Bhangra and the Beebs

My first official Indian train ride is going on right now. I really wish I had booked a lot earlier but there's really no way I could have so I guess I can't be too upset with myself.  Thank god for the business class upgrade at the start of the trip which equipped me with ear plugs. I wouldn't have had those (which I most definitely need) without it.

So far the noises include:

Spoiled baby who has learned that screaming gets her way no matter what.

Audio recording of said spoiled baby played on repeat by her older and equally spoiled sister every 5 seconds (literally every 5 seconds, the track goes "*squuueeeeeeea*l HAHAHAHAHAHAHA *squueeeeeeealllll* no!") over and over.

When not playing the squeal recording of her sister she has an audio clip of 6 panes of glass breaking and shattering. Which she runs up and down the aisle playing. I am certain it is 6 panes as I have heard it enough to count them.

Multiple Indian songs on iPods (which I don't mind as much)

Justin Bieber. Yes. Kill me. Someone has "baby baby" cued up as their ringtone and they get lots of calls. Lots. Of. Calls.

I'm pretty sure the spoiled girl's brothers are playing a game of "I'm not touching you" or the Hindi equivalent.

I'm in clearly a tourist row right now. To my right on the window is a German woman and to my left is an Asian man. Both around my age I think. (The two brothers are now pretty fascinated by the iPad I'm typing on. I can see them staring at it from the seats in front of me.)  Thankfully my Asian friend has a movie playing which is a bit more engaging than me typing.

I can't say I fully understand how the classes work on the train. I know there is the AC class and it's divided up into other subclasses. Then there's no AC but still ok cars also divided into sub classes and then finally the worst trains where people are just packed in. I am in the AC class all of the trips except for the longest one between Jaipur and Jaisalmer. I'm going to do my damndest to sneak into an AC car. Peter mentioned I could just bribe the ticket guy or when I find an empty bunk just lay down and "go to sleep" and they wouldn't say anything. Worst case scenario I say "I was on the waiting list and it said I got it I thought!" and they probably would just leave me.

For now this isn't so bad because the trip is fairly short and I wasn't going to sleep much anyway. I have somehow managed to eek out a little over an hour. Hopefully that will be enough to power me through the day. Once I get to the golden temple it would be pretty relaxed. Today is just take in the temple and get to the India/Pakistan border for some sort of crazy border closing celebration that happens every day.  I was hoping to find a Bhangra lesson while I'm here but since my stay in Amritsar got compressed I don't know if it'll happen. I'm going to ask when I get there.

I also hope I get a window seat next time. The best part about being on this train is watching the countryside go by. It's very obvious you're not in America and so seeing the different farms, building, etc is pretty engaging. I just wish I had a better view.

Train Troubles and Bar Training Grounds

Apparently every ticket on the Indian railway is booked at the moment. I have one last ditch hope of getting on board anything and that is the tourist office in the train station. Apparently there are a specific number of tickets in first class set aside for foreign tourists. You have to go to the actual tourist office and show your passport to get in. There's apparently still no guarantee according to the concierge who was helping me book the tickets originally but I'm going to try. If I can't do that it looks like I have to do a hire car which is going to be significantly more expensive but more convenient for sure. I still hope I can get some time on Indian trains too. That was a big part of what I imagined India to be. Lots of train travel. Here's hoping.

Yesterday we went to a party of one of Peter's acquaintances who is a British ex pat and one of the gays. So the party crowd was mixed up of people who work at various (mostly the British) consulates and the Indian boy toys they have. Everyone was very nice and I took the opportunity to try and get better at engaging strangers as Peter was up and running working the room as soon as we got there. I'm pretty terrible in bars and I figured I had no chance of ever really seeing these people again so this was a good training ground.

I ended up getting a ton of great travel advice and suggestions of some cheap and clean places to stay in Udaipur and Agra. Hooray! I also got to come across as far more interesting than I actually am because just by being white and from the US I was fascinating. So baby steps in the right direction.

Sorry, still writing in bullet points

Day 2 in Delhi

Highlights

* Slept in till about 11:30. Whoops jet lag.

* Hopped up and went to the tallest Muslim minaret in the world. Intricately carved and surrounded by ruins.

* Really noticed lots of "holy crap a white guy" stares. Even had a group of Asian basketball team ask to take my picture as they all crowded around me and cycled through who took the picture and who got to stand next to me.

* Went to the red fort where we met Vikram an American Indian on his "discover my heritage" tour.

