Meet Hurricane Katrina. As someone cleverer than me has quipped, she pretty much fills up the whole bathtub. And while she’s nominally headed for New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile, it looks like we’ll be getting tropical storm or even category 1 hurricane force winds.

As the marquee at the Lutheran church around the corner says, “This too shall pass.” We’re ready. Many businesses in the area are boarded up; our house is not, but I think we’ll be fine as is. The water level in the bay was already visibly higher this morning. This afternoon, it was lapping over some docks.

Seems longer, but week ago I was in Staunton, Virginia. Dad and I pulled out of town in New Hampshire Saturday morning and spent the day in Concord - a very interesting town where we toured houses that once sheltered the likes of Emerson, Hawthorne, and Louisa May Alcott - also visited the cemetary where all three of them and Thoreau now repose (they call it writer’s row, together in death as in life, or something like that). We spent some time on Sunday with family in eastern New York (a cousin of my grandfather and her daughter - neat people) and stopped in Staunton, VA Sunday night so that we could get up on Monday and go to Jefferson’s home at Monticello (also highly recommended). Monday night we were in Greenville, saw Jen and Cort, and were home Tuesday evening. My summer kept following me all the way home: gift shops at the Alcott home and at Monticello were selling old issues of one of the magazines I worked on this summer - issues that dealt specifically with those people and places. They date back to the late ’80s, but these things are made to be resources, and that looks like a sign of success to me.

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I’M BACK!

The drive down was largely uneventful, with some interesting stops. More on those later.

I’m trying to catch up on everyone else’s blog at the moment. Found Elf’s collection of “You Know You’re From XXX When…” and since she’s already posted Florida, I thought I’d check out what they have to say about two states that I almost might know something about. Here are the highlights.

first, a blast from the past - my childhood home
NEW MEXICO

You buy salsa by the gallon.
Exaggeration, but we’ll ignore that.

Your favorite restaurant has a chile list instead of a wine list.
heeheehee

Your Christmas decorations include “a yard of sand and 200 paper bags”.
Heck yeah! And they’re called ‘luminaria’ - not ‘luminaries’. Silly Southerners.

Most restaurants you go to begin with “El” or “Los”.
The ones worth going to, at least.

You think six tons of crushed rock makes a beautiful front lawn.
Better yet, it needs no mowing.

All your out-of-state friends and relatives visit in October.
Balloon fiesta!!!

You know whether you want “red or green.”
This is the state question. It refers to chiles. Sort of asking around here whether you want your ice tea sweetened or unsweetened.

You can correctly pronounce Tesuque, Cerrillos, and Pojoaque.
And the Rio Grande is not the Rio Grand.

You have been told by at least one out-of-state vendor that they are going to charge you extra for “international” shipping.
When I first moved to Florida, kids asked me if I spoke Spanish. NEW Mexico, please!

You can order your Big Mac with green chile.
Heck yeah

You associate bridges with mud, not water.
I remember first seeing the Rio Grande from a bridge high over a canyon with the river at the bottom. It had been particularly dry , so the river was only a thin brown line. I was very confused - that’s not what a river was supposed to look like! I was probably five or six.

Tumbleweeds and various cacti in your yard are not weeds. They are your lawn.
It’s what you put in your rock garden, of course.

A package of white flour tortillas is the exact same thing as a loaf of bread. You don’t need to write it on your shopping list; it’s a given.
Tortillas are a very good thing to have around and do not imply that one is planning to make burritos. This has occaisionally confused some of my college friends.

You know what I did last summer
NEW HAMPSHIRE

You drive a Suburu
They’re serious. I haven’t used the word “Subaru” so often since my parents owned one…and that was before my youngest brother was born.

You rather vacation in New Zealand than Florida.
Can you blame them? At least in the summer. Why anyone would vacation in Florida in the summer is really beyond me. Snowbirds I understand, but summer is just beastly.

You can identify a Massachusetts accent.
I can.

You can recognize someone from Massachusetts from their driving.
I can do that too. Something strange happens when you cross the state line from NH to Mass.

You can visit Berlin, New London, Bethlehem, Lisbon, Lebanon and Dublin all in one afternoon.
Except for the occaisional Indian names, this is not a part of the world notable for having original place-names. Better yet, most town names are repeated in each state…which is a problem when your states are so small! NH and Mass. are both home to towns named Concord, Salem, and Amherst, to name a few.

Down South to you means Boston.
Ha. I spent the summer trying not to smirk when anyone complained of the heat or the humidity. Granted, they would have had reason to make twice as much fun of me, were I there in the winter…

You consider Manchester exotic.
I don’t buy this one. Boston’s too close for this to be true.

