WD40ian Literature

[This post is cross-posted between this site and from russia with blog, my primary blog through June 2006]

Those of you who know me well, or who have been following my adventures in the blogosphere for a lengthy amount of time, will probably have noticed that I have a tendancy to bring up WD40 periodically and inexplicably. Well, sorry to disappoint, but you won't get an explanation from me today. In fact, as the 65+ pages of the as yet unfinished WD40 story are locked in the harddrive of a dead computer from which I may never recover them, it may very well be that you will never know what I'm talking about. Let's just say that it refers to an extremely bizarre period in my life which began almost exactly eleven years ago. Ever since, anything which yields a poignant reminder to that time has inevitably been described by me as "WD40ian."

Some WD40ian things:

ancient Egypt

Arthurian Britain

Waycross, GA

Stars, by Hum

Ghost World

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

The other day, my coworkers and I were discussing taxes, and Brooke said, "What's that form called that you get from your employer? All I can think of right now is 'WD40,' but I know that's not right." (Melissa, let's just say that I totally thought of you right then!) While we may have come down to Earth with Britt piping up with, "W-2!" from the other room, I feel I should bring this up, as Brooke is the person who provided me with the item most recently described be me as WD40ian: A Trip To The Stars by Nicholas Christopher.

My apologies to those of you who don't know what I mean when I say WD40ian, but that's simply the best way for me to describe A Trip To The Stars. Let's just say that the book is incredibly magical, although set in the mundane real world of the 1960s-1970s. The author all but beats you over the head with star/space-related imagery, although I for one utterly love that kind of stuff. There's a pyramid of significance, although it's not Egyptian, and there are so many coincidences that you, as the reader, will find yourself wanting to scream at the characters, "Dammit - why can't you see that it's a sign?!"

Over the past few years I have found myself developing an overly fatalistic view of life (which I must say has solidified over the past few months), and even though we never mentioned it back in the day, WD40 was pretty fatalistic. And well, A Trip To The Stars could also be summed up as a fantastical lesson in fatalism. If that intrigues you, get yourself a copy. Otherwise, well, I didn't want you on my planet anyway.

Costa Rica Travelers: Avoid Cabinas Dagmar

While I am in Russia, I do not have FTP capabilities. This means that I am unable to update my main website, janekeeler.com (thus all the mass changes and updates that occurred over winter break while I was in the States). But, I received an email today that I feel needs to be posted somewhere on the internet, until such time as I can update my Costa Rica Travel Tips section of my site. So here goes:

Hi Jane

I saw that you were recomending Cabinas Dagmar at Punta Uuvita/Bahia Ballena. Me and my boyfriend came home to sweden yesterday (12 jan) after 5 wonderful weeks in Costa Rica. We were spending 2-9 jan, 2006 in Uuvita at Cabinas Dagmar an were supposed to pay 15 dollars per night.

One day were going to the beach and we forgot the sarong so I went back to get it and I found Jose (the owner) in our room. I thought that he was maybe leaving towels or what ever so I only said hi and only told my boyfriend what happened. When we came back nothing was missing. All our money were there and so were the credit cards. We tought just like you that it was a friendly family but we still brought all our “important” stuff whit us rest of the time. We were a bit short on cash the day we were leaving so I paid whit my credit card it was a total of 61.000 colones (about 120 dollars) whit laundry. When I today were checking my account on the internet there is 5 charges from Cabinas Dagmar of a total about 1000 us dollars… I talked to the bank and he have also made a copy of my card and tried to take out money on ATM. He have also tried to make a reservation of a total 600 us dollars but they managed to stop it because there is no more money on this account.

I will get all my money back from the bank but would like to warn people NOT to stay at Cabinas Dagmar.

If you want to respond or ask something:
therese@norstat.se

Kind regards
Therese Eriksson

Back to Russia

From January 7th, 2006 through June 2006 I will be in Vladimir, Russia, and as such, I will be blogging at From Russia With Blog. Enjoy!

Home Fun Round-Up

I've had a lot of fun, being home over the past two weeks, and I'm sad to be leaving already. These two weeks have certainly flown by quickly. Great things about being back (in no particular order):

Seeing friends and family. (My apologies to those of you whom I was unable to see and/or chat with, but I've been busier than I expected!)

Cats! (There's only Gosha at the AH, and he isn't exactly the cuddliest of kitties. It's nice having kitties cuddled up in bed with me, or on my lap while I'm typing. Of course, as my mom is now back up to 12 cats - two strays have decided they live here - my allergies have been driving me mad, and I've taken enough sudafed to knock out a horse or blow up a meth lab, but yet I still sneeze. Sigh.)