* Vikram joined us and we all headed to the lotus temple of the Baha'i. Very beautiful grounds and interesting architecture. Sort of a Unitarian feel of a church.Actually constructed in the shape of a huge lotus. Probably my favorite temple thus far.

* Left and went to a hare Krishna temple which struck me as what Disney might make if asked to design an Indian temple. The inside was nice though and there was some live music which seems to always influence how I feel about a place.

* Had dinner at KFC (yes really) but I tried the veggie options just in the spirit of trying something new. I'm terrified of food illness and Peter and Vik have basically made me even more terrified so it's actually quite tough to find something that I can be convinced is clean and prepared properly. Krishan actually suggested it and I wasn't one to combat food that had been prepared with standards.

* Came back and chatted with Peter when he informed me that the spa was free so hopped downstairs and used the sauna for a bit and plan on going back tomorrow for maybe a scrub or an Ayurvedic treatment. We'll see.

* Tomorrow is a planning day and at dinner with Peter we'll discuss how the rest of the trip should go. Should be really beneficial. Now that I've seen exactly how much energy it's going to take out of me to get anywhere sand do anything I can modify my plans to maybe make things a bit easier. Where originally I didn't plan on going to southern India it sounds like it may be a bit more my style. It will be tough deciding which cities to shorten or skip though but I can always extend the trip.

Overall a really nice day of sightseeing and yet another dip into the kiddie pool of what will constitute living and traveling in India. The thing I've latched on to though from today was something Vik said.

"India is kind of intense. Everyone says its going to be really visceral. It's kind of like vomiting."
"Uhhhh that doesn't make India sound too appealing"
"Well no, but you feel better afterwards"

I've certainly already had some moments where I've though "Oh god what the hell are you doing?" but then we see a ridiculous sunset over a temple or end up hanging off the side of a rickshaw in terrifying traffic but feeling excited afterwards with that rush of adrenaline that I always feel good at the end of the day. India isn't (unless you have tons of money) a relax and explore trip. It's a survive and experience sort of trip. It isn't easy and it isn't for everybody but it's exciting to be taken so far out of oneself and left with almost no comfort zone at all (he says while writing on his iPad in a 5star hotel...guess I still have a little comfort zone but I do see that rapidly disappearing.). Exciting and horrific. Maybe that's what India is. Beautiful and disgusting. As soon as you think one thing of India boom it's suddenly the opposite. Tough to navigate but worth it.

(I hope.)

Delhi Day 1

Day 1 in India complete.

Total culture shock engaged.

Misc thoughts/highlights

*Its going to be weird being afraid of water. I love water and to always be thinking "oh god this could kill me" when I'm around it/drinking it/using it is totally foreign. I genuinely think this may be the toughest thing.

* I am going to get used to being dirty. While at this amazing hotel I can come inside into air conditioning and take a ridiculous shower and feel clean again but I could feel my exoskeleton of dust and city grime covering me by 5. I also have a ton of boogers and snot to cough up but have yet to get past the western politeness of not spitting or picking my nose in public. I have a suspicion (if I want to breathe) I will have to get over that.

* During rush hour breathing gets hard. I would have to stop mid breath sometimes because of the smell of exhaust or the sudden rush of gritty air.

* Despite all the negatives there are some really amazing things too that I think will really show themselves more as I get used to how things are here. Today was a lot of slack jawed staring at my new temporary Tamil travel companion Kishire shouting at rickshaw drivers,  walking into what in dc would be considered certain death traffic and smiling the whole time while commenting about how beautiful India is.

* The hotel is amazing. I'm so lucky to have a connection like this. It's been amazing to not only have a really nice hotel to transition into but even more importantly to have lucked into a guide of sorts with tons of experience and a taste for blonde men.

* Saw the India Gate, the Parliament house and Hamayun's tomb. Tomb was extremely impressive, gate and the Parliament house is sort of reminiscent of the National Mall...if it were more crowded and covered in trash. .

*Went to my first Sikh temple. You have to take of your shoes and cover your head. The outside of the temple is quite nice but the inside looked like it was covered in Christmas garland. One big perk was they gave you some free food after walking around a bit. Actually pretty yummy and hot enough that I trusted all the deadlies were cooked out of it.

