andydoesrl

It's bittersweet, leaving the Shipping office. It's practically been my home for the past five-some months and I got a little attached. (Fie on me, in a Buddhist retreat center!) I grew into the position while my personality manifested in how it looked, what got prioritized, where things were, how people acted in there.

Tomorrow marks the end of the first two weeks for Bridget, the new shipper. It's been a good, solid two weeks and I'm confident that she'll do well in Shipping, providing good, solid, honest, and cheerful service to our customers, to the company, to the community, and to herself. In these past two weeks, she's learned and practiced on all essential tasks for the position: handling the database, printing shipping labels, packing orders, and making the different kinds of art. Bridget's gotten good enough that I felt comfortable leaving her in charge on afternoons and just providing advice when she calls to ask for it. This best example came this morning, when I had to leave the office halfway through training another new volunteer on the database and came back to see Bridget up the final stretch for the task. Even though she doesn't know everything about Shipping yet, it's only been two weeks and I didn't know much at all until after two months of poking around. However, she has enough knowledge to be independent from me and a good support team upstairs on whom she can depend.

The shipping office is getting a long-needed reboot, and now it's Bridget's home. If there were any shiny surfaces in there, they'd be sparkling after her cleanup job this afternoon with Marianne and Keek. As for all my junk that's been accumulating like barnacles in there, it's been scraped off the desk and is now just in a box in my bedroom, ready to be dealt with properly. The place really is her's, embodying her energy infused by the ideals of Dharma Publishing.

I'm glad to be walking away from the position knowing that, despite my mistakes and bad habits, I've still contributed plenty to the company, both for their public image and internally. After all, I worked on their websites, I kept orders going out (most of them on time), and now I'm adding a visual reference howto guide to the shipping manual. Moreover, I kept the lineage of the Shippers active, thanks to Bridget appearing when she did. By the same token, I do feel a twinge of sadness about leaving, just because it means the end of a chapter. It's somewhat difficult to give up the reins and put myself under Bridget, as it were. I suppose there's a bit of separation anxiety there, too. Despite all that, it is the beginning of a new adventure for me, the long-awaited opportunity to go wherever I want to and see what out's there to do.

What's next? I think I'll stay for the next two weeks at the Ling: assisting Bridget, finishing up my Dharma Publishing projects, and helping out in the kitchen. During that time, I hope to sort out my plans for this summer. After I tie up my loose ends here, it'll be farewell to the Ling to go visit friends and family around California and head down to Arizona for the remainder of the spring.

Will I come back? Maybe. Make that probably. While I've appreciated participating in such a positive community, I feel the need to go back to secular society for a while and experience other people and places. However, it won't be for a while -- you know, at least six months =D I do hope to keep up with the Ling folk, since each and every one of them is a super-duper person and I'm glad to have lived alongside them. So, I'd certainly appreciate the chance to return for a week or a month sometime, to help out in the factory again and be near all this - when it's the right time in my life.

All along the eastern shore, put your circuits in the sea.
This is what the world is for: making electricity.

Do what you feel now - electric feel now.

For the past couple months, I've been hanging out in the kitchen a lot, chatting with Mo and Tracy and Kari, helping out wash their dishes in the morning, baking in the evenings, all that stuff. It's a happy, comfy place - who doesn't like hanging out in the family kitchen? Well, I've been hoping to actually work in there part-time since November, and it seems the time is ripe! With the Longchenpa ceremony this past weekend, Tracy asked me if I'd like to come do some official baking and prep work in the kitchen during the day. Of course, I said yes!

This has actually been a long time in the making. Back in October, I made two birthday cakes for everyone's birthday that month; and for Halloween and Thanksgiving, I baked some stuff. Although I haven't been in the kitchen much this month since I've got some personal projects in the evening, plenty of my food has come out of those ovens into the Ling's collective tummy. I also mentioned to Mo and Kari that I wouldn't mind coming up to help out in the kitchen doing dishes.

Now that I've got a competent replacement in Shipping to make sure orders keep on going, I've taken the opportunity to go help out in the kitchen these past few afternoons. I'm learning a lot about cooking for fifty (and being careful with my math) and about just basic cooking skills: how to handle different vegetables and keep several tasks going at the same time in a busy kitchen. It's a really great experience and I'm thoroughly enjoying being up and on my feet, making food to keep the community running. Of course, it comes back to me - I eat it, too, and the cooks get plenty of compliments on yummy food. Moreover, after I leave the Ling, I can certainly put this experience down if I want to apply to work in a kitchen for a restaurant or café.

Life is good, guys!