House Stalking. Most people would probably call this "looking for a new house" but I prefer "house stalking." You know that commercial where one family is eating breakfast, and another comes in and says they've decided to buy the house, but the family that lives there says that it isn't for sale? I feel like that commercial. I've spent a lot of time driving around looking for houses that I would like to live in. That totally qualifies as house-stalking. Of course, I did look at two that are legitimately for sale (posts below if you don't know what I'm talking about), but neither qualified to be Jane's First Home. Mom is going to keep looking for a house for me. I trust her judgment in this, as we have the same taste in homes.

Driving. I love driving, and I always miss it when I'm overseas. It's so fun and relaxing. (Do any of you have driving calluses? I’m not sure what I do to get them, but it has to do with the way I hold the steering wheel. Anyway, they'd gone away while in Russia, and they're just now starting to come back...)

A shower with water pressure. Let me tell you, a shower with water pressure is infinitely better than a shower where hot water trickles down on your head with all the force gravity has to offer at a height of five and a half feet. This has been a real pleasure.

Sunshine and warmth. I was feeling the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder during my last month in Russia. The sun was only poking its head out for a few hours every day, and for the most part, those few hours were pretty overcast. It's been great being outside, in the sun, wearing just jeans and a t-shirt. Today I took a nap in the grass in the sunshine. Soak up that vitamin D, baby.

Triscuits. You can't get 'em in Russia and I love 'em. Mmm. Maybe I'll have some now.

I'm sure there's more, but that's all for now. I wish I could've stayed longer.

Pictures Are Back Online!!!

Apparently, too many of you have been viewing my blog(s). Okay, so I don't actually mind that, but this way I can say it's your fault that the pictures have been down for the past few weeks! I've been using a free image hosting service, with strict data-transfer limits... and whenever a certain amount of data has been transferred (i.e. images viewed) during the course of an hour, it renders the pictures un-viewable for the remainder of said hour. This problem can, of course, be remedied by upgrading to a not-for-free account. Or by switching to a better free service. Which I have done. So enjoy the photos!

Hebardville Cypress Mill

Hebardville Cypress Mill
Originally uploaded by janekeeler.

Okay, so I should be *doing* something useful with my day, but instead I'm wasting time on the internet. Surprise, surprise. Anyhow, here's a photo I took the other day of the old Hebardville Cypress Mill at sunset. (The Hebard Cypress Company logged the Okefenokee Swamp for all the cypress they could get... and then sold the land to the US Government, thus creating the Okefenokee Wildlife Refuge

Brunswick and a Blue House

Yesterday Mom and I decided to drive over to Brunswick, and to explore south-east Georgia a bit. We took all back roads, and drove through all sorts of little, decaying old southern towns with names like Blackshear and Hoboken. Not heard of them? Well, they're even smaller than Waycross, if you can believe that. We ate lunch just outside of Brunswick at a restaurant called The Georgia Pig - delicious barbecue, absolutely delicious. We arrived in Brunswick (I still can't believe they held a G8 summit there!), and stopped for a while to look at the marshland. We didn't head over to Jekyll island or St. Simon's Island or Ft. King George (the touristy things to do there) having done them all before (even if I don't remember), and drove north looking at the sights. We discovered a wildlife preservation area where one can go birdwatching (my mom being rather into this) located at an old rice plantation. We also discovered what was left of an old house, which of course we explored. (Chris, too bad you weren't here!) Soon it began to rain, and the rest of our journey was a bit damp. (We got home to learn that there had been a major storm in southeast GA with tornados and the like... well, all I know is that I have a small dent in my hood where a small bit of tree came crashing down onto it. Sigh.)

The cool old house we found and explored.

Bird sanctuary / old rice plantation

We almost accidentally went here. Good thing they had a sign!

On our way back we drove through the small town of Jesup. As we approached, we could smell this awful reek, which came from the town's Rayonier Paper Mill. When we saw the thing, it was so astounding that we simply had to pull over. I had no idea making paper was so disgusting. It's almost beautiful, in a tragic way.

