25% of the things I love

1.  dried roses in a silver cup

2.  knowing no such thing as a silver spoon

3.  analog and digital

4.  rubics cubes

5.  correspondence, via thank you notes

6.  gold picture frames

7.  collections of pottery, boxes, window frames, dishes, and clear glass

8.  brown boots

9.  swing sets and slides

10.  polaroid

11.  hours with anne

12.  making pasties

13.  breaking tile and gluing it back together again

14.  vintage posters

15.  clean sheets

16.  color!

17.  painting and drawing

18.  aaron time

19.  chips and guacamole at senor moose.

20.  cashews

21.  really old buildings (you know, with character)

22.  oven roasted tomatoes

23.  earrings and cloisonne bracelets

24.  parasols

25.  being thoughtful of others 

Things I'm good at

Approximately, seven minutes ago I ruined hard boiled eggs.  Before I go on a rant about my deficiencies in egg preparation, I will simply place blame my mother who hates eggs in every form and my sister who is allergic.  For me, eggs are fine, I neither love them nor hate them, but despite this, I'll tell you, when I fuck up a hard boiled egg or the yolk of the fried variety it really burns my ass.  Thanks, Ellen. 

On the upside, I have lots of skills that are wholly unrelated to eggs.  For instance, I am very good at spelling, and painting pottery, and making conversation, and finding interesting things on the Internet.  The latter contributes mostly to my current hobby, and potentially my greatest strength, not studying for the GRE, which is the topic of discussion today.  

Plain and simple, there are a lot of things I love.  Most, I love learning new things.  Tell me about something I've never heard of before and I will gladly sit in as your captive audience for as long as you like to go on about the said subject.  And after I'm done I'll do no end of research on the subject if I end up particularly engaged.  This why I think I'm an excellent candidate for graduate studies.  There is so much I want to have the opportunity to learn about, and the exciting and frustrating part is making the decision of exactly what discipline is the best match for my curiosity. 

The focus of the research I will eventually undertake as a graduate student will revolve around geographic and economic factors affecting populations in post-industrial American cities.   Think the decline and fall of rubber companies in Akron, Ohio and its affect on housing prices, or white flight and suburban dispersal in inner-city Detroit and its affect on the economic base, or consider the economic influence of stagnant community growth within single industry economies.  These are things I'm interested in understanding, and I find this research valuable as SO many American cities succumb to patterns such as these as a result of globalization and industrial decline in the United States.  

So, the question is, what program is the best fit for me?  Should I study Urban Geography and critically study the economic and social impact of economic decline on single industry communities, or should I study urban planning and master a tool kit to build better cities, or should I study public administration and compare and contrast methods for allocation resources to populations in post-industrial cities (person vs. place based tax distribution) to  develop a more efficient and effective economic foundation?  

Obviously, there is a place for me within all of these disciplines.  Right now it seems the only clear decision I've made is that there are three excellent choices with no clear stand-out.  Sure, it would be awesome to think critically and investigate geographies, but it would also be excellent to be a policy genius.  Clearly, I don't know how to go about making the decision; I don't know what to do.  

Except, maybe, pretend I'm really good at boiling eggs.

stealth missions

these frames.  i have surreptitiously carried these frames out of my nana's basement over the course of the last year and a half.  every time i visit home i "clean the basement" for my grandmother and gather as many as i can fit in my suitcase without eliciting the suspicion of TSA, and bring them back to seattle.    she visited last weekend and was sort of stunned, and sort of amazed, and sort of thrilled that they were hanging on my wall.  it was weird.  

these along with a great many other things in my apartment are hers, or they were before i got my hands on them.  i usually ask in passing if i can take a few things with me when i leave, but these frames sort of just come along without permission.  she has buckets upon boxes upon baskets of them in the basement.  they sit next to old chairs, christmas ornaments, and boxes of food stowed away for a coming crisis.  these frames are part of the large collection of trinkets that i call my  joan-knacks, the things that remind me of her and her house; these objects are things that make her make sense to me.  they are the things that ensconce her walls, and her photos, and her pictures and paintings, they're the things she collects or keeps underneath her bed.  i explained the her i have in my head and why these frames are important to me.  she was sort of taken aback by the number of things i had in my apartment that looked "awfully familar," but she loved that they are part of my life now.  

as for the parasols, my love affair with parasols goes way back.  when i was little my aunt and cousin lived in the philippines.  jackie and molly would send me things from asia that they'd find in different markets.  one of my favorite gifts was a set of fantastic parasols.  petite umbrellas of dark burnished orange paper covered in ornate paintings of botany and asian characters.  i used to set them up on an old blanket in the living room while my mom watched china beach, a 1980's television show about Vietnam.  I would pretend I was in the philippines with Molly or that i too was in Vietnam.  What can i say, i have a thing for parasols.  They're part of my one childhood memory of actual imagination.  So, when aaron brought the orange one back from thailand last summer i remembered all of this and felt grateful.    

it isn't just reminiscing that i do with objects.  they just make my world make sense.  they are the small gifts given by friends, post cards from travelers, old photos curling at the edges, papers, letters, notes, measuring cups and surely gold frames and parasols.