Giving thanks

Phew! Finally catching my breath after a whirlwind Thanksgiving holiday, which included stints in D.C., Connecticut, and New York in varying degrees. I've never not spent Thanksgiving near home with my whole family, so it was a bit of an unconventional adventure. It was great to spend time with my sister and her husband and his family, though, and experience a touch of winter and their traditions. It was never too terribly cold with the exception of one day when we walked down to a very pretty, very chilly beach.

We had Thanksgiving dinner at a magnificent home that made me feel like a very patriotic American and sing songs from the musical Ragtime in my head. (In 1902, Father built a house at the crest of the Broadview Avenue hill in New Rochelle, New York, and it seemed, for some years thereafter, that all the family's days would be warm and fair ... Fine weather, isn't it? Isn't it? Now that we're out of the city, isn't it? Nothing like the city ... Safe? Yes, everything's safe in New Rochelle ... )

As for running ... after completing four solid weeks of running training, week five (Thanksgiving week) was basically a bust except for a short but lovely run when I was away. It was lovely because I got to run over paths and bridges that looked like this:

And that wasn't even the only spectacular park we visited! We also went here:

What is better than a bunch of trees and lakes and hills and the sun shining through the branches at a state park in Connecticut on the second to last day of November? Nothing. Nothing, that's what!

Week six of training got off to a late start today ... it was very cold and windy and gray and wet this morning, with the misty drizzle basically drenching every inch of me by the time I was done. It was only a short 20-minute run, but I think it was about all I could handle after getting a bit derailed. I'm not too worried about it, though. I got some new shoes (inspired by Linda) and they felt okay. (I got the black and gold ... the color options in my size were limited, and this choice made me feel Saints proud.) I think the run was too short to fully evaluate them. I guess my shins will probably decide in the end, just like they do everything else! (My watch hasn't worked for the last two runs, so I hope I'll be back on track with keeping up with my pace and distance soon.)

I've been doing a lot of reading ... that's one great thing about traveling long distances. I finished An Abundance of Katherines and Paper Towns by John Green (both of which I hope to write about soon) and The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation (volumes one and two), a staggering reading experience that I wrote about over here.

My greatest TV surprise lately was accidentally stumbling upon Indigo Girls: Live at the Roxy on Palladia, a channel I didn't even know I had. I take this is a special cosmic gift since I just happened to see it when scrolling through my guide and it was on that very night and doesn't appear to be airing again any time soon. It just came out on DVD, so it's available for purchase, but I got it for free in all its HD glory! It features many performances that I've watched over and over on YouTube, as well as World Falls and Closer to Fine and Cannonball and Last Tears and Don't Think Twice, It's Alright, all with my beloved Brandi Carlile. I mean, Shame on You? The Wood Song? What more could a girl want? The whole thing is just heavenly.

(In other TV news, Ugly Betty and So You Think You Can Dance and Parks & Recreation and Modern Family continue to make me happier than anything else on right now. I'm so behind on Friday Night Lights that I can't speak to it at the moment, but I'm sure once I catch up it will be at the top of the list as usual. And the fact that Chuck returns next month ... forget about it. I can't wait!)

Meanwhile, I'm back at boot camp, and you know it's been too long since you were last there when the teacher whips out the orange cones and the first thing you feel is irrational hope that she's brought candy since they're the same orange color as the wrappers on all those Reese's peanut butter Christmas trees you've been eating. Oops.

I still believe in summer days

Oh, summer weekends. I love you.

Project Exhaustion commenced on Friday morning. Zuko and I set out for a walk before work, which sent him out of his mind with happiness. I decided to stay in and be quiet that evening, so I made a veggie omelet and watched True Blood, which is pretty trashy, almost shockingly so. But I'll probably keep watching it with the excuse that it's summer.

I got up early Saturday morning and hit the streets again with Zuko. This time we decided to go ahead and run two miles. Frequent stops to lift his leg notwithstanding, he was a pretty decent running partner, and I think he had a great time. I made it to the farmers' market early enough for fresh eggs and also picked up some baby tomatoes and a basket of sweet peppers (yellow, red, purple, etc.) and some more of the spicy purple onions I got last week. I went home and did some chores and baked some sugar cookies. I went to the pet store and spent an ungodly sum on items to treat Zuko's ailment and distract him from making it worse. I bathed him for the second consecutive Saturday, this time in some medicated oatmeal shampoo and some kind of conditioner that is supposed to help hot spots. These products are probably a total sham, but whatever. I think he's enjoying the TLC, and I sure enjoy having a clean dog. I've been brushing him a ton and overall just trying to shower him with love and attention. I bought some Missing Link upon a reader's suggestion and have been adding it to their food just for good measure. I went on a 1000-yard swim that afternoon ... it was very hot outside and I could feel my back baking in the sun despite sunscreen, but there were giant sprinklers shooting out over the pool, so that helped. I continue to love swimming so much I'm ready to build a pool in my backyard. My backyard is totally big enough for a pool. How awesome would that be?

Saturday night, I went out to hear my brother play with my parents, and a friend came along and we stayed for a long, fun catch-up visit after my parents headed home. The musical highlight was hearing my brother's version of "Murder in the City" for the first time, which thrilled & touched my heart, especially considering that (a) I was with him the first time I ever heard it and (b) his version was awesome. (P.S. New Avett Brothers single is very pretty indeed.)

Sunday morning dawned, and something magical was in the air. It was cool. Actually cool. I don't know what forces of nature aligned to make this happen, but it was jarring in the most excellent possible way. I was in shock. I think it was in the mid-70s when I headed out for my 13.5-mile bike ride, and while I certainly got very sweaty, as usual, it was totally bearable and pleasant outside. It was therefore a great ride. I didn't need to downshift on any "hills" (in other words, parts of the route that are at the slightest uphill incline) but instead was able to pedal through them, which makes me think I might be getting a wee bit stronger.

It was so lovely that I decided to grab the dogs when I got home after changing out of my hideous (but lifesaving) padded biking shorts and take them both on a walk. I decided on a whim to head to the dog park, and I'm glad I did. Neither of them is super dog park-y -- they don't wrestle or play chase with the other dogs, and Zuko was not having it when a giant mastiff tried to start humping him, and Daisy mostly stayed close to me. But I, for one, leaned against the fence in the shade and had a great time watching the other dogs play. A big golden retriever sprinted across the park from one baby pool to the other, jumping in and rolling around then leaping out and repeating this action over and over in the other pool. In something out of a comedy script, a big pack of dogs played chase with a rubber ball that reached such heights of hilarity that the entire human population of spectators was laughing heartily in unison. Daisy and Zuko did not roll in the pools, but at least they stood in them briefly. So that was fun.

When we got home, I wasn't ready to be inside yet, so I walked to the coffee shop for an iced coffee. Being able to walk anywhere and enjoy being outside this much by late morning in July is unheard of. It felt like a little gift. I loved it ... I felt so in love with my entire neighborhood, seriously. I cooked a farmer's market egg and had some plain yogurt with berries mixed in for a late breakfast. It was a perfect Sunday morning.

Soon it was time to head to my co-worker's house to help her bubble-wrap household items, which took the rest of the afternoon. Then I cooked dinner with some fresh shrimp from my mom and my farmers' market items ... so good. ("Food reclaims its story, and some of its nobility, when the person who grew it hands it to you." --Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food. And that is why I love the farmers' market. But more on that later.) I attempted kale chips, inspired by Erin, sprinkled with olive oil and kosher salt and a little romano cheese, but they fell a little short ... I think I didn't let them cook long enough because they were a little soggy. I'm going to try again.

Monday was an evening outing to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The pacing was weird, the scene transitions were choppy, and the Quidditch brooms were more phallic than ever, but the acting was good, the effects were grand, and the end was moving. I was not crazy about this book, and the movie was way too long, but Alan Rickman's line readings alone made it worth seeing (along with the marvelous Jim Broadbent, beloved by me in everything he ever does). Best part of movie, possibly, was seeing the terrific Where the Wild Things Are trailer for the first time.

Today began with a two-mile run with Zuko before work, which was sweaty but nice. His leg does not appear to be getting much better, but it doesn't seem to be getting worse, so I am cautiously optimistic. Tonight I ate some delicious fresh fish cooked by my mom, about a pound of her broccoli salad, and a pecan praline.

Meanwhile, weirdly, one of my favorite summer songs is called "Winter Song." It's by Sara Bareilles & and my beloved Ingrid Michaelson. I first heard it on one of this season's audition episodes of So You Think You Can Dance, of all places. Here is the song's very cute video. My favorite lines are these, and I find myself singing them over and over to myself as this summer goes by.

I still believe in summer days
The seasons always change
And life will find a way

D.C. for the 4th

Another summer, another trip to D.C. to see my sister. I'm not going to break it down day by day; instead I'll break it down memory by memory, most of them involving good food and good people.

Crying abundant and very cathartic tears on the airplane while finishing The Book Thief on the way there; a Thai dinner in the rain; visiting with my sister's officemates, some of whom are major So You Think You Can Dance Fans, and feeling as if I'd found My People; seeing my sister and brother-in-law's very cute apartment for the first time; waiting in a very long line while chatting over iced coffee for brunch at Eastern Market, where I got The Brick, a creation with an egg, a slab of ham, and actual hashbrowns sandwiched between two slices of toast, and a side of grits, of course; going running in a place where it was 74 degrees in the middle of the day, which felt like a miracle, enjoying the pretty sidewalk flowers in my sister's neighborhood and seeing the Capitol appear when rounding the curve of a hill; stopping at a fancy grocery store after my run and being yelled at for accidentally cutting in line at the seafood counter and getting between a woman and her giant bag of crabs; feasting upon a creation of my brother-in-law's, peppers and onions and garlic and tomatoes mashed up in a blender and simmered forever and ever until sweet and delicious pasty goo that when served with shrimp over pasta with a side of rosemary bread rivaled the best dishes I have ever eaten in an Italian restaurant; watching episode after episode of season five of The West Wing, one of the years I didn't watch it, and deeming it, in its often jarring Sorkin-less weirdness, "Bizarro West Wing"; going on another run on the 4th of July, again relishing the mindblowingly pleasant temperature, heading around the Capitol all the way down the Mall through the Folk Life Festival, feeling mighty patriotic and swell when running up the sidewalk sloping up to the Washington Monument, meeting up there with my sister and bro-in-law for stretching and a stroll through the very beautiful World War II Memorial, taking a moment at the pillar engraved with "Louisiana"; stopping for a very cold and totally worth it $6 cup of Stella Artois at a Wales tent at the festival, remembering our most wonderful time there five years ago this summer; gathering with some of their very nice friends over beers and snacks before heading en masse on foot back over to the Mall to watch the incredible fireworks lighting up the sky behind the Washington Monument; heading to the Dupont Circle farmers' market to see B.'s sister at her booth and enjoying seeing her and tasting her wares; walking from there over to the lovely Tabard Inn for an amazing brunch of fontina grits, a warm basket of assorted breads, iced coffee, a mimosa, an asparagus/sundried tomato fritatta, waffles topped with fruit, and a side of bacon, yes ma'am; walking past the White House and feeling a surge of joy and pride relative to its current occupancy; going to see Away We Go, which I found refreshingly honest and funny and real; dining on the sidewalk of a Cuban restaurant with my dear old friend Elizabeth, ever-wonderful; taking an impromptu day trip to Annapolis, which is surprisingly quaint and charming, eating crab cake sandwiches by the bay, strolling up and down the streets window shopping, and leaping around the grounds of the state capitol like lunatics; and dining at Matchbox with more of their friends, who were delightful, and enjoying veggie pizza with potato chips on top and several more Stellas.

Before I left for this trip I had kind of a heavy heart, and I think getting away was just what I needed. I think the best part of any vacation, on top of the great times had in its duration, is the feeling it leaves in me once I'm home. In every moment of fun and laughter with my sister and her husband, both of whom I love beyond measure; with every nod of understanding over fajitas in a discussion of how we enter the world; with every sight of the crape myrtles which seemed so much brighter there, not being burned and baked by the scorching heat we're having here these days; with every sip of cold beer; with every step on my runs through their neighborhood and past those buildings and monuments that never cease to leave me a little in awe ... I felt my heart growing lighter and letting go.

Now that I'm home, I feel more free, more focused, and more ready to embrace the pleasures of the summer ahead of me. I feel ready to enjoy this dinner I just made of onions and bell peppers and zucchini and yellow squash and carrots and celery and almonds and green peas and chick peas and whole wheat orzo topped off with a little romano cheese. I feel like me again.

Catching Up

Before it gets away from me, I want to get a little down about a wonderful weekend. I've already posted about the concerts, which were both amazing, but I want to record what else went on. It was a rare weekend when the whole family was in town -- my sister and her husband (they live out of state) and my brother and his new girlfriend (they travel a lot). My sister had the inspired idea to rent out a private karaoke room at a Thai restaurant in an early celebration of my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. We thought about inviting other people, but in the end, it was just us, and we had what can only be called a blast. There was dancing, there was drinking, there was so much eating, and there was plenty of singing. One of my favorite parts was watching my mother watch my brothers sing together. Their harmonies were admittedly beautiful but she was just blown away. Many pictures were taken, some of which I will eventually get around to posting. We also went to one of my brother's gigs, had boiled crawfish, had beignets and cafe au lait, and just had a merry time. I loved having everyone here. Just sitting around eating my mom's crawfish etouffee or lying around on the bed with my sister and brother-in-law were delightful. It was a really wonderful weekend and one I will not soon forget.

Randomness: The Great Performances special In the Heights: Chasing Broadway Dreams is excellent, even if you are not familiar with the show. Definitely worth checking out.

Meanwhile. I am still watching season two of Chuck and loving it a lot and am thrilled it has been renewed. I am reading The Wednesday Wars, finally, and loving it.

I got from Netflix the DVD of the Rent: Live on Broadway special that my brother and I went to see last fall. The special features are indeed quite special. I highly recommend both the live stage show itself as well all of the featurettes, which are VERY WONDERFUL. Seeing Jonathan Larson's parents and sister, all kinds of backstage goodness, the longtime crew members, the closing cast, the original cast (except Adam Pascal -- where were you, Adam Pascal? What could have been more important than this?). Everyone crying and laughing and singing and embracing and remembering, forget about it, it was too much, the tears poured like rain. Rent, I thought I was all cried out over you. But I was wrong.

Once again I have found myself engaging in last minute triathlon registration ridiculousness. A few days ago, I signed up for one that is tomorrow. The distances aren't terribly long, so I think I'll be okay, though I am a bit apprehensive about the biking part since the farthest I've ever gone in my life was seven miles. I'm just going to take it slow, try not to fall off or crash, and try to enjoy myself. I'm viewing it as a chance to road trip with a friend and as good practice for the one in August. I know myself, and I know my anxiety over that one will be greatly lessened over the summer by having this one under my belt.

This morning I went to the farmer's market and came away with fresh eggs, cucumbers, strawberries, bell peppers, yellow squash, and carrots. I feel really good about this. The dogs also approve.

Avetts at Jazz Fest

Clearly I was thrilled to learn a few months back that my beloved Avett Brothers would be at Jazz Fest. My brother scored tickets and tent passes from a friend, so we headed to the city after lunch on Sunday, squeezed into a parking spot on a side street, and waltzed on into the Fair Grounds on a beautiful and sunny day. The tent was really swell -- couches, beers, big screen TVs, speakers, and best of all, misting machines. We parked ourselves on bar stools at tables and enjoyed Blue Moons with orange slices and felt like we were living the life. As the mist spewed forth upon us, I wondered aloud, "Do you think the chemicals making the mist cold are getting into our beer and poisoning us?" He pondered this for a moment and then sighed contentedly, "It's worth it."

Soon it was time to head over to their stage. There was already a pretty big crowd there, but we were able to get pretty close. What can I say? I love this band. They started with "Shame," one of my favorites (you have to scroll about 2 minutes into that video for the song to get started), and they played lots of songs I knew and several I didn't, my favorite of which by a mile was "Salvation Song." (Link is here. Be sure to click "HD" if you can on any videos I've linked.)

Something I love about the Avett Brothers is that they are, I've decided, fundamentally optimistic. Their songs are openly emotional and honest and not afraid to be boldly and proudly emotional and about family and about making the world a better place. That might sound super cheesetastic, but it doesn't come across that way. It's not that their songs don't also have darkness and sadness because sometimes they do. But sometimes they are so nakedly hopeful and romantic and I can't help but believe that they mean every word.

We came for salvation
We came for family
We came for all that's good, that's how we'll walk away
We came to break the bad
We came to cheer the sad
We came to leave behind the world a better way

I am not conveying this well. I just think that there's a time for music that makes you feel dark and twisty, as Meredith Grey might say, and there's time for music that lifts you up and makes you want to shout and sing and feel brave and happy.

I waited in a long line at the merchandise tent following the show so they could sign my CD and I could shake their hands. I have always regretted not waiting in line to meet Anne Lamott. So I decided what the hell. I moved across the table really quickly and they scribbled initials or signatures or whatever on the CD, and I thanked them for coming and told them that their music means a lot to me. I wasn't sure what else to say. They were nice.

And I took a lot of pictures. And I said this over at Flickr and want to say it here. These were not taken with a great camera or with great skill, but they were taken with great affection and joy.

If I had to pick one song as my favorite of theirs, and it would be difficult if not impossible, I think "Murder in the City" would be it. (Here's an excellent video of the song at the fest. Click "HD" and let her load.) When the opening chords started, I turned around searched the faces in the crowd for my brother's ... he'd ended up a little ways behind me in the crowd. We waved and nodded and smiled.

It was a wonderful day.

In Treatment and other stuff.

(The following paragraph contains spoiler information related to casting for season one of In Treatment. You might want to skip it if you care about that sort of thing. I won't give anything away specifically in regards to the plot, but you might be able to infer things about the plot from this information.)

(Spoilery information starts ...)

I'm midway through week 8 of season one of this show with one more week to go. Like most people of my generation, I suspect, I first saw Glynn Turman as Col. Taylor on A Different World, one of my favorite shows of the '80s-'90s. I never missed an episode. And I liked him on that well enough but never really knew what he was capable of as an actor, clearly, because he so stunned me with his performance on In Treatment that I could not stop crying for the entire episode. I mean, I cried the entire way through. He was so good and so powerful that I couldn't stop thinking in the back of my mind, while the power and sadness of the episode and his performance swirled around me and streamed down my face, "If he did not win the Guest Actor Emmy for this performance, there is NO justice in the world!" Once the episode ended, I looked it up, and he did! He won. And my God, he deserved it. There have been episodes of this show that have had me on the edge of my seat, certainly, particularly the ones with Sophie and with Gina (Dianne Weist won the Best Supporting Actress Emmy! I just learned this, too! Hooray!). But I think this one surpassed them all. Wow. That's all I can really say. If I had to describe the emotional impact of this show on me, I think I would have to say that 37 episodes in, it has really taken it out of me. But it has also filled me right back up again. Over and over. It's been a strange and wonderful TV experiment and experience for me. I might have to sign up for HBO for the first time in my life just so I can dive into season two.

(... spoilery information over.)

I don't think I mentioned that AB Chao and Co. came to town last month. It was great to see them. It should come as no surprise that they're a fun bunch. It is strange to think that she lives so near and yet so far. Soon I shall join her group, Bench Monday. I just need to find myself a good sturdy bench.

I am making preliminary plans to go back to D.C. and to Hawaii this year. I need to get myself together and make it happen. I am about to get dressed to go to Jazz Fest with my brother. I cannot believe Today Is Avett Brothers Day. Last year? April 29. This year? April 26. Perhaps this should just become an April tradition. I cannot wait. I am about to freak out with excitement. More later!

Randomosity

(1) I now own my favorite comfy summer sandal in three colors (black, chocolate, and tan), which is possibly excessive. But wearing these sandals basically feels like not wearing shoes at all. I love them. (A note on sizing: I normally wear an 8.5, but the size 8 in these fits perfectly. I have a narrow foot, so your mileage may vary.) I am not the type of person who can wear sassy summer sandals every day of the week. My feet just cannot handle it. These sandles are awesomely comfortable, and I think everyone should buy a pair. So let it be written, so let it be done.

(2) I've never known much about the Buckleys; maybe I've been living under a rock, but they've never really been on my radar. I remember seeing Christopher Buckley last year on The Daily Show and thinking he was funny, and I remember the brouhaha surrounding his endorsement of Obama. But that's about it. The Buckleys might all be a bunch of a-holes for all I know. I read this story today by Christopher Buckley today. It's definitely tinged with a certain snootocity that might just come with being a Buckley, but I got the sense that a lot of love and care went into writing it. It moved me. Like, a LOT.

(3) Elissa, yes! It's okay. Not writing about it around here. But it's okay.

(4) Big fan of tonight's dinner!

That there is a whole wheat English muffin topped with (probably very unhealthy, but whatever) jarred pizza sauce along with broccoli, fresh rosemary, celery, onion, garlic, green bell pepper, yellow squash, chicken breast with lots of cayenne pepper, and a little grated mozzarella cheese. I sauteed all the toppings (except for the cheese, obviously) in a skillet in olive oil before baking the teeny pizzas because the last time I attempted to make pizza without cooking the veggies first they stayed rock hard. This way worked like a charm. Yum!

(5) Not that this is in any way original, but my Adam Lambert obsession began weeks ago and is still going strong. I decided from the first time I saw him on American Idol that he is made to star on Broadway as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar. A little YouTube scouring, and voila! A preview of what is clearly his destiny. I also quite frankly enjoy Adam Lambert in a face full of make-up with a bare midriff. How did we live before YouTube? I'll never know. My sister is staunchly in the Kris camp, and he is definitely adorable and talented, but there is something about this seasoned, make-up wearing, boy kissing musical theater guy making it big on the national stage that really appeals to me.

(6) I am on the hunt for a healthy bread I can make sandwiches with pretty much every day of the week for lunch. I am willing to buy it at Whole Foods/Paycheck if necessary. I just do not know what to look for when it comes to sandwich bread. It all seems to have dozens of ingredients. Does anyone know of a healthy or semi-healthy loaf of bread I can buy?

Sunday

I love the Internet sometimes, I truly do.

Last week, I followed Matt Logelin's link to this video. The video itself is gorgeous -- amazing footage and photos of a father and daughter whose story I've been following for the past year or so -- and I fell in love with the song. I looked up the artist. I downloaded her album. I've been listening to it all week. She might be a new favorite. And I am so interested in ways that we discover music, and I like to remember how I discovered music I love. So, this is how I discovered Amy Seeley. Since then, the line "been realistic about love, been optimistic about the weather" has been floating through my mind pretty much 24 hours a day. Not sure why.

I followed a link at kottke.org to this site, which is clever, funny, and ultimately very moving. The numbered rules are in red, and the accompanying quotations and photographs and captions are delightful lagniappe. This site is full of basic life advice that we'd all be better off following. So many of the sports-related ones reminded me of my dad and brothers. I love this site; it just kills me.

My friend Grace wrote a really nice post recently about food. I have more to say about this, but it can wait.

This video caused me great amusement and delight, possibly because I also have a dog named Daisy. She does not jump like this often, but Zuko does, every day, while outside, on the sliding glass door, wanting to come inside. Weirdo.

