Travel Bug

I. Love. To. Travel.

I love road trips - whether I'm driving or not. Sitting in the car, watching the road unfold ahead. Making the perfect playlist, or being pleasantly surprised when shuffle seems to know exactly what you want to hear. Group road rage, ogling the cuties in the next car, running out of gas on a back road in a strange town the morning of the first day of classes.

I love train trips - the slow rumble as the train gets started. Men helping little old ladies push their oversize suitcases into the overhead racks. Watching the scenery fly by to the rhythm of the turning wheels. Ticket punchers and the clothes the conductors wear.

I love plane trips - passport stamps. Butterflies in my stomach as the plane takes off. Flight attendants giving us knowing looks as we order gin and tonics, and telling us to take it easy. The moment when you step outside the airport and are officially in a whole new world.

I love bus trips - three friends crowded together on uncomfortable seats, but happy just to be together. Sprinting across lanes of traffic to arrive, gasping, at the last minute before the bus leaves. "You people from Albany be getting lucky," says the bus driver, grinning.

I want to say I love boat trips but I've never taken one, unless the 18 minute trip from one end of the Head of the Charles course to the other end counts.

Travel is clearly my favorite thing. I don't care if its driving from Albany to Boston, taking the Metro North from Poughkeepsie to New York, or Flying from JFK to Paris, Brazil, or China. I love everything about it, even the obnoxious lines at airports, uncooperative bus attendants, and unforeseen car problems that even stump the two state troopers who pull over to see what the hell is going on.

In my 22 years of live I've been to Salvador da Bahia, Brazil; Qingdao, Beijing, and Shanghai, China; Paris, France; Dublin, Ireland; Florence, Italy; Montreal, Canada (four times in one month...an excessive number of middle school field trips); Tijuana, Mexico, and several of the united states. I also transferred planes in a German airport once. I love all the places I've been and am thankful I got to experience them because they have changed me and molded me in ways I cant even explain. I know things about myself that I wouldnt know otherwise. For example, I am a city girl. I need to live in a city, full stop. I also know that if I can figure things out in a city where i a) know nobody, b) have zero language skills, or c) all of the above, I will be fine anywhere. It's a real confidence boost.

There will absolutely be more to come on this topic, but for now...

Sweet Tooth Blues

I decided last night to give up sugar. Not permanently, just to see what life is like without it. I'm so used to sprinkling the sweet white flakes into beverages and onto food, its become a reflex. The sugar canister is never empty. I put at least one (heaping) teaspoon of sugar in each of my morning cups of coffee. I love cookies and chocolate and pretty much any kind of sugar coated sugar dipped in sugar. I eat so much sugar that my teeth have been passing around a petition. So, to give my pearly whites a break, and to test my own willpower, I'm giving up the white powder for an indefinite period of time. Now, I'm not one to go cold turkey. I've never really been addicted to anything except books...and coffee...and, uh, sugar...um. But I think a series of cutbacks is best. For example, starting this morning - no sugar in my coffee. I think this was by far the biggest hurdle. Before this morning I had never even TASTED coffee without sugar. It's not bad. I think it'll grow on me. So this weeks task is to not ADD sugar to anything. I'm also trying to calm down with the sugary beverages (I'm looking at you, soda) and staying farrrr away from splenda, aspartame, etc. Yick.

How fast do the sugar cravings stop? Well at lunch, I was eating a banana, and it tasted sweeter than usual. Deliciously sweet. Because there was no sweet competition, except my snapple (I couldn't bring myself to pay two dollars for a bottle of water. This is Albany, not Manhattan.) the banana was better. I like it. Let's keep it going. I looked at our box of kettle corn...zero sugar. Miracle? Also this vodka tonic. Well done, vodka. Well done, tonic water.

That's all for now. Just trying to make my dentist proud!

The World Is Too Much with Us

I think I'll start this fresh, brand new blog with a poem. Not being a 'poetry person' I recently picked up a book called "The 100 Best Poems Of All Time" - I like it because of its ballsy title. The editor, Leslie Pockell, keeps it real by telling us that she is not the last word on best poems, obviously, and that everyone has their own opinion. Anyway here is my current favorite, by William Wordsworth.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

I read this poem on my lunch break, and then read it again, and then a third time. This is unusual for me - poetry tends to make me roll my eyes. Or maybe just high school English class poetry made me roll my eyes? I know I breezed through it in college. But something made me pick up this book of poetry and I like where it's taking me.