Planned Obsolescence.

I'm learning a lot while I'm in Provo. Someone came back to Ender's place for a date and said, "I really need to DTR with that girl." Puzzled, I asked the obvious: What's DTR?

Determine The Relationship.

The next day I asked my friend Emma for some other choice acronyms, and she pointed out EC, which stands for Eternal Companion and NCMO (pronounced Nic-Mo), which is Non-Comittal Makeout. As in, we're making out, but it doesn't mean anything. As in, "I think we need a DTR, that was our third NCMO."

Everyone in Provo has their own language for dating, and dating is all about looking for who you will marry. Marriage is on everyone's mind. Dating and the church, as evidenced by this:

The world of Provo is something I only dip into on the weekends, though - all I get to see is the whirlwind of frozen yogurt trips, viewings of Legally Blonde and bike rides to nowhere. I sleep in my terrible cave on the weekends, where my housemates play their instruments loudly into the AM, editing their covers of popular songs to get rid of the sex and swearing.

It's hard for me to explain Provo, except that there is more space than I am used to - space between houses, space on the road, space in restaurants. It makes me feel like I am always early to the party after the constant crowd of San Francisco.

I think I like the road quite a bit more, where road trip songs are taking on new meanings, and we blast This American Life, stand-up comedians, rock and hip hop as we drive from oil well to oil well, conquering the nearly bare ground with our blue dye.

Ender's brother Shawn has joined us, intent on making money for both his grad trip to the Czech Republic and his new baby Phoebe:

There he is with a horny toad we found and named Rocky while we were spraying a vicious little bit of Utah wild called "The Right of Way," or "the Pipeline." It's a gorgeous bit of backwoods Utah cut right into the hills and mountains, but it's a pain - we fill up uncomfortable, thin-strapped backpacks with our broad-leaf killer and hike with an eye out for thistle and tiny yellow flowers; noxious plants that threaten the gas (I assume its gas) pipeline. When we're empty, we trek back to fill our packs, then hike back to where we were.The pumps are hand powered and vaguely like the Ghostbuster proton packs.

Luckily, for the next week, we are truck bound in and around the wild sage of Vernal, amongst mosquito-ridden oil wells. Here's a full view of our truck:

That truck got us into trouble yesterday, when I was driving us home for the weekend and the accelerator pedal decided to suddenly go into cruise control. This is a feature not actually included on this particular Dodge, so I fought the acceleration in a scary bit of downhill valley, looking in vain for a shoulder to pull off on. When we did, we could only get down to the 10 mph in the shuddering car, both my feet on the brake while Ender turned the key to off. The brakes smoked and our hearts returned to normal just outside Heber City, a happening place with an Arby's and not much else. The car is still there, to be fixed on the weekend, ready for our return this coming Monday.

There is no such thing as a normal day in this new life that I've chosen. Every week is something new and strange, be it the extended stay hotel in Vernal where Shawn, Ender and I watch Arrested Development and Hey Arnold, the wild pipeline with its lizards and Subway sandwich breaks, or the oil wells where a bad wind could make us quit for the day:

That's Ender with a neat little gadget, measuring the wind, trying to determine whether it is safe to spray chemical from the back of the trucks. The only thing that's constant is our plaid shirts and sunscreen, a constant question of where we are going to eat (we've got to look forward to something) and sleeping like a stone.

Next post: San Francisco, I Miss You.

I can't watch that one, I don't know where to skip.

So here we are. I have moved in. I have maps of the world and the fifty states up on opposite walls, I have my magnetic poetry calendar next to me with the nonsense: "summer light is never magic it is a ghostly memory of an apple" still in position. I wrote that in San Francisco one morning, with the idea that I could do one every morning and put them on Twitter. I can't really do that here, since during the week I am in places like these:

That is an oil well. We also spent three days at gas compression sites. The job is like this: Ender and I drive around in a giant Dodge truck with a 300 gallon tank in the back that can spray twenty feet left to right off the back. We drive around as much as we can, spraying where we have been, marking the territory with blue dye and ground sterilization chemical. The reason? Places like this can't have weeds. They are a fire hazard. So we come, with our hard hats and our safety goggles and our workman's boots and we spray. When we can't get to it with the truck (in between equipment, too close to other Dodge trucks) we go at it with spray units that are also attached to the back of the truck with fifty foot hoses.

It's a weird job. But you can do it with iPod earbuds in, so it's not a bad one. Even with my hands lightly blue and my clothes sticking to my body from the heat, and hunger pangs from bad planning, a lot of it is listening to music in an air conditioned car with one of my oldest and best friends, talking about life and seeing country that I have never seen before.

There are unexpected perks too, like spending the last week in a giant cabin with six rooms and a cannon downstairs. My room had a spa bath, and the stairs leading there had a taxidermy pheasant. It was a mixture of bizarre and homey, and they walked the line like pros.

When I'm not doing that, I live in this house. Please do not look too closely at it.