This past weekend marked the Longchenpa ceremony, an especially important time in the Nyingma Buddhist tradition according to the Tibetan (lunar) year. Longchenpa is, according to tradition, a rather decent Tibetan Buddhist philosopher; we publish some of his writings in Now I Come to Die and Kindly Bent to Ease Us volumes I-III (available to buy on the DP website </plug>). Anyway, I think that he died around this time of the year -- somebody correct me if I'm wrong -- so his energy is supposed to be most accessible now.

Since it's that time of year, all of the Nyingma folk in our organization hold a four-day ceremony, so that's us, Odiyan, and the Tibetan Nyingma Institute down in Berkeley. Basically, it's a lot of candles, lamps, and chanting around the clock. No, really, we had people chanting all day every day from Friday afternoon through this morning. During the daytime, everyone participating in the ceremony split into two groups, which traded off chanting and taking breaks; in the evenings and overnight, people signed up for 1- or 2-hour sessions all through the night.

The ceremony (from what I heard) is intended to let you draw some of Longchenpa's energy back from the universe and contribute your own to that cache - but it's also meant to push you beyond your limits and your comfort zone, into that area where you're just so damn tired that you're kinda floating and zenning out. A couple people had to drop out because it was killing their bodies, and I understood why; when they'd come on break into the kitchen where I was working, we had a bunch of red-faced zombies on our hands. They'd quietly get something to eat and moisten their throats, sit around for an hour, then go spell off the other group. Man, oh, man.

Those of us who didn't participate in the ceremony helped out in our own way. We spent some of our regular work hours down at the factory as usual, doing what we could with just half a dozen people. The rest of the time, we came up to the lodge and helped make food and clean up for everyone. (Isabelle and Roger told me about how, this time last year, they ended up washing dishes for three days straight to help the retreat participants focus on Longchenpa'ing.)

The retreat finished this morning at 8:30am and the retreatants got the morning off to relax and unwind. Some people took walks, other people meditated. We all came back together at lunch and went back to our regular work schedules. Everyone seems happy and positive after a great couple days devoted to the ceremony!

As you might have seen, something's been on my mind for the past few months: who is to be my successor? We've been putting up advertisements here, making it a featured item on our other recruitment areas, and asking our friends if they know someone suitable. Two weeks ago, I sent out an email to our volunteer recruiting team and everybody at DP, asking "What's our contingency plan for when I leave in a few weeks?" Not ten minutes later, Bridget (one of the new volunteers who's been here for two weeks) walks in to the shipping room to say hi. "Andy," she says, "I heard you're leaving in a few weeks. I was wondering, how does someone get into Shipping?"

"Well, Bridget," I tell her, "you ask that question." It was the same question I'd put to Gwen back in August before I transferred to Dharma Publishing. We talked to Anette, who supervises all the factory workers, and Magda, who supervises the DP office workers, and scheduled her to start training on Monday, Jan 25.

It's been a week now that I've been working with Bridget, training her how to use the database system and the different shipping programs, how to package books and art for shipment, how to make notebooks and laminate posters and assemble products, and how to work within DP. It's been a super-positive week and Bridget is picking up everything super fast and asking questions when she doesn't. As it is, I mostly just sit on my computer, writing up reference sheets for her (and her successors) to use when I'm gone and answering any of her questions about if an invoice looks good or a package is well-packed or where something else in the office. I feel pretty confident about leaving her on her own, since she has an excellent support team upstairs with Meggie, Andrea, Marianne, and Magda, who know how to do everything I haven't taught her yet.

After a couple days of working, Arnaud held a meeting with Bridget, Meggie (as shipping supervisor), and me (as trainer) to check in. He asked Bridget how she was doing, if there were any issues she had already or foresaw, if she would like to continue with shipping. Thankfully, she said yes, and while she voiced some concerns, they're nothing that can't be overcome - especially with everybody supporting each other to make for a happy, productive office. He then set out what he expected of the Shipping department: to keep the office a clean and welcoming space, half library and half work room; to get orders out in a timely manner, but not to sacrifice quality in favor of rushing orders; and to ask for help if it's ever needed. All in all, it was rather nice.

For these coming weeks before I leave, I'm transitioning myself out of Shipping to let Bridget take over while still providing some support. It's a great situation because orders are still getting out while I have the opportunity to record my knowledge, answer Bridget's questions and make sure she's getting everything done that needs doing, and taking care of some projects here (like organizing parts of the warehouse). Moreover, we're both staying on task, since we stick to the factory schedule and take breaks with everybody, so we get a lot done when we're working and then relax a lot when we're not. My intent is to stay out of the shipping room for most of the day to get Bridget up and running as quickly and possible, but be accessible for if she needs a hand.

So, the great man-hunt is over: we've captured a new shipper!