This morning, we went to look at another house. This one is for sale for $16,000, and has been for sale since July 2004. Well, now we know why. It looks fine from the outside (other than it needs to have bigger windows. Whoever thought pulling out the old tall windows in all these old houses was a good idea?) and has a rather unsightly handicapped ramp. But, once you go inside (the realtor isn't even bothering to lock the place!) and are hit by the overpowering stench of mold, you start to realize that there's a problem. It's kind of weird - there's a new roof on the place, but whoever put it on obviously did a craptacular job, as the inside walls were wet from yesterday's rain! All the walls are moist, and the originally ugly, brown carpet is wet as well. I figure it's worth $5000, and would have to be completely gutted and redone. And well, I might have 5K, but completely gutting and refurbishing a house from 1910 is not on my hermit's budget.

The blue "bargain"

Happy New Year!!

Wow. It's 2006. I'm not even going to get into how weird that makes me feel. But, I will tell you about the past few days. Chris came up from Lake City (where he was visiting his family for the holidays) on the afternoon of the 30th. Mom and I got a phone call from him; he had managed to find his way to the downtown area of Waycross, and had no clue as to how to make it to her house. I figured it would be easier to drive down and get him than to explain how to get from there to here (I know I've mentioned how strangely this town is laid out), so I met him downtown. As it was a nice afternoon, we decided to explore the downtown, and we had a lot of fun. I won't get into too many details... but let's just say this town has some interesting old buildings.

A shot of Chris during part of our explorations....

Melissa and Alex arrived early that evening, and we went out to dinner at a local diner called Jerry J's, featuring some scrumptious down home southern cooking (i.e., everything fried), and upon returning home, we had a small pseudo-Solstice celebration. Melissa, Alex, Chris and I have been sort of celebrating the Solstices every December and June since the winter of 2000... although it's mostly an excuse to get together and act like weirdos/pyromaniacs. Yes, we are aware that the Winter Solstice fell on December 21st, not December 30th, but keep in mind, I was still in Russia on the 21st. Anyhow, the "solstice celebration" consisted mainly of a bunch of candles lit around and atop an old tree stump in the corner of the front yard. We sang all (four? five? six?) verses of Mother Earth and Father Time (a Solstice carol written by Chris to the tune of Angels We Have Heard on High - it's a great song, but my god, it's about three verses too long), Chris sang his new Solstice carol (another song about Mother Earth and Father Time, written to the tune of Greensleeves), and we made up a song to the tune of Oh Holy Night about a burning plastic box and some rosemary. Yes, we're a strange bunch. (This is all on video, as my father gave me a video camera for xmas - thank you, thank you! - so assuming I can get all the necessary cords and software to edit my footage, you may one day get to see what I'm talking about.)

"Everyone" has a candle...

Alex and Melissa burn as one.

The next day (New Year's Eve), we drove down to the Ghost Train at Kingfisher Landing, and (of course!) took many pictures. Then, we drove down to Folkston to the main entrance to the Okefenokee Wildlife Refuge, and drove out to the boardwalk. On the drive to the boardwalk, we passed an alligator sunning himself on the side of the road, and along the boardwalk, we saw two more alligators and a snake, which we were unable to identify. We made some interesting video of the swamp (to which I may one day subject my poor students) and we took some great pictures from atop the observation tower.

Chris rides the Ghost Train

Melissa rides the Ghost Train


Melissa and Jane ride the Ghost Train


Jane rides the Ghost Train... again.


Chris, Jane and Melissa at the Okefenokee Swamp


Melissa and Alex at the Okefenokee Swamp


Me at the Okefenokee.
What do you think, my picture for the dust jacket?


What kind of snake do you think this is?

After leaving the swamp, we headed back up to Waycross, where we dined at Ruby Tuesday's (so disappointing) and then strolled over to Wal-Mart to stock up on some booze for the evening. (We are such a bunch of light-weights. We had 12 wine coolers and a bottle of champagne, and half of that is left over, and we were all sloshy. We're getting old, my friends.) While waiting for the stroke of midnight, we decided to film a murder-mystery with the new video camera, which turned out to be absolutely absurd. Again, this may one day make its online debut (but don't hold your breath). At 10:43, in homage to the good old days, Melissa, Chris and I went running down the street after the Ghost Train (yes, there was a train whistle at that time, but with this being Waycross, that was hardly surprising) shouring "wait for me!" while waving wooden swords from Korea. (In honor of Gwen, Alex sat on the front porch and looked embarrassed.) At the stroke of midnight, I opened the Russian champagne (yes Frank, I opened it myself), which for some reason we drank out of ice-cream dishes instead of champagne flutes or wine glasses (both of which were readily available, but we had been imbibing those wine coolers...), and then, old folks that we are, we went to bed. I've spent today recovering.

Jane and Melissa with a bottle of Russkoe Champanskoe


Our first toast to the new year.