I went to a theme party the other night titled 'Red or Dead'. I thought it was clever. You had to dress in red or dress as a person who is dead. I would have gone all out, as I love costumes, but I did not have much notice. I opted to bust out my handy medieval dress, renaissance boots, and a sword and go as Joan of Arc.

As I approached the food table I heard, 'Timika you have very beautiful cleavage'. In many instances, I would be so turned off by a comment like that. Yet, it was said with such sincerity that I was quite flattered. How often does a girl hear that from a guy that does not want to get in her pants? Anyhow, here are a few shots of the evening. Ciao.


getting there was treacherous


erica as lisa left eye lopez


katie and her man


dave and annie


(b) katie, dan, mike (f) alicia, me, patrick


colleen as a silent film star


me and annie


(b) joy as janis joplin, kim, erica, jason (f) amy


?, russell, me


katie and kim


cool shot of some christmas lights


kristin as audrey hepburn and me


alicia and me


mike as johnny cash and jason


colleen


an experimental shot with the candles on the mantel


kristin


patrick and his girlfriend


dan as jerry garcia


lights on a tree


same shot without the flash - very cool imo


me as joan of arc

I had a lovely time at the Snow Party. I had the opportunity to meet some new peeps, including (e:Jessbob), (e:Beast), (e:Imk2), and (e:Enknot). It took me a moment when I woke up this morning to remember why I had writing on one of my breasts. Without further delay....




















jess showing off his nipple ring








carey got her bracelet stuck in her tights, jeff had to help her out








sarah started spanking mike with his belt


then she tried to pull his pants down and he chased her into the kitchen


more crack


back in the living room, mike got pantsed


he retaliated but failed to pants sarah


jessica comforted him


then mike decided he was famous and sarah and i were his groupies.....


.....so he autographed our breasts


but the real star of the show is basra


thank you and good night

I had my work party tonight. Sorry to say I have no exciting stories like (e:Mike)'s Eckerd story, but what do you expect from a private Franciscan institution? They had free beer and wine, so I was stoked. Apparently, they do not believe in any type of de-icing agent here at Hilbert. I skated all the way across campus on this lovely sheet of ice. Thankfully (e:frogedelic) gave me a ride back to my building.


Lori and I with the President of Hilbert


This was funny. One of our fellow GA's was walking us out the doors when he reaches into his coat pocket and says "what is this"...then pulling out a little Santa figurine. How random.


(e:frogedelic) trying to scrape the coating of ice off her window

In a spontaneous gesture, two classmates and I decided to play in the snow. Since the snow was too fluffy to make snowballs and have a proper fight, we decided sumo style with fists of snow fury was the way to go. As I was taking one of them down I somehow was flipped and ended up going head first into a deep bank. I got a seriously compacted cork of snow in my ear canal! It was so bizarre, and quite cold. In all my years of playing in the snow, even having spectacular snowboarding crashes in Aspen, I have never had this happen. Weird.

We went back inside to defrost. Then we had the brilliant idea that we should continue our snow theme and imitate penguins by sliding across a giant boardroom table on our bellies. On my first attempt, I caught my thigh on the edge of the table and ended up doing a booby flop. That's right, a booby flop - with a bounce. Ayna! (That is Afrikaans for 'Ouch'). Subsequent attempts proved much more successful when I had the idea to wrap my abs with my fleece scarf. This allowed for maximum slide down the runway. It was a nice interruption from finals. One paper to go!

Warning: This is a bit wordy.

THE NAZCA LINES
The Nazca people of Peru left no trace cities, but did leave the marvel of the Nazca Lines. Geogliphs. Built for extraterrestrials? Runways? They are figures only visible from the air, when modern flight was hundreds of years away. Some lines run 10 miles long. Birds, monkey, spider, whale, human like figure, there are thousands of figures. What was their purpose?

Astronomy theory relates to the positions to the moon, stars, solstices etc. The lines can point out horizons and figures relate to constellations. Is it just a map of the sky to mark the seasons? Astronomy theory doesn't fully explain it. It can only match up with 30% of the lines. Random at best.