And now, random rambling. This week has been a blur of I don't even know what. Sushi & beer at happy hour (fun). Stressing about school (not fun). Stressing about work (SO not fun). I am sad about the end of ER. Even though I missed many-an episode over the 15 year course of the show, I saw a whole lot of them, and it's certainly the longest running show I've followed in my lifetime. I chose Chicago Hope over ER in 1994 and stuck with it for a long time, but I always ended up back with ER, and it obviously long outlasted its initial competition. I have a real fondness for many of those County General characters; I think the softest spot will always be for Carter. I don't know why. I also have never forgotten that sweet and sad scene when Carol tells Luka goodbye and explains that she's been in love with Doug since she was 23 years old. It's weird to think that was in season 6, and here we are, at the end of season 15. I never cared for Sam or Gates despite really liking the actors who played them. I loved Neela. I was very taken by this new, foxy, tortured Dr. Brenner and I'm convinced he will be a big star. This show has been on forever. I don't know why it's affecting me, but it is. I loved how they used old school-style opening credits for the final episode. How could America not break out in simultaneous smiles and tears upon seeing Benton kneel down and do that familiar punching move.

And once again I killed my iPhone. It stopped syncing or charging after an unfortunate encounter with my ceramic tile. The genius bar girl regarded me knowingly after shining a light into the base of the phone and said, "It appears to be a hardware problem." I nodded guiltily in silent acknowledgment of its contact with the floor. She noted that my original warranty had expired. I sighed, "Yes." Then she kept typing and her eyes widened and she broke out into a giant grin. She was obviously delighted to discover that I had five days left on my replacement model's warranty. "I'm so happy for you!" she smiled. "I'm so happy for me, too!" I said. It was a smile fest. Thanks, Apple. Tip: She said that we should only plug our iPhones into the car charger in emergencies. She said it's a "trickle charge" that is not good for the phone and to use the wall charger whenever possible. I told her that I plug that thing into the car charger every time I get in the car. "Oh, that's NOT good," she said. So -- word to the wise, straight from the mouth of the genius bar girl. Chill with the car chargers.

Yesterday evening I did a 5K with some friends, and I have to say, it was a great time. A big street party before and after, basically. My friend and I might join the running club that put it on. It was inspiring to see all of the super-fit runners and also the not-so-fit ones who were there pounding the pavement. It was a beautiful night and the pink azaleas were blooming along the route and the sun was lowering in the sky and it was just swell. The live music, the amber beer, the visiting. Excellence all around.

This morning I went to visit with my parents for about an hour and a half while they prepared to depart on their trip to Sicily. It is funny to sit there as an observer as they pack last-minute things and call across the house about remembering this and that. They pack funny things. Zone bars and Triscuits and large styrofoam cups so my dad can have bigger cups of coffee than they serve in Italy. My dad was in full-on travel garb; it looks like his pants and shirt were designed by Rick Steves himself. We got into our cars at the same time and I happened to have Josh Groban singing "Mi Mancherai" from my dad's beloved Il Postino on the mix CD in my car, so I queued it up and played it loud in honor of their trip, and that beautiful violin played the opening bars of that beautiful music. (The ones starting at 0:26 of that clip.) They started slow dancing faux-dramatically in the driveway. I am excited for them. They love Italy so much.

Finally, I can scarcely recall being more excited for any concert event in recent memory than I am for Brandi Carlile. I was excited to see the Avett Brothers last April, sure, but my love for them was in its initial budding stages when I saw them onstage for the first time, so I had not built up that much pre-concert excitement. My Brandi love has only intensified since first discoving her, and I just know in my heart it's going to be one of those concerts where tears start leaking out of my eyes the moment the artist steps on stage and don't cease until possibly when I'm driving home or falling asleep that night. In between then and now, I'm seeing the Avetts again, and I just learned yesterday that the Indigo Girls are playing the night before Brandi, and I haven't seen them in concert in this state since the mid-90s, and I just feel like April and May are going to be two glorious months for live music in my life, and it feels like just what I need.

Catching Up

This weekend was also all about friends but in a quieter way. My friend who was meant to fly home to Hawaii was delayed, so we spent Friday evening at our other friend's daughter's 2nd birthday party which went somewhat awry due to illness.

The next morning, I tried and utterly failed to do homework. That afternoon, we returned to the scene of the birthday party to help do some pantry cleaning, which is always easier to do when it's not your own pantry. That evening, I was on my own and watched Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, which was disappointing after enjoying the book so much. I also watched Zack & Miri Make a P0rn0, which was mostly a little too vulgar for the likes of Eliza, though Elizabeth Banks=great.

Sunday was a nice patio coffee and bagel date with my friend and Ghost Town, which I liked much more than I thought I would. The writer/director, David Koepp, has a huge list of credentials behind him (mostly as a writer of major blockbusters). I thought the whole thing was sweet, funny, un-blockbuster-y, and charming. Gervais, Leoni, and Kinnear can basically do no wrong in my book, and throw in a little Kristin Wiig and Billy Campbell and Aasif Mandvi and I'm sold. I could easily watch this again, and I know I'll listen to the commentary because life is too short to deny oneself any Ricky Gervais doing commentary as far as I'm concerned. This movie totally flew beneath the radar for me, and I'm glad I decided to rent it. On paper, it seems like it would be sort of wretched, but the cast and Koepp pull it off somehow. The bloopers reel also gets a big thumbs up.

This weekend also involved taking my fave five-year-old to the dog park, which was fun and exciting but also mildly terrifying, like, what if one of these dogs takes a big bite of her hand on my watch? Dog parks are generally happy shiny places but sometimes these loving family pets devolve into savages when thrown together. A dog park is an uncontrollable place! But it all went well, and we had fun. The best news was that Daisy and Zuko had their first ever meaningful reaction with a small child, and it went swimmingly. They thought she was the bomb diggity and did not try even remotely to eat her. I think it might have been because she was about their size and gave them treats and they sensed her pure, childlike, blissed-out dog love. Shame on me for not doing a better job socializing them, it's totally my fault, but I was so relieved and overjoyed that they were great with her because I think she'd somewhat celebritized them in her mind and I didn't want her to be disappointed if they were on their worst behavior, which they weren't. They totally showed off for her, sprinted through the yard, rolled around, sat on command, and were adorable. It was a trio of adorableness all around. Yay, dogs and children!

Last night I petted my friend's belly and talked to the guys growing inside. I felt not only kicks but what can only be described as rolls and squirms. Which was thrilling beyond belief, frankly, and made me scream. I also kissed them goodbye and my friend humored me and all of my belly love. I will miss all three of them more than I can say.

Castle is a cute show, but I find that it stretches the whole suspension of disbelief a bit far if they honestly expect us to believe that the lead female detective would be able to maintain this ruse of being constantly annoyed by Nathan Fillion at all times. I'm sorry, but who is more charming than Nathan Fillion? In any role? Even Dr. Hammer? Nobody, that's who. At least David Addison misbehaved and was really juvenile and ridiculous and earned Maddie Hayes' annoyance with him at all times. But Nathan Fillion's Castle is a successful author, a doting son, and a devoted father. And ... he's Nathan Fillion. What is to be annoyed by? Unbelievable. But still entertaining. Especially when Hallie Lowenthal is a guest star.

Meanwhile, my new Indigo Girls CD arrived this afternoon, and I can't wait to listen to it. I'm not sure what else to say. I made yet another giant stir-fry tonight. I had a wonderful run on Sunday and my heart sang with the joy of beholding dozens of people out around the lakes enjoying the beautiful weather. I had a horrible run this evening during which I felt alternately like barfing, dying, and passing out like Margie in Thailand on The Amazing Race. Once again, I thank Kelly Clarkson for getting me through.

Weekend with old friends

MONDAY! I just spent an enjoyable hour visiting with my BFF, who's been in town for the weekend. We talked while I browned my drained-for-days tofu in olive oil and invented a yummy stir fry with broccoli, carrots, onion, celery, and garlic. Made up a random sauce with soy sauce, sesame oil, a drop of molasses, and black pepper. Then I threw in some walnuts just for good measure. And some frozen peas, why not? I'm eating it over quinoa, and it's very tasty! I love made-up food.

It was a busy and crazy fun weekend. I took the day off on Friday at a very inappropriate time of year to spend my BFF's birthday with her. We went shoe shopping, ate Lebanese food for lunch, and went to my favorite cafe. That night, we had dinner with our other BFF -- macadamia nut tacos over fried rice, shrimp tempura rolls, BBQ chicken pizza, plum wine, you name it!

Afterwards, we headed to a crawfish boil / karaoke party for our friend's rehearsal dinner, which was festive. At one point in the evening, my old friend and I headed to the most vile bar in creation because I thought my brother was playing there, but I was sadly mistaken. A frat boy took a giant handful of my bottom as I walked by. It was unpleasant but unsurprising. I should have known better than to set foot in that heinous place, where you get stuck in the crowd and end up fighting your way through the sweaty masses with a feeling not dissimilar to what it must feel like to stand in sewer. Not good! Overall, the day and night were great, though. It's just really good to be around people you've known forever, isn't it?

Saturday dawned, and I'm drawing a blank. I brought my friend who stayed with me to a brunch. Eventually it was time to get dressed for our friend's wedding reception, held outside on a terrace overlooking the river, and it was GORGEOUS. Beautiful bride, beautiful friends, beautiful night.

Yesterday, the BFFs and the cousin and I went to a coffee shop and had a non-shower for the friend pregnant with twin boys. We drank coffee and ate cake and gave her some gifts. It was nice to sit out in the sunshine together.

This is not very exciting, but my heart was very full this weekend.

I didn't eat cake because I still haven't cheated on my no-sweets-for-Lent resolution, which is shocking beyond belief. I finally sat down to watch the Battlestar Galactica series finale yesterday afternoon after basically resorting to a media blackout for two days. (No spoilers to follow.) All I'll say is that I'm so glad this show has been in my life for the past few years. In July of 2006, when I first started watching the show, I wrote, "Last night I watched the first 45 minutes or so of the Battlestar Galactica miniseries. When you can realize that greatness is unfolding not even an hour into a new show, it's pretty exciting. The cast seems solid, the premise is intriguing, and it's got heartache and comedy and sex and war and outer space and that's pretty much a perfect show right there ... it's going to be fun to immerse myself in this universe, I can already tell." Who knew the ride I was in for? I still marvel that my brother picked up the miniseries a few short months ago and flew through the entire series, Razor, and the webisodes in time to catch up before watching the finale this weekend. Talk about immersion! We agreed that we don't even really care what happened in the finale. We just feel like the show has been a gift.

I guess I have nothing else to say for now. Sometimes I wish all we ever had to do in life is sit around with those who speak the same shorthand language that we do and eat, drink, and be merry.

34

The night before my birthday, I went out for Thai with my parents and brother. We had a nice visit over shrimp toast, nam sod, and various shrimp/chicken/vegetable entrees.

On my birthday morning, I was inexplicably wide awake at 4 a.m. I decided to roll over, flip on the bedside lamp, and open Harry: A History by Melissa Anelli, which (Melissa was right) is pretty fantastic. I spent a couple of hours with it before falling back asleep, only to be awakened at 8 by Zuko's staccato alarm bark. Oh well. I ate breakfast and headed out on a run. It was gray and very breezy out, the wind whipping the leaves (and me) all over the road. I got diverted by a train at one point, but overall, it was a fairly satisfying run.

After showering and all that jazz, I stopped for an iced coffee and headed to the farmer's market, where I bought some birthday gifts for friends. It started getting colder and colder outside, which was weird considering how warm it's been lately. I had a nice lunch with B. and headed to my massage appointment. It was my first time with a male massage therapist since Arturo in Costa Rica. I was a little nervous but got over it quickly. As he dug into upper back with great force, he noted that I can take more pressure than most. Then as he dug into my neck mightily, he said that some people have a tight spot here and there in their necks but that mine was tight all over. "Your neck ... is a rock," he said. "Yeah," I sighed. He worked on it for most of the hour, moving onto my hips at my request because they are always super tight, I think from running and squatting during the f-ing Jillian Michaels' DVD, and hard to stretch. He did all sorts of stretches, pushing my knee onto my chest and saying, "Wow, you are flexible. I mean -- wow. You are FLEXIBLE." I told him that was the only thing I scored well on during my gym fitness test a few years ago. Then he held my hip as he stretched it the opposite way across my body and sort of lay on it. This is hard to explain and sounds sort of obscene, but it was all very comfortable and professional until I screamed when he massaged the IT Band area of my hip with a little too much vim and vigor. Then he worked my upper back underneath my shoulder blades and so forth and it was basically an hour of complete heaven. It felt like a great gift to give myself on my birthday.

After my massage, I lay like goo on the couch and popped in my new Dr. Horrible DVD, a gift from my little brother. It was awesome, of course, as was the musical commentary, which just knocked my socks off. This whole enterprise is so delightful on so many levels to me. I bought myself the soundtrack and made a copy for him so we could continue to share the Dr. Horrible love. It was fun to check the mailbox and get some really nice cards. Overall, it was a lovely morning and afternoon.

The day shifted into evening, and I headed out for a girls' dinner. Stupid me did not think to make reservations, so our group of six faced a two-hour wait. Oops! So we sat outside on the patio, which was challenging due to the fact that a sudden Arctic blast was blowing through. Luckily there were heaters, and it gave me an excuse to wear my new school bus-colored coat all night long. We shared potstickers and pizza and fried rice and pad Thai and drank wine and gossiped and laughed and it felt really good to be surrounded by women I've known so long ... one I've known since kindergarten. They all brought me very wonderful and thoughtful gifts, which I didn't expect, and picked up my tab. It was all very special! I can't really describe it without lapsing into sentimentality so I'll stop there. One girlfriend and I headed out to watch my brother play for a little while but didn't last very long as apparently 34 means you have to be in bed by 11:00.

It got down into the thirties last night after a long string of days in the seventies, so that was a little bizarre. I woke up this morning and went to the grocery store, story of my life. Then I baked a ton of St. Patrick's Day cookies to freeze for my parade party. I've never frozen cookies before and hope they come out okay. I have to say that the green shamrock-shaped cookies are pretty cute even though some of them look more like amoebas than shamrocks. Then I decided to go out to World Market and look for some aqua curtains for my bedroom. I bought these and like them a lot. I also bought a new rug for the foot of my bed. My room, I have to say, is looking very different, and I am happy about it. I decided to go all white for my new bed (more on the new bed soon!), and I think it's all coming together.

Today I made this in my crock pot. I drained that m-fing tofu for like 36 hours and it still felt a bit moist. But I had better luck with the cornstarch and browning the tofu than last time; I think tofu just feels damp no matter how long you drain it! I used olive oil instead of butter and took my time getting it nice and brown, and it turned out perfectly delicious. I cooked it longer than the 3 hours instructed because I checked it at 3 hours and the carrots were still too hard for my liking. I also added a little more water than the recipe called for and when it tells you to add a little water and shake up the remnants of the sauce in the jar, I added 1/4 a teaspoon of cayenne pepper and some salt and shook that up with the liquid. I also added two cloves of chopped garlic and a pretty hefty chunk of chopped fresh ginger. Fascinating, I know! Anyway, I ate it over basmati rice, and it might be my favorite thing I've made in the crockpot thus far. Success!

Overall, it's been a very nice birthday weekend. Today is the beginning of a new month and a new year at a new age. I am determined to live well and work hard and, as Maria instructed Liesl, look for my life.

Monday Catch-Up

And now for more thrilling catch-up. I finished A Mercy on the plane, and I liked it very much. There was one particular part that made me well up with tears; it involved a character changing her name. I think this is a Biblical concept if I'm not mistaken, and it always moves me to contemplate it. I also finished The Reader, which was beautiful, gripping, and sad, and I can't wait to see the movie now.

Speaking of books, I've posted a few more reviews over at Kidliterate, Melissa's book review site. I'll hopefully be continuing to do so, probably focusing on graphic novels for now.

Okay, I guess that brings us to Saturday night ... it was crawfish etoufee, shrimp and corn soup, stuffed shrimp, seafood gumbo, cheese fries, and beer with old friends, followed by a girls' night out at a bar where we watched my little brother play. I had enough beers to screw up the courage to sing a duet with him, "Falling Slowly" from Once. Ridiculous but fun. It was great to hang out with my girlfriends and stay out late and cut loose for the first time in a long time. There was something about singing songs and sharing frozen sangria that took me back to the old days when all we ever did was act silly and stay up late and have fun. It was nice to realize that it's still possible! Seriously. I'd like to plan another girls night out soon with all the peeps who couldn't make it that night.

Sunday morning, I woke up to bid my houseguests adieu, and eventually I collapsed back into bed, tossing and turning and rousing in time to head to the dog parade with the same girlfriends and some kids. It was a nice afternoon, and we stopped on the way home for frozen yogurt. Sunday evening, I went to my first-ever book club meeting. I'm not sure how I made it to almost 34 without ever being in a book club, but there you go. We discussed A Mercy and drank red wine and ate homemade French bread and it was very relaxing.

It's now Monday and a new week. I'm cooking some whole grain quinoa (is quinoa supposed to be crunchy?) and defrosting some frozen curried vegetables I made in the crockpot last week. After a week of dismal and abysmal sleep, I hope to start fresh tonight and actually sleep more than a few hours. I feel this is important towards the overall positivity of the week ahead. I'm not sure what else to say, so I guess I'll post some pictures of parade dogs. There's nothing like a neon green labradoodle to sing that spring is coming.

Running & Richmond

Phew! It's been a while. It's Valentine's Day afternoon, and I'm sitting here listening to Daisy barking and Nanci Griffith singing "Listen to the Radio."

I guess I'll work backwards. This morning, I got up pre-dawn with some houseguests who had to get an early move-on. I tried to go back to bed, but it was futile. I went on a 3-mile run outside, and it was horrifically muggy. After not exercising for three days, it was tough to hit the road, but I'm glad I did it. I've been having lots of thoughts while running about how it truly is the great equalizer. I mean, barring injury or some sort of condition like bum knees or ankles or whatever, anyone can run. Anyone. And anyone does! All sorts of people run past me regularly. They are equal opportunity smokers, or EOS as I've started to call them in my head. I get smoked and left in the dust by young, skinny sorority girls; silver-haired grandpas; lean, muscled, shirtless marathoners; and women twice my size and age. All of these people are better runners than I am, and I admire them all. What I really appreciate about running is that you can be good at it whether you are the super-fit aerobicizing type or not. Running doesn't care what size or how old you are, it just wants you to put one foot in front of the other. I think that's why I try to stick with it even though I suck at it. I am lumbering, I am slow, and I am totally ungraceful, but there is something pride-inducing about just doing it anyway and being out there with all of the other people, young/old, big/small, male/female, who are doing it whether it's hard or easy for them. It's nice.

After the run, I went out to buy a cream cheese/praline king cake for my houseguests and stopped by my parents' house, where they gave me a nice Valentine and I had a good chat with my mom.

Yesterday, I returned home from a short work trip to Virginia. Mostly I was just glad it wasn't freezing because I am delicate about such things. I really loved visiting the capitol and learning all of the groovy historical Thomas Jeffersony things about the city. It is sad but true that mostly everything I know about Thomas Jefferson, I learned from the musical 1776. I loved walking over the bridge and seeing the river, and I enjoyed an afternoon in an English pub with BW. Hi, BW, if you are reading this. Maybe there is a place at home with penny half-pints? That'd be swell. Anyway, I'll update more soon, but meanwhile, here are a few pictures from my trip:

Things I Like

I've been feeling sort of at a loss as to what to write about here. It's weird to think it is now 2009, and I started doing this online diary writing thing in 1999. That boggles the mind. I think about all I wrote that is no longer online, all I've written that still is, and what kind of things I'm still comfortable writing about here. It's all a bit much lately. Lots of things happened in 1999, and it is now 2009. In January of 1999, I was teaching Shakespeare to 9th and 10th graders in Florida. In the summer of 1999, several things happened. I moved back here. I got Daisy. Daisy is 10 years old! I got my current job. I've had this job for almost 10 years! I started an online journal. 10 years, 10 years, 10 years. It's just a weird thought, that's all. It makes my head hurt a little bit.

So today I think I will keep it simple write about some things that I like. (There are plenty of things I don't like, of course, but I'm not focusing on them today.)

I like my new purse. I have it in Rhombus Blue. I coveted my sister's so passionately that she bought me my own. I love it! I love that it's cute, I love that it's sporty, I love that it's big, and I love that it's reversible. (It's a nice mocha brown on the other side.) The only thing I don't love is that it doesn't have a zipper or snap at the top to keep me from dumping its contents out on the floor, which I tend to do constantly with purses, but it's deep enough that sometimes things don't fall out even when it's turned over. Yay, new purse!

I like my new calendar. My friend Grace made this calendar with her own breathtaking photographs and included some lovely quotes. I cannot tell you how much it brightens my day to see it every day. It is such a nice gift to have given to myself to start the new year, and I am grateful to her for creating it.

I like that David Sedaris exists and keeps writing books that make me very happy.

I like that I had the good sense to hire a dependable yard man years ago and that he and his crew just did an excellent job plowing down the backyard jungle.

I like my new washing machine and that my mom recommended a nice plumber who fixed the leaking faucets and that his nice son, when I noted the heinousness of my hated outdoor laundry room, as I always do, said, "Hey, all you do in this room is laundry -- who cares?" And that suddenly all of my anxiety about the laundry room, its rotting walls, and its motley crew of vermin residents lessened significantly. I also like that the plumber took one look at my 27-year-old hot water heater and scolded me in sputtering exasperation for even considering buying a new one, saying they don't make them like that anymore and to use it until it decides one day to empty itself of its contents all over the floor. I decided that's just fine by me.

I like that I've made a little progress in decluttering my life. Small things like cleaning out the kitchen pantry and bagging up a few things for the food bank, pulling a few books off of the overcrowded bookshelves and boxing them up to give away, and pulling out my dresser to wipe the piles of cat hair from the floor underneath it, and even making my bed every day make me feel good and better about the world in general.

I like that we'll have a new president very soon.

I like that the sun has come back out after several very rainy, gloomy days.

I like the fact that my BFF is not only pregnant for the first time but pregnant with twins. There are no words that aptly capture my excitement about this. I am more grateful than ever to have had our visit in Hawaii last fall and to have had such great time together over these holidays ... a nice coffee date with her, our other BFF, and our favorite five-year-old kid in a Peter Pan costume; a night of Rock Band and pizza; a soup and sandwiches lunch; a night of gumbo, etouffee, and jambalaya; her fun wedding reception (party of the century); dinner the night before she left; etc. All of these occasions were mostly built around food, photographs, laughter, and tears. Without getting too much into the story of the twins (because that is her story), all I can say is that this unexpected news reminds me that life is full of surprises, and in the immortal words of Kevin Arnold in the series finale of The Wonder Years, "You go where life takes you." I think it is a beautiful thing.

And now, some random photos from the holidays that I like.

Maid of honoring

It's a good thing I took off this week so I could devote full attention to my duties as my sister's maid of honor! Phew! This might be the most fun job ever, though. It involves accompanying her on errands, lunching, drinking half cafe au lait/half hot chocolate, folding programs, arranging table cards, opining about sash tying methods, searching for toeless panty hose, making playlists, scanning pictures, attending fancy brunches with mimosas and cheese grits, watching parents cry, eating all of the treats people keep dropping by, sharing lovely sisterly gifts, and so forth. Being the maid of honor means you participate in the action without the pressure of getting married. Not that it's pressure! It's a wonderful thing. But you know what I mean. The week is already flying by, and the big day will be here before we know it. I kind of want it to slow down so we can keep accomplishing fun tasks together.

So, it's been a hectic but enjoyable week so far, the freezing weather notwithstanding, which I HATE. It is allegedly warming up later today as God meant it to when placing us in the South.