One of the aspects of working at Ratna Ling that really appeals to me is the lineage of volunteer staffers, doing the same jobs, somebody new every three or six months. It's all these different friends coming and going and leaving their mark on the site. I hear a lot of names and stories, but mostly what I see is the remnants of volunteers past.

These traces of old volunteers show up a lot in the shipping room, where things are relatively undisturbed compared to the rest of DP and the factory. Sure, a lot of material comes in and out, furniture moves around now and then, but there's not much one person can actually change in the shipping room.

This makes for a fun game when you find an old note attached to a piece of equipment with some obsolete instructions and wonder, "Who wrote this? Do I know their handwriting? This doesn't sound like something else they've written." Also fun- the legacy of hats: Alaina, two shippers my predecessor, saved up for a month to get a freebie Boston Red Sox hat. Nobody's ever worn it. It's on top of the cabinet now, next to a fancy top-hat that Gwen, my predecessor, made out of cardboard, tape, a kiddie paint set. Keeping them company is my rock-em-sock-em robot helmet from Halloween. I'm eagerly awaiting the next shipper to see what hat they bring.*

Mostly I just got really excited today, thinking about my contribution to the Shipper Lineage. I reprinted all the labels for the small art boxes, I built a bunch of storage boxes for folding thankas, I sorted and labelled all the barcode labels for books (with the new ISBN-13 barcodes, since most of our books only have the ISBN-10), I'm moving the shipping manual into a wiki and consolidating all the various reference manuals, etc., etc. Basically, I'm leaving the campsite in better shape I found it!

Of course, it's the next shipper's prerogative to say, "This is silly," like how I organized the computer desk to be left hand-friendly, and change it up again. And there's doubtless some smart thing that Gwen or Alaina or Javier or Alex or Meggie did in the past that we've forgotten or I've messed up. But it's all good, as long as that ball keeps on rolling.

* I'm also eagerly awaiting the next shipper so that I can train them before I leave after February.

Preface: I'm really not a fan of milk beyond a splash of white in my tea or coffee. It's both a lactose thing - not drinking much milk turned me into a bit of a lactard - and a texture/flavor thing. For years, I've been pouring cereal in a cup and eating it dry.

Today, I came up to the commons for breakfast (and internet - it's down right now at the press barn) and had my regular breakfast, a mix of granola and pumpkin flax in a cup. Tara just asked why no milk? I gave her the run-down on me and milk and she suggests soy milk. "Nope, still too thick." Rice milk? "Hmm..." Conclusion: rice milk with cereal is yummy nummy!

Further information: Tara tells me that almond milk is pretty similar, but that I should buy the orangy carton (which is pretty thin), not the blue carton (which is creamy). Tara is my Jiminy Cricket for real cereal eating!

P.S. These people I live with are HILARIOUS. They are SO SMARTLY GOOFY. I would quote them but they're all "you had to be there" moments. (Also, we'd probably lose our PG rating if I put that stuff on the internet.)

Well, more like four months on, two weeks off.

I'm in my last stretch for my stint at the Ling, guys! Six month contract, started in August, and stretching it out through February. It's crazy. This is the longest I've lived away from Delaware, guys! Since I got off the rez for two weeks, though, I thought I'd do a little Compare and Contrast between Ling life and the Outside World. (There's a reason it's called the Ratna Ling Retreat Center, folks.)

The first thing I saw off the boat? All the commerce! There were grocery markets and coffee shops and retail and newspaper stands and oh man so many places I could spend my money (what little I've earned recently). Buying things was kinda funny; it felt kinda like backsliding into pre-Ling habits. So much is freely offered to us at the Ling: the food, the kitchen, the woodshop, etc., and then there's people sharing rides, baked goods (George's bread is SO GOOD - he made French bread last night and it was so nummy!), paint (for painting) and yarn and whatnot. We're so socialist, guys, even those of us who are fascist capitalist American pigs.

What's next? Let's talk about the people. There's so much diversity out there - especially down in Berkeley. Back in December, the Ling had 50-60 people and now it's closer to 40; all adults except the occasional 19-20yo and sometimes somebody's kid. We see each other all day, every day, so it doesn't really matter what particularly you're wearing or how long your beard is getting. (Okay, the beards are actually a bit of a joke, and I'm not just talking about how long they get.) So let's talk about how the entire population of the Ling could fit on a subway car. If we were all moving out and lugging our personal belongings, maybe two and a half cars. I got off the subway and there were a bunch of kids with skateboards sitting around the plaza shootin' the shit, couples with strollers, hobos, college kids, canvassers, people from all walks of life. Seeing all these different people, I've got this enhanced appreciation for who they are: how they move and act and talk, what they wear, what they're thinking about, if they went to classes or work today, all these little niggling details of life.

