travel update and musings.

ghi ghad ajkljkl pqrstghdepqrsde tghghimngpqrs to say... and that's how I spell them to myself when I'm texting. (if you take out the extra letters up there, it says, "I had all these things" to say.) So let's hear it for actually having an opening paragraph about nothing! I win!

Wichita was very interesting. The town wasn't, but the conference was. The town was like any other somewhat-large town with it's standard old downtown. Except it wasn't that big and it was where all the "party kids" hang out. As in college age kids. Sadly, for me, that was ten years ago. I didn't feel too old to be there, though. The best part of that night was dragging my camera and Keaton into a construction area, over the tracks where trains pass every 15 or so minutes, and catching a sunset over the town as well as shooting the heck out of an old Santa Fe engine with the war bonnet. (No, I don't have any pictures because my camera is in the trunk of my car right outside this place's door, but since it's not my computer, I ain't uploadin nothin.) The crappiest thing was that I didn't have a tripod and had to balance my camera on various things: bridges, rail road tracks, walls originally meant to keep people off the rail road tracks. I learned a lot about how my camera works. And I might have gotten some good shots, too.

I really should read the manual for that sucker. And try to make any kind of sense out of it that I can.

Then again, a lot of wichita was worthy of a photograph. I just wish there were an easier way to take the shots without a tripod. Some of them, I swear my shutter stayed open for 30 seconds. But I digress.

At the conference I learned a lot and I believe I've ingrained much of it into my working knowledge of people. For example (and I mean no insult to anyone): People insult one another when they are afraid of either rejection or appearing inadequate. So you can pretty much decide that anyone who insults you is doing it because they're afraid of looking like a dipshit or are thinking that they're going to be rejected. I thought about this for a while and it's true, at least for me. Any insults that I hand out are pretty much borne out of acute discomfort. Listen to me go on and on about bimbos in stiletto heels or even girls with perfect hair and bodies. I will rip them to shreds verbally (scared the hell out of Keaton when I did that in Oklahoma City). And it's because I don't have (nor will I ever have) the kind of body that warrents hot dresses or stillettos. I am very much a girl-next-door with an athletic frame. Never will you see me in daisy dukes.

And I'll be damned if I can figure out where this 5 pounds came from, but I'm going to get rid of it if it's the last thing I do. And I'm taking it's friends with it. I'll even join a gym this fall. Then I'll be all, Yeah, you know that commercial where they pick up the love handles? Those were MINE, baby!!!

But anyway, I tend to feel inadequate when those kinds of girls are around. Like my tall friend ...crap, have I talked about him before? I grew up with him. He was a bit of an obnoxious dork as we were growing up, but later, when I got back from Australia, he came into the bookstore where I worked. I didn't think anything of it until one of the girls who worked there pulled me aside and said, "You know him? He's Hot!" I looked back at him and she was right! WTF happened? I'll call him, "the tall."

Anywho, the tall has apparently always thought that yours truly is a cutie. I'm not tooting my own horn here, I'm merely expounding on the bizarre nature of my friend's very warped psyche. There's something very wrong in there. Because if you look at every other girl he's dated, they've ALL been hot blonds, none over a size 6, with perfect hair and makeup. And then look at me. (size 10, now a hideous jiggily 140, wavy brown, sometimes frizzy hair, ...but I've been told a million times I look like her.)

Oh hell no, that didn't make sense. It just made me complain a lot. And what is this grouchiness borne out of? The fact that I feel insecure about my body and my looks. Tried dating him, by the way. I've known him too long. It was like kissing my brother. And therefore it was all kinds of wrong.

Anywho, I learned a lot of other interesting things, but I'm not going to go into it right now. I'm going to go watch serenity with my insane the short, Keaton, and his daughter, air-air.