Going home...

Home. Isn't that a funny concept? It can be a location but mostly it's a feeling. A feeling of warmth, comfort, ease and relaxation. That's where I'm going. Back to where I can be myself. Back to where I grew up and know that people there understand my sense of humor, the way I form a sentence and the sarcastic way I say and do things. Home is being understood by those around you. Home to me is Brooklyn. Where I lived for most of my life. Where I will go back to one day if it will have me. Where I can wander about and find things and do things and know how to get there and know what I'm doing there.

I don't feel pressured or out of sorts. That's what it is all about. Feeling at home in a place and with yourself. That's home.

Random Thoughts and Progressions

So I'm looking forward to my next few days off. I have come to this point in my life where I revel in the freedom I once longed for. I knew it was in my grasp and I fought hard to get there. Here it is. I feel vindicated. Is that the right word? Validated. Is that the right word?

Time off is a treasured thing. I want to focus my life on how to enjoy it most and maximize the time spent. What a novel concept for me. I still feel like I am contributing to the world at large but still can enjoy the time away doing what inspires me or being creative when I feel I can not be in my job. Some day I will be able to join those things I think. That will be a day when I know I have come to where I want to be.

New Orleans in November

I was in New Orleans for SETAC up until this Monday. Good trip. Interesting town. I did all the touristy stuff: walked up and down Bourbon St., went on a Vampire tour, drank a hurricane (only 1/4 of it), had my share of etoufee, gumbo and a shrimp po' boy. Tasted alligator, saw an alligator and an armadillo on our airboat tour. Also got to hold a baby alligator. it's nice to do something new and different every once in a while.

Now I am back to the grind. Did I mention I really hate this time of year? Shorter days, dreary weather, lonely feling, cold, limited to indoor activities, cold, drafts, chills after I eat, dry throats, sore nose, running nose, bad hair, the list goes on and on. Can't wear short-sleeve shirts, can't wear flip flops, can't swim in the pool, can go to the beach but nothing is open if you want to go there. Just got to suffer along until the spring and then realize I am again one year older than I was.

More Intensity and Books

So I will admit I am very much absorbed into the True Blood universe. I started reading the books only a week ago and I am already on book 2: Living Dead in Dallas. Thanks Charlaine Harris for writing something I can sink my teeth into and not get bored.

As for the HBO show, I keep watching things on you tube about the characters or last night I watched this promo thing where Alan Ball gave this synopsis of the whole first season. I am completely enthralled.

Now, last week I was trying to find out what was wrong with me that I am so preoccupied with this. This week I am riding the wave. I am just enjoying the focus and fun of it all. Realizing why I am caught up is half the fun of being caught up. I just love the way Vampire Bill is devoted to Sookie. Even after she thinks she wants to be with someone else. She comes back to him. She awakens something in him he thought he lost. True Love. You can't beat that, even with a Vampire...even better with a Vampire :-)

Intensity

So I've been getting into True Blood lately. On HBO. Had not a whole lot to do last week while I was sick so I caught up on Season 1. There is something that strikes me as either really great acting, great storytelling, or great perception on my part or a combination therein about the scenes where the vampire Bill looks at Sookie. I don't know what it is but there is this amazing sense of combined devotion, love, lust, intensity I find incredibly intriguing. What is that? It makes me think of real life relationships that could have this same intensity but you would never know unless you saw a couple like this or were one of a couple like this.

I like the scenes where he tries desperately to get to her when he knows she's in danger but he is stifled by the daylight. The one episode where he foregoes holding back because it is daylight, he almost burns to a crisp to be there for Sookie. In the next scene where he is back in one piece and waiting on her door step shows what he went through just to see her. Just to be with her. This is some romanticized ideal. Perhaps that is the appeal but I can't get it out of my head what a good feeling it gives.

I like the converations they have because they stare intently at one another. I like the way Bill says Sookie's name. All of this is wrapped into a romantic idealism you don't normally see so I find it refreshing and cute.