And now do those people get around? CARS! and SUBWAY TRAINS! and PLANES! man, I'm starting to sound like a children's book. But wow: there are places in the world where's it not 5-10 minutes walk from end to end (or 15min if it's raining). You'd think I'd grown up in the middle of the woods instead of in a college town of 20k residents 20k students, but four months is a long time in my life!

What do they eat? WHATEVER THEY WANT but it's mostly mass-produced somehow. I mean, sure, we get a lot of our cooking supplies from Sysco, but I feel like there's such an emphasis on organic and vegan kinda food up here, given that we have a bunch of health-conscious types up here that we're kinda closer to the food. Like, for personal groceries, we go to WholeFood and Trader Joe's instead of Walmart and Target. um.. that's about it.

okay enough of all this. I've got some projects to do.

P.S. Winter holidays were very nice! I got to see lots of family (my actual blood family, not my Ling family) and some friends (sorry for the people I didn't see! but I'll be back in June) and eat lots of whatever I wanted (aka lots of hamburgers and steaks and munchies).

THUNDER AND LIGHTNING GUYS!  well okay, two lightnings and one thunder. BUT IT STILL COUNTS UP HERE.

We never get thunderstorms up at the Ling. Now and then, like every other week or so, it'll rain for a day or two. But it never proper storms, it just rain rain rains.  Bo-ring.

The rain is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it means there's clean, fresh water pouring into our reservoirs. On the other hand, it means we have to move all the books and supplies we left outside into one of the warehouses. On the one hand, we get all wet walking around outside. On the other hand, you can dump all your extra crap and just go take a nice walk in the cleansing rain. Also, it washes my glasses.

Unfortunately, I have to schlep my stuff back from the office to my room through it. Fortunately (and this is the best part of all), my room is all of 500 feet away and I can sit on the back patio and watch the rain come down!  Well, I could if there were street lights out, which there aren't.

OH HEY THERE WAS ANOTHER THUNDER!  TOTALLY COUNTS!
(that might have just been the factory loading dock gate getting blown around, though)

Leigh, the volunteer coordinator, dropped by my office yesterday (Saturday) afternoon, after everyone's been back for a few days and caught up on all the backlog from vacation. She says to me, "Andy, I've got a question for you -- a residential question. There's a couple coming up to Ratna Ling on Tuesday night and would you mind moving to the press barn to open up your [two-person] yome for them?"

Let's take just a moment to cover how I've been quietly bemoaning the lack of a headboard on my bed ever since I moved in back in August. Let's also review real quick how quiet my yome has been since Gerardo moved out in November. Now we can check out the press barn, which is a house built next to Temp Warehouse 1. (It's called the press barn because it used to be a barn and it's right next to the printing press building.) 3br; full bath; kitchenette w/ full fridge, microwave, coffee machine, and sink; wifi; back porch; small yard where the deer congregate. Got all that? Alright, back to our program already in progress.

Leigh: "You wouldn't actually need to be moved out until Tuesday afternoon. Just make sure you do your sheets and clean up the place before then and we'll check it over and transfer your security deposit over to the new room in the press barn."

Fast-forward to today. It took me maybe an hour and a half to pack up all my stuff and walk it down the hill from Yome E to the press barn. Take another hour to unpack my junk and sort through what I've been meaning to put in the commie closet. Nice shower in the bathroom. Three hours later and I got some new digs!

While the yome was pretty cool and exotic, plenty of room to stretch out, a nice walk through the woods to work, living in the press barn is gonna be downright luxurious: I don't even have to leave the house to get a shower or fix some food. There's the choice to roll out of bed and be at work in five minutes or to make some coffee and eggs before going over to the press. Moreover, upstairs are Mallory* and Rachel, whom I've always thought were pretty cool people. Maybe I'll stay here past February after all. =D

* It seems I'm always a week behind Mallory. She arrived at Ratna Ling a week before I did in August, she moved into the press barn last Saturday, etc. At least I can take solace in the fact that I'm a year or two older.

So, I'm back at Buddha Camp. Holidays were pretty baller. I'll write something more substantial more tomorrow. I just want to put this one little thing in the record. (Sorry about the fact that I've already cross-posted this to Facebook and Twitter and it's gonna show up again on Facebook. Deal).

Before hopping into bed tonight, I did like Meggie did last night and checked under the bedsheets for spiders and pranks and things. No spiders. Just about thirty acorns which are now scattered across my yome. I'd sweep them up but I think somebody stole my broom over holiday. Hil-ariousssssss. alright g'night I've been up too long tonight already.