I've had a little revelation about my running training. After having to take another 9 days off because I could barely breathe without coughing so hard it felt like my lungs were about to fall out onto the floor during the '08 Cough of Doom, I found myself running three miles on Saturday and two miles yesterday and enjoying this concept of shorter runs just for the fun of it. I realize that though I could keep amping up the long runs to train for the half-marathon, maybe I would be a much happier person running what are normal lengths to me (like 3 miles) on a regular basis and still doing my videos, which I miss. Maybe I should just do the 5K instead of the half-marathon and start enjoying running and life again. The whole point in my mind was to force myself back into a regular exercise routine, and I have. So ... I haven't made a definite decision, but that's where I'm leaning right now. It's sort of anti-climactic to train to accomplish a mission I already accomplished two years ago. I'd like to just stick with exercising regularly in whatever form that takes. That would feel like an even greater achievement at this point, frankly!

(Later ...) It has indeed warmed up outside! Thank goodness. Most of today was spent working on a slideshow. In between scanning and selecting pictures and making my mom watch different slideshow versions over and over and eating an awesome grilled cheese sandwich she made for me, I went through my iPhoto albums and deleted 2,000 pictures. I still have 5,000. It is absurd, and I know I need to delete lots more. Most are already backed up on discs, on my external hard drive, on Flickr, and in Kodak Gallery albums ... there is no need for them to just be hanging around cluttering up my hard drive and making my sweet little iBook stall and freeze and sputter all the time. Meanwhile, for the life of us, my dad and I could not figure out how to connect my iBook to his LCD projector so the slideshow would actually play. This caused a near heat stroke because LCD projectors burn at about 1,000,000 degrees. At one point I actually sat underneath the kitchen table to escape its blare and sweltering exhaust. LCD projectors are nothing to trifle with, apparently. While working on this project, I consumed approximately 6 caramel pecan pralines, and I am surprised my teeth are still intact.

I think I need to lie down and read Sarah Vowell now. I'll close this one off with some recent pictures o' holiday family fun.

Snow!

I went to bed last night relaxed in a way that only a horrible night's sleep the previous night AND finishing classes for the semester can let a person do. I read a little old school David Sedaris and pulled the covers over my head and prepared for a cold night, one where a "wintry mix" was predicted. I figured this meant cold, miserable rain and braced myself for the coming day of grayness and grossness. I heard precipitation falling outside when I woke up about 6:45, and as I reached over to turn off the alarm clock on my iPhone, I checked my e-mail while still under the covers with my head on the pillow, and there was an e-mail from my mother from mere moments before: "IT'S SNOWING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I shot out of bed and looked out the window and not only was it snowing, it was SNOWING. All I could see outside was whiteness: the street, the sidewalk, the yard, the neighbor's roof across the way. I threw on some sweatpants, boots, and a coat and grabbed my Dunder Mifflin umbrella and went to the backdoor to let the dogs out to explore the backyard. They weren't all that excited about the snow, but I sure was.

That was the beginning of a wonderful day. I went into work for a few hours as one of the few who showed up -- some had other meetings and some have little kids and some live far away, and school was canceled. That's right. School canceled, bridges shut down, you name it. I know this will make those in colder climates roll their eyes but you have to understand that this sort of thing only happens about every 20 or 30 years down here. It snowed briefly in 2002, enough to cover the ground, but that was about it. I don't remember it lasting very long, though it was very exciting because my brothers did something cool in my parents' yard that I can't seem to find a picture of at the moment.

The last time it snowed this much (like, 2 or 3 inches that hung around for a good part of a day or two) was in 1988. I was in the 7th grade. We had free dress day that day, I remember, and it was some sort of Spirit Day at school. Somehow we ended up pouring into the parking lot, scraping snow off of our teachers' cars, and throwing snowballs at each other before being sent home early. It was delirious happiness for us, who had never before seen snow like that in our lifetimes unless our families went skiing for Christmas, which not many of our families did. I still have happy memories of that day and that weekend, how it felt to have our hair wet with falling snow and pink cheeks and that sense of celebration. My little brother and Shelley's little brother built a snowman in our front yard -- they were about four years old. All I'm saying is that it was a great time. And it's been more than 20 years since.

So seeing the streets of town covered in whiteness created a lot of joy today. I loved looking out the windows at work (before being sent home early, of course) and seeing how different the same boring sights I see every day looked when covered in snow. I loved driving around my neighborhood and past my old high school. I loved laughing at the dogs as they freaked out. I loved taking a stick and writing a message in the snow in my front yard. I even loved bundling up and heading to the gym to run three miles. I just pretty much loved every minute of it.

Right now I'm making my favorite chicken curry in the crock pot and peppermint brownies. I'm about to have some dark chocolate truffle hot chocolate with marshmallows on top. B. and I are going to watch the new Christmas episode of "The Office."

I would not want to live in a place where it snows for months on end and it has to be shoveled and sloshed through to and from work every day. I don't like cold weather, and I know I would hate dealing with snow in that capacity. But having it snow for one single morning in December was a beautiful surprise and a gift. I will not soon forget it.

Catching Up

It hasn't been the healthiest week in the history of my life. Last night, I woke up at 2:30 a.m. and was wide awake. I think this insomnia resulted from a week of no running (resting the shins), which resulted in major restlessness, along with the consumption of a steady diet of chocolate mint brownies, Thanksgiving leftovers for about a dozen meals in a row, and Fa La La La Lifetime. I decided to turn on the light and read Coraline, which I did in its entirety. I'm not sure if this book is normally terrifying, but it definitely is in the middle of the night. Terrifying and AWESOME. I can't wait to read the graphic novel version of the book and to see the movie.

I haven't written in so long that I'm not sure where to start. The past few weeks have been filled with running, then abruptly not running. Worked a Habitat day one Saturday. Got to help build and raise walls, which was pretty great. Thanksgiving was small but very nice. I saw Atonement, which was both very lovely and very annoying in ways. Today I took my favorite almost five-year-old to see Bolt 3D, which was fun, especially when she did cute child things like reach her hands out try and touch the 3D-ness. I've been spending the past few days working on homework, which has been a drag but a necessary one. I'm in the middle of reading Watchmen, which I only understand about every other page of, but I'm sticking with it.

My little brother and I did year two of our pre-Thanksgiving afternoon movie tradition ... this year was Role Models, and it made us laugh and laugh and laugh. Mostly because of McLovin, who has to be one of the most endearing kids every to be on screen. I don't remember his name in this movie, but he was adorable, and the movie, though stupid at times, actually had a sweet gooey center, largely to due to long, ridiculous scenes of role-playing wars and kings and knights and whatnot.

Today is December 1. I hope to start the week and month off on a healthier note and hope my shins don't break when I try to run on them tomorrow. I need to get my school shit together. I need to not freak out at the monster work holiday project because it always works out somehow year after year. I need to not kill my dog when he wakes up in the middle of the night two nights in a row to go out and potty but refuses to actually potty but rather stands there and looks at me like, "Who, me?" while I stand shivering in my pajamas. I need to get into the holiday spirit and get pumped for all of the fun events of the coming month, mainly my sister's wedding which should be grand. I guess that's about it for now. I'm gonna shut this down because I have a date with a David Sedaris book. But first, a few recent pics:

While we breathe, we hope.

Memories from Election Day 2008 ...

I woke up early and excited and headed to the polls around 8 a.m. I only waited about 5 minutes, and I stood there with actual butterflies fluttering in my stomach. I cast my vote proudly and with a catch in my throat. I headed to the gym, where I ran 3.5 miles and watched election coverage on MSNBC, hearing Dan Rather talk about having covered the Civil Rights Movement and never thinking he would live long enough to see this happen, saying how honored and proud he was to be a part of this day. This was only 9 a.m., and there was already a sense of knowing how the night would end. At some point yesterday morning I chatted online with AB Chao and we discussed being blue dots in our red state and possibly needing to be medicated before the day was over. My cat sat in the window and pondered it all.

It was a beautiful sunny day. I went to the library and to Starbucks for my free Thanksgiving blend coffee, thought about how proud I was of my sister for her Election Day activities in VA, and I met B. for lunch. We split a bowl of shrimp & corn soup; he had a salad and I had a turkey burger. We talked election, election, election. It is hard to believe that we first met just after Bush won reelection in 2004.

I thought about some of my feelings before his reelection and since that time. How the weekend after that election I convened with friends to lie around our pajamas and eat our way through our bitter disappointment. And how that disappointment never really waned. How in April of last year I was starting to freak about yesterday's election in a big way. And how intensely I believed in Obama once it became clear to me that he was the guy. And how moved I was by his speech on race. And that day when those men were hateful about my Obama shirt in the coffee shop. All of these thoughts and memories were converging in my head and heart yesterday and I thought about how very sad I was when Bush was reelected and how that sadness would be magnified by about ten billion if Obama should lose.

I reluctantly headed to my evening class, during which I hid my cell phone behind my purse and hit refresh on news sites for the entire class period. I heard not one word the professor uttered. I got texts from Elizabeth and my future brother-in-law that Obama won Pennsylvania and I could hardly sit still in my seat. I scrawled that message in ecstatic letters on the notebook of my classmate sitting in the seat beside me. She smiled. It was so hard to sit there and not start freaking out.

I ran out of class upon dismissal as fast as my legs could carry me and headed home to watch returns with my laptop, chatting on Facebook with Amy and others and marveling at CNN's weird hologram graphics and creating an entire conspiracy theory about Chris Matthews hating Keith Olbermann but honestly I was in some sort of spaced out dissociative zone by this point because before I knew it Obama had won Ohio and I started to believe this was really going to happen and I don't remember much but eating cheese grits & an apple smeared with peanut butter and how Marley was lying on the couch cushion behind my head with her feet entangled in my hair. I found it strangely comforting. B. showed up from his classmate's election party and we sat there and watched it unfold until the minutes approached when the West Coast polls would close. "45 seconds," I said, watching the countdown, and the next thing I knew he was on his feet leaping in the air about to take down the ceiling fan because it was being called and then I was on mine and there was laughing and embracing and crying. I talked briefly to a co-worker who called during McCain's concession speech to say while laughing somewhat hysterically, "I KNOW they did not just boo the new president!" and then I sat there with my jaw dropped watching Roland Martin crying and Jesse Jackson crying and Oprah crying and the Spelman student who had fallen to her knees and the crowds euphorically cheering, waiting for Obama to finally come out.

And then he did, and I cried some more, loudly and proudly, and I was struck deep in my heart by the beauty of that man and his family and his words, and I will never forget for the rest of my life what last night felt like as he spoke and as I saw him kiss his daughters and his wife. "I will never forget this," I thought over and over, "I will never forget this, I will never forget this, I will never forget this."

I still feel it today, watching slideshows of reactions of joyful people around the country and world. I bonded with the cashier, grocery bagger, and a fellow shopper at the grocery store on the way to work where I was buying celebratory cookies and she was buying celebratory cakes. I passed an Obama/Biden sign in a yard with a handwritten sign beside it that said "Thank you America, I love you" that made me cry some more and I hung out of my car window to take a picture.

This morning I loved hearing the beautiful, radiant Toni Morrison saying that it's not just that he is a black man -- though that fact in and of itself has an enormity and a weight and a significance that I know means something to black people that I will never pretend to understand as a white person -- it is that, but it is also that he is THIS black man -- and I loved seeing, when Diane Sawyer told her that he said one of the highlights of his campaign was meeting Toni Morrison and seeing that she was just as he expected her to be, Toni Morrison's face break wide open with light and love and joy before she said, "He's another writer," as in, see, he is a writer and so much more, he is like me in that way, and he is like all of us.

I know he is not a magician or a god or a savior. I know that it's not going to be smooth-sailing bliss and perfection in this country from now on. (As my heart soars, it is also broken due to yesterday's passages of anti-gay marriage and anti-gay adoption laws; I keep trying to tell myself that the fight is not over in this regard but it still baffles me, angers me, and hurts me deep in my soul.) I just think he's a brilliant, good man who wants to serve his country well, make his wife and daughters proud, and make us all proud of ourselves and our country again. Maybe that's naive and simpleminded; today I just do not care. Today I celebrate and give thanks with all of my heart.

Bobbing along

I have finished all episodes of Wonderfalls except for "Lying Pig," which my Netflixed DVD would not play for anything despite multiple efforts at cleaning it. Overall, I enjoyed this series immensely. It is quirky and strange and very fun to watch. I'd never seen most of the series regulars before, and they all won me over quickly. I think my favorite casting element of the show, though, was how exciting it was to see familiar faces popping in from episode to episode. I had no idea that Tracie Thoms, who played Joanne in the Rent film, was a regular on this show as the lead's best friend. She was really great on the show, and it was so fun to see her in another role. Each episode features a guest star or two in a key role, and I'm telling you, this show had some of the best guest stars ever. Louise Fletcher (the grandmother in Flowers in the Attic, the piano teacher on Joan of Arcadia, and the Oscar-winning Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest!), Rue McClanahan (Blanche Devereaux!), Audrey Wasilewski (the self-righteous neighbor on Big Love, Peggy's self-righteous sister on Mad Men), Glenn Fitzgerald (the awesome Brian on Dirty Sexy Money), Sarah Drew (Hannah on my beloved Everwood, Salvatore's wife on Mad Men), and last but not least, Jewel Staite (Kaylee from Firefly and Serenity) ... the list goes on and on. Not to mention that one of the series regulars is Lee Pace, a.k.a. Ned the piemaker, a.k.a. Michael in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. I really recommend this show. It's got several commentary tracks, and my favorite moment on any of them was when the show's creators, the actress who played Jaye, and the actress who played Sharon all burst into joyful song when the opening credits played. It's clear the affection they all still have for the show, and it warmed my heart.

My mom and I went to see The Secret Life of Bees. We both cried. I was surprised that Alicia Keys was one of the strongest actresses in the film -- I thought she was truly fantastic -- and Dakota Fanning is just an awesome actress. There, I said it. It was nice to see the movie with my mom, as the book meant a lot to both of us when we first read it and we really bonded over it.

Lately I have been sort of hating my house. It's dusty, crawling with pet hair tumbleweeds, and I've decided I loathe all of my furniture, wall colors, and bedding. Basically ... everything about it. I bought my couch from the couple who used to live next-door on the day I moved in because they were having a garage sale and it seemed quite convenient. But it's quite ugly, who are we kidding? I went on a really red rampage a few years back which resulted in red dining room walls, red chairs, red throw pillows, red lamps, red red red. I am really over the red. And now I'm not sure what possessed me to paint my kitchen the color of an avocado or my hall bright orange. I have one bedroom that is basically a blank slate ... the only thing in it is a twin bed (with bedding I hate, of course) and I'd really like to build a really cute room entirely from scratch. Oh, and it has a cute rug.

That rug is basically the only thing in my house (other than my rainbow bookcase) that I like right now. None of it hangs together. It's very dissatisfying.

Honestly I don't know where to begin. Paging AB Chao ...

Recipe for a nice Friday evening ... Thai take-out, the season two season finale of Mad Men, the Halloween episode of The Office, and pumpkin pecan quick bread with vanilla ice cream.

Catching up

The time came when it was time to leave Hawaii. It was a sad day indeed. I took a two-mile walk around S.'s neighborhood while she went to teach class, and we went out to lunch and for coffee. Then she took me to the airport for my overnight flight. I'll tell you how it was. Depressing. On the flight home, I basically broke my neck and could not move it for several days. I tried to order coffee at the airport Starbucks during my Houston layover, but I was so deliriously sleep-deprived that I just shook my head sadly at the barista when I got to the counter and walked away in a haze.

It was a weird adjustment being home. Being back to work and school instead of on vacation. The time change was crazily life-wrecking in a way that has really surprised me. And mostly I just miss my wonderful friend more than I can ever say.

Now I'm settled back at home, fearing emotional aneurysms daily relative to the election. My nerves are totally shot. I start weeping when I contemplate a certain outcome. My sister came into town, and she and B. and I did a little phone banking, which was a good experience. I've also started training for a half-marathon, which Erin and I are writing about over here.

Yesterday my sister and I went to a football game. It was fun. My shins hurt. I'll miss Mad Men after the season ends tonight. That's really all I can think of to say right now.

Last full day in Hawaii

My last full day in Hawaii was another fun day. We got up early in the morning and went on a tour of Pearl Harbor on the Admiral's Barge.

(Photo by S.)

It was a small group of people, as this is a tour you can only go on if you're with a member of the military. Since S.'s husband is in the Navy, we were in like Flynn. It was a gorgeous day on the water, and if I love anything, let's face it, it's a good history lesson on the history of war. Being at the actual site of the events was amazing. Riding on a boat while doing so was just gravy. We learned all about the area, the ships in the harbor, and the events of December 7, 1941. I was particularly struck by the presence of the U.S.S. Missouri, on which Japan surrendered at the end of WWII. And the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial was, of course, very moving, particularly the area listing the names of survivors who chose to be interred upon their deaths later in life with their shipmates.

After our tour, we headed to nearby battleship (?), on the deck (?) (not good with my Navy terminology) of which S.'s husband had a promotion ceremony. It was very, very cool. The military life is very foreign to me, but I'm getting a closer look at it now through the eyes and experiences of my closest friend and her husband (my junior prom date!). The best thing about this ship besides the ceremony was seeing the launch site of the missile that shot down the space shuttle.

We celebrated his promotion at the Dixie Grill, sucking down beers and water and fries and mahi mahi sandwiches after roasting in the sun on the ship. It was fun to hang out with their friends, who came along.

After that, it was time for pajamas, Thai leftovers, Java Chip ice cream, and the presidential debate. The next day, it was time to leave and return to real life, but I'm choosing not to think about that.

Livin' the dream

After our day at the beach, we decided on a day of rest. It was a day of laundry doing, General Hospital watching, and spaghetti making. We did venture outside for a two-mile jog around the neighborhood, which was (a) hilly and (b) hot but still nice. We finished off the day watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which made us laugh a whole lot.

Which brings us to yesterday. We drove back into Haleiwa to visit S.'s favorite coffee shop, the Coffee Gallery. It was as cute as she promised ... she got a drink called the Coconator and I got an iced hazelnut soy latte.

We snacked on things called California Bars and Banana Date Blobs and sat outside on the patio with some chickens, talking about The Sopranos (which she is just finishing for the first time) and Deadwood (which I'm encouraging her to watch next).

Next she took us to the Soap Factory, housed in an old sugar mill. It smelled like heaven, and we bought some soap for the road. We stopped in a shop next-door that's also a coffee factory; I was talked into a sample and luckily noticed the small worm floating in it before taking the first sip.

We were left wondering which beach to visit. So we headed along the North Shore, and each beach was of course more stunning than the one we just passed. Ultimately we decided to visit Turtle Bay, where her parents stayed when they were here and where Forgetting Sarah Marshall was filmed. Like geeks, we got excited to see the things like the desk where Mila Kunis worked, the bar, the restaurant, and so forth. The beach there was lovely and relaxing and we settled into the sand with our mango (her) and raspberry (me) slushies and magazines.

I have only met two locals here who were anything less than friendly -- one at the farmer's market, who became livid when I realized I had just spent $10 on four mango/peach scones (I dislike both mangoes and peaches) instead of four cheese biscuits and asked to exchange them, unopened and paid for 5 seconds before, for something else. And one was on the beach at Turtle Bay. He wanted to sell us some "Hawaiian art," and when we (politely) declined, he set off on a tirade about how visitors act like "they" offend us, but it is we who offend them. He said, "You're looking at someone who's pure." Then as we packed up to leave, he told us to go ahead and leave because we'd spent enough time on "their" beaches. Then he called out to S. as we once again politely declined his offer to sell us some art, "You live here! You should know better!" S. has lots of thoughts and insights into the "us" vs. "them" situation in Hawaii, and I have to say it's pretty damn fascinating.

We walked along the shore back to the car and did not leave until embarking on a covert mission led by the intrepid S. to find the beach cottages where Aldous, Sarah Marshall, and Jason Segel stayed in the movie. It was exciting.

We then headed home, at which point we headed to two exercise classes she was teaching. One used all balls ... the body ball, the medicine ball, the pilates ball. Thankfully, it was only 30 minutes because though it was fun, it was hard! Next came Rep Reebok, and I have to say that it was also tough but I loved it! I kept thinking how much my sister would like this class. My friend is a great teacher.

We got some Thai take-out and headed home; S. and her husband watched Heroes, and I took to my bed to watch the season premiere of Friday Night Lights online (wonderful), and that was the end of yesterday. It was another great day; apparently there are no bad days in Hawaii.

Hawaii, Day 3

Our day began with a drive to the Valley of the Temples at the foot of the Koʻolau Mountains.

The mountains were mindblowingly huge and beautiful. The whole temple and burial ground area was very peaceful and calming.

After wandering the grounds for a little while, we headed into Kailua, where we had sushi for lunch. S. was quick to point out the side of "mac salad" that apparently comes with everything in Hawaii whether you order it or not. Good to know!

Our next top was Bellows Beach. The moment we parked the car, it started pouring down rain.

We woefully watched the rain through the car windows, but it stopped a few minutes later. Hooray! We relaxed in the sand for a few minutes before deciding to brave the water. It wasn't nearly as cold as the water at Chun's. S. explained that Chun's is a reefy bottom and Bellows is a sandy bottom, which means at the latter we could swim without fear of being slammed into a volcanic rock and dying. The waves were super strong and knocked us over multiple times, but it was very fun and thrilling and outstanding in that way that only being smashed around by ocean waves can be. S. yelled, "The Pacific isn't very pacific!" We took lots of pictures of ourselves throughout.

We swam until we couldn't swim anymore, and then we headed home along a winding mountain road. We pulled over immediately when we saw a sign reading "Scenic Point." It was scenic, alright. It was the Halona Blowhole, and it was gorgeous and breathtaking and all of those other adjectives that don't begin to capture what it felt like to stand up there.

After sufficiently taking in the glory of the view, we drove home through a very ritzy part of the island. We stared with mouths agape at the HUGE movie star mansions on the mountain and decided to try to see if we could get up there. We could not, as we would learn from a security guard who laughed in our faces. It was called Hawaii Loa Ridge. In my mind, the stars of Lost live there.

We got back to the house, showered, ate pizza, and collapsed. It was another really exhausting and really wonderful day.

Hawaii, Day 2

On my first night in Hawaii, I could only sleep until 3 a.m. Two hours later, S. and I departed in the dark to the gym for her 6 a.m. spinning class. She helped me set up my bike and made sure I was good to go. Her group of regulars was there. It was awesome to see her in action. I've known her for 25 years now, but I've never seen her in teacher mode, and she was a natural! So proud of her. What I was not so proud of were my knees, which screamed even as I pedaled with zero resistance at 0.00000001 mph. Whatever muscles knees need to ride a bike? Mine apparently don't have. Not to mention that my entire nether regions felt like they were in a state of severe pain and torture. So I meekly climbed off five minutes into class and headed to the treadmill in the next room. Never did I think it would feel so good to run two miles. Anything was paradise next to that bike. I am a little sad that I am not equipped for my friend's expertise, but what can you do? After her class, I headed back over, where I was informed by one of her regulars, who was gifting her with two homegrown avocados, how wonderful she is and how much they all love her. Heart=warmed. So nice!

After the gym, we headed to a fancy mall for iced hazelnut soy lattes ... yum. This mall is akin to Rodeo Drive ... Tiffany, Harry Winston, Prada, Gucci, Jimmy Choo, Louis Vuitton, and so forth. Fancy. Apparently lots of rich people either live in or travel to Honolulu to do their shopping. Then we returned to the house (in a town nearby), drove past the very lovely park where they got married, and prepared for our hike!

This is a favorite hike of hers on the North Shore, the Kaunala Trail.

She told me it would be "easy" but perhaps her fitness ease is different from mine considering she is a fitness instructor. At one point along the trail, we began to encounter many fallen trees blocking the path.

