Vacillating Velocity

I showed up to work today and was greeted with an option; either work my shift (I work short, lunch-covering shifts on Thursdays) or go volunteer with a backcountry products company to test theories involving digging out avalanche victims.  Always eager for a change of pace, and figuring (rightly) that the merchandise offered as compensation would be worth more than I’d make working that day, I drove up the pass to the site of a recent wet-snow avalanche.

And then I dug graves.  In order to have buried “victims” to dig up, you’ve got to dig a hole to throw them in.  A hole about six feet deep, six feet across, three or four feet wide.  It was a little creepy.  And then?  Then we dug ‘em back out.  That was the hard part, because there was a time pressure – if you’re buried underneath feet and feet of snow, you’re gonna suffocate pretty quick.  My first rescue attempt (using an experimental technique, which I shall place the blame on) turned into a body recovery after minute twenty or so.

Strange, hot, backbreaking day.  By estimates bandied about I shoveled at least two tons of snow.  I am officially scared of the backcountry now.  Anyone wanna buy a pack?

I’ve had death on the brain for the past twenty-four hours or so. Not so much because I’ve finally started Six Feet Under season 5, but because a friend was talking about her preparations for the possibility of premature passing. Her plans were prudent and rather simple; she doesn’t want to be kept alive artificially, she wants her body disposed of in a simple cremation, she wants her journals destroyed. If I had private journals (all of mine are online) I would feel the opposite – as another friend said to me recently, “I’m trying to live a less emotionally furtive life.” Once I’m gone would seem like the easiest time to fully bare my soul.

But I digress.

My friend George had perhaps the most elaborate desires on the subject I’ve heard; he wants to be encased in lucite, have servo-mounted glass eyes attached to a motion sensor installed in his ocular cavities, and be placed in the living room of his first-born child, to haunt houseguests endlessly.

My own desires are somewhat less complex and more, well, feasible. I would want my funeral and wake to be combined into an all-day beach party, culminating in my body being launched out to sea on a burning ship, viking-style. Is that too much to ask?

That being said, I hope this is all moot, because I’ve got plenty of joie de vivre left in me.

I’ve been addicted to bittorrent recently. I use it to obtain a variety of things – new music, needed applications, and, perhaps my greatest obsession, TV shows. On my last day off, I spent far more time than I care to admit catching up on this season of Gilmore Girls¹. For bittorrent to work effectively, for reasons that aren’t interesting, something called Network Address Translation needs to be functioning properly. So the client I use, which is open on my computer more often than not, has a little indicator to show whether that feature is working. Usually it’s on “maybe,” which it represents thusly:

NAT OK?

It makes me feel like my computer is constantly concerned with my well-being, which is touching, albeit strange and off-putting. The thing is, I don’t really have an answer. Not a concrete one. I could offer you something in a mutable; we also have some lovely wishy-washys.

I’m not sure what’s going on in my head these days; it often feels like too much to process. Today at work, I was outside in the sun, well-rested, energetically doing snow work at 12,500 feet. I put a song on that had been stuck in my head, and it made me happy, perky . . . and then that happiness boiled over and became tears that I was fighting back. Not tears of joy, mind you, tears of sadness.

I just don’t know. Things are going mostly well, lots of upcoming positives, my imminent future solidifying somewhat, my early attempts to start transitioning back from vacation mode to productivity mode seem successful, and yet I can’t seem to shake this feeling of malaise.