So. Tired.

Okay I am going to level with you. I have had a rough couple of days. I am in a combination of post-vacation and not-going-to-see-my-boyfriend-again-for-at-least-a-month blues, and life is not helping me out. Nothing really super horrible, so I shouldn't be letting it get to me this much but, alas, here we are. Among other various depressing world events (Batman shooting, navy testing killing hundreds of whales and dolphins and injuring more, Animal Planet's sci fi movie about how there might be mermaids being more important than the actual navy testing that's going on, really hard day at work, etc.) The main thing that's getting me down is other peoples' negativity.

I've never really thought of myself as a super positive person, what with the bouts of depression and anxiety over the years, but I've realized recently that despite all of that I am really fundamentally a positive person (although not necessarily an optimist, that's a totally different thing). And one thing that I find just incredibly draining is being around negative people.

Okay, I know this is a sweeping generalization that by no means describes all of them (my brother comes to mind as an excellent example of not this, I know they exist, but hear me out before you get all indignant, okay?): but I think that my getting just exhausted by negativity is why I get so frustrated with the majority of atheists. Most of the ones I know (or the famous ones who yell about it a lot) are just so negative, not just the "no god" part, but their whole life view. Whether they admit it or not, I find most atheist arguments to actually be anti-christian (or whatever religion they were raised as, most often) and often (not always, not hating on all atheists, want to make that clear again) dripping with disdain for any kind of belief. Which just turns me off and makes me want to go away and take a nap or something. I mean, I am a scientist, I get the whole lack of proof thing, I do. But part of being a scientist is also being open to ideas that have not been disproven. Otherwise, you are just as guilty of expectation bias as people who believe in something supernatural. Since the existence of a higher power can neither be proven nor disproven, why don't we all just calm the fuck down about it? I mean, I'm so okay with getting angry at people who use religion as an excuse for ignorance, prejudice, and harming others, and I know it's done a lot of bad things, but good things happen because of religion as well, and even more good things happen because of faith, outside of religion. Organized religion has caused a lot of pain, but that doesn't mean that anyone who believes in anything supernatural should be judged or looked down on any more than they should judge or look down on anyone who is an atheist. The negativity and the hypocrisy just bug me is all, and I know many atheists who are wonderful people and this is not directed at them (and even many of the ones who do this are wonderful in many other ways), it's just that I've seen a lot of this lately and combined with all the other things it's just reached a tipping point (plus I realized the negative/positive connection). As a note, I am not religious, I'm not an atheist, and I wouldn't even describe myself as agnostic. I don't know what I am and I'm not going into any more detail about it here.

Anyway, sorry for the rant, but I needed to put it somewhere and it's my blog, dammit! Mostly today was just a long, long day, and I've been waking up from horrible dreams that make me want to cry as soon as I wake up which is just not helping. The girl I usually work with had to help one of the other polo players today, so I was the lone groom for 6 horses and 2 players today. One of the horses we were leaving behind cut herself a couple of days ago and it's getting infected and starting to look bad, so I had to take care of that before I did anything else and I think that made us late leaving which is a huge pet peeve of my boss' husband. He is very high-strung and quick to get frustrated with any little slip-up or thing that goes wrong, and today I was the only person to blame. He didn't actually blow up at me which is frankly a miracle, but he was edgy all day and that made me edgy and I constantly had to be doing like 5 things at once and I didn't really sit down all day, except on the drives. We don't get paid for the drives (which I think is fair, because I usually end up falling asleep) but today I was the only one in the car so I was in charge of keeping my boss' husband (who is also my boss, I guess, but whatever) awake and entertained on the drive, which meant making awkward small talk with a very, very negative man for a total of five hours (two and a half hours there and two and a half back). I feel like I should be paid for that. It was awkward. And he is a professor so he talked a lot about university budget cuts and how it's getting harder and harder to get into grad schools because they don't have money to fund grad students and the government is going to cut funding which will make it even harder and it's possible that students will just get dropped mid-degree (although admittedly unlikely). Plus also, once they graduate there aren't as many jobs as there are graduates, although not as bad as with bachelor's degrees. Not helping my motivation to research programs and get myself there. He has a tendency to talk about the sad state of the world in a way that just makes me want to go home and crawl under my covers for at least a week. Once we talked global warming. Ugh.