We would climb over them and under them and around them and it was sort of like maneuvering around town post-Gustav. This was very flummoxing and she kept saying, "I've never seen the trail look like this!" Finally she realized that was the case because we weren't actually on the trail. We found the trail and from then on it was mostly smooth sailing. Despite some hard inclines, it was definitely beautiful.

It took about 2.5 hours to get to the destination, a lookout where you can see the ocean down below and the mountains in the horizon.

It was very beautiful indeed, and we plopped down happily to have a snack, but it started raining shortly thereafter. Alas. The hike down was very muddy as the path has been overrun by tractors lately putting in some communications lines. But we still had plenty of fun.

Afterwards, we headed to lunch in a cute town called Haleiwa and ate BBQ chicken pizza and salads at Pizza Bob's. And then we went to the beach! A beach called Chun's. The North Shore is apparently famous for its beaches/surfing. I went into the water in my shorts & sports bra because I was a little bashful about changing in the car. The water was cold but clear and AWESOME. Word to the wise ... the currents here don't exactly feel like those in the Gulf of Mexico (duh). You don't have to go out very far to quickly be too deep to stand, and the currents really knock you around. I floated around for a while blissfully until I got pruney, but then I came in because I got a little nervous about the currents ... there are huge rocks and it wouldn't take much to smash into one! Anyway, it was so fun and relaxing to swim and the surfers were very cool and it was all stunningly beautiful to behold.

Then we came back here and S. cooked us a delicious dinner of fish, corn on the cob, and broccoli. I managed to stay awake until 8 pm at which point I collapsed. It was a great day.

Processing

It's hard to know where to start talking about this week. I'll start with flashes of memory: the sound of the wind on Monday afternoon as the hurricane passed through, sounding like an ear-splitting whistle or a woman screaming, for hours. The sight of my roof shingles strewn across multiple yards. Walking the dogs with my cousin through the neighborhood puddles. Eating shrimp and chicken breasts saved from a powerless freezer by my cousin, who cooked them over a camp stove in the backyard. Putting pots down under one ceiling leak, then a second, then a third. Watching leaks that were drips turn into leaks that looked like a stream from a running faucet. Watching the mold appear on the ceiling in one place, then two, then three. Smelling the mold as the stench set in. Seeing my dad pull up my driveway in the rain and hold out a ten-pound bag of dry ice that he found heaven knows where for me to put in an ice chest. Stepping in mid-calf-deep water in my Tevas while splashing through my backyard picking up shingles. Lying in bed sweating because there's only so much air a small battery-operated fan can produce. Laughing deliriously with my cousin and B. Running down the driveway in my pajamas in the pitch darkness and rain to tell a truck full of very tired-looking firemen carrying hoses up my driveway at two in the morning that my smoke alarm was set off by the water flowing from the monitored smoke alarm in the ceiling and that there was no actual fire. Watching my cousin and B. disappear into my dark attic to survey the damage. Watching B. climb onto the roof to put up a tarp with bricks from my dad's house while the dark clouds swirled behind him just before it started storming again. Hearing about how my dad fixed his phone line by climbing into a ditch with twist ties and a plastic bag. (Still not sure how he did that.) Seeing how excited my mom was to have a phone line again.

I'm not saying any of this to complain. I am better off than many people, most people even. It has occurred to me as I've begun to peek my nose past my cellphone, which was my main communication for a few days, that there's a lack of understanding beyond this state about what has happened here. I'm as happy as everyone else that the waters did not flow through New Orleans this time. But that doesn't mean there hasn't been water and devastation. I have friends in this city who have been told as recently as today that the best case scenario for their power being restored is 21 days or more. Living without power might be better than being flooded (as many have been) or crushed by trees (which many, many, many, MANY homes and businesses have been and which actual PEOPLE have been) or dead (not sure of today's count, but yesterday it was 19 in this state), but it sure is miserable, especially for old people and sick people and little babies and kids. And it sure makes it hard to dry out homes if there's no cool air circulating and it's topping 90 degrees every day. My relatives would like to go home, but you can't go home when you live in a city where you can't drink your water or flush your toilet and have been told you won't be able to for the next month.

I guess I just want people to understand. Kids are out of school. People are not going to work. Small businesses are losing income and throwing out tons of spoiled food and products. People are waiting for hours for gas -- my cousin got to the gas station at 7 a.m. yesterday and did not fill up until 10 a.m. Three hours in a gas line. Few stores are open. The line just to set foot in Walmart? Around the entire circumference of the building. I've stopped counting the trees I've seen that have cut through houses because they are everywhere you look. Both houses next-door to my parents' house and the house across the street from them all have holes in the roofs. It just kind of freaks you out to realize it could have been you and then it makes you feel really sort of guilty to feel such deep relief that it was someone else. I am sort of an emotional basketcase over three leaks and mold and a messed up roof. Which is sort of unacceptably self-indulgent, and I am working on it. And I GOT MY POWER BACK. Making me one of 25% of the city's people who have power right now, 5 days after the storm. I am so thankful for that it makes me want to fall to my knees and weep.

Meanwhile, I've missed the entire Republican National Convention, not that I think I could have stomached watching it anyway, and I'm now reading things like this that are just about pushing me over the edge of sanity. Wake up, voters. Please, please, please let's all be awake and pay attention and not sit back and let this happen. It is terrifying me and making me feel like puking.

I don't know what else to say. I am worried about the people of my state and of my country. I want us all to come to our senses and be okay.

Scenes from my neighborhood:

Getaway

It was decided that an end-of-summer (not weather-wise, but freedom from school-wise) night away was in order. So we headed to the quaint and lovely town and stayed at a bed and breakfast. I liked this bed and breakfast a lot because it had cats, a dog, a patio, homemade oatmeal raisin cookies, a six-pack of my favorite beer stocked in the fridge for our arrival, a hammock, a rope swing, beautiful grounds, an antique bathtub with bathsalts and soap that smelled like apple Jolly Ranchers (in a good way), and little guestbooks full of messages from people who've stayed there over the years which made for great reading somehow, showing little glimpses into people's lives from all over the world.

We got up early in the morning to cross the state line into Mississippi, where we hiked down to some "waterfalls." It was great just to be outside, hearing nothing but the bugs and the birds and the water. It's important to get away sometimes. I recommend it.

D.C. Days 4 & 5

This morning we rolled out of bed and headed to Rock Creek Park, where we took a long, brisk walk. It was beautiful and peaceful.

We headed to brunch with B.'s mom at Kramerbooks -- a lovely and fun place -- and had a nice little visit with his family at the Dupont farmer's market.

Now we're sitting in Artfully Chocolate Kingsbury Confections, which is delightful as all get-out. I'm drinking a lavender lemonade.

(Later ...) We got Chop't again for dinner and are turning in early. Goodnight.

(The next day ...)

This morning I woke up early and headed to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. My sister left me detailed Metro instructions because she went to work, but after calculating that it was exactly 2 miles from her neighborhood, I decided to just walk it. My iced coffee and I had a pleasant walk down 14th Street for most of the way until I reached the Mall and lost all shade and started pouring sweat. The line wasn't too bad ... I definitely recommend that you get there early, though.

This is an amazing museum. It was very similar to the exhibit we saw in London but was obviously on a larger scale. Haunting and unforgettable. No words.

I stopped in the museum cafe when finished to grab a bite to eat as it was past 2:00 and I was hungry. Then I learned that my sister had 40 free minutes at her office so I got my roasted vegetable panini and sprinted through the streets eating it, stringy mozzerella flying into my hair, making it to the Metro and to her office in the nick of time. It was great to see where she works and meet her colleagues.

Then I met up with my old friend J. at Dupont Circle and we decided to go to Kramerbooks for a couple of pints of beer apiece and some good conversation. The graphic novels section was right by our table, so I grabbed a few to show him what I've been reading for class. It started pouring down rain, but we decided to trek through it, me with the umbrella and him walking his bike, to Busboys & Poets, otherwise known as the cutest coffee shop/restaurant in all the land. We each got a pint of beer; he had a blackened fish sandwich, my sister had pesto veggie lasagna, and I had a spinach, feta, and red pepper pizza. It was delicious and fun.

Overall, it's been a great trip. Hot as hell, but what're you gonna do? It was wonderful to get away, see my sister, drink a little, eat a lot, exercise a little, visit two awesome museums, and spend time with some dear friends. I didn't get to see all my friends who live there, but I tried to see those I've seen the least frequently in the past few years. Hopefully I'll get back soon and will be able to see everyone! P.S. Dragon Slippers is a really cute book ... thank you, Melissa.

D.C. Day 3

We woke up early this morning and headed to the Y. I ran 2 miles and my head exploded. Then we walked over to a farmer's market where a lot of pretty loaves of bread and berries were being sold.

We headed into Old Towne Alexandria, where we're at a coffee shop. It's very pretty and peaceful here. Tonight we are having dinner with my dear friend Elizabeth, and I CANNOT WAIT.

We got a little lost on the way home from the coffee shop, but it was enjoyable because we did some loud, obnoxious harmonizing to such songs as "Somewhere, Somehow" by Amy Grant & Michael W. Smith.

We decided to stop at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the Mall, featuring NASA, Bhutan, and Texas. It was pretty hot, so mostly we just enjoyed a giant rocket popsicle and a giant slab of watermelon.

(Later ...) Dinner with Elizabeth was great. We went to Zengo, ordered six appetizers and mojitos, and all was good. It was so wonderful to see my beloved friend again! We headed to Gifford's for ice cream after upon her suggestion, and I had a scoop of hazelnut ice cream with chocolate cookies and chocolate fudge swirls, throwing my new healthy eating habits under the train for the team. It rained like a mofo, and we caught a cab. We parted ways and vowed to see each other again soon, hopefully in November to celebrate rather than mourn the presidential election results like we did four Novembers ago.

After that, my sister and I met some of her friends at L'Enfant. They were nice and I liked them but I cannot stay up late so we left about 11:30.

Goodnight!

D.C. Day 2

Whew! A full day. I slept not a wink last night. We rolled out of bed and did Turbo Jam. I don't think my sister enjoyed it very much but I was excited for her to experience it. We made the foolhardy decision to walk from her U-Street neighborhood to the Newseum at high noon. We thought a grande iced coffee would be enough to help us along the path. It wasn't, and sweat poured down our faces and we got too delirious to find a Metro station. Luckily we passed some pretty flowers along the way.

55 minutes and a couple of cases of severe dehydration later, we arrived at the glorious Newseum. We contemplated not going, but Elizabeth insisted, and I'm so glad we did. It was first class. A top-knotch museum experience from ceiling to floor. The view from the terrace was amazing, and each exhibit was better than the last. The only con is that it was like a walk-in freezer. Normally this would bother me, but I was generating so much heat from the walk that I welcomed it for the most part. My sister was shivering and turning blue, however. I cannot recommend this museum highly enough.

On the way home, we stopped at the famous Chop't. I was overwhelmed and had no idea what to order so I just started randomly picking stuff. I ended up with romaine lettuce, shrimp, feta cheese, egg whites, carrots, cucumbers, sunflower seeds, ginger carrot dressing, and possibly something I'm forgetting. I ate the entire thing and regret not one bite.

Tonight we watched my beloved Lars & the Real Girl. Now there is nothing left to do but eat ice cream pops and collapse.

D.C. Day 1

Character-building moments while traveling.

(1) Realizing that getting into an empty metro train at the airport and spreading my luggage out meant that I would have to end up holding my little rolling backpack on my lap once people started pouring in. So wheels on my lap. Wheels that had rolled through two airports, multiple airport bathrooms, and a metro station. On my jeans. One leg of which has a small hole in it through which the plastic wheel was touching my skin. I tried to be brave and un-germophobic like Robyn (seriously -- I am in awe) but it was really hard. I felt myself about to burst into tears. I held this bag on my lap to make room for a soldier of some kind to perch himself next to me while balanced on one buttcheek because my other bag was also in the way but my lap is only so big. I thought to myself, "At least I am making room for a soldier." I felt, not unlike Sharon Cooper and Louis DiMucci, that I was doing it for my country.

(2) Realizing I would have to veer from my sister's explicit instructions and switch trains because it's rush hour. This makes me itchy and frantic because I don't know what in the hell I'm doing. I remind myself that I have navigated subway stations in Paris, Rome, and New York, albeit unsuccessfully sometimes, and to get a goddammed grip. I finally figured out what other train to ride and found the Starbucks at which I'm supposed to be waiting for her.

(3) As I'm standing at the counter ordering my grapefruit spritzer in a bottle or whatever the hell it is, I ask for a cup of ice. One barista calls out to another that I need a cup of ice. She ignores her. She ignores her time and again. Finally I say: CAN I PLEASE HAVE A CUP OF ICE? She wiped her paw all over her face including her nose and then got me my cup of ice, mauling the lid with her hand in the process by pressing it on way more times than it needed to be. I sighed and told myself that this is a part of food and beverage service and that the ice itself is probably dirty and to chill out. (The germophobia spirals ... it starts with a dirty bag on the lap and snowballs into further irrationality from there.)

(4) As I'm settling in at Starbucks preparing to plug in my laptop whose battery ran out on the plane while watching the special features of In Bruges (more on that later, wow), a man makes a dive for the plug at the same time, coughing tubercularly without covering his mouth and pulling an actual jambox out of his large duffel bag to plug in. By this point I'd had it, so I said, "EXCUSE ME," and plugged in my laptop first. I wasn't trying to be rude but I think I might have been, a little. Of course there are two sockets, one on top of the other, so we could share, but for some reason I felt like I had to go first if he was going to kneel down there and cough wetly on my brand new running shoes. I have no idea what he needed to hear so badly on the radio but all he could get was loud, jarring static so he left, thankfully. I was not feeling like the nicest version of myself.

(5) In keeping with my seat-hogging tradition, a little girl asks if she can have my other chair so I move one of my bags off of it. She proceeds to stand on the chair, not sit, peering over the counter and yelling hello to the ignoring, face wiping barista, and then she knocks over my bottle of grapefruit spritzer! And it spills on the table, millimeters from this very laptop. I was so aghast that I just blinked in shock while her mom or caregiver or whoever she was cleaned it up and told the girl not to stand on the chair again which the girl proceeded immediately to do. Which only leads me to ask as I sit here: WHAT KIND OF STARBUCKS IS THIS?

My mom thinks that putting up with other people in the world teaches us virtue. And I think that I am a normally pretty tolerant person. I really cannot stand when people act completely put out that other people live in the world … stand in line in front of them, stop at red lights in front of them, etc. After all, other people DO live in the world and we must all try to live in harmony. I really do believe that, and I think that people who get mad at kids in restaurants and grocery stores are giant assholes. But when people start coughing and spilling on me, that is where I draw the line. Is that wrong?

Okay – In Bruges! This movie is so fantastic! I read Heavy Liquid and V for Vendetta and Serenity: Those Left Behind for the first few hours of travel, all of which were good, but I needed a break from the freaking comics so I put a movie in on the way here, and In Bruges … like I said, wow. Okay, I won't give anything away. So I'll just say that I have a deep appreciation for Colin Farrell that heretofore I never imagined possible. He was brilliant. Brilliant, I am telling you. He gave one of those performances where you can see a million different tiny emotions from his heart and thoughts from his head all over his face at any moment, in all the right places. I thought it was a revelatory and incredible performance. The rest of the cast was great, too, but he made my jaw drop. I am trying to think of someone his charisma and nuance reminded me of, and all I can come up with was Robert Downey, Jr. at his best. He was funny and heartbreaking. I was laughing out loud on the plane. Even though it's not always easy to watch. I will say that. But wow! I liked it so much.

And …. now the girl at the next table is taking off her nailpolish and re-painting her nails with reckless abandon. What kind of a person opens a bottle of nail polish remover in a crowded, small, hot coffee shop in June? I can never return to this Starbucks. Ever.

---

It's now later and I'm showered and calm. We went to eat at Rice, which was delicious even though my basil, tofu, and vegetable concoction over purple rice set my lips aflame and made me sweat profusely. She bought red and yellow gerber daisies and is taking great care of me. I love the look of the buildings in her neighborhood. We're about to watch the results show of So You Think You Can Dance (we think Comfort & Chris should go), and life is good.

This is going to be one weird summer.

Weekends!

This past one was an early birthday/bon voyage celebration and started with a mix-up of Elizabeth's famous bourbon slush. I decided to halve the recipe, so it went like this: 4 cups of water, 1/2 cup of frozen lemonade (thawed), 1/2 cup of frozen orange juice (thawed), 1/2 cup of bourbon, 1/2 cup of sugar. Freeze in plastic pitcher. It was frozen by morning, and we enjoyed it all weekend. This is the perfect summer drink treat.

Friday afternoon, we headed out for pizza with one of B.'s school friends and his fiancée. Blue moons and pizza were consumed and presidential politics was discussed. Then we watched Battlestar Galactica, which frankly was as dull as dishwater. It seemed like a lot happened, but it all happened so utterly boringly that I could not care. We also started The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, but I slept through most of the first half. I blame the Blue Moons.

On Saturday morning, we headed out to the farmer's market for muffins, lemon scones, garlic cheese biscuits, and coffee. At some point, we finished The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which was so utterly gorgeous and profoundly moving that I wept throughout. I loved every performance in the movie, especially Max von Sydow's. Highly recommended. We had lunch at one of our favorite sandwich places and listened to the guitar man play the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly on his fiddle very beautifully. B. went for a massage, and when I went to pick him up, I saw the teacher of my old circuit class!!!!! He gave me his card and I really hope to check out his new gym. B. said, "She loved that class," and I said, "I did. I really did." In the immortal words of my teacher, "Love yourself!"

That afternoon, we went to a reception at an art gallery where for some reason I almost had a heat stroke even though normally I'd be all about visiting a labyrinth, and then we went out to dinner. We had shrimp over eggplant and angel hair pasta and some other stuff. I can't remember. Oh yeah. A fried ball of crabmeat with little fried strings shooting out of it that looked like the flying spaghetti monster. Sazeracs. Cake.

A new dog park opened, so when we woke up early on Sunday morning, we decided to head over there.

I first brought Zuko home a little more than seven years ago because the shelter people told me he gets along with any dog, any time, and I didn't want a dog who would snap back at Daisy. They were right, and it seems this is his essential nature and hasn't changed. He just rambled around at the park and had a great time, not really engaging in serious play with the other dogs, but being unfazed by it all and peeing happily on every fence post he passed. Daisy was nervous, but she didn't snap at anyone and seemed to appreciate the wide open spaces she could retreat to. It was a good time.

Later that morning, we headed down the river for brunch. I got us hopelessly lost and was an asshole about it. But brunch was divine.

"Why don't we eat here all the time?" B. asked. "I was just thinking the same thing," I said. He had some kind of black bean soup with shrimp and bacon, and I had the best food on earth, otherwise known as a bread bowl with shrimp, yellow/red/green bell peppers, and purple onions in some kind of buttery, spicy heavenly sauce and a mimosa.

Then we split eggs over a fried grits cake topped with BBQ shrimp. All of this took place in a little old wooden building that used to be a general store right across from the river. This place is almost too perfect.

After that, we stopped at my parents' house so B. could look through their multiple boxes of crazy travel accessories. On our way out the door, my dad asked him if he had a pedometer. When he said no, my dad shrieked, "YOU CANNOT GO TO EUROPE WITHOUT A PEDOMETER!" and ran back into his study to fetch one. One of my dad's favorite things to do when traveling is to measure and then report how many miles he walked that day.

Early that evening, we met a couple of friends and their dogs back at the dog park. It was way, WAY more crowded this time, and while Zuko continued his easygoing wandering without caring where I was, Daisy was not as relaxed and stuck pretty close to my side. I think it was because she was pretty tired from the outing that morning and kept looking at me wearily while surrounded by fetching, spazzing dogs with an "I am nine, and I have had it" face. If she felt cornered and didn't appreciate it, she definitely let the other dogs know. B. kept reminding me that she picks up on my nervousness, so I tried to keep my distance, but usually I'd just walk away from the scuffle and call her to come with me to a less crowded area of grass, and it would work out okay. I really want to keep taking them, but I do worry about her sometimes. The funniest sight of the evening was seeing four large dogs sniffing the belly of a yorkie who'd rolled over and seemed to be loving the attention -- either that or seeing our friends' floppy, adorably clownish boxer / mastiff mix bound over, come to a face-to-face stand-off with a chihuahua, and lick it delicately on the nose.

The reason behind all of the festivity this weekend = B. is going to France for the summer. I just waved goodbye in the driveway and cried a lot. I am now consoling myself with cold cashew chicken and a Gossip Girl rerun.

I miss him already.

What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing

Not sure where to start, so I'm just going to start typing. It's Memorial Day, and I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about that, but none I can really find words for at the moment. Mostly I'm just thinking about my friend Jessamyn!

I really liked Iron Man. I have always loved Robert Downey, Jr., and he did not disappoint in this role. I definitely recommend it.

I'm not really sure what has been going on. I've been really busy with work. B's mom is here, which has been nice. I sort of went into a manic panic when it came to pre-visit housecleaning, which was silly. We had dinner with my parents the other night, took her to a plantation, took her to a museum, took her to the top of the capitol, had lunch with my parents today, and overall it's been a merry time. Today my mom made three different salads -- her cabbage crunch salad, a green salad with fresh pears and toasted pecans and feta cheese, and a curry chicken salad with dried cranberries ... delish!

I've been reading Linda's journal for a long time ... long enough to know that she is all about the Turbo Jam. I knew it was a tool in her fitness routine, but it wasn't until I saw her legs and passed out from their sheer awesomeness that I got on eBay and bought myself a copy. I did it for the first time this morning when B. went to play racquetball and his mom went for a walk around the lakes. As I told Linda in an e-mail, I am becoming increasingly frightened of my own stomach. It's always been a place where my out-of-shapeness manifests itself ... along with a big bottom that is sort of big no matter how in shape I am ... but my stomach is now doing this weird thing when I bend over where my stomach goes down before the rest of me and is sort of like a distorted, distended other being, like a sandbag attached to my body, and it's so bizarre and so disturbing. While this Turbo Jam video does not specifically address the stomach, I'm hoping that just getting moving again will be an overall good thing for my overall body. I could barely follow the steps and do not understand the different kinds of punches and am wholly baffled by how the teacher's somewhat skimpy orange bikini sports bra holds her boobs in place and I ended up just kind of punching the air randomly to the beat and trying to kick my legs out without putting my foot through the TV or taking out one of the cats. But I think it's okay because I did sweat a lot and get out of breath, which is more than I've done lately, so I hope to get into a little routine and stop scaring myself with the flubberoo.

We watched The Painted Veil last night. I sort of hated the first hour, but by the end I was glad we watched it. I've decided I think Naomi Watts is a very good actress because she just comes across as very natural. Edward Norton, on the other hand -- I've decided that he bugs me. Whereas Naomi Watts seemed to really inhabit her character, every move he made -- every turn of the head, scratch of the neck, hand on the hip -- seemed so calculated and actor-y. It was definitely not an exciting movie, but the scenery was pretty and I ended up being mildly moved by it.

I was much more moved by Secret Lives: Hidden Children & their Rescuers During World War II. I love a good WWII documentary, and this definitely was one. I cried and cried when one man, then a boy, spoke of how when the war ended, freed from his hiding place and his hidden identity, ran out into the streets waving a small Dutch flag and shouting, "I'm a Jew, I'm a Jew." I cried and cried when children grew up and re-met their rescuers -- their parents during those years, really -- half a century later. I was very struck by one woman who was the biological daughter of a rescuer couple who remains angry that her parents risked her life and the lives of her siblings to hide Jewish children. She said she's been angry about it most of her life. And I felt so sad for her and so sorry. And I wonder how all these years later she cannot see the experience with some perspective. That because her parents did what they did, children were saved. And it was dangerous, but nobody died. Not them, not her. So wasn't it ultimately a good thing? I enjoyed this movie very much.

