pressure is too freakin’ hard here. I got used to low water pressure and actually appreciate it now. Costa Rica is not very good on the plumbing side of things, and perhaps to its benefit. The morning after we got back I stepped into the shower, turned on the water, and got scalded with a blast of hot water. I used to like the hot and fast water stream. I suppose I still do like the warmth that eases me into the morning, but damn it’s hard. There’s no reason why we need that much water streaming out of a faucet for a single shower.

Conservation is one of the main selling points about Costa Rica. Eco-friendliness is what makes the country so beautiful and popular with tourists. As long as you are comfortable with being gluttonous with exploring the beauty of the region you can tolerate some of the differences in every day plumbing practices. For instance, in the United States, when you flush in a public place, if you aren’t throwing any paper in the toilet you are probably not a citizen. In Costa Rica you can expect to see a trash can in your bathroom to collect the unmentionable paper. It keeps the water more “organic”. This is a tough practice to follow when you have been trained to discard in the swirly pool. I’ll admit that I was forgetful a few times, but I tried to follow the rules. Thank God I didn’t cause a clog – to my knowledge.

This time around I was less shocked/scared/anxiety riddled about being in a different culture. I’ve started to understand the method to the madness a little more. I’ll talk more on this later. But, I miss my growing family and hope I see them all again soon.