I was two years old when we moved to Tanzania. My grandparents were already living there, and my family and I originally went to vist, and ended up living there for two years. My grandmother never tires of telling the story about how I would ride my tricycle up and down the sidewalk telling everyone on the street, "I'm going to Africa!" And of course no one belived me.
I was too young to remember a lot of my time there, but there are snipets that I can still recall. A pomegranate tree, the crowned cranes and peacocks at the hotel, the weird sound our plumbing made. Now I'm going back, and I'm getting a little freaked out. It's been a while since I've been overseas, and the last time I went I had a major panic attack on the way to the airport. I've never had any real problems in all the places I've travelled, but for some reason as I get older, it's actually getting harder to deal with.
I'm preparing myself by reading a funny and interesting book called "Tick-Bite Fever", an auto-biography of an English/South African boy growing up in Kenya about the same time we were in Tanzania. It's helping me remember a lot of the subtle things about living in Africa: the bugs, the dust, the extremely slow pace of life. I'm studying up on the birds of the region. Birdwatching was a hobby of mine when we lived in Botswana, many years later, and the species are similar, but there are so many more of them in East Africa, it seems. And the other major preparation, getting our visas and shots. I'm really dreading the shots, I really hate needles getting anywhere near me, so I keep putting it off. I can't put it off too long, though. Just have to deal with it.
The worst news of all is that we can only take carry-on luggage, since we're getting off the plane at an intermediate airport and can't get checked luggage. Since we're stopping for 4 days in Amsterdam on the way, it's going to be a packing challenge. 4 days of winter clothes and 9 days of summer clothes in carry-on? Plus a honking huge camera and laptop! I'm definitely going to need some negative space suitcases.
It's been a pretty trying couple of days. A's iMac started it. Blinky system ? on startup. TechTools couldn't fix it, so I had to borrow an external hard drive from my fomer employer to back up the data so I could reformat. It was really nice of them to let me borrow the drive, but it meant going down to the office and putting on a smiley face to all my former co-workers, endlessly asking how I was doing. Fine, fine... except that I'm broke, and it's winter, and I don't know how I'm paying my mortgage next month. The accounts payable people at my freelance job aren't answering their phones and my invoice is way overdue. I figured since I had to go downtown I'd take my watch in to get the battery replaced, it was a newish battery and still under warranty, so I didn't think it would cost me anything. The nice gentleman at the counter tells me it's not the battery, there's something mechanical wrong. Damn it! It's a nice (expensive) watch, from a very respectable (Bulova) watchmaker, and it shouldn't have crapped out on me after only a couple years of good service. Luckily I don't really have to leave the house much these days, so I don't need my watch to obsessively check the time while waiting for the bus.
But it's all mostly OK. Fixed A's machine. I started to suspect that the problem was viral, which surprised me, since it is a Mac. There were all sorts of weird files cluttering up the system folder, and I'm pretty sure he didn't put them there. In any case it's not a virus I'm familiar with. I need to upgrade him to OS X, it's soooo much more stable. While working on that machine though, I realized how much I've become accustomed to OS X. It's only been a few months since I fully switched (I was running 9 at work until September, fuck you Quark) and I was already having a hard time trying to find the "quit" and "hide" functions. I'm with John about having old habits and trying to hack around them to make things work the way I'm used to, but it's just as hard to go back to the old after you've become used to the new. Damn that motor memory. Thank heavens Adobe put the Quark keyboard shortcuts into InDesign or I'd be lost.
Anyone interested in our native plants, or on the history of scientific exporation, should check out this site at the Smithsonian.
Lewis and Clark as Naturalists
The site features an interactive map of the route with information about the plant species cataloged at each site. Also included are images of the original specimens they collected. Includes animals as well as plants.
I've had Acrobat 6 for a while now, and have been extremely pleased with the new features they've added. I use it constantly for managing reviews, and the commenting features alone are worth the upgrade.
One feature that I didn't notice at first that seriously kicks ass is the "Reduce File Size" item hidden in the File menu. This feature saves a copy of your file and parses out all the uneccesary data. I've managed to cut in half some of the huge files that I have to send by e-mail, which is a godsend to my flakey Airport connection.
But just yesterday I found that it also really helps if you're trying to extract EPS images out of a PDF in Illustrator. I used to spend tedious hours getting rid of all the extra object frames and points that the PostScript driver adds to files. It doesn't get rid of all of them, but any little bit helps.
*Sniff* I hate getting up in the morning and finding out that one of my favorite performers has died. David Hemmings, star of one of my all time favorite films, Blow Up, has died of a heart attack at 62. I had absolutely no idea that he worked as a director on The A-Team.
Blow Up is just coming out on DVD too. Guess I'm just going to have to watch Deep Red and Barbarella to get my fix.
So long.