You know what a bubbler is.
Yes! I’d been wondering all summer exactly how local that expression is. It’s a water cooler, guys… I think “bubbler” can also be used to refer to a drinking fountain.

I looked at South Carolina’s list, too, but I didn’t think they were that funny… I was told this summer that I really don’t belong in the South. And though there are certainly people and places here that I love, they’re right. I really have very few cultural ties to this part of the country.

You are Agonistic

You’re not sure if God exists, and you don’t care. For you, there’s no true way to figure out the divine. You’d rather focus on what you can control - your own life. And you tend to resent when others “sell” religion to you.

For a quiz with fewer questions than I have fingers, it got me right on the money.

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If you’re looking for tales of my weekend with Pug and my birthday, check his blog - he’s quite comprehensive about it, so I won’t try to duplicate.

Instead, a few more tales from my life as an intern.

The president of the company was here last week, which was rather interesting. An odd duck, by all accounts - I’m told he has his doctorate in philosophy, and you know what that’ll do to a person. Or something. He didn’t look at all like I expected. His given name is French and his family is rich, so I had pictured him looking very…I don’t know, French and fashionable and haughty. Yeah, so kill me for thinking in stereotypes. He is actually rather mousy, very plain with long hair and a bald spot and a nasal voice…and possibly haughty. I got a few glimpses and passed him in the hall a time or two (at which points he gave me an interesting “and who might YOU be?” look - I was not introduced, which is just fine with me. I got a good look at the infamous character, and that’s really all I wanted when I heard he was coming.

My great triumph of last week was finally finding a couple of photos of Indian houses for one of the editors - a “photo emergency!” Took me forever to get in touch with people at museums that have such photos, waiting for them to return messages, finally giving up and calling again…etc. etc. Had two days of good luck last week and spoke with helpful folks who immediately became my favorite people of the day, and am very relieved to have it settled. A small triumph, but nonetheless.

Pete has me working on expanding the text for a Civil War timeline. It appears in its current form in each of the Civil War books, but they’re going to make it into a poster too, which will be bigger, thus have more space, thus needs more text. I’m looking forward to working on that, though I have a few picky little things to finish up first for Deb. The books themselves are almost out of here at last, as are the animal books for younger readers - I saw the covers for those the other day - very cute and colorful.

I tend to always have something to do for Deb now that Sarah’s had her baby (a boy). Deb is still a bit daunted at having to do everything on the magazine for the next few months, but she seems to be doing fine. I do what I can for her, and Claire, the secretary (not the correct title, sorry), pitches in as well.

Pizza party here at lunch on Friday for a lady in the call center part of the office who is retiring. Mary is absolutely adorable in the way that little old ladies can be, which is enhanced by her Boston accent. We’re all sorry to see her go! So of course I had the allergy conversation with Pete (who already had some idea, having seen me deal with it at restaurants twice), and that was taken care of. Fed again. I’m happy.

Weird computer story. I was downloading pictures onto Ellen’s computer this afternoon - an ancient Mac, poor old thing. And granted, internet hexplorer and amazon.com hadn’t been playing well, but then suddenly - I have NO idea how I/it did it - the cursor disappeared from the screen!! No, the machine didn’t freeze - sometimes, you could still see the cursor around the edges of the screen, and better yet, you could still see links and icons react as the cursor passed over or clicked on them…but you couldn’t see the cursor itself! A ghost! Would be a phenomenal April Fool’s Day prank…if only I knew what had happened… Had to restart the machine, then it was fine.

They’ve been paving the road between home and work, which has been a bit of a nuisance, but the new road is nice. Supposedly, they’ll finish tomorrow, hurrah for that. I have found an alternate route and used it a few times, but it is much longer. A new view is nice, though. That route takes me through Greenville, NH - MUCH smaller than it’s SC counterpart! But it IS next to a small lake…

Over the weekend, I went down to Salem, Mass., which is an odd place. It’s a weird mix of honest history, modern wicca (many shops selling incence, spellbooks, bags of dried herbs, and other oddities), and tourism (midnight graveyard tours for thrill-seekers, etc). Interesting, though!

Quote of the day:
“I like naked-tattoo-man”
Don’t ask. I still haven’t stopped laughing.

Quote of yesterday:
“Christ, it’s only his lordship.”
Say it in a Scottish brogue - yes, I’ve started another mystery featuring the eccentric Lord Peter Wimsey, by Dorothy Sayers. Wimsey! So fun to say. Almost as much fun as “Christ, it’s only his lordship.”

Categories: internships
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