I also saw this movie Broken English recently. An indie film with Parker Posey. She meets this French man with whom she falls in love but does not realize it until the end. She's not foolish or crazy about not knowing, just scared and hesistant. But the French guy is also intensely devoted and loving/ caring and seems to say all the right things even when he doesn't know her well and she freaks out in the middle of a cafe they stopped in.

This kind of intensity or love/devotion is rare. I like when it is portrayed on screen. It makes me want to wrap it up and put it in a nice place then pull it out and look at it just to smile and recognize it is out there.

Gowanus Canal Memories

When I was little, maybe 6-10 years old, I can remember going into Manhattan a lot to go shopping for my dad. He needed suits for teaching so we would go to SYMS which was way down at the tip of Manhattan by the Brooklyn Bridge. When we would get on the BQE I would look left to find the Statue of Liberty, way off in the distance, shining kind of light or sea mist green; always very small on the horizon. My brother would try to point out the Twin Towers to me. For the longest time I thought they were these twin smoke stacks at a processing plant. When he would point across the water to the buildings in Manhattan then I knew where they were and I would look for them each time we went into the city. Up ahead was the bridge and I would look across the water to the Manhattan skyline. I used to wonder what all those other buildings were for, who worked there, what did they do for a living? How they got to the top of their buildings. Then, when I would look to my right, as the BQE wound around toward the bridge, we would drive over a small over pass. There was a small canal (I now think this is the Gowanus Canal) that ran under another over pass for trains that was further off in the distance. I looked down at that canal and my little 6-10 year old sensibilities were appalled, even then. That canal was brown. How could anything live in that? Were there fish or anything else in there? There couldn’t have been…then, realizing that we caused that water to be brown. By running our trains over it everyday, by driving our cars across the highway all the time and by not being clean about the industrial things we did, we caused that water to be a murky, muddy mess. That couldn’t be right…it wasn’t right. And I still think it’s wrong.

That’s why I do what I do. That’s why I focus on the issues I do. That’s the reason.

Things I miss about Brooklyn...

Top ten things I miss about Brooklyn:

10) sidewalks!
9) a really good decent bagel I don't mind waiting in line for.
8) walking almost everywhere I need to go
7) Rockaway beach in the winter time
6) sarcasm understood by all; it's a sixth sense or other additional language in Brooklyn
5) efficiency on getting around on the subway
4) real snow, less humidity
3) awesome restaurants, culture
2) The aquarium for wildlfie conservation, the Brooklyn botanic garden
1) feeling like I am home

It took me 45 seconds to make this list. Maybe I should move?

Blog Envy

I admittedly have blog envy. I read a few blogs a day from Brooklyn and Paris, France (I can explain that one in another post) and they all write so well, so clever, so witty. I guess they can do this because they are writers. Me, I am just a lowly biologist...not known for eloquent prose in our profession.

Stories are weaved so well, little anecdotes are told as if you are standing right there listening to them tell it. A few I read I can't wait for the next post. What the heck is wrong with me?

Boredom, I think. If I had more of a life and were actually busy at work and not procrastinating, I would never think to blog. Yet here I sit, trying to be as clever and as interesting when all I can come up with to write about are my short-comings in blog-writing.

Just wait until I start writing about fish reproduction and the chemicals in the environment that cause male fish to become female!

7th between Madison and Jefferson

So I had to share this because it was so funny that it happened in the middle of the mall in Washington, D.C. You know the place that is swarming with tourists year round, the place in between our nation's capital building and the monument for our first president of the U.S.?

So I get on this great commuter bus that takes me home everyday, back to the confines of suburbia. It picks me up near work, makes a few more stops near the mall and then heads on out of DC. So, our bus is turning onto 7th street from Constitution Ave. This is a major street. Lots of pedestrian traffic and cars as well.