Yesterday we visited a special Jim Henson exhibition. It was just wonderful. If it's coming anywhere near you, I think you should check it out. After coming home still feeling a bit happy/weepy from the exhibit, I went on an all-things Henson YouTube search. I loved watching the singing from his memorial service (part one, part two). And I somehow came across a version I'd never heard before of "The Rainbow Connection," which is one of my favorite songs, even when sung by the likes of Andy Bernard. Anyway, it's by the Dixie Chicks, and here it is, and it made me cry and then cry some more.

Can we talk about plantations for a second? An African American man I rode around with a lot at work last week is probably his mid- to late-60s. He was born on a plantation in St. Fr-ville and picked cotton every summer until he was 19. We were talking about plans with B's mom, and he said we definitely needed to take her to a plantation. He said he loves visiting them, loves walking through the grounds and gardens, even loves seeing the slave cabins. I asked him, not very articulately, if walking around a plantation makes him feel "yucky." (The best word I could come up with. I'm not proud.) He said definitely but he still likes going because he thinks they're beautiful. We had a pretty interesting conversation about it. So when B. and I decided to take his mom to one, I kind of kept him in mind. And sure, the house was beautiful. And hearing about the history from the tour guide was sort of neat. But I about gagged when she said something about how "they're very proud that slaves were not abused at this plantation." Well -- swell. It gave me an overwhelming sense of ickiness.

Here's a picture of the house from the top of the levee:

I can't think of anything else to say about the plantation other than that the best part of the visit was the restaurant's sweet potato fries. And now here are some more pictures of late:

Catch up

Last week, my mom called to announced that there was a Camelot special on PBS. Of course I turned it on right away, and behold, there was Live from Lincoln Center: Camelot. I could not believe my bloomin' eyes. Marin Mazzie as Guinevere? LORD. Perfect. I've loved her since 1998, when she created the role of Mother in Ragtime (even though I never saw her in it, I feel like I have, you know?), and seeing her in Kiss Me, Kate was something I'll never forget. I thought she made a fine, fine Guinevere.

Anyway, I'd never seen the guy who played Lancelot before, but I understand he's an opera star and I was pleased to see that he had both comedic and dramatic chops as well as a great voice. Christopher Lloyd as Pellinore? Too good. I have no idea who Mordred was, but he was great. And Gabriel Byrne as Arthur was wonderful. Sure, he spoke through many of the songs, but that is what Arthur does, since it's not a singing part and it never has been. (Hello, Richard Burton.) And sometimes he rushed and didn't speak the words with the proper musical timing. But you know what? I didn't care. He made me cry so hard during the "Proposition" scene that B. could hear me from the next room even though I was sitting on the bed in the dark with the door closed. It was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful to see this show that I have loved so much my whole life reinvented in this wonderful way.

Of course I called my parents crying during the show to tell them it was the best thing I'd ever seen, and a few nights later, while B. and I were over at my parents' house visiting my sister who was in town, my dad busted out his Camelot script from his college production (he played Arthur) and performed the "Proposition" scene for us, stopping to explain how the notes from "I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight" play in the background and so forth, and it was a beautiful, beautiful thing.

On Saturday, I was running around buying gifts, and I stopped at the Catholic bookstore to buy my dad a gift certificate and next-door I spotted a Mexican bakery. At least it looked like a Mexican bakery. Seeing as I don't speak Spanish, I wasn't sure. But I was so hungry that I ran and not walked inside. I was not really sure what to do, procedurally. This was definitely a Mexican-Mexican bakery and not an American-Mexican bakery. Should I order at the counter even though I could not translate any of the menu items on the wall? Should I stand at the large rack of unlabeled baked goods and inspect them carefully until someone came over to take my order? I did the latter, and the friendly counter guy asked me what I would like. I pointed to a big pastry and said, "I'd like one, please." He said, "It's chicken!" Because I think he thought I thought it was dessert. I said, "Great!" He told me, "Americans always taste that one and come back for more." $2.65 later, I walked outside, got into my car, and tore into it. It was so good I moaned. I ate the whole thing with my hands, while driving. And it wasn't small. I took my sister back the next morning, thinking she might want to speak some Spanish. She explained that if she were in Mexico, sure, but that the general consensus among bilingual types and those trying to be so is that as Mexicans operating a restaurant here, they might not want to be used for us to practice Spanish on, but rather might want to use us to practice English on. Which made sense, I think. So they spoke a little Spanish and a little English and all was merry and gay. We loaded up on stuff and it is now my favorite food establishment. They've only been open a month; I hope they're a wild success.

Spending some time with my sister when she was here was nice. We went shoe shopping, which is not either of our things, but we survived. Mother's Day was good. We also celebrated my dad's birthday, and my mom cooked an awesome meal of crawfish etouffee, broccoli casserole, and of course ice cream dessert. It was nice to have the whole family together, plus fiery B. I forced everyone to jump in the air for pictures because I read that it's a good way to spice up a group photo. I feel everyone was slightly annoyed, but these pictures will make me laugh forever.

My mom, sister, and I watched P.S. I Love You, and I'm not sure I have the words to aptly capture how much we hated this movie. Just when we thought it couldn't get any stupider or more unrealistic, it would. IT WAS BAD. I am still kind of in shock that it ever got made. I think we started hating it immediately when Hilary Swank's character complained about how small their apartment was and it was a big, lovely NY walk-up that was bigger than any apartment my NY friend ever lived in. I also hated: her fancy up-do for her husband's funeral [not really a spoiler; his death is basically the premise of the whole movie] and the way she went to bed after it in the most uncomfortable type of bra possible (corset) and sexy black panties. Who dresses like that for her husband's funeral? I hated ... everything about it. EVERYTHING. Except for the beauty of the Irish countryside. That was the only good thing about it. What a slog of a movie ... the worst I've seen in years. Possibly in my whole life.

Don't know what else to say. So ... pictures.

Weekend Update

It was a jam-packed weekend to be sure. On Friday evening, B. and I headed out to celebrate the end of his finals with some of his school friends. We ate pizza and drank beer. Then we went to a foul, piss-smelling bar where he played pool and merriment was made. I headed home early while he deservingly partied the night away.

The next morning, I ... am drawing a blank. Oh yeah. I went to World Market to buy some bamboo shades for my back living room windows. I have some cute but flimsy white curtains in there, and now that every last tree that provided shade to the back of my house has been felled either by Katrina or a chainsaw, it gets full afternoon sun and causes my house to bake like an oven every single afternoon. I'm not sure how I feel about the shades, and I broke one of my dad's drill bits by trying to drill a hole in the window frame with the drill set in the wrong direction, but B. saved the day and now they're hanging sturdily and darkly. This does not solve the problem of the curtains I have hanging over my sliding glass door which, despite being think and sturdy and nice khaki Pottery Barn curtains, do zilch to block out the slammin' rays of the sun. But it's a start.

Then I went to class, where I had to walk out angrily and lie on a bench in the quad in the sun for a few minutes and talk to S. on the phone because I was so annoyed that people were going over the set 7-minute time limit for our presentations, like way over, like doubling that time and beyond, and it meant we would likely have to meet the following weekend. And I did not understand why this professor whom I like very much was not just shutting them the heck down. What is wrong with these people? I do not know. But because the last remaining people (myself included) speed-talked through ours, not bothering to fire up our powerpoints, we got done in time. So much for all that time spent on the powerpoint for nothing. I really need to relate, relax, and release over this and unclench. And I have. There. Done! Overall, I loved the class because I got to read and talk about YA literature which is one of my favorite things in life to do.

That evening, we ... I don't know why I am drawing such ferocious blanks on the whole weekend. What in God's name did we do? Oh yeah. We went to a crawfish boil with some of his school friends.

Then we went to a party with some of my school friends. It was great to see some people again I haven't seen all semester and lovely of my classmate to host it. Hi, classmate, if you're reading. I want that tomatilla salsa recipe.

We got up on Sunday morning and prepared to head out to Jazz Fest for our fourth year in a row, which is kind of mindboggling. I enjoyed snapping some photos on our walk through the neighborhood on our way in.

The thing about Jazz Fest is that it's really awesome but it's usually really hot. It's dirty, a lot of the people are annoying, and for every annoying person, there are dirty feet in flip flops. And yesterday all of those thousands and thousands of dirty feet surrounding me at every turn got to me. That and the heat. Other than that, I was glad to be there. The Raconteurs were great, even though I know none of their music. But Jack White is a real rock star and it was cool to be in his presence. Then we saw the Neville Brothers play together in New Orleans for the first time since Katrina, which was awesome. The announcer who introduced them talked about how the people of New Orleans are a family and how this was a big family reunion, and the people around us screamed and held their Miller Lite cans proudly up in the air in salute. Then we took our dirty, sweaty selves out of there. Before the Fest, we ate a very yummy lunch of salads and spicy tomato paste on pita triangles at Fellini's, where we hadn't been in ages, and that was lovely. B. and I sure have had some good meals together.

Speaking of meals, I stopped on the way home from work today to pick up some Thai food over which to enjoy last week's Battlestar Galactica. Unfortunately, the bag broke just as I exited the car in my driveway, and my food splattered on the concrete. Needless to say that is not where I wanted my food to end up. But I guess there's no sense crying over spilled cashew chicken. B. shared his red curry with me instead, and we just finished the episode. All I have to say is that this show just keeps getting weirder and weirder, and I love it.

Life is tiring sometimes, but I'm glad to be alive.

Fun Home

Boy howdy, but I've read some good books lately. First there was The Story of Forgetting, which I've already mentioned. And I just finished Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel. Which I have to sincerely thank Leenie for recommending in a comments thread. It was -- wow. I don't even know where to start. It might be the best memoir I've ever read.

The way that Bechdel writes (and draws) the story of her childhood and the story of her family knocked my socks off. I felt my heart tightening the entire time with a sense of identification, not because my family or my life are anything like hers in any specific sense, but because she's that great kind of a writer that makes you feel that connection -- that intangible something that makes human beings feel connected to each other no matter how different they are. It gave me that feeling of I Am Nothing Like You, But I Am Just Like You, and How Did You Know How I Feel? And in addition to that nagging, longing feeling of identification and yes, yes, I understand this, the drawing and the words and how it all tied together between past and present and James Joyce and Colette and and Oscar Wilde -- it was just so damn masterful, heartbreaking, funny, and beautiful. See? Kind of hard to explain. But I loved it, and when I tried to start telling B. over sundried tomato pizza and pints of Blue Moon tonight how much I loved it, my eyes got teary and I couldn't find the words. Thank you again, Leenie.

The only other thing I have to say is that my Riggins shirt came in and I was a little excited about it.

Of late

Of late:

1.) It was five years ago or so when I first became obsessed with the song "Better Things," and I thought I'd since found every cover out there. But I just discovered a new one! It's by the Bouncing Souls. And it is awesome.

2.) I was watching the behind the scenes features of Enchanted, and I learned that some of the older folks dancing in the "That's How You Know" number are old-school Disney movie dancers. They did an interview with one of the guys, and it turns out he was one of the chimney sweepers in Mary Poppins. Then they showed him as the chimney sweeper. And it warmed my heart more than I can even say.

3.) I just finished The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block, and it was really good. Here's what it made me think about: memory in general and memories specifically, mothers and children, fathers and children, love and loss, life and death. What I want to look back on my life and remember when it's time for me to die. Heavy stuff, but good stuff. Things that are important to think about. On top of that, it's just a really good story. Impressive & highly recommended.

4.) Stefan Merrill Block is the roommate and best friend of my friend Annegrrl, whom I first met in the summer of 2000 and like to romp around lovingly with when visiting New York. And EXCUSE ME, but they are in today's New York MF-ing Times. I started screaming and jumping around the living room and called her immediately, which might not have been a sane reaction, but I couldn't help it. She seems to be handling this much more calmly than I am. She is too cool for school. Love that girl.

5.) B. and I watched Lars and the Real Girl last night, which I've been waiting and waiting to see. Basically, it confirmed for me that there is nothing Ryan Gosling cannot do. (Read a great review here that really captures the feeling of the film.) Somehow this movie about a real doll ended up a sweet-spirited fable about what it means to be a nice person and help to heal the inner wounds of our fellow human beings, no matter how bizarrely manifested those wounds may be. I'm not sure how this film pulled that off, but it did. I thought it was brilliantly done, and it made me laugh and broke my heart a little bit.

6.) It's a beautiful day. The windows are open. The cats are sitting in the windowsills. I wish I were at Earth Day, but I'm writing a paper. But that's okay. My brother and I are going to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall later, and I can't wait.

One year

One year ago today, my godchild was born. I met her a few minutes after that:

And what a year it has been! It is fun to be a godmother.

Here are some things I will remember about her first year: her baptism, carrying her in her sling through Whole Foods when she was still tiny, the day we went to the fair and sat in the grass, pushing her in her stroller on a walk around the block, seeing her clap, seeing her wave, watching her try to crawl, holding her hands as she took steps, and pushing her in her swing.

If you look to the sky

There's a man all alone
Telling me his friends are gone
That they've died and flown away
So I told him he was wrong
That your friends are never gone
If you look to the sky and pray

--"Cannonball"

Giant beds of flowers are being planted all over town. Signs of spring are everywhere and mean everything.

I love Brandi Carlile so much that is starting to become ridiculous. I just had to turn off the hairdryer because I was listening to "Cannonball" really loud and I had to take a moment to cry. Brandi Carlile's music makes me fill up with feeling until it overflows while I am trying to dry my goddamn hair.

Pizza and wine with a school pal tonight. New pals, old pals. Pals are important.

Marley is watching a mosquito bounce on the ceiling with crazily good eyesight.

Not sure what else to say. Trying to drown out worries about work and homework and the flies that seem to be swarming from our drains and the fact that my front yard and sidewalk have been destroyed by a sewer line repair, and sure, it's only grass, but I was quite fond of that grass, and pull in towards me only what is important and what matters. I'm frozen in my bed till the day comes around, how I'm lost, how I'm found. I miss my sister. I miss my friend in Hawaii! I am depressed about knowing that as of next week, barring some emergency, I will not be able to take a single day, hour, or minute off of work until July and then July is going to turn around and be crazy at work in a whole different way so Lord knows when vacation can occur??? I am emotional. My sweatshirt that I've had since senior year of high school and is in remarkably great shape smells like marinara sauce, like my clothes used to smell when I would come home from the restaurant I where I worked in college. It's very weird how many memories can be dredged up by the smell of marinara sauce mixed with clothes. WEIRD. I'm feeling groggy and wondering how my friend is functioning having not gotten a full night's sleep in basically a year. I just don't know how she does it and I think she must be fueled by the blue eyes and smile of her nocturnal baby and the hilariousness of her four-year-old. I wonder how people function in general. Truly? How does the world keep spinning? Jim Sturgess is in a new movie with an American accent, and the trailer startled me because I expected him to sound like Jude and start singing in the aisles of a bowling alley.

I think I'm going to bed to read Dreams from My Father. Clearly I'm in no shape for coherence.

33

I had a nice 33rd birthday. It started with a nice card from B. and some calls from people singing to me. We had cake and ice cream at work, and B. and I went out for Thai food and he gave me some lovely gifts. Then we watched Lost, during which I had to start crying near the end of the episode.

The next night, I gathered with friends and family in the private room of a Thai restaurant for a karaoke birthday party I decided to throw for myself. I am not really sure what came over me or possessed me to do this. I am more and more introverted the older I get, and I don't gather with large groups of friends very often anymore. But I decided to say "what the hell" and go for it. My parents came, as did my brother. Frankly, any party where most or all of my family can't come is not a party of mine I want to have. And lots of friends, some of whom I hadn't seen in a while. I had no idea if anyone would get up and sing, but 99% did. I kicked things off with "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" by The Darkness. My mom's jaw hit the floor because normally I'm quite stage fright-y about such things. My dad sang "By the Time I Get to Phoenix." B. sang "Summer Wind." M. sang "Behind These Hazel Eyes" and some Hall & Oates song. My brother sang some Air Supply song. I mean, the songs just ran the gamut, and people seemed to have a lot of fun singing them. There was lots of merriment all around, and I shocked myself by actually relaxing and enjoying the whole thing after a few hand-wringing moments of needless anxiety. My brother even figured out some way to set up his iPod on some speakers and play a recording of my sister playing and singing a personalized, re-written version of Ingrid Michaelson's "The Way I Am," which warmed my heart to no damn end.

The next night, B. and I sat down with Italian take-out and watched Gone Baby Gone, which I enjoyed very much. It was great to see Michelle Monaghan again, whom I loved so much in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.

Yesterday, I did homework and spent a little time at the park with M. and her girls. My godchild is going to walk any day now, I can feel it. She pulled lots of sand determinedly and ferociously into her diaper. And the four-year-old sang "Tomorrow" at the top of her lungs while swinging, which is always a good way to have one's spirit lifted, and we all drank Icees for the second day in a row.

B.'s mom sent me a basket of four beautiful plants for my birthday. I bought some new pots and some potting soil and potted them yesterday. They are really brightening up the house. It had been so long since I put my hands in dirt, and it felt really good. I hope I keep them alive.

I have high hopes for 33.

Update

The first thing I would like to say is that I have finished Rob's book. My friend Rob wrote a really, really good book. In case you've been holding out because you think you've already read his blog and it's just his blog on paper between two covers, you could not be more wrong. I couldn't put it down. Obviously I've been following Schuyler's story since she was in utero in Rob's blog, but the story in the book goes far deeper than that. It's beautiful, and it's just a fine achievement.

All I have to say about the Oscars is that I am sad that Hal Holbrook lost and so thrilled that Once won best song that I basically haven't stopped crying yet.

Their performance:



Their speeches.

(For more on the Oscars, go read Kymm's great-as-ever recap.)

I took charge of two giant and dead bushes, a lantana and a plumbago, in my front yard because the garden experts at the farmer's market told me to. "Just cut them all the way back to the ground!" they said, waving their hands dismissively in the face of my skepticism. "They'll grow back!" So that's what I did. And I scratched my arms up and there's now a giant pile of dead sticks on my curb.

I'd really been missing my friend Grace's semi-regular updates -- luckily she recently posted a link to where she's been writing lately. As usual, I am in love with every word she utters.

This weekend, B. and I went to Sunday brunch in New Orleans, where we hadn't been together since last fall, which is weird and wrong. It was fabulous, and it was great to meet his old friend who was in town for a wedding. We treated ourselves to mimosas and sazeracs and creole eggs benedict and seafood gumbo and really soft bread, and between the food, the drinks, the sunshine, and the jazz trio playing "A Kiss to Build a Dream On," it almost felt for a moment like neither of us is in school or working too many hours or doing anything else but relaxing like we used to spend every weekend blissfully doing.

Meanwhile, I turn 33 in two days, but that's too weird to contemplate this early in the morning.

Update

I worked 70 hours last week, something I hope not to repeat any time soon, though I might. That's nowhere near the number of hours some of my rockstar warrior colleagues worked, so I won't complain.

Here are some things that have made me smile recently:

Standing around the island in my friend's kitchen with her, her husband, her mom, her sister, and her four-year-old daughter as we adults started randomly singing "Dumb Dog" from Annie (her husband making the tinkly doo-doo-doo-doo background notes quite impressively) and the little girl just sat there looking at us like we were all nuts. I started laughing as we wrapped it up, and she said, "IT'S NOT FUNNY!" not unlike this kid, which just made me laugh harder. Then she said to me, "Why do you sing so weird?" and I just had to shrug.

Watching The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, which I found entirely hilarious and strangely riveting.

Going out for a nice dinner with B.

Seeing my mom's azaleas in bloom.

Hearing about how my dad cannot tolerate the small cups of coffee in Rome so, on a recent visit, brought several large to-go coffee cups from his favorite coffee shop here at home and took one with him every time he ordered coffee. He ordered a café Americano, an espresso, and a cappuccino and poured them all together into his large Styrofoam cup. At first he got weird looks from the locals, but then, he said, they began to envy his giant cup of coffee deliciousness as he strolled out with his cup. When they sat in the audience before the Pope, he aimed his camera at the man but not before placing his coffee cup on the railing. Coffee cup in the foreground, Pope in the background.

Hearing the theme music begin in the trailer for the new Indiana Jones movie. My sister says she does not remember the movies well; I do, especially the second and third - I think I spent a lot of time watching them at a friend's house. I am super pumped about this one.

Spending yesterday in its entirety with my sister on a warm and sunny Sunday. We went to see Definitely, Maybe, which was very sweet and cute, ate soup and salads outside on a nearby restaurant's patio, got coffee, walked to an estate sale, went to the bookstore and posed dorkily with Rob's book, drove around listening to showtunes, had heart-to-heart conversations, and went to the pottery painting place. It was very nice. Then we went to my parents' house for a dinner of shrimp & corn soup. Glorious!

Misc. stuff

Crazy! That's how life's been lately.

Let me rewind a little bit to earlier this week. On our day off, B. and I decided to go see There Will Be Blood. (Possible spoilers in this paragraph.) I have to say that I rolled right along with it for most of the movie. I found the music highly irritating, but I thought it was a pretty darn good movie. The only other Daniel Day Lewis movies I've ever seen are The Crucible and The Boxer, but they were both so long ago that I have no real memory of them, and so I am not a part of the universal human family who worships at his altar even though I really enjoy his startlingly serious and heartfelt acceptance speeches and obviously think he is a beautiful physical specimen. But I liked him in this part, mostly, and I thought the oil drilling stuff and the small town stuff was really neat, and the kid was adorable, so fine. But by the time it flashed forward, it lost me, and I just wanted everyone to die (except for H.W.) and put themselves and me out of our misery. I also thoroughly misunderstood the preacher character. I thought that Paul and Eli were his split personalities and had no clue they were actually two people. We walked out of the movie theater, and I was like, "Huh?" And B. was like, "Clearly it was an allegory about the defeat of religion by commerce in America." Ooookay. I'm sure he's right, but I really did not need to see that bowling alley scene to teach me that lesson. I am becoming annoyed all over again just thinking of the goddamn straw and milkshake business.

Thankfully, I watched The Jane Austen Book Club a few days later, and it was so sweet and adorable and lovely and I really liked it. I liked every single person in it, and Hugh Dancy is clearly destined to become a Major Movie Star.

Something that makes me happy: The Weepies have a new album coming out on April 22. It is called Hideaway. I cannot wait.

My shopping at the produce market has altered the way I'm trying to eat lately. I'm not trying to diet, but I'm trying to eat so many healthy, natural foods that I don't want to fill up on crap all the time. I still have the occasional cookie at work, but I'm really enjoying the healthier foods right now. I'm also over meat for the time being. I've never been a major meat lover, but I've been eating some tofu and soy crumbles lately and trying to find protein substitutes for meat. I continue to be obsessed with roasting vegetables. This is very dull so I will stop.

Cute.

Based on hearing 2 of their songs, I think I have a new favorite band! The Avett Brothers. "Die, Die, Die" is a song that gets better as it goes along and becomes pretty great by the end. I am intrigued and want to hear more.

One of the better things I've done lately was spend a lunch break pulling over, parking my car, and standing under Japanese magnolia trees and taking pictures of them on a sunny afternoon. They are pretty and pink and smell like heaven.

Weekend update

What is better than a sunny Sunday afternoon? Not much.