Nothing really horrible happened today, but I was rushed and mistakes were made and passive-agressiveness was directed at me and all in all it was very tense. All day. I worked from 7am to 8pm. And it was all tense. I'm tired. And the best part is I get to get up and do it again tomorrow! Although now the girl I work with will be there, so that's good, but the game will have higher stakes and people will be even edgier. Oh god.

So now I'm recuperating. On the way home I bought chips, sweet tea, and two candy bars and I'm going to snuggle up in my bed and watch happy movies and eat comfort food and try to recover my positivity before I go to sleep. I'm sorry if the atheist stuff offended you, I just really wanted to express these things I've been realizing lately and I'd be happy to discuss it rationally but please please please do not get indignant and/or passive-aggressive or finger-pointy at me (I'm really not sure who reads this) because I cannot take that right now. Thanks.

Goodnight!

Hey, Beantown!

And so I'm back from Boston. It was a really wonderful trip. I flew in late last Monday and Alexander picked me up at the airport very sweetly and gave me my first taste of Massachusetts driving. Yikes. He had the whole week planned out and kept almost all of it a secret. Tuesday he took me to the New England Aquarium, which was awesome! They even had fairy penguins! My favorite! I haven't seen them since Australia! Adorable. And a giant sea turtle, among a lot of other amazing creatures. Then we went to an awesome consignment/thrift store type place that was HUGE and awesome. I got to spend some more time with his mom and meet his dad. I loved his mom already from the few hours we hung out in Chicago in April and they told me his dad was just an older version of Alexander but I was not prepared for how correct that was. Except he writes programs for a genomics research company which is awesome. I feel like I understand a lot more about him now, and his apparently hereditary humor. It's pretty great.

Wednesday was a mini golf crawl during which we were both terrible but out of four games I won two and we tied on a third. Awesome. I suck slightly less at mini golf! Woo! Then we went out for delicious sushi and swing dancing at MIT! It was Lindy which neither of us know but we could triple or jitterbug to it for the most part. I even got to dance with a stranger for a song so I have a little Lindy experience now. The T (the train in Boston) is actually really nice. Not always the most convenient, but usually somewhere close to where you want to go and really clean. It only freaks me out when it suddenly shuts off occasionally.

Thursday we drove out to a fancy wine and cheese place. I know I live in Wisconsin but that was some damn good cheese. I think my favorite was the Chebrie, a mixture of sheep and goat cheese. So tasty! The town with this cute little shop happened to be just down the road from Walden Pond so we stopped by. I was expecting it to be tiny, but "pond" in this case seems to mean really big lake. It was full of people swimming, not at all what I was expecting. They had a replica of the house Thoreau built and I have to say it reminded me a lot of  a dorm room. Not bad at all! I really need to get around to reading Walden. I've been meaning to for ages.

When we got back after we ate delicious cheese and bread we got dressed up and drove into the city. Alexander wouldn't tell me where we were going but it turned out he got tickets for the new Cirque du Soleil, Totem! It was so much fun. I have a pretty great guy, if that was not already clear.

Friday we went back into the city. The only real exposure I'd had to Boston growing up was the Make Way for Ducklings book which I loved and read over and over, so one of the only things I requested we do while I was there was see the statue. So we strolled around Boston Common, and over to the Public Garden. We took pictures with the statue and even rode the swan boats (which are still incredibly cheap and surprisingly fun). There were even little ducklings swimming in the water. The rest of the garden was really beautiful, too. I wasn't expecting it to be so romantic. Afterwards he took me to a fancy Swiss chocolate shop, which also helped.

After dinner with his parents at a fantastic pizza place, Alexander and I went out to a bar, which was especially exciting because it was the first time we'd been able to go together, since Alexander turned 21. We listened to the bands, one mediocre and one that I liked pretty well. We even danced a little, but I think the highlight of the night was the guy with a silver peg leg sitting behind us.