Honestly though, I'm glad I'm here. I have serious homesickness for San Francisco and the life I used to lead, one without restrictions and such, but in the mean time I am getting used to the idea that not all space between buildings have to be filled, and the view from the cab of a truck can be mighty pretty.

That's Ender, in case you didn't know. Look closely at his shirt. He's missing a lot of buttons.

Next on this blog: what I miss about San Francisco, Provo is weird, and maybe the first chapter of the book that I'll never write about this.

chiquitita.

Ender and I listened to some Abba in the truck today, but not enough.

We drove three hours or so to find safety goggles, a hard hat, and coveralls for me. Oh! And we bought workman's boots, which feel weird on my feet. I guess that's because I am not used to real work. And then we got super lost for a while, and then it turns out it was too windy to spray anyway.

So. Nine hours of work, and most of it (all of it?) was spent catching up, eating Subway sandwiches, and listening to a mix of Abba, Spoon, The Faint, and Chuck Klosterman talking about Abba. Not too bad. Apparently, next week, we will be driving that same truck, doing the same thing, but in Wyoming probably.

Utah is strange, but not in a bad way. I feel like a foreigner. People ride their motorcycles without helmets here, because it's legal.

they sell hearts in provo.

I am sitting in a mound of detritus, trying to decide how many t-shirts I am going to allow myself, hoping that I am going to be able to fit books somewhere into this sad picture of packing me into a suitcase. When did I acquire so much stuff? Why is it so hard for me to pack without getting super, super distracted?

I have a feeling I am going to be packing early tomorrow morning, hoping that the frenzy of having to be done will make some of these decisions easier. But I also have to get rid of a futon bed and a black side table, and get to Oakland with this monolith of a suitcase, so that would constitute incredibly poor planning.

Blah. I hate packing. I'm looking forward to being done, though, because it means that I will have simplified, and isn't that what Thoreau wanted?

The last time I traveled with this suitcase, it was through the London underground, and I had way more strapped to my back and another bag on top of the suitcase. This is going to be way easier. That's going to have to be my mantra.

Okay, back to the grind.

Good evening.

How good of you to join me.

I am jet-setting again soon. I am going to Provo, Utah, to work at killing unwanted weeds in the hot sun with Ender. We are also, presumably, going to write music and hang out.

So I think it might be time to resurrect this space.

I'll miss San Francisco, and I think I'll devote my next post to that.

See you all soon.

indecision brings no joy.

Hi there!

I am no longer updating this blog, at least, not until I travel again. I know I left it with the cliffhanger that I WOULD update it, but I won't.

Readers rejoice, though! I have a new blog.

somethingsyoucouldknow.blogspot.com

There are five new posts for you to read over there. Enjoy!

the day you move, I'm probably gonna explode.

I'm in Brighton.

I realized I promised many things in my last post, promises I will not be able to keep. My computer is packed away, the computer cords are packed away in another place, my computer charger is packed in still one other place. So... Pictures will have to appear when I return to the states. Many apologies, darlings.

The last couple days at UEA and MCC and Norwich were lovely. We reminisced, we partied. We danced, we cooked. We took pictures and went out to dinner and out to breakfast. We turned flat one into a dance floor, flat four into a mess hall. I had a final cocktail at the Birdcage, my favorite pub. Joseph and I had a filling meal together at the Bell Hotel. I had planned to see a movie at Cinema City, a wonderful movie theater, but it fell through. We shopped. We had hot chocolate. I watched folks ice skate. I turned in my final assignments.

One final night at the UEA club was spent watching the Vengaboys, bumping cars on the dodge 'ems, getting twisted on the Twister. I had a vodka red bull, which happened to be just as bad idea as I imagined. Almost everyone from MCC went together, and I saw people from my courses and my clubs and we danced, and we shook, and we stomped. We sang along and clapped.

I kind of felt like it was the end of days, like we were dancing and eating and looking and hugging and crying as though this was it, the world was ending, goodbye earth, goodbye moon, goodbye stars. Of course it's a much nicer reality than that - as I was packing things haphazardly into my suitcase, saying goodbye to people and feeling a tightness in my stomach and in my throat, people were coming in to say goodbye, to gasp at my barren walls, to take final pictures... but it never felt final. At first I imagined it was because I didn't want to leave, didn't want to deal with the reality that everything was ending... but to be truthful, it's because I know I will see these people again. Patrick is easy, he's in San Diego. Jack and Joe have a year abroad, both of them near northern California. Alice loves traveling, I'm sure we could backpack someplace together. Hannah promised she'll teach me how she dances. Joseph is a SoCal kid at heart, he just has to come and visit me to realize how much he needs the sand and sun to live. All these lovely folks are not relegated to this period in my life. I am a good letter writer, a good facebook messager, a good email-er.

I am going to keep in touch.

But now I'm in Brighton with Joseph, spending our time walking through the shops but not buying anything, drinking mulled wine, being cooked for by his parents who are incredibly nice to me. It's making me very homesick. I want my parents. I want my home. I want mulled wine in my city... although I think I will have to make it somehow.

Home soon, and I doubt I will post before then. But good news... I'm going to keep this blog.