*The rickshaw drivers kept trying to take us to shitty little markets because they get some rupees from the owners for dropping unsuspecting and gullible tourists off at their spot and a commission on anything we buy. I was genuinely excited to see a "market place" but none of this stuff really qualified. Lots of cheap knock offs and over pushy salesmen following the white dollars signs.

* Every shop employes about 700 people per shift. The stores almost always have more staff than customers from what I can see.One guy will open the door, one will ask you how you are, one will show you the good, one will wrap the good, one will bag the good, one will tie the bag and one will hand it to you.

* Lots of stray dogs. Watch out for rabies?

That's about it for today. I'll try to not write in bullet points as much as we move on. 

Planes, trains and autorickshaws

Jesus booking trains and planes and automobiles in India is crazy even if you have someone else to help who understands the system.

I sat up last night for about 3 hours agonizing over how long to spend in each city? Which trains to get on? Can I fall asleep long enough on that train to avoid paying for another hotel? Did that leave me enough time for the Indian cooking class I read about? Is that enough time in Amritsar to see the golden temple AND find a Bhangra class somewhere? Am I over thinking this? Oh god I'm over thinking this.

Thinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthink.

Think.

I ended up almost getting scammed at "the tourist office" yesterday. I went out and had the rickshaw take me to the tourist office which I was told was at the train station. We drove to the train station area and he pointed me into a building that matched all descriptions and titles and I hoped in. The guy ended up telling me everything was booked but he could get me in on the tourist quota but I would also have to book the hotels with him then. It immediately sounded fishy. We talked for a bit, drank some chai, he kept trying to upsell me and I got the vibe I was stuck in a con but worried I might not be able to get out of Delhi on the up and up and the price wasn't SO awful that maybe I should consider it. So I gave him my credit card which has been canceled and shock of shocks it was declined. I told him I'd have to go back to the hotel to call the bank to see what was wrong. I had to leave a deposit of about $10 to hold my spot but after some more upselling I was let out. I went back to the travel desk to check and see if the card he gave me was indeed the "tourist travel desk" and the concierge told me it was not. So thankfully I dodged that bullet but still had them on the line if I couldn't get out any other way.

Right now I'm standing in line at the ACTUAL tourist travel desk at the hotel with the travel lady who is helping a very angry Asian man cancel his flight which he is going to be late for and rebook him for a 4:30 direct flight to Goa. We made it almost ALL the way through booking my trains (she was in the last bit of her schpiel) before the guy ran up and stole her away. He was here before me apparently though so I can't be too upset. Plus it gives me time to write this. Hooray! Ill be saving quite a bit of money this way and the only downside (which is a pretty big one) is my longest train ride doesn't have AC. I'm going to try and upgrade if there are any cancellations or I may just sneak in the higher class car once tickets have been checked. Everyone will be sleeping anyway and apparently there are usually spaces because lots of places like the "tourist agency" I spoke with buy up blocks of train tickets to sell for a huge profit. If they aren't purchased they don't good Samaritan them back to the train station that's for sure so fingers crossed there will be a space for me.

Yesterday was a planning day. I sat in the business center most of the day planning things to do and where to go. It's tiring. I know that sounds so lame "oh please tell me how awful it is for you planning a trip in India from a 5-star resort" but it's draining! I think a lot of it comes from the fear of leaving this place. I will certainly not be staying anywhere this nice for the next 2 months (slash the rest of my life) and I must admit I'm a bit intimidated of really stepping out into India on my own. I'm hoping all of this planning will make a difference but Peter leads me to believe that nothing will happen as planned...we'll see what shakes out I guess. Gotta get my game face on. Do I have a game face?

A travel journal you say? Surely you kid yourself.

I just watched the last bit of the UK fade underneath the rain clouds that followed me for most of my time here. Not that it was ever too much to deal with (it just made some of the photos look a bit more dreary than they actually were). I'm now sitting in my very own aisle off the left side of the plane en route to New Delhi. All of my worldly goods have either been sold, thrown away, donated, mailed to KY or mailed (at GREAT expense) ahead of me to Sydney. I'm listening to the "Bollywood Hits" station on the plane to try and gear up. I can't help but think maybe I should listen to the "Western Hits" to hold on to that last little bit of my known world before disappearing into a culture I've only minimally experienced. One baby sits about 9 rows ahead of me but seems mildly tempered. 

I don't regret the decision to mail my laptop ahead of me in exchange for the iPad I'm writing on now but damn it I will miss a real keyboard. I should have really invested in a roll up one. Maybe I'll be able to find one in India? (Even while typing that it feels naive to even hope.) 