It's been a nice weekend. On Friday afternoon after work, B. and I met downtown for sushi at a place we don't go very often. There are always lots of women in Carrie Bradshaw clothes, the music is bumping and loud, and the servers rush you out of there like their hair is on fire. But we were basically the first people there, so we took our time a little bit and enjoyed the terrace view, our wine, our scotch, our shrimp and eggplant miso, our seaweed salad, and our sushi rolls. We got frozen yogurt on the way home and watched Friday Night Lights, which I still love no matter how off the rails it might be going this season.

Yesterday morning, we got up pretty early. I went to the gym and did day two of week two of Couch to 5K and headed to lunch with my girlfriend. We shopped around a little after and exchanged late Christmas gifts. It was nice to see her. Then I went to a gathering of school friends, whom I was glad to see after the holiday break.

Dinner last night was uneventful leftovers, but the entertainment was eventful. It was Stardust, which I knew nothing about other than that Pajiba named it one of the best movies of 2007 we probably didn't see and that my little brother thought it was good. And it was. It was so good! It was just delightful and fun and very pretty to look at. It also did what I previously thought was impossible and that is make me like Claire Danes again. It was a movie miracle! She won me over in her first five minutes. Everyone in the movie was great. Just when I thought the cast could not be improved upon, up showed Ricky Gervais. Just kill me now.

The one thing in the movie that drove me a little nuts was the familiarity of some of the score. I was like, I have heard this before and it is driving me bananas! You can hear the little snippet that made me bonkers here. And I could not figure it out. And finally B. threw out, "Battlestar Galactica?" Whose title sort of sounds like Back to the Future. And I realized, eureka! That was it. (The first 25 seconds or so of that clip.) Anyway, other than that, the movie did not drive me crazy at all except for maybe with happiness.

This morning I went grocery shopping and did day three of week two outside, which was downright blissful because the weather continues to amaze. Then I went to paint some pottery with my favorite four-year-old, who announced as she madly splashed her ceramic plate with color, "I CAN'T STOP PAINTING." This is my last non-school weekend for a while, so I'm glad it's been so lovely.

Here are my playlists for week two, days two and three:

Piddle, Twiddle And Resolve/Till Then ~ 1776
Blame Canada ~ South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
Pavement Artist (Chim Chim Cher-Ee) ~ Mary Poppins
What Would Brian Boitano Do? ~ South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
We're Not Sorry ~ Urinetown
Broken Heart ~ Motion City Soundtrack
Closer To You ~ Brandi Carlile
All I Want Is You ~ Barry Louis Polisar
The Story ~ Brandi Carlile
Who's Got a Match? ~ Biffy Clyro
Eyes ~ Rogue Wave
Shake It ~ Metro Station
Follow Your Heart ~ Urinetown (mainly for the part at the end when Hunter Foster knocks "laughter and glaaaaadness" out of the park)
School for Monsters/The Money Song ~ Avenue Q

Dear Prudence ~ Across the Universe
Run, Freedom, Run! ~ Hunter Foster (Urinetown)
So Nice So Smart ~ Kimya Dawson
All My Loving ~ Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe)
I've Got the World on a String ~ Michael Buble
Singin' In The Rain ~ Gene Kelly
When Your Mind's Made Up ~ Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová (Once)
The Nicest Kids In Town ~ James Marsden (Hairspray)
Busted Afternoon ~ Old 97's
Kind Of Hope ~ Pilot Speed
Happiness Is a Warm Gun ~ Joe Anderson (Across the Universe)
You Can't Stop The Beat ~ Hairspray
Everything ~ Michael Buble
I Will ~ The Beatles
The Story ~ Brandi Carlile

I've got issues

1989



1990



1991



1992



1993

Day three

It's 6:59 in the morning. I managed to get out of bed, but I have now relocated to the couch and am having trouble forcing myself off of it. 25 degrees is too cold to face. I am pretending I don't have to be at work in an hour.

So, it's the beginning of the third day of the new year. 2008 was rung in quietly but happily. A matinee of Juno with Skittles and popcorn, then an afternoon of crock pot cooking and No Man's Land (excellent, thanks, Kymm) and Superbad (dumb but funny) and a bottle of red wine. I was asleep when the clock struck twelve, but I'm fine with that.

On New Year's Day, we watched yet another movie, The Bourne Ultimatum, and I jotted it down, hoping to actually stick to keeping my movie and book lists for 2008.

Last night in the tub, I finished What Gets Into Us by Moira Crone, which was very good, and then I tackled How Sassy Changed My Life. It really took me back to the days of Sassy. I have very vivid memories of lying around on my friend's bed reading it. I think she was the one who first discovered it; I'm not sure how. But I know we loved it from the start, and it meant so much to us. Reading this book was a nice way of learning that it meant the same thing to lots of other people. I also remember quite clearly getting the issue run by the new staff and being like, "What are you and what have you done to my Sassy?" It was kind of crushing, like the end of an era. This book was also enlightening relative to the boycott of the magazine and how it tied its hands when it came to sexual topics. I had no idea that ever happened. I was just happily reading it in my friend's bedroom and spinning my little REM record that came in one issue. I wonder if I still have that record somewhere? That I still have so many issues is one positive aspect of being a lifelong packrat. I don't see ever parting with them, honestly.

I am vowing to embrace the joys of this new year and focus less on the bummers. I really want to stop waking up in the middle of the night and using that time to fret, fret, fret the dark hours away. I want to be healthy and kind and energetic and creative and loving and have plenty of fun.

I guess I need to face the music and get up off the couch. I'll end this with a few pictures -- flowers by me, dogs by B.

Blessed

Feeling at peace this Christmas Eve evening. Spent a few days in beautiful Maryland with B. and his family. Came home, kissed my godchild, ate chocolate-covered Ritz cracker peanut butter sandwiches, had my friend wish me Merry Christmas in Hawaiian, and spent the evening with my family over turkey and sausage gumbo, my dad reading the Christmas story from the book of Luke, telling stories and laughing. My pets are healthy and seem happy. The heater in my car is broken. It looks like Santa is bringing me a ticket to the national championship. I have the whole week off from work. All seems pretty good.

I read three books, Welcome to Vietnam and Hill 568 by Ellen Emerson White, both good, and Twilight by Stephanie Meyer, which I am torn between liking and hating.

I got to see the beautiful beach, which always makes my soul happy.

B.'s mom knitted me a scarf made out of bamboo thread. It pleased me.

They have a very nice orange cat, who let me squeeze his purry self for a quick cat nap.

I saw amazing paintings by Edward Hopper and an exhibit I loved that showed how people have taken pictures over the decades. I stood in front of the Capitol during an impromptu stop before the airport in the mist like a dork with semi-crazy eyes.

And I think that is enough pictures of me for tonight. Mostly I just want to say that I love my family, I love my boyfriend, and I love my friends. I do not need any presents. Even though there are totally rats in my backyard and I have no idea what to do about them, I am blessed to a disgusting degree, and I never want to forget it.

Monday

My sister brought me some amazing handmade gifts from Bolivia - a dress, a skirt, a purse, and a wall hanging with little pockets. I love them! Before wearing the clothes, however, I will need to invest in some spanx.

We spent a little time driving around on Saturday listening to Mary Chapin Carpenter. My sister said that every song brings her right back to specific time and place in her life. I agreed. One reminds her of being in her friend's car learning to drive a stick shift. One reminds me of sitting at a red light thinking about forgiveness. The entire album we were listening to reminds us of the summer of 2004 because we both had it on our iPods when we were in Europe. There are a few artists like that, I guess, for everyone. Those whose work has followed you for years through the entire human emotional spectrum. Adventure, romance, heartache, healing. I said, "Mary Chapin Carpenter is important." She said, "She really is so, so important." Then we just went ahead and agreed that Mary Chapin Carpenter is one of the most important people who has ever lived.

I've been coming around to the idea of thinking maybe I should start running again. Not following any program or time requirements or mileage requirements. Just doing it a little at a time if only to be able to fit into my winter pants and feel like a worthwhile person again. Is it insane to tie in one's sense of self worth to whether or not one commits herself to exercising? Because I totally do.

What else? Waitress really holds up upon third viewing. Once will be out on DVD before we know it. My little brother, of all people -- OF ALL PEOPLE -- has never seen it or even heard of it. I told him, "I don't mean to go overboard and say it will make your life complete or anything, but it totally will." School remains a mystery. I like the people I've met (most of them), though, and I'll miss having classes with them next semester. I am really enjoying the Across the Universe soundtrack these days and some old, live Ray LaMontagne. I'm excited to see Juno and The Golden Compass. In completing my unplanned but somehow neverending theme of war film and literature this year, I just finished The Things They Carried, which was beautiful. I'd like to close out the year with a really excellent book or two, but I can't decide what to read next.

And now, random pictures from the past few weeks.

Surprise

My front flower bed has become pretty overgrown. What started out as tiny ferns, irises, and witchhazel shrubs are now gargantuan monsters. I noticed this morning when I went out to get the paper a tiny bloom peeking out from behind a mammoth witchhazel and fern. So I grabbed the clippers, cut them back, and was reacquainted with my azalea. It was blooming even though it was totally shielded from the morning sun, which my plants usually like the most. So I'm really glad to see it again. It's a little puny and misshapen from being crushed by its neighbors, but it's still fighting for life. And I like to think of it as a nice omen for the coming winter -- life and brightness and beauty are always there even when it's too dark to see them. Sometimes you just have to dig them out, getting your hands dirty and your slippers wet in the morning grass, to remember they're there.

Boots

Lately I've been missing my faraway friend. She's about 4,000 miles away, give or take.

When she moved away, she left me her boots. These are boots I've always admired and coveted. I went to the shoe store to get some and tried on endless pairs, but none of them ever fit me properly. But she left hers with me. And I wasn't sure they would fit. The first pair of socks I tried on with them made them too snug and I was seriously bummed, but then I tried on a pair of thin running socks with them, and now they are perfect.

I wear them and I feel closer to her, less lonesome for her. But just a little.

Right now I'm baking cookies and watching the new Charlotte's Web. I thought I never would, but I am, and 20 minutes in, it is so sweet and adorable and lovely that I have deemed it acceptable even though it makes me intensely long for the songs of the original. I'm not sure how I feel about Julia Roberts as Charlotte though. She's being a little too cheeky in her first scene. I don't remember the original Charlotte being this cheeky. And I don't remember the other animals shunning Charlotte and calling her ugly? Maybe I blocked that out. I also rented Miss Potter and The United States of Leland.

So far this weekend, I've spent lots of money getting my car fixed (some more), finished up a project at the library, gone to an art show/party where I felt awkward and square to a shocking degree, eaten Thai food, done laundry, and gone to the Farmer's Market for a hazelnut latte and garlic cheese biscuits and raspberry scones. I'm looking forward to having coffee with my friend and her daughters tomorrow. I've decided no longer to freak out about school. And I'm really glad I've got my boots to keep me warm.

More remedies for the blues

Remedy: Listening to Gordon MacRae singing "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" on the way to work.

Not a remedy: Toasted marshmallow hot chocolate from Starbucks. It tastes like someone dumped the powdery dust at the bottom of the Lucky Charms cereal box into a mug of hot chocolate. It is not good.

Remedy: Going out for an impromptu evening of beers and dinner with school friends after class when we all simply could not face the library and opted instead to walk on a beautiful night to dinner and where we visited and where I feel like I saw them all in a completely new way. They are all very neat people.

Not a remedy: Feeling somewhat awful about the state of several assignments.

Remedy: Suddenly deciding after 32.5 years of life that I rather enjoy cooler weather. Not cold, but cool. I slept more solidly last night than I have in months, and it was the coldest night we've had since last winter. No heater ... just nice warm pajamas and an excellent comforter. Coincidence? I think not.

Remedy: I don't know squat about the television industry other than I love television a whole lot and always have. I've been closely following the strike story on Pamie's site, Stee's site, Jenna Fischer's, James Gunn's. Striking reader Tony sent me these links, and I thought I'd pass them along. I just think that regular people should not get screwed over by big business and it's kind of that simple in my mind.

Remedy: George Bush's veto override. I don't even know what he vetoed. I'm just glad Congress handed it to him. SUCK ON THAT, GEORGE BUSH. I only wish they'd pulled it together and done it for the stem cell bill. That still burns me up so ferociously when I think about it that I become physically ill.

Remedy: Watching the dogs investigate their early Christmas present from B., their first-ever proper doghouse.

Light

(This entry talks a little about The Road. I don’t consider what I say to be mega-spoilery – it’s nothing you wouldn’t gather quickly when starting the book or read in reviews, probably – but if you haven’t read it and are super spoiler-averse, you might want to skip it.)

There’s been a lot of crying these days. It seems to come and go. I cried at the end of The Road and The Lives of Others. I’ve cried during every episode we’ve watched so far of Friday Night Lights on DVD. I cried during multiple viewings of Paul Potts (thanks, Sally, for that wonderful link). I cried last night before going to sleep while trying to explain to B. how I want to try to spread light in the world.

I know that sounds stupid. But I’ve been thinking about The Road. Mostly about how the man and the boy could not ever stop to help anyone else. They couldn’t share food they needed to live. They might be attacked by the person asking for help. They had to be selfish to stay alive. Helping others meant hurting and possibly killing themselves.

I pass people asking for money at a certain stoplight I pass twice a day. They hold tattered cardboard signs that say they’re hungry and that they need money for food. Their clothes are torn and filthy. They are thin, and their skin shows the sign of exposure and sun. And they stand right outside my car window holding the signs while I sit at the red light and I just look away. And I don’t know why I do that. In the past, like years ago, I would sometimes drive straight to McDonald’s and buy a supersized meal deal and bring it to the person. I thought somehow that would help them more than a dollar. But sooner or later I just stopped giving anything at all. Maybe because seeing them day after day after day has desensitized me altogether. I don’t know what the right thing to do is. But yesterday something dawned on me and that is that it certainly does not hurt me to give one of these men or women a dollar. It does not mean I will go without. It would not endanger my own life like it would have the man’s or the boy’s in The Road. And maybe it would really help that person. I wonder if it is really up to me to decide what they need the money for. Do they want it to buy drugs or alcohol or cigarettes? Do they want it to buy lunch? An Icee? Shoes? How the hell am I to know, and who am I to judge them?

I want to be a more giving person.

Since January, I have held in my heart the story of a woman who was killed pre-dawn just outside her own home. I keep returning to the website set up in her honor – to see if her killer has been caught, to look at pictures of her and her husband and their baby and their pot-bellied pig. I never met them or saw them in real life, and I hope it is not intrusive that I have gone to the site and peeked in on the remembrances of her and tributes to her. I am so moved by the outpouring of love that has been shown on that website for her and her family. And the recurring theme, it seems, is that everyone saw her as a burst of light in the world. And I hope it does not seem like I am trivializing a stranger’s life or trying to boil her life down into some kind of simplistic nutshell. But what I take from reading about her and learning about her in whatever limited way something like a website can portray is that she was the sort of person I would like to be. Someone who welcomes people who need welcoming, feeds people who need to be fed, rebuilds communities that needs to be rebuilt, creates what needs to be created, loves life with all of her being.

The other day after work it was thundering and cloudy and suddenly not swelteringly hot, so I plopped down on my back patio after getting home from work and just felt the thunder roll in and called for my dog. Unbeknownst to me, B. was standing in the open doorway behind me taking photos. I have the luxury of sitting in my backyard calling for my dog with my nice boyfriend waiting inside after coming home from my job that pays me enough money to live comfortably. I feel like I should appreciate that more and be more of a force for good and light in the world. I don’t know how. But I know I want to try. In small ways or big ways, doesn’t it just matter that we try?

Not Laboring on Labor Day

Right now I'm sitting at the coffee shop with Herpreet. She's working on her laptop, and I'm working on mine. I'm not sure what she's listening to. I'm listening to Grease 2. It's not a bad way to spend part of a Labor Day afternoon.

My boyfriend is a deep thinker and has been having especially deep thoughts lately in the wake of his plunge into academia. Last week, I was only sort of awake when he started to intelligently explain Barack Obama's appearance on The Daily Show, and I actually interrupted him to say, "Yeah, that's sort of like Danny Tidwell on So You Think You Can Dance." Showing how nice he is, he nodded as if that were a totally apt and legit comparison.

I've found myself more than once recently talking about Wil Wheaton. "Well, Wil Wheaton says..." and he finally asked me, "Who is Wil Wheaton?" And I walked into my bedroom and walked out with the framed showcard I bought off of eBay with a framed picture. It's a piece of one of those big cardboard displays in the movie theater, the image of John Cusack and Wil Wheaton sitting on a bed in one of the flashbacks in Stand By Me. I pointed to him, "That's Wil Wheaton. Now he has a blog." And I really do enjoy it. It's weird sometimes to realize that the little boy who played Gordie LaChance, one of the characters that pretty much consumed my entire psyche throughout the entirety of sixth grade and who grew up to be a writer, is now a grown man and a writer. But he's a good writer and seems like a genuinely nice person, and there's something that feels right to me, in a corny way, about that.

Speaking of blogs, there have been two blogs I've been keeping up with this year that have moved me down to the depths of my being. This one chronicles a family's battle with lymphoma. Even though I don't know these people at all, I followed it so closely, hoping and praying for a good outcome and healing beyond the heartbreak they suffered. To read about them coming back into the light has been nothing short of inspiring. The writing on this site is some of the best I've ever encountered on the web. This one also has incredibly beautiful writing and tells the story of the birth of two babies and the survival of only one. It is hard to know how to describe these blogs because they involve struggles and heartbreaks of a degree I've never experienced and can't even imagine and I don't want to come off like a dork talking about how beautiful they are and how much they've moved me. I just am grateful to have been able to read them, really, and to have witnessed from a million miles away the beauty and the strength they have been able to express. I don't even know.

I watched The Pianist recently for the first time. It certainly was harrowing. Worth watching for this scene alone. {Warning: Huge spoiler in that link.}

Meanwhile, I have finally started The Road. I haven't gotten far, but I know I want to keep going. I just finished Daniel Isn't Talking by Marti Leimbach, which I thought was pretty excellent.

This week I've been spending a lot of time with my sister, which has been great. She came to exercise class with me and marveled at my ability to roll around in other people's sweat. She was proud of me. "It's definitely good germophobic therapy," I said. Class continues to be hard but fun. Sometimes I'm so tired during the cooldown that I almost fall over during the stretches. The other night a panting man saw me about to keel over and then right myself and he nodded in agreement. "Talk about spent," he said. I nodded back. Spent indeed. My sister and I went to Piccadilly for lunch, site of many childhood family meals. I ordered a side of orange macaroni and cheese and a side of orange baby carrots for my lunch and decided to drink some orange Fanta with my meal. The three went well together. It is impossible to quantify how much Piccadilly macaroni and cheese we consumed as kids. Back when they had the really delicious red punch, not the Hi-C fruit punch. Good times.

We had a party with all of her lifelong friends the other night before sending her off to South America, and we ate jambalaya and shrimp and brownies and it felt good to be in my parents' house with all of those old friends and their babies. So many babies! Wow.

Yesterday my boyfriend and I went to New Orleans together for the first time since he's moved here. We ate at our favorite brunch place -- he got debris and poached eggs and I got a bacon, arugula, tomato, and egg sandwich on focaccia. Later, we stopped for gelato (strawberry and chocolate hazelnut). Because it's so long, we've been watching The Lives of Others in installments. I thought the first 15 minutes or so were sort of boring, but now I'm hooked.

What else? I'm liking my classes so far. The material is alternatingly mindnumblingly boring and very interesting. I guess all of grad school might like that, no matter what you're studying.

Jessamyn and Grace have been schooling me a little bit on the ways of the Canon Digital Rebel. I borrowed B.'s and tried to do a little shooting with it. My main goal was to be able to shoot at my sister's party indoors without using the pop-up flash that comes with the camera. It was not a completely successful mission, but I learned a bit about apertures, shutter speed, and ISO and just knowing a little tiny bit makes me want to know a lot more. Mostly I just want to be as good a photographer as those two ladies even though that will likely not happen in this lifetime. Here are a few shots that I like even though they're nothing sensationally arty.

Closed hearts, open hearts

I took both pups to the vet the other morning at the same time -- what a fiasco. Daisy's microchip injection bled all over the place, Zuko's poop juice got all over the vet's outfit during gland expression, and Daisy peed all over the room. It took me, the vet, the vet's wife, two vet techs, and a muzzle to wrestle Zuko into submission during the gland procedure, and he was still thrashing like a maniac. It was awesome. $300 later, they are both vaccinated and chipped and checked and all good, though Daisy needs to have her teeth cleaned and has once again not taken well to her vaccinations at all. She's hobbling around, can barely use one of her back legs, and did not even bat an eye when both cats entered the room and perched not too far from her. Normally she would be in full chase mode. I feel really awful for her, but I keep telling myself this happens every year and not to freak. Next year I might reconsider loading them up with all of these shots. What is the point, really? Zuko cried all night after the appointment and would only stop if I went to lay on the couch. And Daisy was just pitiful yesterday. I can't really bear it.

Last night, I made this recipe, and it turned out pretty well. I used light instead of fat free sour cream because life is too short, and I served it over gemelli noodles because it turned out that my bag of brown rice was full of little dead bugs. Also, it was the first time in my life I'd ever bought sausage that wasn't made by Boca or Morningstar, so it felt like a turning point. (It was Healthy Choice smoked sausage.)

Meanwhile, the neighbors' dogs broke through my fence again, leaving the neighbors' "barricade" as a pile of fallen cinderblocks (safe!), so I don't know what in the hell to do. B. thinks I should call their landlord, which I am leaning towards doing because as soon as Daisy feels better she is going to bust through that gap like Seabiscuit.

Meanwhile, I got my computer back from Apple for the 2nd time. Hopefully the disc drive is now fixed. What is not fixed, however, is that certain things on the internet remain invisible. Such as: where a YouTube video is supposed to be, there's no video. It's just comments. Or where Myspace songs are supposed to be on a band's Myspace page? Not there. Or any embedded video on websites? Not there. No "x" inside a square, no empty space, nothing. Just .. not there. Even trying to change my buddy icon in Flickr, where you drag the square on the photo, you know what I'm talking about? That doesn't work either. I've googled my face off and can't find anything about this, talked to several different Apple people about it, I wrote in detail about it both times in my little notes to Apple when sending it in for repair, and nada. This cannot be that hard to fix? Right? Frustration. (Update: Apparently, all evidence to the contrary having spoken to at least 3 other technicians about this, it is not. All I had to do was check a box that says "enable plug-ins." Thank you, Aaron at Apple, who just helped me through this over the phone!) (My sister just had an amazingly positive experience with Apple that almost restores my faith in corporate America. I'm not kidding.)

Lately I've been feeling very tired and crappy. Partly because my dog worries and ailments are keeping me up nights. Mostly I think I blame the heat. It is so oppressively hot. Nobody can deal with it. We all try to have conversations about how hot it is. In the elevator, on the phone. But there aren't that many original and newfangled ways to say how hot it is. So people just say over and over, "I can't believe how hot it is. It's -- unbelievable." And the other person says in defeated misery, "I know." I have to walk across the street to sign something in another office, and I told the guy I'll have to do it first thing in the morning before the sidewalk starts boiling. He agreed, insisting it's far too hot to make that walk. It's, like, literally across the street. It is a 2-minute walk. That is how hot it is. I can't really form coherent thoughts. I think things like, my house is messy. Weeds is funny. I wish I were as sexy as Mary Louise Parker. How have I gained 10 pounds since last summer? My dog is crippled. I hate my neighbors. Golden Grahams are the best food on earth. Sandy and Dennys are both likeable and annoying at the same time in Many Waters. I wish I could say "take me someplace cool" like they said "take us someplace warm." I can't concentrate long enough to read an actual book. So I lie on the couch and do things like watch The Hills. I'd never seen this show or any of its related shows before this week, and all I can really say is that I don't understand. Is it scripted? Or not? The heck? It's confusing, and it frightens me that there are (a) people like that in the world and (b) young kids who actually watch that show and think that's what your twenties are like. Gross. I'm not sure tonight is a good night to finally watch The Pianist. I'll probably just watch The Nine although if we don't find out by the end of this show what actually happened I am going to be some pissed. And -- great. it looks like they're no longer going to show the final episodes over the summer. Thanks a lot, ABC.