Wow. That was pretty crazy: cleaning up everything and taking last-minute orders and driving down to Berkeley and crashing with a (pretty cool) CouchSurfing host and getting to the Oakland airport and getting home from the BWI airport in about three days!

I'll write up more later about end-of-season stuff. But let me say that I AM SO COOL because I TOOK A PHONE ORDER AT 2:30pm and had it all packed up and heading out and then I LEFT THE LING AT 3:00PM.

oh and for anyone I didn't see before I peaced out, HAPPY HOLIDAYS.

oops, the sun's coming up. That's what happens when I come home and hang out with friends and chat with mom until the wee hours. GOOD MORNING NIGHT WORLD, I'll see you soon.

After a particularly cold day last week, I stumbled into my yome in the dark (since the overhead lights are out) to trip over a portable electric radiator.

The next night, I followed a bright light to my yome to be blinded by light from the three overhead bulbs. (Okay, it's not that bright, but it's a lot better lighting than before; plus the lightswitch is right next to the door.)

This morning, I looked up from my bed to see a foil-covered piece of insulation covering the chimney hole at the top of my yome.

Now the only thing my yome is missing is Gerardo, my roommate, who went back home two weeks ago. I don't think Mike McMurphy can install a Gerardo... or maybe he could ... this could get creepy.

Do you like packing things in boxes? Can you handle a spreadsheet and some data entry? Would you enjoy eating free, delicious vegetarian food day and night? Are you interested in Buddhism or don't mind working with Buddhists? If yes, you should apply to the Shipping department of Dharma Publishing!

The shipping department is responsible for:

• packing and sending out books and art to bookstores and individuals world-wide
• managing warehouse inventory
• ordering shipping supplies
• assembling products such as notebooks and wrapping paper packages
• handling online orders and some phone orders
• other tasks around the office determined by your skills and what needs to get done

Requirements:

• Ability to handle an Excel spreadsheet and some data entry
• Occasional heavy lifting of boxes under 50lbs

Work schedule: Monday through Saturday, 8am-6:15pm with 30min breaks in the morning and afternoon and lunch from 12:30-1:30pm.
Compensation:

• $150/mon stipend check
• Room on-site
• Lunch and dinner, vegetarian meals prepared by professional cooks
• Full utilities including internet and phone
• Free classes on Buddhist topics and Kum Nye yoga
• Open access to industrial kitchen and carpentry shop

Community: All Dharma Publishing volunteers live at Ratna Ling, an intentional work community in the redwoods of Northern California. In January, there'll be about 30 people living and working here from all over the world from 20 years old to over 60 You can read more about the community here.

If you're interested in this position, please fill out the application form and email it to dharmavols@nyingma.org. For more information, call our Volunteer Coordinator office at 510-809-2014 or contact me via commenting here, email, or Facebook.

I walk around the Ling in the dark a lot. We've established this, like, two or three months ago. There's very few proper roads around the Ling; this we also know. There are, however, several established paths - at least, inasmuch as there's beaten-down ground where volunteers over the years have trod en route to their yome, the commons, and work. I follow one of these paths home every night (sometimes a little later than other nights, like when I passed out on the commons couch).

This particular path, which leads from the commons to my yome, starts across the road and two steps to the left of the walkway leading out of the commons. There's your first hazard - if you don't veer left, there's half a dozen small shrubs which will eat your legs up to the calves. They're nothing to trip on, but if it's raining like tonight, it's a bit of a nasty walk the rest of the way. Pretty soon after that are the second and third hazards: a raised manhole cover to kick on the left of the path and a wooden post to run into. At least the manhole cover is white, so you can aim just to the right of it and steer clear of these dangers.

After clearing these two trip-ups, it's smooth sailing for about thirty feet. My advice at this point is to treat toe-first, since there's a small hump immediately followed by a slightly larger hole. If you have either a cautious tread or a good sense of balance, this shouldn't be an issue.

Another thirty feet on, the same thing happens - that is to say, another hump. If you don't encounter the hump after a minute, though, it's time to worry: you're probably near THE CARNIVOROUS TREES. Yes, the trees will eat you up here in Volunteerland, too. You won't see them coming because a devious turn in their evolution left them with some fearsome leaf cover overhead, blocking out any moonbeams which might otherwise have glinted off their sodden trunks. The only method of detecting this by employing a paradigm shift in the way you look at things, by seeking out the negative space where the trees block the night-time sky behind them - and avoiding that space. Sometimes, though, its compatriots off in the distance form a barricade against any night sky helping us poor, damp volunteers get home. The end result: coming up short with your nose dead against a tree, if you haven't already stumbled over its roots.