I have actually written a bit about my trip so far in NYC and the UK. It sits safely (if royal mail does it's job well) in my laptop which I won't have access to until I arrive in Sydney so don't be confused when this goes out of order randomly. To highlight some thoughts though:

* While I love visiting NYC and appreciate all it has to offer, I wouldn't really go out of my way to live there. I would if all signs pointed to it but as I get older I see less and less chance that the road signs will all magically turn their arrows towards the big apple. London, however I love and adore. It's everything I want NYC to be. Cultural, beautiful, exciting, clean and alive. I would eat bull testicles every day to live in London. Sadly unless the exchange rate improves I don't see that happening either. (I'd make a much stronger personal campaign to make it so in comparison to NYC.)

* I have been so lucky with this trip and can only hope my travel karma continues to hold. Through the kindness, friendship and generosity of my friends, airline workers, buskers, strangers and friends of my friends I have eaten for cheap or free, seen areas of the UK, learned about customs and history, danced, explored and traveled well out of what would be possible on my own. Nearly everyday I keep questioning if I'm making a smart choice in this trip. Is a 2 month backpacking stint the "adult thing to do" or am I throwing away everything I worked for thus far? Am I uncomfortable with the idea of stability and thus decide to throw away any hint of it when I see it appear in my life . DC was amazing to me and I will always see it as a home. Why would i leave the first place I've ever attached that label to? The way things have thus far continually fallen into place gives me the confidence that this is clearly the right thing. "Surely the universe is unfolding as it should." Stability is a bit of a myth and illusion. That sounds a bit scary but I actually find it quite liberating. Behave responsibly sure but don't be afraid to make big crazy choices, it's usually when you take a leap of faith that you land somewhere awesome. (But fuck me if that leap isn't scary.)

* I think the reflection time I'm getting is going to be great for me. I have been surrounded by amazing friends for the past 3 weeks or so and have loved traveling with all of them. To suddenly be alone is intimidating but in the couple of hours I've already done it I've found a lot of time to think and it's already yielding some fruit. I'll try and flesh out some of my thoughts here but I can't count on my success. 

Side note: I just got my airline dinner and it smells amazing. Maybe being a vegetarian for a while isn't going to be that bad. 

Well I've just laid eyes on India for the first time from the plane. Not exactly what I expected the aerial view to be (but I guess I had little expectation of something so specific anyway). At first I thought I was looking at giant mountain ranges which I guess in effect I am but then as I looked out over it it was clear this used to be covered in water. The huge shadow casting mountains used to be thousands of shores of thousands of rivers and lakes. And around all of that? Nothing as far as I could see. It looks like a pretty intimidating countryside. My auto correct first had "looks" and "looms” and I guess that's actually probably more accurate. (Sidenote: I guess this is actually how most mountains sorta "work". That used to be water and it all carved out the valleys as it dried up or ran elsewhere. I guess I've just never seen a better example of it before.)

Whenever I fly I'm always glued to the window seat as long as I can see land. It's everything in me to pull myself away to write this and I keep straining my neck back to get a new peak. Even as many times as I've flown in my life I am still filled with childlike wonder every time. On the outside I'm trying to look out the window casually as if I'm possibly thinking about something really deep or maybe settling in to nap on the window port but my inner monologue is something like this 

"Holy shit we're about to take off. I love airplanes. Oh my god look at that other airplane over there! Where'd it come from? Or is it going somewhere? Oh god oh god oh god. The baggage truck is headed over to the other terminal. Hope all those bags are...oh god we're taking off! Whoooooo! Squeeeeee! Let's see how much of this city I can see before cloud coverage takes over! Ahhhhhhh! How do we do this?!?!?! Look at that! And that! I wonder if I can see people coming out of that store if I look hard enough. *pantwheezepant*"

So back to India.  There's very little cloud coverage but definitely a haze over the country. I'll hope that that's light fluffy semitransparent nimbus clouds but I'll assume it to be smog. Still no real signs of much civilization sans the long straight lines of trains cutting through the countryside.  I just spotted my first little cluster of buildings and finally a still surviving river...which took a while to identify as it is basically the same color as the ground surrounding it. More building clusters are popping up and we're 434 miles away according to my in flight tracking screen. Hooray for palindromes!

Time to fill out my arrival card. Next time I write I'll be back underneath the clouds...of whatever they are. 