I had a really nice talk with Jessamyn today. We agreed to do something nice for ourselves tonight, be kind to those we love, and start tomorrow with open hearts.

Because I have not been feeling supremely serene lately due to the heat, the dogs, not having my computer, the non-sleep, and so forth, here is a picture to remind myself that I am capable of serenity and that surely I will experience it again soon.

Needles & Nicola

I’m getting a little sick of the needles, to tell you the truth. One arm got stuck with a tetanus shot and one with a meningitis vaccine, and OW. They both hurt like they were hit with a billy club. I can barely lift either of them. I think it’s getting a little better, but I am a side sleeper, and I haven’t been able to sleep on my side for the past two nights, and that makes me unhappy indeed. And this morning I got a TB skin test, which wasn’t too bad but also not what I’d call a delight.

I reread I Capture the Castle recently, and it was as wonderful as ever. I lifted my boycott of the movie and actually bought it since neither Netflix nor my local video store carries it. I was really skeptical of Romola Garai as Cassandra after realizing she was the lead in Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights, but then I found out that she played the friend in Vanity Fair and I remembered liking that performance, so I gave it a go. I was really interested in seeing Bill Nighy as Mortmain, and that was what cinched the deal when it came to my viewing of the movie. Here are some random thoughts: Marc Blucas has no charisma. He never has, and I doubt he ever will. I could not stand him on Buffy, and he was certainly not as dashing and semi-devilish as I always pictured Neil to be. But he was okay. Not terrible. Handsome, but blandly. Not exactly a nuanced performance. As for Henry Thomas as Simon – in the book it’s pointed out that since Neil is from California and Simon is from the East Coast, they speak differently – and Henry Thomas does definitely sort of speak in a very refined and proper way. It’s kind of annoying, I have to say. I really, REALLY loved him in Legends of the Fall (it’s true) and God knows he was a genius in ET – seriously (watch his ET audition here – it’s sort of devastating) – but he did not do a whole lot for me as Simon. I remember being confused in the book as to why Rose and Cassandra were so horrified by his beard – I always thought, what is the big deal about having a beard? But in the movie, it is clear why they were horrified. As I told mo pie already, it is a heinous, hideous goatee. Maybe it turns out that I just kind of hate the character of Simon and think he is unworthy of either Cassandra or Rose. Topaz was not like I pictured her, but the actress was good so I got over it. Rose Byrne was actually excellent as Rose and cried and emoted very well, but I was pretty distracted by her wig. Cassandra was very well played by Garai. Bill Nighy as Mortmain – well. I’m just not sure. I guess I liked him. I think Stephen is supposed to be blond. The book says that he sometimes has a daft look about him, so I pictured him sort of as a Chris Klein type. He’s got brown hair in the movie, and the actor playing him does a nice job.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about the movie. So I sat down to watch the commentary, and that made me like it more. It made it clear that the film was very lovingly adapted, cast, and made by people who were definitely aware of the magic of the book and how deeply it is loved. So – I am going to give it a thumbs up. No movie based on this book could ever truly do it justice, but this one is a respectable effort. The castle and the scenery alone make it worth watching, I think.

Meanwhile, The Best of Youth is a good six-hour Italian movie if ever there was one, but my boyfriend’s hard drive died while we were watching it on an airplane so part of me will never forgive Matteo and Nicola for that. The computer place said his data=irretrievable so they replaced the hard drive. We still might try Drivesavers or something per Amanda Page’s suggestion because I refuse to give up hope yet. Meanwhile, he can’t get his iPod to sync up or whatever you call it now that the new hard drive is in. His iBook is from 2005 (or something) and the newer versions of iTunes are screwing it up. Like, his relatively new shuffle needs one of the newer versions of iTunes, but only older versions are simpatico with his operating system? I feel like I am speaking a foreign language so I might not be using the right words. I am not exactly sure what the problem is. Has anyone ever dealt with this before?

Meanwhile, my new favorite bookcase:

Road Trip

Sometimes you decide that you are leaving the next day for a road trip. That happened to us on Thursday when my boyfriend decided we should go to Oxford and Memphis for the weekend as one last hurrah before life changes come about soon. So we did! And fun was had.

We left on Friday morning for Oxford, where we stayed at the too charming to be believed Puddin’ Place. I loved everything about it – the room, the bathroom, the porch – and renamed it Puddin’ Palace in my mind. It was an easily walkable distance from the square and was just lovely.

We had drinks on the balcony of City Grocery that afternoon and strolled around the square, stopping at Square Books, where I bought The Road, and Square Books, Jr., which Melissa would love and where I bought I Am the Messenger by Marcus Zusak, author of my beloved The Book Thief, after having a rousing conversation with the staff about His Dark Materials and all of the books they think I should read -- Octavian Nothing, House of the Scorpion, and Snowflower and the Secret Fan. (If anyone has read I Am the Messenger, can you please e-mail me? I feel like I really need to discuss it with someone as soon as possible.)

That night, we went back to City Grocery for dinner, which was very good except for the rabbit special. I am not really sure what possessed me to order rabbit for the first time in my life other than it was served with saffron risotto, which sounded really good to me at the time. I don’t know if rabbit is supposed to basically be made of fat and be pink and raw, but this rabbit sure was and I don’t believe I’ll ever be eating rabbit again. We shared an excellent salad and soup, though, so all was not horrifying at City Grocery.

The next morning, we had a great breakfast at Puddin’ Place – orange muffins, fruit/yogurt/granola parfait, and a great frittata. Overall, big thumbs up. We walked back to Square Books for a coffee and one last bask in its comfortable and wonderful atmosphere. Then we drove to Rowan Oak, the home of William Faulkner. Which was quiet, peaceful, pretty, in the middle of the woods, and totally cool.

We said what the hell on our way into Memphis and decided to stop at Graceland before going to our hotel. Graceland was the opposite of Rowan Oak. It was just … Graceland. If you’ve been there, you know what I’m talking about. We bought our tickets and milled around for an hour and a half before we could line up for our shuttle across the street. Then we waited in line for a while. Then we went on the tour. Which was all very neat-o but also kind of gross and sweaty. The horses were pretty. My favorite thing was a petition framed on the wall of signature after signature of people asking Elvis to play in Brooklyn. Graceland was exhausting. We did eat a garden burger (me) and a peanut butter and banana sandwich (him) in Rockabilly’s, which was random but fun. We agreed that we put more into Graceland than we got out of it and that we will never go back but that we definitely had to go. (For a much more entertaining account of Graceland, go here.)

We then checked into our somewhat gross and quite plain hotel room at the Sleep Inn, but it was the only one downtown for under $100, so there you go. The afternoon is kind of a blur of hotness. What did we do? Where did we eat? I don’t even know. Oh, yeah. We walked down Beale Street to scope out the scene and I got a giant strawberry snowball, which I spilled all over myself.

At around 5:00, we headed to the lobby of the Peabody to watch the ducks process into the elevator, which was quite cute. For dinner, we headed to Rendezvous, where approximately one million people had come also to dine, but the whole operation of the mob was run very smoothly. We only had to wait about thirty minutes for settling down for dinner, where we ate ribs and barbeque chicken nachos and pretty much went into a barbeque fugue state with dazed eyes and sauce on our faces. Damn, that was some good barbeque.

We went up to the roof of the Peabody to check out the sunset and then we cruised around Beale Street before going to Blues Hall to hear Dr. Feelgood Potts and his band play. They were pretty awesome. We also spent a fair amount of time in A. Schwab’s, the oldest business on Beale Street, a store which seemed to have everything and nothing and which I loved very much.

Soon it was time to collapse and get up the next morning for Sun Studio! We decided to walk there and ended up pretty lost and blind in the scorching sunlight, one desolate block after the next. We stood on a corner debating whether to find a cab (his vote) or walk back to the hotel in defeat before getting mugged (my vote) when suddenly a bright blonde woman named Sally in an SUV with a W sticker on the back stopped to offer us a ride. We hopped in with her and her two beautiful daughters and they drove us right over. It was truly one of those angels on earth moments and reminded me that Bush people are people, too. Thank you, Sally of Memphis! All I can really say about Sun Studio is that it beats Graceland by a mile. (Read the Lesters’ account here.) I really loved this tour and felt way more into the spirit of Elvis and the birth of rock and roll than I did at Graceland, and our guide, Shawnie, did a fabulous job. This is the sort of tour that gives you chills. I recommend it.

And now we are home. And as of yesterday, home = a place we live together. Holy shit! He is starting a new path in life, and we’ll be living in the same city for the first time. I’m excited. I’m glad that we got to hang out with the ghosts of William Faulkner, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and so forth before settling into this new existence. I like to think they are singing to us from the great beyond and wishing us luck.

Catching Up

It's daunting to think of updating chronologically so I think I'll go backwards.

Tonight I am sitting on the couch. I just watched Moonstruck and ate some disgusting chicken fried rice from a Knorr envelope. Zuko liked it, though. Today I mowed the grass, did four loads of laundry, unpacked from my trip, reorganized my bathroom cabinet, got gas, went grocery shopping, and finished Harry Potter. And also spent hours on the phone with Apple bemoaning the fact that after sending it in for repairs, something is now broken that wasn't before. (It won't burn any CDs.) The first person I talked to immediately "suggested" that I take it to a retail store so that a "Mac genius" could "isolate the problem" and then I could "call them back" and tell them what the problem is. I "suggested" that I paid for Apple Care and intended to receive technical assistance over the phone. I did this nicely, of course, but deep down I was growing more livid by the second. After going through the usual hoops and steps I have jumped through countless times as they've tried to diagnose problem after problem and reminding them that I just sent it in and had the disc drive REPLACED, they had me do whatever you do with the 2 original install discs and then call them back to report that it still was not working. After much ridiculousness, I finally talked to someone named Dan who gave me his personal extension, told me how to cut through the voice prompts, and said he or some other specialist would be handling it from now on. So I'm sending it back in. And I have never been a customer service person and I understand there are rules they have to follow, but I swear to God that when what's-his-name, before even beginning to address possibilities or troubleshoot, suggested that I drag my ass to Comp USA, I almost cursed Apple forever. Thank God for Dan.

Last night I went to see a local production of Cats with Maryelizabeth. We stopped for cookies and Icees on the way home along with a hamburger and fries. We decided that it was a very good production but that even at its best, Cats is kind of a boring slog of a show. I like some of the songs, but mostly I've decided it's annoying and I don't understand what it is about it that middle America so faithfully embraced for years and years on Broadway. Give me Rodgers and Hammerstein any day of the week, is all I'm saying. One weird thing is that we noted when walking into the theater that we went to theater camp there the summer after ninth grade. So we were reminiscing about it. And one of the girls from theater camp was in the show! Bizarre. She looked great, danced great, sounded great, and was overall in incredible shape as a performer. Nelly Forbush was played by three girls that summer ... I was one, and so was she. I got "Some Enchanted Evening," and she got "Honey Bun." I think it's safe to say that she carried the torch from theater camp, and I totally dropped it. I cannot believe that was 17 years ago.

Speaking of Rodgers and Hammerstein, I've been enjoying the hell out of a four-disc set that my dad dug out while cleaning his study, "Golden Memories of Stage & Screen." On my way to the airport last weekend, I listened to "Edelweiss" and cried and cried. Mostly remembering the moment when the Captain is too overcome with emotion to continue singing at the end and Maria walks out on stage to save the moment and save him. One of my memories of watching that movie on repeat as a child was how my mom always pointed out during that scene how much Maria loved him to go out there and sing the song when he couldn't. The whole box set is pretty damned awesome.

Yesterday, I got back into town and played with my pets and bought Harry Potter and was reunited with my computer, which was a very joyous experience before I realized it was still broken.

On Friday night, B. and I flew home from our week away. We finished disc one of The Best of Youth on the plane ride home and in doing so broke HIS computer, only his seems to be more severely broken as all it will do at this point is blink a question mark at him. Sorrow. To make our connecting flight, we ran and ran and ran through the Miami airport and I almost had a heart attack. The Best of Youth is quite long and good. This trip's airplane breakdown occured while reading this article about Barbaro. It was similar to my fit while reading The Book Thief, only shorter in duration as it was an article rather than a novel. I just could not control the tears from shooting down my face. I discovered after finishing it that it was written by Buzz Bissinger, who wrote Friday Night Lights.

(Photo by B)

We spent a few days with his family, which was very nice as always, after going to Williamsburg, which is a groovy place to visit if you enjoy historical nerdiness, which I do. We went to Jamestown Settlement, the Governor's Palace, Busch Gardens, etc.

(Photo by B)




(Photo by B)

I wish I were not such a germophobic freak in hotel rooms, but I can't seem to shake my paranoia. I am definitely happy to be back in my own bed and bathroom.

The Emmy nominations came out, and I have some thoughts on them, but they'll have to wait. A new week starts tomorrow, and I want to be on top of things and be healthy and happy.

Ice cream cake is important.

First things first: big shout out to reader Jana who has finally solved the mystery of those damn five notes from the Planet Earth theme that have been driving me insane as to where I've heard them before. They are from the theme to Somewhere in Time! If you listen to this, you can hear the five notes from about 3 seconds in to 5 seconds in. Thank you, Jana. You have no idea how this has been torturing me.

On Friday night, we went out for honey wasabi shrimp, pad thai, and the best spring rolls in town. For dessert, we had ice cream cake. This was a very easy and tremendously yummy dessert if you like ice cream sandwiches, oreos, and cool whip, which I do.

The next morning, we went out for breakfast. Later that afternoon, we got take-out from the same place and watched Venus, which was alternately good and kind of disturbing. I liked it, though, mostly. It kind of made me think about my grandfather. He really kind of had a rebirth in his later years when he moved into the retirement home. The men were vastly outnumbered by the women, and a number of the ladies adopted him and crocheted for him and showered him with cards and attention. But mostly he liked the young women. The young women who worked there, the young women at his favorite coffee shop, the young women at the Y, the young women my brother dated. He LOVED them. He took pictures of himself with them and scotch taped them around his apartment. And I really don't think it was a perverted sort of lust he felt for them. I think it was mostly that they were young and alive, and they made him feel young and alive, too.

We took the dogs on a walk around the neighborhood after finishing the movie, which they definitely enjoyed if their near hysteria was any indication. For dinner, we went out for Japanese food. He had a sushi roll with coconut shrimp, avocado, mango, and pineapple sauce, and I had grilled shrimp and vegetables over fried rice and some miso soup. We also split some gyoza. That might be my favorite meal, honestly. Rice, veggies, shrimp, some soup, some dumplings. Perfect. More ice cream cake was had for dessert, enjoyed over about five episodes of season two of The Office. I realized I never saw most of season two, and I laughed until I almost cried, especially during the Olympics.

On Sunday morning, we went to the baptism of my friend's baby. (Thanks again to all who e-mailed or commented with advice!) It went very well. I did my godmotherly duties, amounting only to draping a little white garment over her after her head was doused with the water. She was uncharacteristically quiet and serene, and her dad said, "It must have been all that original sin that was giving her a stomachache." We went out for a very nice lunch after, and a good time was had by all. B. had poached eggs over crab cakes and english muffins with remolaude sauce, and I had seafood crepes. We both had shrimp and corn soup with andouille sausage. I had a cappuccino, he had a Newcastle. I don't know why I like to record what was eaten, but I do. It helps me preserve the memory of the experience somehow. As for being her godmother, I can't pretend that I will be able to advise her about faith or things of that nature, but I definitely promise always to be here for her because holy shit, she is cute, and I love her.

Speaking of memories, a veritable flood of them hit me while in mass for the baptism. I don't know if it was being around other people who went to school there or what, but I felt so nostalgic about the school and I felt SUPER nostalgic in the church. My parents were there, which was nice, and my dad took his volunteer photographer duties very seriously, darting around furtively during the actual baptism taking shots from various angles through breaks in the crowd and barking officially such commands as "Stand by!" My mom looked like some kind of radiant goddess in her blue and white checked shirt. Anyway, it was the first time that B. came to church there, and I found myself wishing for the songs to be really good. Sadly, they used versions of the Amen, Holy Holy Holy, Christ Has Died, Lamb of God, etc. that I didn't know or particularly like, and the opening hymn, closing hymn, and responsorial psalm were not all that. Thankfully, the choir came through with "Here I Am, Lord" during communion, one of my all-time favorites. I don't know how I know every word of every verse of that song, but I do. I guess it goes back to how permanently things are cemented into your brain when you do them over and over as a kid. I had a flashback to being in the choir loft way back in the day and singing at the top of our lungs a very rousing song called "Go Ye into All the World and Preach My Gospel to Every Creature!" There was lots of exclamatory singing in that song. My family is in full agreement that the best mass parts are by Bob Dufford. Two examples are the "Amen" and the "Holy, Holy, Holy," which you can hear (sung rather hideously, I'm afraid) here if you click on "Listen." I think these are from the St. Louis Jesuits Mass, whatever that means.

I guess my point is that even though I don't believe in God like I once did, I still like going to church sometimes and hearing the music I grew up on and being surrounded with so many memories of special times, like our fifth grade Christmas pageant where I played an angel with wings made out of coat hangers and aluminum foil, singing in the choir loft as a kid, all of the Christmas masses where my siblings and I stifled laughter over some crazy off-key choral nonsense going on, and all of the school masses and Sundays spent finger spelling whole conversations in the pews with my friend or my sister and how my friend and I used to pick out Eucharistic ministers who looked like movie stars, such as Tom Hulce, Diane Wiest, and the grown-up Yahoo Serious. I wished I could somehow take a picture of my heart while we were sitting there and show it to B. and say, "Here. Here is so much of my childhood and so much of who I am."

Looking forward to: a rock concert and, at long last, seeing Once.

Weepy weekend, whoa

This was a wildly weepy weekend. On Friday night, I drove to see my boyfriend. We went out for sushi and watched part of Planet Earth. Which for some reason sent me into a tailspin of weeping that I'll have to try to explain later.

The next morning, we headed to a museum that I could not have loved more. I kicked myself for not bringing my camera. We ate lunch, sharing crab claws marinated in amber beer and rosemary butter and a Thai chicken salad. I had a strawberry lager, which was scrumptious.

Later, we shared a pizza at Angeli and went to see Waitress. I started sniffling when Keri sang the pie song and cried and cried by the end. I must have had something hormonal going on, because that made two nights in a row. Certainly this called for gelato. He got white chocolate almond, and I had strawberry and vanilla.

The next morning, we crossed the lake to take care of some house business. We had our first coffee since Katrina at his favorite coffee shop, which just reopened a few weeks ago.

I became and remain obsessed with a five-note section of the Planet Earth theme. You can hear it here ... it's the first 5 notes of this interlude, lasting until about 8 seconds in. I played it on the piano as G E F G C. I know those five notes in sequence for some reason. Part of a movie theme? Another song from another life? It's been driving me totally insane. (That link goes to Windows Media Player, so apologies if you don't have it.)

Last night, my mom cooked crawfish etouffee, shrimp and corn soup, butternut squash with pecans and breadcrumbs, and ice cream dessert for Father's Day.

I found the actual recipe in an old church cookbook from 1980. I'll post it here at the request of sixmilechick, who asked for it months ago. Eat and love.

So as for my breakdown on Friday night. Which was some sort of strange existential crisis, brought on, I think by watching too many World War II documentaries, most recently American Experience: Battle of the Bulge. I told Jessie that I keep watching them because I'm trying to understand why and how that war happened. And she said, "I actually know exactly what you mean about having to watch 800 movies ... because something is too large to make sense of without a lot of different stories." And that is exactly it. And I told Jessie some of this in an e-mail and now I will say it here.

So the Battle of the Bulge really brought on the weeping. And after watching a tiny bit of Planet Earth, I started and could not stop. And he said, "What is wrong?" And I said, "I have a heavy heart." And he said, "Because of the Battle of the Bulge?" And I said, "Yes." And then I hiccupped a lot and said, "And the animals. All the beautiful animals. They're just trying to survive. And we're messing the world up. And we didn't learn anything from WWII." And I thought about soldiers with their feet frozen off and the little dead Belgian children frozen in the snow that the documentary showed. "And if we didn't learn from that war? What war will we learn from? We are at war RIGHT NOW." And we're killing the planet, and what is the point, and nobody lives for very long in the end, etc. etc. And I wept and wept. And nicely, he let me and patted me.

Anyway. All I'm saying is that World War II documentaries and Planet Earth are kind of a serious one-two punch in the soul, at least for me. I've hardly seen any of Planet Earth so far, but it's killing me. Especially the snow leopards and bottlenose dolphins and elephants who swim like they're as light as feathers or air.

Strawberry love

I spent the weekend out of town at my sister's law school graduation. It was a whirlwindy but very fun weekend. It involved eating both local and national chain pizza and sushi. And watching The Office and laughing as my brother declared he'd rather die of tetanus than hang out in the emergency room. (He cut his foot by kicking the corner of a low-lying heater in her apartment.) And going to the student health center instead for his shot and killing time in the waiting room discussing the presidential candidates, abortion politics, the Rosie vs. Elisabeth feud, and the ins and outs of Lost. And going to a big family reception with an amazing buffet spread and greeting and meeting my sister's friends and professors. And eating gelato and Italian ice. And it was, for the most part, a very merry time. (We missed having my older brother there; his stand-by ticket plan didn't work out.) My sister looked radiantly lovely, and we were all very proud of her.

(Speaking of Rosie, I love what Nora Ephron wrote about her leaving the show.)

And we saw Waitress, which I loved and adored, and whose song I cannot get out of my head to save my life. ("Gonna be a pie from heaven above, gonna be filled with strawberry love.") It was so simple and funny and sweet. I think I loved it more than they did, because when I announced that I thought Keri Russell deserved an Oscar nomination, my sister looked at me like I was nuts. I loved watching Adrienne Shelly talk about how the movie is a love letter to her daughter, though that makes me unspeakably sad.

I also read two books during two very long days of travel. What Is the What was quite good and intense, and I'm very glad I saw Lost Boys of Sudan before reading it because I think it really informed and enriched my reading experience. I read it on the way there and would not shut up about it while my sister and I spent a while waiting for her car to be washed to the point where she drove us to the bookstore afterwards and bought it for her human rights professor.

On the way home, I read The Book Thief. I hadn't cried so hard while reading a book since my last airplane emotional breakdown, which was coincidentally also on the way home from visiting my sister. This was a very similar weeping extravaganza. I blew my nose into napkin after napkin from Au Bon Pain, and the woman next to me in the Chanel sunglasses kept looking at me out of the corner of her eye and shifting away from me uncomfortably. But I could not help it. I was so moved that what started as quiet tears running down my face dissolved into hiccups and blurred vision and whimpering and a runny nose, and it went on for page after page after page. I put my head in my hands when I finished it and kept on crying, partly because it was so beautiful and partly because I was so sad that it was over and I was leaving Leisel and her dreams and Papa and his accordion and Rudy with hair like lemons and Max with hair like feathers and Rosa and her curses behind.