Now, the only remedy to this dire situation we find ourselves in, lost in the middle of the forest, so close to home but potentially stuck running in circles for hours to avoid the underbrush, is to use our finely tuned Kum Nye senses, stretch out our mind, and feel for the path. Okay, in reality, I just walk back and forth really carefully until I can feel the the dirt path underfoot instead of the grass and fallen leaves everywhere else. Sometimes I try to keep an eye out for landmarks I recognize, like the prayer flags Zach hung outside his yome or the little LED light on the side of Kari and Jon's yome. But still, I gotta use my awareness! That's Kum Nye, man!

Once I get back on the path-by the way, I get in this kind of a fix about three nights a week-and over that last hump, I just gotta keep an eye out for one more little shin-kicker next to the path. It's a knee-high wooden post, which I know since I've busted my knee on it more than few times. Then you cross the road and there's the welcome crunching of gravel underfoot. It's almost home free - just keep an eye out for that shiny white block of concrete that's the first step up onto the yome patio!

Okay real quick, because I need to go to bed at a reasonable hour so I can be functional at work in the morning.. jeez, whoda thunk I'd grow up to be a responsible adult? and I'm not even getting paid for this. ehhh who am I kidding - even though they let me vote, drink, and buy porn, I'm never gonna grow up proper.

On that note, HALLOWEEN! We did the place up RIGHT. Even though we're a Buddhist work community, it's still staffed by Westerners and we fusioned this place like a space shuttle from the future. The banquet hall got all decked out Saturday morning with spider webs, coffins, and one corpse hanging from the rafters (I tied the noose, Meggie's clothes provided the corpse). A bunch of people made yummies, there was candy in abundance, and we all came down to bumble around and have a Halloweeny dance party. The winners of the costume contest - Ana and Davie, who were riding chocobos ostriches - won a week off of lunch cleanup duty. At 10pm, everybody pitched in with cleaning up the place and then migrated over to the bonfire, which Mike Murphy had stoked up. There were guitars and wolf-howls in abundance! You can check out Leigh's photos on Picasa if you missed them.

Soon after Halloween was THANKSGIVING - and two week's worth of preparations, oh man. A signup list for cooks went up on the fridge pretty early into November, so people could elect to cook a particular dish or side. We had to give our recipes to the kitchen, too, so they could order enough food for us to cook with. Another list showed up with times for people to cook their dishes, starting at 6:15pm (after dinner was cooked) on Thursday the week before Thanksgiving.

The day of Thanksgiving, of course, we had to have a FOOTBALL GAME. What without any TV reception on-site - and a mixed bag of loyalties to different regions - we instead trooped down to Stump Beach and held our own Ratna Ling football bonanza. Doug brought traffic cones, somebody rounded up the football, and we went! Loads of fun, even in the misty chill from the NoCal Pacific.

When I got back at 4pm, the kitchen was overrun with a lotta lotta cooking, and for a good cause: 50 people sitting at three long banquet tables arranged in an arc around the banquet hall. We filled the buffet line to bursting with tofurkey, green bean casserole, candied yams, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and one huge platter of tofurkey - followed up by George's delightful dinner rolls. They rolled out another table for all the desserts, too, which included gingerbread cookies, 16 punkin pies, and tiramisu. ohhhhh man so much good food. And so much thankfulness! Arnaud gave a speech during dinner which everyone echoed, to the gist of: "We are thankful to be so fortunate, that we have a roof over our heads and food in our bellies and friends and family members we care for and who care for us, wherever they may be, and that we have the opportunity to do the work we do and preserve the cultural legacy of Tibet." And afterwards, we put Alice's Restaurant on the stereo =)

These holidays are still hanging around, mostly in the form of leftovers popping up - the day after Thanksgiving, we had a Leftovers Casserole, four different dishes stuffed into one casserole pan. Pretty good stuff. And yesterday for lunch, the remainder of my yams from Thanksgiving were remixed into sweet & spicy burrito stuffing and sweet potato fries! Man, our kitchen is great. There's still some Halloween costumes floating around the Ling, mostly the Commons - and my robot helmet is on top of my armoire.

Now that it's December, several Holiday Cheer squads were dispatched during Saturday morning's community work period to prepare for the coming Yuletide times. Now visitors approaching the Ling will be greeted by a cheery string of Christmas lights outlining our gate, some colorful ones on the trees, and a 20-foot tall Christmas tree in the front lobby of the lodge! Fortunately, we're avoiding most of the schmaltzy music* and tawdry sales associated with the season and just get the good bits: happy people anticipating their holiday cheer.

(* Okay, that's not totally accurate: we dug out a copy of John Denver and the Muppets singing Christmas carols because Megan from Odiyan wanted to hear them.)