Lincoln knew what he was doing.

I shaved my beard off today.

This happens about once a year and always sort of sporadically. It’s usually because of a show/role/performance but this year it was more of a check in to see “how things were going”. I first grew my facial hair in to give myself a bit of a false definition to my chin line which for many years was not very well defined (read: nonexistent). After losing a significant amount of weight in the past year I thought it might be something to check in on to see if any of my chins had disappeared along with the other weight.

Thankfully they had done just that and I now only have one real chin rather than multiple chins all sloughed together on my neck. Now, my face is less an amorphous blob and more an actual face. Hooray for actual face.

Also, I have a bit of a confession. I’ve started putting minoxidyl (the main ingredient in rogaine) in my beard to try and fill it out a bit. Vain? Absolutely. I have always had a lot of my self image tied up in my facial hair. My beard has been a bit patchy in the past and I’ve had a couple spots where things didn’t quite connect (bridge between my moustache and goatee, sideburns on my left side, couple of larger patches on the right side) that have always bothered me. I’ve always had to grow my beard out quite a bit to mask these bearded imperfections. I’m jealous of guys who have genetically lucked into beards like this:

Perfect coverage. Full. Thick. Amazing. 

Or this:

Football beard. *grunt* 

Or definitely this:

Photo selected only to show beard fullness and for no other reason...*melt*

Lucky bearded bastards all of you. Thankfully I can grow enough facial hair for it to look right but not as much as I would want if I had my druthers.

When I was in college one of the running jokes was to give me rogaine as a present or gag gift because I was quite clearly losing my hair on the top of my head (monk’s hat style). After the obvious hilarity ensued from the initial gift I did actually use the bottles they would give me. Like they always say in the commercials/warnings the effects of Rogaine will go away when you stop using Rogaine. So while sometimes it would show some extra hair growth on the top of my head, it would go away after I ran out of the bottle. (I was a college student so I couldn’t afford to buy anymore either.) I would always apply as directed to the top of my head then it would leave some residue on my finger tips so I would rub that on the largest patchy spot under one of my 4 chins. This grew in amazingly and even after I stopped using Rogaine, it stayed on like a champ. My oval beard champion spot.

This has always made me think dreamily that maybe one day I too could have a beard like these lumberjacks. I too could posses facial hair deserving of admiration and jealousy. Little ole Strother could have a beard that could take any other beard in a cage match of beards. (Thanks “Title of Show”) I found a good batch of generic minoxodil on sale on Amazon and decided to pounce. I have now been using one bottle for the past month or so and have definitely seen some improvement. The shave was a way to take my face back to zero so I could more closely monitory my progress. It’s a lot easier to see hair follicles popping up when the beard is short/nonexistent.

Why all this devotion to facial hair? Why such a strong desire to have a thick beard? Well, it’s what I’m attracted to and with a bit of an “I’d fuck me” attitude, I want to have that same thing.

When I was in high school I grew facial hair to cover my chins and also to somehow assert my masculinity. In my tiny little small town mind, who could suspect a guy with a beard of being gay!? It just didn’t seem like it could exist in the world. (Thank God I was wrong about that.) I held on to facial hair tightly throughout high school to the point of refusing to shave at the cost of missing a performance with my choir because our director “didn’t want anyone to think I was a drug dealer”. I even came up with an elaborate hide utilizing some of Ginger’s concealer and some clear packing tape. While it fooled my director from a distance, he still refused to let me participate in the show…bastard.

My facial hair remained a huge part of who I was even after I cut off all my shoulder length hair (which was the right choice). I always feel kind of naked without at least some hair on my chinny chin chin. It's colder without it for sure because all the skin under there is not used to braving the elements. All through college and all post college I've kept my face adorned in some form of hair so that's why a shave gets such an extended post. 

I just think I look better with some facial hair. I used to wear it to hide what was underneath but now that I'm happier with all that, I wear it to enhance what's underneath. I don't look as ridiculous without facial hair as I used to but it's still not how I want to look. I used to try and hole up in my room until my facial hair grew back when I shaved, now I'm no longer at that point and I don't hate it with the same fervor. As the beard comes in a bit more I'm even finding myself happy with just some stubble, but something has to be there.

And for those who care to know, it's working. The patches get smaller and the stache gets ever closer to connecting. It won't be long before I can actually rock the elusive "monkey tail" style in all it's glory. 

Christ Blogging is Hard

Jesus. I did such a good job there for a little bit.