Water theory suggests the figures coincide with aquifers that lie under the desert surface. They spiraled wells to tap into the aquifers. These 2,000 year old aqueducts are still in use today, fantastically preserved. Yet, only 30% match up with the lines. Random at best.

Ritual theory suggests they made huge images so that the gods in the heavens would be able to see them. They performed ritual dances but evidence of brutal rituals has never been found. Weak at best.

ATLANTIS
Could it be the island of Santurini in Greece? The island has many geological similarities to Plato's writings. The hot and cold springs, the red, white and black rock, the fact that it is an active volcano and could have been the cause of extinction. Atlantis supposedly sank into the sea. How does this compare to the city of Pompeii that was buried under a hundred feet of ash? The concentric circles described by Plato, do they offer evidence of advanced life? Yet there is no mention of a volcanic geological event. It is possible that they simply had no concept of what they were witnessing, if the piroplastic plume was obscuring the view, but it was a most violent explosion of priroplastic bombs. Scholars suggest that violent earthquakes and floods occurred over one day and night, sinking the city of Atlantis and making all the area impassible as mud. Such an eruption would do just that..

Was Plato writing entire fiction, entire fact, or fact based fiction? Was he simply the Dan Brown (author of The DaVinci Code) of the day? Was his writing merely a tale of mortality? Why are we so intrigued by Atlantis over the factual history we know of? Is there some psychic connection to the human mind collective that Atlantis has something to do with our future?

Aquitiri is a city that was unearthed much like Pompeii. An old city, supposedly of high functioning individuals. However, unlike Pompeii, no bodies were ever recovered.

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE
The Bermuda Triangle is a triangular region in the Atlantic Ocean between Florida Keys, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda. An average of five planes goes missing every year and more than 50 ships have gone missing in the last century. However, is this phenomenal for an area consisting of 1.5 million sq miles of ocean? Surely, there are logical scientific explanations: gas bubbles, electromagnetic interference, violent seas. The geography of Bermuda is amazing. It is a coral reef perched on an extinct volcano 1 mile down at the bottom of the ocean. Its precarious environment is at the mercy of this vast deep ocean with easy changing weather.

Water spouts, essentially tornados on the water, form easily in the Atlantic and can be very deadly in open water. Many times, they are invisible to ships on the water. Methane gas bubbles releasing from the ocean floor in a localized concentration can cause a drastic density difference in the water, easily sinking an object. Random rips can suddenly turn 3ft waves into 6ft waves, and if the wind is blowing the opposite direction, it can make it worse. Microbursts produced by thunderstorms could tip an object.

When flying over water and a long way from land, spatial disorientation can occur. In other words, in flight Vertigo, the loss of sense of up and down, left and right. We fly by horizon, without it, the mind cannot compensate.

Have you ever been in the water in total darkness? While snorkeling a beautiful underground river in Cozumel I experienced this madness. I was face down, enjoying the beauty of the floor some 30 ft below when darkness swallowed me. Almost instantly, I had no idea where I was. I literally had no sense of direction.

I was far from the caves walls so I thought I might try to swim slowly with an outstretched hand and eventually reach a wall. I would then follow the wall and either head back to the light from which I came, or emerge on the other side of the blackness. My friend and I were calling out to each other but within the acoustics of an underground river, our primitive echo location was useless. I didn't panic, but I will admit I wasn't loving it. Slow and cautious, I swam in what I hoped wasn't a circle, trying to reach a wall. I ended up cracking my head on a razor sharp rock. Blood running down my forehead, the salt water burning my cut; it was fanfuckingtastic. Anyhow, that is my small version testament to spatial disorientation. Human beings like to feel centered; having no sense of where you are in space is disturbing.

Back to the triangle, there are many natural scientific explanations for probable causes of these tragedies, but why is no trace found of the majority of these missing modes of transportation? We were able to find the Titanic with no accurate coordinates, and she lies 2.5 miles below the surface.

I guess I shared these thoughts because I have always had a passion for archeology, both land and marine. Secrets of our future buried in our past, that sort of thing. Ciao.