But Christmas break or not, we're still working hard! It's our good ol' eight hours a day, six hours a week that keeps this place running and, by george, we're sticking to it. This coming week is the last full work week, then we get a two-day retreat for everyone on site-a nice way to round out the season-and two days of cleanup before most everyone heads out to see their families - at least, their families outside of the Ling!

As of yesterday, Ratna Ling has been home for four solid months (excluding a weekend in Berkeley). Here's a few signs that I've settled in:</p>

• Walking the gravel path from my yome to the bathroom shed requires neither shoes nor (after dark) flashlights.
• Walking anywhere at night doesn't require a flashlight, even during new moon.
• I automatically lock bathroom doors behind me.
• The "DONG!" of the prayer bell no longer makes me jump. Neither does the gunshot "bang!" of people stacking pallets outside the bindery in the morning.
• I know the nickname and at least one hobby/interest of every single person on-site. However, I know maybe 20% of their legal first and last names.
• I am surprised when people shave.
• I am not surprised to eat tofu anything.
• I am happily surprised to see leftovers from lunch transformed into an entirely different dish two days later.
• I don't read the original labels on bottles. There's usually a masking tape label that's more useful.
• I also don't read what t-shirt I put on in the morning, since I only have seven. Everyone's seen them and nobody cares anyway.
• My bookshelf contains several sci-fi paperbacks, one dirty romance novel, a bestseller novel, and a copy of Skillful Means and Gesture of Balance, Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche's guides to practical Buddhism in Western work and life.
• The other end of my bookshelf contains more hand-written letters and handicrafts than DVDs and video games.
• I don't actually have a "bookshelf" per se, we just make do with what's here.
• My yome's decorations consist of abalone shells from the coast, bird feathers, little things other volunteers have made for me. Oh, and art we produce at the bindery.
• Most of the movies I've watched here were from an external hard drive, an old volunteer, or Netflix.
• All of my personal storage boxes are recycled from leftovers at work. So are all my personal notebooks and looseleaf.
• Despite the fact that I'm living below the poverty line, I'm eating better than I ever did since I got into college.

Why have I been so low-energy since I got back from Berkeley? I spent ten minutes staring at my craft table during break today instead of living life.

I'm still getting a bit of exercise, walking back and forth to work and to the lodge every day. I'm eating an okay amount. I spend enough hours in bed. I'm not depressed or anything.

Y'know what? I think the vegetarian diet is finally getting to me after four months. Eating whatever I wanted in Berkeley was great. (Being down in the city was fun, too, but I think that was only half of it.) It seems I might need to start going to the grocery store more often for myself.

So the Ratna Zine was awesome. They ran a set of 30-ish and hope to finish off the rest of the 108 of the first edition. What's the RZ, you say? It was the youth of the Ling banding their creative forces together to form one 8.5"x5.5" booklet of art, essays, poems, music reviews, and general visually creative stuff. Some of it is in-jokes for people who've lived in yome-land or been part of the society here, but there's some good accessible stuff for folks from outside the Ling.

To celebrate and share the goodness, we had a party! The kitchen brought down pizza and pumpkin cheesecake muffins to the Tower House last Friday and people gradually filtered in around 7pish to pick up a copy to read - and to listen. Some people read their own contributions, making their pieces even more hilarious and poignant. Jesse described her conversion to vegetarianism, a bit stunning to her quite carnivorous New Zealand family, with humor and a brutal honesty, while Rachel, in a satirical but loving manner, lambasted the plight of a banana plug she encountered while on a morning run. Monel pulled up the myspace page for A Nice Place to Visit for one of Tim's bands and read her "EP Interpretation" - less a music review than a running narration of the album. We all tried to piece through Anna's German captions to her drawings of the different bathrooms around yomeland. That was pretty hilarious, especially the bit where people around the room eventually realized which bathroom was whose.

Sitting around the common room in the tower house with everybody, perusing the zine to find our lives portrayed so- it was pretty cool. I'm very glad that it happened and hope to keep it up into the new year.

You can download a PDF of it from my server, since the creators were kind enough to distribute it to us electronically.

Just a warning: if you've lived at the Ling, you'll read this note, smile ruefully and say to yourself, "Yeah, I've done that;" as for y'all city folk, you're probably gonna laugh at me instead.

Walking from the bindery to the lodge, the quickest route is along the footpath that follows the road. Up one side is grass and the hill with the reservoir. The other side is a copse of trees. Along the path every ten paces or so lives a little footlamp; some burn steadily while others strobe, with the remainder flashing out now and then like lighthouses warning "keep an eye out or your feet will get wet!" Since my flashlight is dying and this week hosts a new moon, those little lights are literally my guiding lights to get from work to dinner. The entrance to the footpath is bounded on the right by some manhole covers for the septic system (?) and on the left by a little light and a tree.