Apparently a hurricane and earthquake are still not motivating enough to blog about. Long story short they were both anti climactic and boring...at least here in DC. I've had all sorts of "experiences" since the last post and I've just been zapped energy wise. Also, when you fall so far behind the mountain of updates you have to do looks so daunting that you say "ahh fuck that" more often than not. I'm going to spend the next couple of hours catching up...sort of.  So I am going to grant myself amnesty from all the posts before and try and catch up a little but not kill myself over it and start anew.

Or I might spend 15 minutes trying to make this damn thing in Gimp. Writing with a track pad is hard. 

Maybe a daily recap is a bit much to ask. Still a good goal to aim for. It's probably better to expect 2-4 updates a week as far as real posts go. Maybe that'll stick...

...probably not.

Keep on dancin' till the song ends...or turn it off before it gets that far.

Being one of the gays I have a small (not-so) secret place for little miss B Spears in my heart. She is a skanky white trash hot mess but lord love her little heart I like her. Or I usually do. Her new CD is just awful and I have absolutely ZERO standard for her. Does the song make me wiggle? If the answer is yes then I consider it a win for Britney. This cd blows.

Most of the songs are boring and repetitive. The couple of singles are ok but the rest is all filler. With the exception of gasoline and brief moments of a couple of other tracks the cd is not even qualified for background music at a party because it’s all over the place. I do love the whistle-filled "I Wanna Go" and think it’s a pretty solid addition to the Spears library. THIS is what you need to crank out B. Catchy fun and danceable fluff. Don't try and transition your career to some sort of house mash up. You don't do it well. Even with (or especially with) Will.I.Am. in the studio. (Big Fat Bass is one of the top 10 worst songs ever written. I will defend that to the end. It. Is. Awful.)  "Till The World Ends" isn't bad but nothing terribly exciting and "Hold It Against Me" is lackluster. Of course, the radio has played them so much that now I do groove a bit more than when they first came out but they're flat and boring songs overall. 

I was hoping for a fun dancey album of trashy pop but what I got was an attempt by a pop star to give herself an “edge” with “house” music and “urban” beats. All of these words deserve quotation marks as she doesn’t even get close.

Buy the singles and don’t waste your time with the rest of the album. Miss Spears, you have one more shot. Don’t shave your head again either. 

I may not be Fred Flintstone Baby but...

It was just another day. Until terror struck P St…for everyone but me.

This is now the 7^th earthquake I have lived through and not felt. A couple in California (where I was sure I’d feel at least one) and now DC. I was walking back from Starbucks to a meeting at the gym and all of a sudden people started running out of the buildings and looking up. After a couple of seconds murmurs of “Did you feel it?” started making their way through the crowd.

No. No I did not feel it. (That's what she said...bazing!) 

I had no idea anything had happened. Apparently if you were moving at all (on a bus, in a car, on a bike, walking quickly) you might not have felt the quake. Since I had no objects to really put any of the movement into perspective for me it just felt like a regular step in my stride and I didn’t feel even a quiver.

Government agencies shut down, businesses closed, people went home and took unscheduled leave time. DC is the least prepared city for a natural disaster ever.

Teeny earthquake: City shuts down

Snowstorm: City shuts down for weeks

Hurricane threat: Grocery stores emptied

The capitol of our nation is the wussiest city I’ve ever lived in.

1)    It’s fine, some people didn’t even feel it…yes it cracked the Washington monument but it certainly didn’t fall. Take precautions but it’s not a sign of the end times.

2)    Invest in some snow plows. I know it doesn’t snow most of the year and the budget is tight but for Christ sake have SOME option for when/if it snows. The money lost due to lack of people going out for 2 weeks of snow time is way worse than the money it would cost to get a couple plows and hire some people. Even if it took a day or two to do, it’s fine.

3)    Don’t even start with hurricane. It’ll be a separate post all together.

I know I shouldn’t “wish” an earthquake to happen anywhere. Even a pansy little one like we had here has done some damage. It shakes buildings off their foundations and cracks penis shaped monuments. No one wants that. So clearly I don’t want another earthquake to happen…I’m just saying if one does and I live in that city I hope I feel it next time. (I also hope it’s a little puss puss quake like this past one because I think while I want to feel one, I’d also be terrified if one really rolled through and say knocked down a wall or something so dear universe…don’t take this too seriously, I wanna feel one but I don’t wanna die in it.)