I have said it before

and will say it again: It is a small world.

Just now coming back from the library I took the back stairs heading to my third-floor office. Walking down the stairs was a woman talking on her cell, and her voice was really familiar, and I looked at her as she came to the bottom of the flight and she looked at me and I said, "Hey, aren't you my downstairs neighbor?" And in fact, she is. And had told her girlfriend on several occasions that she had thought she was seeing me in the building, but had been pooh poohed. So she is my downstairs neighbor twice over -- she lives directly beneath me in our apartment building, and her office is one floor below mine, although since she works in administration, it's unfortunately for complete parallelism not directly vertical. Even so, small world.

How fitting to return to this theme for what appears to be my 200th post.

Out of touch

Well, with the Oscars coming up this weekend, there's the usual furor and compilation of information - who's getting what in the Oscar bag? who has been best dressed? who has been worst dressed?

Out of idle curiosity, while waiting for something to download, I just followed this Yahoo link to a compendium of worst-dressed Oscar attendees. Oh wait, it's actually entitled "Oscar fashion disasters" on the portal page, that's even worse.

So... what does it mean that I actually like the majority of the dresses that they're disdaining? They don't even explain what the problem is for many of them, like it's oh-so-self-evident, but I'm clicking "next" and going, "Huh, I like that." Or, "She looks pretty." Or, "Yeah, that bow is too big, but the rest of it is ok." And that Bjork thing where she wore the swan and her handbag was an egg that she laid from under the dress? That people are still making fun of to this day? I totally loved it.

I guess it's a good thing I'll never be an Oscar-nominated actress, or date an actor who will attend the Oscars, because obviously I would wear something completely, totally wrong.

More of the promised cuteness

Perhaps cuteness is not the most appropriate term for the elegant heron, but it does seem applicable to the sleeping seal (or two):

and the sleeping pelican,

and the about-to-be-sleeping pelican,

and the group of grounded pelicans,

and even the flying pelican, which is charming in its awkwardness.

Otters are always cute, especially when frolicking, which is unfortunately difficult to capture while kayaking and with a low-batteryish camera in the pocket of your life vest.

Lazy-ass sea lions, by contrast, are very easy to catch on film.

Probably least cute of all, sad to say, although still appealing in some oddball way, are humans in windbreakers, life vests, and kayaking skirts.

Ungainly, no? While wading shorebirds are at the other end of the adorable continuum.

Otters are cute

I'm guessing you knew that already. But here's some additional proof from this afternoon. (More to come later.)

Contrary to popular opinion

I had an epiphany this week about why I dislike the holidays I dislike. And I really think it can be chalked up directly to my somewhat contrary nature. On the one hand, sure, I'm nice enough, even periodically thoughtful and empathetic. And in many respects I think I'm overly obedient, which is how I was raised by my overly obedient parents -- there are rules, and they are meant to be lived within; there are other people's concerns and needs, and they generally come before your own. (For example, I'm working on getting over this for conferences, where my first reaction is that I need to go to everything and take good notes and if I miss even slightly relevant talks it'll be bad bad bad. Except who am I reporting to? Who is keeping track? And if there's stuff I don't feel like seeing or I should maybe pace myself, why shouldn't I? So I have started only going to what I really want to see, or in support of people I want to support even if not completely relevant to my own thing, and otherwise blowing off the rest, and really, it's making for much more pleasant experiences.)

On the other hand, I don't really love being told what to do, especially by parental or authority types. Like, I was really tired the other day and my mother said, "maybe you should nap," which of course duh, but in any case my immediate reaction was, "don't tell me what to do." Which I'm pretty sure I didn't say out loud. But anyway, many is the time that I have a knee jerk reaction that leads me to want to do exactly what has been suggested that I not do. So adolescent! Or maybe just New Yorky? Or perhaps fundamentally American? Whatever the origin, it is there nonetheless.

Now my two least-favorite holidays are, in order of hierarchy and also chronologically, New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day. I've disliked them both for as long as I can remember feeling that they were applicable to me, which is decades already (and nota bene that I always dislike Valentine's Day, regardless of my relationship status, or the status of whatever relationship I may be in at the time). But it is only this week that I figured out one reason why this might be. Many other holidays are perfectly nice, or pleasant, or utterly ignorable. My own favorite each year is Thanksgiving, when we get two big family days, Dad's (religious) side on Thursday and Mom's (not so religious, a lot more gay) side on Saturday. It's not about anything except hanging out with people I'm fond of slash love and eating really a lot of food. And I feel like no one is telling me what to do, except to eat more food. But for both New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day, I feel like the general discourse of the holiday is instructing me as to what my internal state needs to be. It's like, "Go out and have a glamorous evening and feel really good about the marking of the passage of time!" Or, "Feel really romantic about the person you're linked with in some way! Now!" And I think this brings out my knee jerk "don't tell me what to do" reaction. I'm like, "Fuck you! I'm not good with the passage of time. Why should I dress up and spend a lot of money to pretend I'm happy that another day and another year has passed?" Or, "Fuck off! Who's telling me how I should feel about my guy? What if I feel romantic on February 12? Or 15? Why this day over all other days?" Luckily, this attitude carries me through the not-having-a-man-on-Valentine's times as well, sort of a "what, so I need a man to be happy?" kind of thing.

So I'm relieved to learn that it's just leftover adolescent rebellion keeping me from loving these otherwise fabulous holidays. I feel at peace!

Endogamy vs. incest taboo

Last night I engaged in some semi-ambiguous socializing with someone that I met last week at a talk. His work and mine intersect in some interesting ways, and I wanted to know more, and also found him quite cute, at least from the distance I was sitting (we spoke in person only briefly after the talk). He turns out to be my neighbor, at least by local standards, so we met up at a nearby cafe, and chatted about work- and theory-related stuff, and then moved to general feeling-out kind of shmoozing with just a hint of flirtation. This was all well and good, but something was off for me, and it wasn't just that he was Israeli, although culture clashes at different levels do seem to cause problems in my interactions with the manly sabra types and undermine their general hotness. And then it came to me in a flash: he looked really quite a lot like a cousin of mine -- and here I mean the son of my somewhat-older first cousin. And is just four or so years older, I think.

And herein lies the problem. In principle, I'd like to settle down with a Jewish guy. Or maybe, all things being equal. It's not a deal breaker, but I need someone who gets it. Either from growing up like me, or from being sensitive or similarly cultured or whatever. So that's the push towards endogamy -- it would make really a lot of things easier, like not ever having a Christmas tree in the house (I just can't imagine it), or raising kids to be traditionally agnostic, or lessen potential problems with my parents and those relatives on the religious side. But on the other hand, as soon as anyone even vaguely resembles any member of my family, poof! The idea of anything sexual with them is icky in the extreme. Some of you know that I didn't kiss even one Jew between the years of 1992 and 2005, and then the guy who broke my dry spell was 6'4" and blond (and 25!), which I think is no coincidence. (I've gotten better over the years, though, and in the last month and change have actually kissed three, although Jew Number Two kind of reinforced my "maybe not so much with the Israelis" feelings, in that instance, with his octopus-like tendencies.)

So I'm wondering just what to make of this. Am I the only one with this issue? It can't possibly be. Other people manage to meet and marry within their tribe all the time. I wonder what I'm missing here...