July 31, 2006

Climb through the clouds.

Whew, sorry for the blog neglect. I've been out of town this last week, and I'm still sick.

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I was in Colorado Springs for a work conference during the beginning of the week. Colorado is a beautiful state, and our meetings were in the shadow of Pike's Peak. Thunder storms rolled in every night, and the rumbling crashes bounced off the mountains. It was much more dramatic than the high storms we get here in Oregon.

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I just returned from my annual family reunion out in the wilderness of Central Oregon. It was a perfect weather weekend- warm, but not too hot. We enjoyed a hike through the rugged terrain and a few hands of Rook to pass the time.

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I'm looking forward to being well soon. I'm just waiting for these antibiotics to kick in. I'm heading into week three of having this pesky fever.

July 21, 2006

A sea of brake lights.

I have very early memories of hearing the mysterious codes over the radio. I understood everything else from the back seat- the talk show host’s jokes, the mattress commercial, the news report, the weather forecast. But the traffic report was gated in the adult world.

Eventually I recognized all the terms: stop and go, the Terwilliger curves, Sunset highway, the Banfield, southbound, inbound, and all those freeway numbers. The speed talkers rattled off enough that my parents knew which highway to avoid, but it remained a puzzle in my mind. The report was rhythmic and familiar, but it had no frame of context in my childish world.

With traffic and weather together on the eights: eight, eighteen, twenty eight, thirty eight, forty eight, and fifty eight after the hour.


I was driving home from work yesterday, and the familiar traffic chant interrupted the news. All the places and codes fit neatly into my commute. I realized that I had been let in. I knew what all the terms meant and which highway to avoid. It was some sort of coming of age moment in my mind. I must be a grown up.

July 17, 2006

Quality of life.

The following is an in-depth Erin update:

In the last two months I have been through a major discernment process about my plans for law school. It has become more and more clear to me that a career in law is not going to allow me to do the type of advocacy work that I want to do.

I am most fulfilled when I work directly with people. I love tutoring and training and just building relationships. A career in law would necessarily require that most of my time be spent researching, building cases, and working at the macro level of systems. That is good work, but I know my heart would be restless. I am also aware that the highly competitive, prestige-driven field of law would be a burden for me even if I was doing the most ideal work. So I have decided to withdraw my admission and go back to the drawing board with my future.

I feel at peace with my decision, and I am excited to rethink my path. School is an absolute for me. I want to keep learning. But I am happy with waiting until I am more certain about moving ahead. It is actually sort of empowering to know that the whole law path was laid out in front of me, and it was my decision to choose not to go. I really like my job, and I am looking forward to spending some time working at the shelter before I make another major career change.

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I had a great weekend. My college roommate Lauren came into town, and we spent some time catching up before she moves down to attend Emory University in Georgia. You can see some pictures from our weekend in the sidebar.

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Today I am sick. What is it with me getting fevers in July? Ugh.

July 11, 2006

Make it a double.

Good morning folks! It’s a beautiful Tuesday, and I am at the beginning of a new week. The weekend was full. The world keeps on turning. Life finds its way through the cracks.

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Dan and I dropped in on my parents at the beach on Friday. It was beautiful at the coast, and the temperature stayed in the warm-but-comfortable range. Unfortunately, that is a recipe for disaster with the wind and water. Poor Dan got one of those truly awful sunburns, and he has been moving around like a senior citizen ever since.

Outside of the painful sunburn, we had a great time playing Rook, running head first into the waves, and enjoying the beauty of the ocean.

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Today we went up to Trout Lake, Washington, to help with a camp for middle school students. I was there to give a brief introduction to Sudan. The camp is set up so that the kids “travel” around the world and learn about different countries each day. It was really fun to see their eyes light up at the pictures and stories from our trip last November. They will be “flying” to China tomorrow and then Mexico. I wish that I had been exposed to so much of the world back when I was in camp!

July 05, 2006

Fireworks on the roof.

July 04, 2006

The Brits still haven't come back.

It's Independence Day, and I'm looking forward to a day of good people, good food and a little bit of celebration.

My grandma told me that when she was growing up in Oklahoma, the fourth of July was a bigger holiday than Christmas. Everyone spent the day at picnics with family. There were parades in every town, and the parks were filled with potlucks.

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I was parked downtown for a little while on Sunday. I didn't think there was anything special about the curb parking spot that I picked, but I was so wrong.

When I returned to my car after about three hours, it was absolutely covered in bird droppings. The telephone pole on the sidewalk must have something special about it, because I have never seen one car so well marked. It took me over an hour to clean it all off.