Saturday we drove out to the Plimouth Plantation. I am a big fan of historical reenactment and they did not disappoint. They had a lot of nice touches like pronouncing the k in "know". There was a wedding in the pilgrim area and we wandered around and talked to several people. Apparently the reenactors live there full time in the summer which sounds really fun but also really hard. Of course, my favorite part was the Wampanoag village. The people there were wearing varying degrees of traditional dress and most were actually of Wampanoag descent, but they didn't reenact. There was a large weetoo (I am totally guessing on how to spell that, a traditional dwelling of the people) and first an older woman, then a somewhat younger man just sat in there and told stories about how their people lived and interacted with the world, each other, and the white people when they came. It was fascinating. I probably would be in there still if I could be. I love learning about Native American culture but find it hard to do from a book, so being able to speak to people that close to the history was fantastic. The woman was my favorite, too. She was sassy and kept telling people to get out of the way of her breeze when they just stood in the door. There was one slightly awkward moment. She was asking someone about the wedding over at the settlement and when she was done I asked her what Wampanoag weddings were like. They sound really cool. They all involve the same elements (sage, tobacco, and water, I believe) but in different orders and done in different ways depending on what the medicine man (or woman? Not clear on that) sees in each specific couple when he/she meets with them. I like that a lot. Anyway, I just wanted a comparison since we had just seen a Puritan wedding, but as she was leaving she came over and asked me when Alexander and I were getting married, then when we said we weren't she gave us a look that clearly said "Well why not?!" and shook her head. It was hilarious but also quite awkward. Especially considering the number of people I know who seem to be getting engaged lately. It's weird.

On the way out we stopped in Plymouth, which is a very cute town. We saw Plymouth Rock (which they keep in a cage, a fact no one else seemed to think was as funny as I did) and the Mayflower II, which was cool, although we didn't' pay to go on it. When we got back we met up with one of Alexander's friends from high school which was very interesting. She was a lot of fun and we weirded each other out whenever we wanted to get Alexander's attention (no one at home calls him by his full name, and I'd never heard anyone refer to him by his last name before). She drove us around looking at different beautiful views of the city, talking, and eating ice cream. It was really quite lovely.

Sunday we thought about trekking all the way back out to the beach (I really wanted to swim in the ocean) but in the end it made a lot more sense to just go to the nearby lake (we got up late and it was supposed to storm in the late afternoon, although that never did happen). The lake ended up being beautiful, though. No seaweed, deep enough for a dock you could dive off of and a huge deep swimming area. I would swim there every day if I lived in Newton. I felt silly coming from MN/WI and going to a lake but it was much much nicer than any I've seen here outside of the Boundary Waters.

Monday I got to the airport early, only to find out my flight was delayed. Delayed one hour turned into longer, which turned into indefinitely, which turned into canceled. We had one of those delightful stranger bonding moments while everyone from our plane cursed United and scrambled to try and find another flight out. Since I didn't have any urgent business I let them put me on a flight the next morning, with the promise to give me meal and hotel vouchers. I wasn't expecting much but after a good two hours in line (I don't even think that's an exaggeration) I got a voucher for the nearby Embassy Suites for a very expensive room. They also gave me $30 for food in the airport, which fed me lunch on Monday and enough snacks to get me all the way home on Tuesday. Not a bad deal at all. I wasn't sure Alexander would be able to see me at all Monday night, since his mom was leaving for Japan on Tuesday, but it turned out she had plans all night so he came and hung out with me in my plush room and the free pool. It was a very good deal, even considering the extremely expensive room service and almost no other restaurant options around. Also, we discovered a show called Duck Dynasty which is essentially real life Beverly Hillbillies. It's absolutely ridiculous and we could not stop watching. I should probably be ashamed of that but it was hilarious.

I finally did get on a plane this morning, convinced the bus driver to take yesterday's ticket, and finally ended up back in Madison, only to find out it was too hot for work tonight, which is both a blessing and a curse. I can't say I'm exactly happy to be back, but I did have a lot of fun at game night tonight and very soon I have to start making arrangements for my move! That, finally FINALLY having roommates, and work should keep me busy for the next month, month and a half tops, before Alexander comes back to town.

All in all it was a really wonderful, fun, and romantic trip. Pretty much perfect. I am so so happy I got to go, both to see Alexander and also Boston, which it turns out is a pretty cool city. Mostly Cambridge, though, I guess. Anyway, spectacular week, happy Karis, ever so slightly bummed to be back in the sweltering midwest and facing an early day of work in the morning. But, you know, with horses, so I think I'll live.