to boldly vent...

I am such a Star Trek: Voyager geek. No, I mean it. It's gotten to the point that I cry nearly every episode -- because there are only a few more episodes to go before they end the series. So I guess that makes me more of an emotionally unstable Star Trek fan than an actual geek. (I'll have to check the manual on that one.)

Yesterday it genuinely pleased me to see that Robin Roberts, my English professor for this summer's classes, had a "United Federation of Planets" bookbag that she brought to the orientation. (It was an orientation for my study abroad classes in Dublin this summer.)

So anyway, when Tom Paris helped out a dying woman and her baby last night, tears just soaked my eyes like you were squeezing out a sponge. They poured out of my eyes, making little salt paths down my cheeks to my mouth, where I couldn't help but taste them on my lips. My lips were trembling at that point, so there was no point in trying to control them.

I'm going to miss that little show. It had great characters, even though its storylines weren't the best. In my little world of change and shifting, it's been a constant over the last few years.

When I was in Japan, Jim taped a few episodes and sent them to me. It was great to watch them.... I saved them like little treasures, as if I were a hungry child during a time of food rationing.

I savored each one once every few weeks, saving them for when I felt lonely or homesick. They comforted me with the uniquely american culture embodied by the Federation. They made me feel at home in a culture more enlightened than the *real* U.S. culture.