Maybe it's not nostalgia. Maybe I'm just happy.

I heart orchids a lot. I wasn't a "what's your favorite flower?" type until I stopped to actually look closely and well at orchids. This came, if I remember correctly, after I read the first volume of Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, a novel in which orchids figured prominently. I read the novel, incidentally, because when I was in high school, writers in the Wall Street Journal kept calling things "Proustian" and I wanted to be in on the joke. Weird, that chain of causality—I like orchids because I used to be a fervent WSJ enthusiast.



Daniel and I went down to San Diego last week, partially to help with our church's homeless ministry because our pastor was worried enough people wouldn't show up, and partially to actually enjoy the city in which we spend so much time doing things besides enjoying (like working ten jobs, in my case. I updated my résumé this week and discovered that I had ten active positions last semester, nine of which were paid. I don't quite believe it myself, so I am going to list them here: editor in chief of campus creative arts journal, copy editor of campus newspaper, intern for literary agent, library assistant, teacher's assistant, co-editor with freelance proofreader, on-campus university press assistant, dissertation editor, freelance manuscript editor, transcription editor).



All that work was spread out, though, so I think I stayed between 25 and 40 hours a week. Oh, and don't worry, I kept my grades up.



Balboa Park was our only planned destination. Daniel had never seen the Rembrandt in the Timken (the last time we went, it had been displaced for a kimono exhibit), so we paid St. Bartholemew his due attention and then lingered in the botanical garden next door.



Outside was a bush full of munching caterpillars and a glistening cocoon with miniature gold beads. Gorgeous.



Running through my head this entire time was the Driftwood (of my ten jobs, the one that plagued me the most over the break). My advisor called me almost every day (including on Christmas) with updates and issues that needed to be resolved so that we could go to print. I couldn't do the edits from home because I didn't have a Mac, or an acquaintance who would let me borrow a Mac for 30 minutes, and it was these measly 30 minutes that were holding up production. My layout editor was getting married that week, but my advisor encouraged me to get a hold of her. I tentatively emailed her under his instruction, and she called me back, busy but willing to help. I told her I'd be in the area that day and would be willing to find her wherever she was so that I could enter the edits quickly and be out of her hair. But she never answered while we were down there, and I don't blame her.



For Christmas, I found for Daniel the pictured jeans. He hadn't owned a pair since he was (shhh) nine, so I made like commenter 21 on the Freakonomics blog post about what to get an economist and headed to Target. I even tried them on to make sure they were comfortable (which was his major complaint about the category of clothing, and not a completely unfounded one, it turns out. Spandex blends for females abound, but males are entrenched firmly in 100% cotton territory). I'm considering contacting all of our mutual friends in advance and telling them to pretend like they don't notice when he wears them, to prove to him that jeans are normal and not conspicuous and they look really good on you and you're not capitulating to social norms, I promise;).



Another in the great tradition of Daniel-trying-to-take-the-camera-away-from-me-because-he-doesn't-like-pictures pictures.



We shared lunch at Con Pane in Point Loma, continuing unintentionally to recreate our first quasi-date, sans bicycles. The people who told me Con Pane had really good sandwiches weren't lying. I already knew the focaccia was fantastic. Then Daniel, sweet, understanding Daniel, seeing how increasingly crestfallen I was becoming the longer my layout editor didn't call me back and the greater the prospect became that I would have to drive down to San Diego the next week to make just 30 minutes of edits, suggested we drive up the hill onto campus to see if we couldn't find a computer with a compatible program. So we did, and we didn't, and I was dejected. But then, Daniel thought of a solution. I could download a 30-day Windows compatible version of the program I needed onto my laptop, make the edits, and overnight the flash drive. Much, much happier, with the prospect of a solution in sight, I suggested we head over to OB.



We walked along the tide pools south of the pier and watched the surfers in the frigid water take the towering winter waves. We also saw a brilliant sunset. All sunsets are categorically wonderful, of course, but I favor the more orangey-blue ones over the pinky-purple ones (unless it's Valentine's Day, in which case the latter is entirely appropriate).



The afterglow reflected in the tide pools as we walked back. And then we headed downtown to meet our pastor and hand out sandwiches and water bottles to people on the streets, and we learned more about the strategic considerations of "the problem of the homeless," who, as our pastor wrote in the Union-Tribune last month, are neither a problem nor homeless.