Anyway, so I like to look out the window before I promptly pass out and try to let the long day drift behind me when I notice a few tourists standing waiting for the light to change to cross 7th street, right on the mall (between Madison and Jefferson Streets, to be specific). I look closer and I see this 20-something guy standing behind his girlfriend/wife (?) with his hands placed right on her boobs. Right there in the open, right on 7th street and the mall. I cracked up. Not only were his hands strategically placed, he was fondling and squeezing. Hilarious! No one on the bus cared or saw, except me. I wonder if anyone on the mall saw? I'm sure they did.

No way could this happen in the confines of suburbia. This is pure city occurence.

Loved it. Still laughing!

Sidewalks Part I

So, let this be the first of probably many a rant about sidewalks. Cities have 'em, suburbs don't really, depending where you are and what the county wants to spend on infrastructure. When I first came to this state, from NYC, I had very little suburban exposure. "Where are the sidewalks?", I exclaimed to no one in particular every chance I could get. Why do I have to take my life in my hands everytime I want to cross the street?

Here's an example:

My freshman year at college I offered to look in on someone's dog while they were away. I decided instead of taking the bus to be dropped off after a class outing (extracurriculalr activity) and drop in on the dog that way. Well, as part of maybe another future post, the dog was not too keen on me coming into his house since stupidly the owner never introduced me to him and said (and I ") Oh, he'll be fine. Alex. The Samoyed. Samoyeds are not come-right-in-and-sit-down-you-look-tired-have-a-seat-in-my-house kind of dogs. He barked, and growled. He stood in the doorway looking mean. I put my hand out for him to smell, and he bit me. Great!

Here I am several miles from campus, bleeding. Hole in the sleeve of my cool NYC flight jacket. Damn! I have to WALK back to campus. So I head back up the main road. Guess what? No sidewalks!!!

Not only was I bleeding from my hand but I had to risk my life on the road side of route 1 near dusk, not very visible to cars on the road, in my green NYC cool flight jacket (thinking back I should have turned it inside out, it was safety orange on the inside :-). Lots of cars flashed their lights at me, yeah yeah I know, but well I don't have a car, I ain't waiting for a bus and I can't call anyone since in 1992 the only people with cell phones were doctors and drug dealers. So I plodded on...for about 2.5 miles...in the dark.

Anyway, I trekked back to campus, stopping first at the local bar, the first and only time I ever went into this happening college hang out, to wash my hand and clean my wound. Then I headed back up route 1 toward the health center. Luckily it was open, the dog had been vaccinated recently, and all was good.

So, the moral of the story is, put sidewalks in and I would have felt a bit more at ease with my bleeding hand while trying to get back to campus. Also, the professor who said it was okay, Alex would be fine, he's friendly? You're an idiot and no wonder you didn't get tenure.

Sushi in my backyard

We found this pretty good sushi place right near home. Just 10 min. away. Stays open late (10 pm) what could be bad? We were talking about the parents' visit this coming weekend and was reminded of foods we like to have around when they arrive. Big A suggested we get knishes. And then he wondered why we never get any around here.


That's because there was only and will ever be Mrs. Stahl's knishes in Brighton Beach which has been gone for a number of years. I found another blogger who wrote about that. A commenter mentioned it should have been illegal to tear that place down. What a shame.



That was a family outing, to Brighton Beach to pick up quality knishes. There was no other place that came close.


I miss those knishes.



But now I have sushi close by, you gotta make do.

First Post 2009

I've started blogging. I've jumped on the band wagon. Something I thought I would never do. But I did it and here I am. Stomach still gurgling from something I ate this morning, who knows what.

Apparently someone else out there has the same blog title as me. What does that blogger know about fish anyway?

This blog is about this fish (me) outta water (somewhere other than her hometown) that she misses so much she has to read other blogs about it almost daily.

I know how foreigners feel getting used to being in a place they are not used to, a language unknown to them in a different country. But I feel like a fish outta water just between two states. Two very different states. With different priorities and different ways of doing things everyday.

More on this on blog day 2!

outta here