This tree, it eats people if they don't keep an eye out. It'll just lean a branch over--esspecially on wet nights, like tonight--and smack 'em right in the face. I've lived here for over three months now, so you'd think I'd be familiar with it. Oh, I sure am familiar with it.

Tonight, as I approached the path, I figured out that I should hold my gradually weakening flashlight up in front of my face in order to illuminate any errant branches that might scratch my glasses. I got past the warehouse tent, over the road, onto the path - nothing! Great. The flashlight is out to save what battery is left. And-

BAM! in the face. So much for outsmarting the tree. Sometimes, you just gotta laugh.

Soooo last weekend was Berkeley weekend. SO TOTALLY AWESOME. This weekend was the first time I haven't slept at the Ling since I got here, I believe.

The excuse to come down to Berkeley was the Dharma Publishing store! After not having a Nyingma store open in Berkeley since we closed the bakery on San Pablo down five (?) years ago, we're finally opening a store to hawk all of our DP wares: books, children's stories, art, jewelry, yoga mats, you know the drill. DP staff had been going up and down the past two weeks before the opening (this past Saturday) to prep the place: clean up, organize, stock the shelves, hang art and prayer flags, and generally make it awesome. Their hard work paid off!

The grand opening was Saturday with lots of free activities: reading children's stories in the morning, Kum Nye yoga session after lunch, and two talks from Arnaud. A decent amount of people showed up and a lot of people have heard the word that we're back in town! So, lots of happy happy -- and a lot of stress off our backs, now that the store is open and we just have to sustain it with inventory and the occasional visit.

There was plenty for me to do in Berkeley besides the store, though, and I took full advantage of my free time. Instead of sleeping at the Institute, I stayed at lesisputnik's place, which was a super brilliant idea. We went out to the Albatross Pub, which serves fancy beer and $1 bottomless popcorn, and talked about sign language and life all night. It was glorious. P.S. Her house is super-cute, both inside and out:

She also joined us for lunch and hangouts Saturday, which entailed wandering down Telegraph to Dwight Way to find Industrial Tattoo, a sweet tattoo studio. (She and another Berkeley friend -- Jasmine, who cooks for Dharma Mangalam -- both gave it high recommendations. Funny enough, we ran into Jasmine waiting to do her tattoo there.) I got a new piercing (inspired by my dear friend Liz Aresti back in Delaware) and got a sucker lollipop from my piercer, Lysa!


During the afternoon, I got the chance to drop by the Nyingma Institute, so I'd never seen it before. We got the dime tour and man, what a place! It used to be an old Greek house just off-campus, on Cyclotron Rd just below the LBL. (They joke about "that's why we glow.") HUGE HUGE HUGE prayer wheel out back. SUPER view of the bay, especially at sunset. Just huge and labyrinthine and lots of nice to hang out there with our Institute brethren and sistren. The coolest part of it for me was actually seeing a bookstore that I've shipped to, seeing products that I've wrapped up and boxed and sent out the door. It gave me a new inspiration to Ship Well.

Saturday night, DP and some of our Berkeley volunteer and retreatant friends all went out to a Chinese restaurant around the corner from the store -- Great China, incidentally -- and we had a delicious celebratory banquet. yummy yummy yummy and leftovers to bring back to the Ling, too! My friend Dorothy V, who I'm pretty tight with from Delaware, is also out in California, so she rode the BART into Berkeley and joined us for festivities and hooliganaciousness. Our shenanigans took us to the dregs of some random art show and around downtown Berkeley until we ran into a karaoke joint at the end of the night and decided to sing sing sing! In addition to the youth of DP, we brought along one of the girls from the Institute, Kelly. Turns out she went to University of Delaware, too, 'cos Dorothy and her recognized each other from the art department. Small world, man!

Sunday was pretty sedate: waking up, joining Dorothy for brunch at Cafe Durant across the street from the karaoke place from the night before, meandering down Telegraph Ave and checking out the vintage shops, yadda yadda. In the afternoon, Dorothy caught a ride back to Mountain View, where she's working on a show, and I headed back up to the Institute to collect everyone for the ride back in Greg's car. Then -- oh no! -- Greg's keys got locked in his car! Fortunately, his mum was in town from Utah on business and had AAA-style insurance through Allstate, so we took advantage of that and called a lockpick guy. He was pretty nice and told us all about gun control and public/private security laws in California. (He used to be police/military, then went into private guard services. Very interesting! and very genial. We learned a lot from having him pop the lock, not to mention how to pop locks on newer cars.)

So, we drove back up. What a full day and two halves. Berkeley was glorious. Now I'm refreshed and ready to work hard for the Christmas season!