Nostalgia.

I finally just got back to Boston after three years, and it was great to be there for a few days, even if the time seemed to fly by (and two days were sucked up with a conference).

Some things I underestimated:

• How much catching up with friends would feel like I'd never left, even though I haven't seen most of them in person in 3 years.
• How comforting and familiar it would feel to walk through the South End to BUMC.
• Ditto Fenway and the Citgo sign.
• How grating I would find the Boston and greater New England accents. I've never found them pleasant, but after a few years of being surrounded by Southerners, they're more than a little harsh.

Some things I overestimated:

• My patience for public transportation. The waiting, really, not the mode of transit.
• My ability to still navigate around Copley and the Back Bay. (After that, I wisely skipped Beacon Hill)
• That they might have actually cleaned the public restroom in Alewife in the last 3 years.

I'll admit to feeling a little bittersweet at the airport tonight. Hopefully it won't take me three years to get back there the next time!

Pollen Shmollen.

Thanks to our abnormally long, cold winter, everything is now just blooming. At once. Check out the pollen count! Yesterday and today over 5000. Considering it only takes >120 to be considered "extremely high", I'm not sure what this counts as.

My world is coated in a layer of neon green pollen dust. I'm sure my lungs and sinuses aren't getting special treatment. The rain is coming, and I can't wait.

Don't worry, be happy.

I can't count how many times I heard that, or some variation, in the past week. I'm just back in (rainy) Atlanta, after spending seven (excessively sunny) days in the Caribbean with my sister while she took a spring break from her eighth graders. It was lovely.

I'm still deciding how I feel about cruising in general. On the one hand, how else would I explore seven islands in seven days? Which, I loved. Each island was remarkably unique. But, on the whole I think I'm a depth rather than breadth person. Nevertheless, here are the greatest hits:

Puerto Rico

St. John

Dominica

Barbados

St. Lucia

St. Kitts

St. Maarten

It's good to be home, especially for my peeling, reddened skin. But, not having a new beautiful island greeting me when I wake up tomorrow will be something of a let-down.

I am Liz Lemon.

For those who watch 30 Rock, there are a fair number of Liz Lemon moments to which I can (often unfortunately) relate. Some highlights?

• Fashion:

Jack: Alfredo. 2 p.m.
Liz: I'm not dressed for that.
Jack: You're dressed for Burger King. Should we make it Burger King?

• Relationships:

Liz: I just wish I could start a relationship about twelve years in, when you really don't have to try anymore, and you can just sit around together and goof on TV shows, and then go to bed without anybody trying any funny business.

• The to-do list:

Jack: Uh Lemon, I'm going through the guest list for my 50th birthday party and you have not RSVP-ed.

Liz: Oh, right, sorry, my mail has been piling up and I keep forgetting to buy toilet paper.
Jack: What's that supposed to mean?

• Dating:

The Head: I see you're lookin' at my watch.
Liz: What?
The Head: It's cool, isn't it? That's a Japanese pie watch.
Liz: Oh, okay.
The Head: It tells time with those little pie pieces. Each piece is six minutes, so right now it's... six times four... 5:30? That can't be right.
Liz: My watch has these little hands that go around and point at numbers.
The Head: Hey, that's awesome possum.

The latest? I decided I really needed to get my hair cut today. That turned out to be a poor decision. Remember this episode?

Good thing I'm going on vacation for a week. And that hair grows. Unfortunately, not enough in one week.

Liz: "This is how I cry now!"

Sunny Saturdays in spring.

I spent a lovely Saturday morning this past weekend at Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta. I've been wanting to check this cemetery out for a while, and then I found out that there were free tours this weekend. (This picture is not my tour, it's from their website, but you get the idea.)

I mean, I like cemeteries. I've said that before. I have a soft spot in my heart for random historical sites and local curiosities. But even better? Tours of random historical sites and local curiosities. I love tour guides and their command of, in many cases, socially useless knowledge. I love that one really zealous tourmate, who's always there to ask the important questions. I leave happier than when I started. How can you not?

Better still? That I have friends who indulge my quirks.

"The best part about being a nerd within a community of nerds is the insularity – it’s cozy, familial, come as you are...

"Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know. For me, the spark that turns an acquaintance into a friend has usually been kindled by some shared enthusiasm like detective novels or Ulysses S. Grant."

- Sarah Vowell, The Partly Cloudy Patriot

The personal narrative.

A staple of grade school writing teachers, in our family we had a running joke that I was the one person without a single personal narrative. Every writing assignment became a struggle to come up with an idea, any idea, that could be expanded into narrative form. A shy, cautious child, I tended to avoid situations that could result in high adventure, major embarassment, and/or significant bodily harm. Nor was I creative enough to string a narrative through the mundane. (I still need to work on that... while I have since managed a few adventures, I have substantially more mundane.)

Thus, I have a fond appreciation for the narratives of others. This is one of the reasons I look forward to the Olympics. While I do enjoy watching the sports for their own sake, I love the stories.

This year has been generally lacking in drama (Quote: "I miss the Cold War." -- Jake Ricks), but my favorite so far has been Alexandre Bilodeau, the Canadian who won Gold in Men's Moguls the other day, out-skiing Austrailian spam-king Dale Begg-Smith.

Canada's first gold medal ever on Canadian soil! He gave up a promising turn in ice hockey and chose freestyle skiing instead to be near his brother with cerebral palsy!

How can you not love these? Syrupy sentiment and all!

A favorite among Olympic stories = Dan Jansen, flashback 1994:

How quickly we forget.

I'm so cold! It was 17.6 degrees when I left for work this morning (I checked), with a single digit wind chill. And the temperature will be somewhat similar for the next few nights.

I keep having to remind myself that I survived 6 years in drafty old houses in Boston winters, where the weather was as cold or colder for a very long time. And the wind, oh the wind! I even waited for the bus in early mornings and late nights. And walked to work. And had to dig my car out of ice and snow.

This was the dear Harriet House in February 2003. I remember this winter vividly. It was so cold and snowy that year, for so long, and it was only my second winter out of the desert. Thankfully, I guess, I'd had a "mild" winter (as Boston winters go) the year before to ease me into it. Here are some things I remember about that winter:

• The Friday before this blizzard, I (playing the ever-dutiful admin assistant in what felt like a scene from the Keystone Kops), spent 3 hours out in a raging snowstorm trying to get a faculty candidate a cab to the airport. It was utterly ridiculous, but the flight was delayed enough so that he did make it in time. And after all that, he didn't even take the job!

• At one particularly bitter point in January, they had to shut down the harbor ferry between Charleston and South Boston for a few days because the ice was too thick. I remember calling my mom, incredulous. The ocean was frozen! Where did I live? And when could I come home?

• One morning, probably late February, I had the radio on as I was getting ready for work, and heard the current temperature was 23 degrees. I clearly remember thinking, "Oh, it's so warm this morning!". And then, I thought, "Who have I become?!".

• When it finally got to the point in the spring when I saw my first non-frozen body of water, I felt real joy.

Basically, what I'm saying is, I don't deserve to be whining about the weather right now. Many of you are dealing with worse. But, if I learned anything from my time in Boston, it's that you can always complain about the weather. I'm so cold!