I made the mistake of reading a few less than raving reviews of the book when I got home. I decided to ignore them and write the reviewers off as insane. I think I'm going to stop reading reviews of any book or movie I love because there's just no damn point. If they're positive, great. But if they're even remotely negative, I get irrationally protective and defensive and then secretly wonder if I'm crazy to have loved it. In this case, I know I am not. Sure, I can see why some of the aspects of the book would be annoying to some, but they worked for me. I loved the story and the characters so much that I don't care that the author employed some unusual and possibly gimmicky methods. It moved me utterly and profoundly, and I will love it forever.

Now I'm home and settling back into real life. My brother sat behind Lance Bass at Les Miserables last night. And here are some pictures.

(a little excited about her Friday Night Lights shirt)


(making his best Jim Halpert face)


(pretty building)

(posing for one too many pictures before heading to the reception)


(giant piles of sushi at the reception buffet)

(the graduate and me)

Mom

My mom loves orange sherbet and tamales.

She played Joan of Arc in college.

She and my dad fell in love when they were nineteen. She told me recently that part of the reason they've stayed together all this time is sharing not only common values and faith but liking to do the same things. "We both love football," she said, "and going to plays." My mom and dad are still in love. They genuinely like doing things together. They always have each other's backs. It is both inspiring and impossible to live up to.

At least one of my friend's dads has a (harmless) crush on my mom. He doesn't ask me, "How's your mom?" He asks me, "How is your beautiful mom?"

People think my mom is beautiful. My dad stared at her walking through a parking lot once when we were sitting in his car. "Look at her," he said. "Isn't she beautiful?" My mom does not know how beautiful she is.

My mom is the kind of person who tells you that you can't be all things to all people -- but she does not follow her own advice. She is so many things to so many people. She's attended daily mass since she was a little girl, where she prayed every day that God would send her a good husband. She visits the nursing home on a regular basis even though we no longer have any relatives living in any of them. Old people adopt my mother, and she adopts them. One elderly gentleman in particular loved and adored my mom, and she took some camellia trees from his yard and now they grow in her yard. She calls them "Kap's camellias" because Kap was his name. My mom transplanted some daylilies from her mother's yard to hers, and then from her yard to mine. They are currently exploding.

My mom has a regular list of people she meets with on a weekly basis to give them spiritual guidance. I've no doubt that she helps them to figure out whatever they're trying to figure out, to find whatever they are seeking.

My mom loves An Affair to Remember and To Kill a Mockingbird.

My mom's first boyfriend was gay.

She was raised by a single mother of five, and they didn't have a lot of money. She remains the thriftiest person I have ever known. She has a knack for finding the most beautiful clothes at consignment stores. She does not waste; if something she buys isn't right, she'll return it and get that refund, even if it's only $2. She didn't believe in buying us a lot of name-brand clothing, and I appreciate that, as I told her recently. I didn't when I was younger, like when I was in the bathroom stall at school and overheard a Mean Girl saying that I wore the same Esprit shirt on every free dress day, but now I like that I don't care a lick about expensive purses or sunglasses or jeans. She would regularly remind us to turn off the lights, chiming on repeat: "The more money we give to Gulf States Utilities, the less money we have for other things." I am as a result maniacal about my air conditioner and heater. I'd rather it be 80 degrees in my house in the summer and 60 in the winter than spend hundreds of dollars on my utility bill.

My mom was once an English teacher and then a creative writing teacher. She taught the older kids at my school when I was young, and I remember my friend's older sister telling me that my mom was her favorite teacher and how proud that made me. My mom is the sort of person who has written letters to the editor lamenting poor grammar exhibited by beauty queens during the question/answer portion of the pageant or valedictorians during their speeches.

My mom is a clipper and a saver of words. She has files and files of clippings of articles and essays and cartoons that are organized by subject matter and she can always put her hands on the appropriate one depending on what is going on in your life.

My mom really, really, really, really, really believes in and loves God.

She tells me one of her major regrets of my childhood is fighting with me over what I could and could not wear. She also has blocked out, apparently, the memory of washing my mouth out with soap on two occasions. I don't hold it against her, because I think I probably deserved it.

My mom let us make "potions" out of all of the liquids and solids in her refrigerator and pantry. Pickle juice and mayonnaise and paprika. I also vaguely remember making mud pies. My mom taught us to put toothpaste on bee and caterpillar stings.

My mom is all about breastfeeding. I also remember her letting my little brother run around naked a lot when he was a baby and her commenting that it's okay to do that because it makes babies so happy. I told her recently that I think that my little brother being born when we were 11, almost 9, and 7 was the unifying event of our lives and that maybe the reason our childhoods were so lovely was that we had this one bright ray of sunshine that we all focused on all of the time. There was something about his birth and the fact that he was so blond and beautiful and perfect and fun that made us all nicer people, I think, and maybe made us all love each other more than we had before.

Once my mom bought us all new shoes just before the end of the school year. I didn't wear them all summer, and when it was time for school to start again, she said I didn't need new shoes because mine were practically new. I reacted to this by locking myself in the bathroom and writing a distraught letter to Ann Landers.

My mom has a very green thumb and always has plants growing beautifully both inside and outside her house.

Once my mother yelled at me that my room was such a disgrace with its piles of clothes all over the floor that I might as well take a pair of scissors and cut up all of my clothes for how well I treated them and how shameful it was because my dad worked so hard to make the money to buy them.

My mom has lots of themed holiday figurines and always tries to make the house festive. When she buys something really nice, it's usually on the last day of an estate sale when it's half-price.

My mom always has extra gift wrapping supplies in her hall closet and threatened us upon pain of death always to send thank you notes.

My friend calls me for advice and instead of asking, "WWJD?" she asks, "WWLD?" because my mom's name starts with an "L." It's just kind of a given that what my mom would do is the kind thing and the right thing, even if it's the hard thing.

Here are some things I remember my mom cooking when we were little: tacos, hamburgers, pork chops, veal cutlets, shrimp stew, chicken stew, macaroni and cheese (both boxed Kraft and homemade), roast, spaghetti, shrimp and corn soup, crawfish etoufee, drop Bisquick biscuits, grits and bacon, tuna salad, and homemade pizza. She always told us to chew our hot dogs well or we would throw up. She always had a box of popsicles in the freezer and my old friend claims to this day that no one made better peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She tried switching us to wheat bread when her little sister moved to California but we were like, oh hell no. She also makes an insanely good chocolate sheet cake which has a stick of butter in the batter and a stick of butter in the icing. She also used to make heavenly hash cake, and she would make angel food cake for her mom.

She had a complicated relationship with her mother, mostly, I think, because her mother was a very complicated woman. But she was always kind to her, even when my grandmother was at her meanest and most difficult, and she taught us to be that way, too. (Even though sometimes she would vent behind her back: "She just makes things up. She MAKES things UP!" Which she did.)

My mom bought us red jell-o to eat out of the box before our swim meets and always wore a red shirt to our meets because red was our team color. My mom is the only person who knows how to get stains out of our sweaters.

My mom really likes the love songs of Lionel Richie. She loves Mandy Patinkin's voice. Her only albums growing up were the soundtracks to Oklahoma and South Pacific, so she still knows them by heart, along with many, many other musicals. My dad likes musicals, too, but I think my mom is the one who really made me love them because I can't remember a time when movies like The Sound of Music and West Side Story and Grease were not on in our house and I suspect that was her doing. My mom loves to read and always let me check out as many books from the library as I wanted.

Once a perfect stranger stopped my mom in front of a video store to tell her that she had really nice calves. And she does really have nice calves. She has long been a regular exerciser, much more faithful at it than I have ever been. I like the fact that I think she secretly hates it. There is something me that cannot fully trust a person who loves exercising.

My mom's reactions to things have really gone down in family history. Once my sister spilled a giant pitcher of sweetened iced tea and my mom yelled so loudly that it echoed through the neighborhood treetops: "Four quarts of tea on the floor!" It was a cry of despair and disbelief. And once my sister rigged the sink sprayer with a rubber band so it would spray on the stomach of whoever turned on the sink water, and it hit an unexpected target, my dad, who was none too pleased. My mom emitted a similar cry: "Where's the camera?!" as if it were so hilarious that it should have been captured on film, but not really because it was so stupid and she was so fed up with all of us.

I remember once when my mom was sitting on the backyard swing crying and saying she just wanted to run away. This is a very, very vague and hazy memory and I don't know if it actually happened or if it was a dream. I guess it's understandable if it really happened ... at one point she had three kids under the age of four and I'm sure we drove her over the edge on a regular basis.

My mom helped me to re-grow my front yard and plant my front bed. I am complimented on my front bed on a regular basis.

My mom believes we have to face our childhood wounds in order to be set free of them. She asked me recently if I have any childhood wounds and told me she wonders what my siblings and I think about when we look back on our childhoods. I told her I can't really think of any childhood wounds, and it's true. My main heartbreak when I was a little girl was that they wouldn't let me have a cocker spaniel.

I think my mom gave us the childhood she didn't have but always wanted.

Last night my mom stopped by my house to bring me her special ice cream dessert, leftover carrot salad, and leftover cabbage salad. Just because she knows I like them.

I hope that I make her even half as proud as she makes me.

Jam-packed

This was a pretty jam-packed weekend, I cannot lie.

On Friday evening, my friend and I went out to an art hop, each having a cocktail and walking through various shops and galleries. We met her husband for dinner and each had a raspberry margarita, which I hadn't had in ages and which was the most delicious thing I have ever tasted. My crawfish burrito wasn't bad, either.

The next morning, I got up early and dropped off a bunch of giveaway stuff to a local charity, got a frozen coffee, stopped at the spa to buy my mom a pedicure gift card, and got my hair cut. That afternoon, I babysat for my friend's three-year-old and six-week-old, which was fairly uneventful except for the three-year-old's hiding under a blanket during the prologue of Beauty and the Beast and announcing loudly, "I DO NOT LIKE THIS MOVIE." She later explained that the part that sent her over the edge was when the Beast scratches the picture of him as the prince with his claws. We then watched part of Toy Story 2, The Velveteen Rabbit, and Lady and the Tramp. The newborn was pretty sedate and chilled out except during her diaper change, when she screamed so loudly I thought the windows might shatter. She immediately went into a blissful swing-induced nap after that.

That evening, I took my mom out for a Mother's Day dinner. We had a nice and fairly intense talk. Somehow we got onto the subject of how one of my deepest sources of anxiety and grief is thinking that my parents are worried about me, worried about their kids, and I felt compelled to assure her that no matter what happens to us, we will all be okay. We have each other, and we have them, and they made us strong. She said that was the best Mother's Day gift she could ask for. She shared how it is easy for parents to become obsessed with their kids' choices and become convinced that what they wanted for their own lives and what they need to be happy is also with their kids will need, but that she has learned gradually that what they need is not necessarily what we need and that they have no control over their children's choices. Like I said, it was intense. But good, ultimately, I think. Our waitress, I swear to God, was on speed and that was kind of nerve-wracking, but our food was excellent.

On Mother's Day morning, we ended up going to three different restaurants for lunch because wait times were so insane. My dad said, "Why don't we just drive up to New York and have lunch with your sister? It'd be faster." (My sister moved to New York yesterday; wow.) We also celebrated my dad's birthday, and I gave him some of these coasters, which he really liked. We settled in for a Greek and Lebanese feast, where my dad amusingly ordered a cheeseburger on whole wheat pita bread.

After lunch, my mom suggested that I come over to watch The Heart of the Game with her and I said sure. It was just as good the second time around, and she loved it. During the movie, we passed back and forth my dad's giant plastic bubblegum tub that he filled with chocolates for the class he teaches in wrappers in the school colors, which was enjoyable.

I spent the rest of the afternoon watching Music and Lyrics ... it was pretty dumb, but it had its cute moments, and I actually liked the music a lot. Seeing Jason Street as Hugh Grant's partner in the Wham-like 80s group was admittedly hilarious. (You can watch the video here.)

The bulk of the rest of the weekend was spent reading Ellen Emerson White's new book, Long May She Reign (the galley). All 708 pages of it, thanks to Melissa and her connections. I will save my "review"-like comments for when the actual book comes out in October, but I will say now that I never thought that I would see these characters in a new book, and the mere fact that one was written is thrilling. It was great to see Meg and the rest of the Powers family again, and Preston and Beth. I could say a lot more about it, but like I said, I think I should wait until the finished version is released.

Last night my boyfriend arrived safe and sound from his backpacking trip in the Smokies. He did not see any shooting stars, but he saw fireflies. Also, bears.

I wish I could tell you the story of my little brother in Vegas, but I don't think I can. Suffice it to say that it left my entire family in an ecstatic frenzy of text messaging, phone calls riddled with guffaws and screams, and hysteria.

Whirlwind Weekend

Weekend whirlwind, whew.

On Friday night, I drove to see my boyfriend. I didn't get there until later than usual, so there were no big dinner plans. I ate his leftover curry vegetables and rice, and we turned in pretty early. We woke up early on Saturday morning and headed to the big city.

On our way there, I talked to my sister, who'd just run a half-marathon that morning at the very impressive pace of nine-minute miles, once again leaving me in awe of her. Once we got to the city, we attended a Jazz Fest brunch at his neighbor's house ... grits with shrimp, corn casserole, homemade cream biscuits, and other mighty fine dishes. We then headed to the festival, where we saw Snooks Eaglin in the Blues Tent and part of Galactic. We also enjoyed frozen cafe au lait, crawfish strudel, a pink lemonade snowball, a strawberry smoothie, and I think that's it. We spent a lot of time walking around the different arts and crafts booths, which is always fun.

(The Harry Shearer photo is for mo pie.) After sizzling in the sun for a few hours, we headed to a wine and cheese night with his co-worker and his wife. We walked over to the St. James Cheese Company, and smelling the gardenias and jasmine growing all along the gates on the beautiful Uptown streets was pure heaven. Somehow we spent more than $60 on cheese. I don't even know how.

I don't really know much about cheese other than I hate blue cheese and that the worse it smells the more I will hate it. I know that makes me quite a simpleton when it comes to cheese. We bought cheese from different countries, in different shapes, in different containers. It was a cheese extravaganza. The couple laid out an impressive spread of cheese, sliced baguette, crackers, and wine, and we went to town. It was quite fun, and it's too bad that they're about to move away.

The next morning, we went to brunch at the Longbranch. It was very pretty and fancy and delicious. I had the whole wheat pancakes with raspberries and blackberries and cinnamon butter, and he had eggs benedict with ham and English muffins and crispy chive potatoes. And eventually I drove home, talking to Shelley and listening to Cabaret.

I went straight to having coffee with an old friend and to Toni's reading, then I came home and watched Little Children. Which I thought was brilliantly made but pretty gross and disturbing. So I recommend it, but prepare to go, "Ew."

What else? I watched a fantastic episode of Brothers and Sisters, which I swear gets better and better every week. I love Patricia Wettig, I mean, I have loved her since she was Nancy Weston about whose evolution as a character (I'm sure I've mentioned) I wrote a 30-page paper for my Women & Television class. I watched so many hours of tape of her as Nancy that I can recite whole episodes and mimic her hand gestures and facial expressions. And so I am thrilled that she has such a juicy and wonderful role on a show that has turned out, against my initial assessment, to be absolutely good. I love that she won three Emmys for thirtysomething because she totally deserved them, and I love that she is married in real life to Michael Steadman ("Yo. It's my art center."). Love it. Love her. So it pains me to say this. But her very scary boob shelf saddens me. She is 56, and she looks wonderful, and there is no woman whose breasts should sit that high up at the age of 56. Or any age, really. Maybe she is just wearing insane bras, I don't know. It's really my only criticism, and maybe I shouldn't even be making it. I still love you, Patty!

Meanwhile, I've decided that I miss running and that I have to return to it. Not only for my physical but for my mental health. I've felt decidedly more crazy since the half-marathon. For my first run back, I'm shooting for a mile. I'm not even confident that I can run a mile. But I have to start back somewhere.

Pie for days

I spent most of the weekend eating slice after slice of my boyfriend's homemade strawberry pie. I'm a big fan of strawberry pie, as it turns out.

Let's see ... we went out to our favorite Asian restaurant on Friday night. He had honey wasabi shrimp, and I had shrimp with tomatoes, peppers, onions, and pineapple. For dessert, we had strawberry pie and pistachio ice cream. We started The Illusionist.

On Saturday morning, we had cereal for breakfast, stopped at the coffee shop for a granita, and headed out to a festival. This was our first visit to this festival. It's a lot smaller than Jazz Fest, and it was fun to walk around downtown, check out musical acts from Belgium, Finland, and Mexico, and eat festival food like a pink lemonade snowball and crawfish maque choux.

We got back to town, went to a backpacking store, and went home, where I made chicken stroganoff for dinner, inspired by this post of Jackie's. I liked it, but I thought it could have used some cayenne pepper or something to make it a little more fiery. We had more pie and more pistachio ice cream for dessert. Also, we finished The Illusionist, which I definitely do not recommend. It was terrible. Maybe not quite as terrible as The Holiday, but close. It was boring and ridiculous, and I felt embarrassed for all of the actors. Except for Jessica Biel because I don't expect anything better from her. But Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti are really good actors! How are they not mortified to have appeared in this nonsense? Argh. And we also watched Hollywoodland, which I liked but did not love, while playing a game of Scrabble. I thought everyone in this one did a great job, especially Adrian Brody and Ben Affleck, and I thought my beloved Diane Lane was a little over the top, but I still liked her performance.

On Sunday morning, we went to the coffee shop, sat outside, ate a white chocolate raspberry scone and a whole wheat bagel with veggie cream cheese, and read the paper. Soon it was time for him to go home. I did some chores like hedge trimming, went grocery shopping, lay around watching episodes of How I Met Your Mother online, and so forth. I took the dogs on a walk that went awry when Daisy got out of her collar and took off like a rocket after a cat and I ended up trespassing in someone's backyard and ultimately cornering her, which was not an easy task. It's always an odd moment when Zuko's the dog that comes out like the angel of the situation.

Last night, I was watching The Riches, and I had a flashback to when Minnie Driver was on The Rosie O'Donnell Show and she and Rosie sang "Truly Scrumptious" in harmony. It made me really like Minnie Driver from that moment on. I wasn't sure about this show at first, but I've decided that I like it. And I really wish I could find a clip online of them singing, because it was adorable. Truly, I probably still have it on tape somewhere, so maybe I'll dig it out.

I am trying to turn over a healthy new leaf this week. I've been packing on the pounds since finishing the half-marathon training and skipping my crazy exercise class for a few weeks, and I've also been eating like an out-of-control lunatic. It really has to stop. It was almost exactly a year ago that I started Couch to 5K, and I somehow completed that (9 weeks), One Hour Runner (10 weeks), and training for the half-marathon (16 weeks), but I find myself floundering when it comes to health and fitness right now. After missing class for a couple of weeks, getting back into it has been so difficult. It might be because the temperature has been pushing 90 lately, and it feels like it's about 190 in the class. I was doing some move with an exercise bar where you lie on your back and hold it over your head and then do a sit-up with it and on the bar's way back over my head, I hit myself in the nose. Dazed, I reached for my nose and thought it was gushing blood, but the dripping liquid was just a river of sweat! Delightful. I really want to commit to doing the class three times a week and throwing in a day or two of running in there for good measure. And start eating more healthy foods. Just as soon as I finish this strawberry pie.

Catching Up

After work on Thursday afternoon, I baked lemon scones. I liked them. They tasted kind of biscuity, and the lemon flavor was present but not overpowering. I might become more adventurous with my next batch.

That night, we had mediocre Thai food at a place that is usually one of my favorite restaurants.

On Friday, I went to work and he went to his thing. That evening, we had another mediocre meal! This time at a casual Italian joint. Two for two. We started Marie Antoinette, which was pretty to look at but kind of boring.

On Saturday, we had egg sandwiches on biscuits at our breakfast joint and fetched a vanilla iced coffee. Then it gets kind of blurry. We finished the movie, still pretty but still boring. He spent a few hours writing, and I spent a few hours taking pictures of the dogs on their cots and playing on my computer. I baked Rolo and toffee brownies. We went to visit Maryelizabeth, the new baby, et al. I got my weekly fix of baby head smell. That night, we went to an old friend's house so she and B. could actually meet each other. I drank too much wine, which I have not done in a long time.

On Sunday, we made egg sandwiches at home, discussed some things, he went home, I mowed the grass, dropped off a birthday gift, and got some granita and a sandwich and headed into work for a few hours, which is always a delightful way to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon. But I was cheered up by my great visit with the inimitable Mo. I then headed to my parents' house for my mom's incredible tuna salad and a good, frank conversation about my secret dreams of becoming a young adult librarian and, also, living in sin.

Today I am groggy and kind of surly. With no energy to say anything profound or entertaining, I will now post some pictures of my wicked dogs and their groovy new cots.

Would it be wrong to eat leftover brownies for dinner?

Mo + Eliza = Love

Tonight, mo pie and I met up for cafe au lait and beignets. She's in town for a conference.

I hadn't seen mo pie since 2003, but our love has not faded. Hers was one of the first online journals I read, way back in 1998 or 1999 -- I know it was before I started mine in August of 1999, but I'm not sure when it was exactly that I first found her. Anyway, she is, of course, a brilliant writer. It is strange, these online friendships. We remember so much about each other's lives from years and years ago and have followed each other's stories and every now and then we are lucky enough to sit across a table and dip beignets in hot chocolate together.

It was so great to see her again. I am really excited about the latest version of her fantastic site, Big Fat Deal. I've read it regularly from the start, and the new design rocks. I am so proud of her for starting such a great site.

I am so proud to know Mo.

Spring Awakening

(transcribed from paper journal)

It was a packed house, and I felt so excited to be at a Broadway show on a Saturday night!

Then the show started, and it was everything I hoped it would be and more. Let's face it, I cried throughout, even when the song wasn't remotely sad. I loved the lighting and staging and seeing the songs I know so well in my head exploding into life.

The cast so impressed me so much that I don't think I can convey it aptly. Their voices were so powerful and amazing. I was especially impressed by the three leads, John Gallagher, Jr., Jonathan Groff, and Lea Michele. I had my typical anxiety that my favorite cast members would be played by understudies, but they were all there, there, there.

Some of the songs were regulars for me during my running training, and I know them inside and out and backwards, and to see them in person was just mindblowingly great. What can I even say. I wanted to jump out of my seat. These kids were really just phenomenally gifted.

It was especially great to see Gallagher as Moritz metamorphose during his songs from the meek, terrified kid to the full-on blazing powerhouse rock star. I would love to see his real-life band play. And I really thought that Groff was quite incredible as Melchior, whom I see as the heart of the whole damn story. I read one review that described his performance as "wan," and I was like, excuse me, WHAT? He was anything but wan. Even when he started doing some weird modern dance moves that were kind of like vogueing that made Shelley put her face in her hands, he was flat-out awesome. He really did a great job balancing being the wholesome and idealistic gentleman, the reckless and jerk-like adolescent boy, and the heroic rebel. I think they both definitely deserve Tony nominations.

And you could tell that the audience members, young and old, were really with the show the entire time. (Except for the mom who dragged out her 11-year-old son at the end of Act I -- she couldn't be convinced to stay by the lovely older couple behind us who encouraged her not to leave. My sister whispered loudly that she should let him stay because "THAT'S WHAT THIS SHOW IS ALL ABOUT!" Clearly.) At intermission, my sister expressed her discomfort about the way a key scene went down, but I was like, "What? You're crazy."

Then Act II started and flew by, and too soon it was almost over and I found myself losing all control of my tears and during "Those We've Known," I just kind of fell apart and wept in manner of a river. And the tears continued during "Purple Summer," even though that song is random and I have no idea what it's talking about or what it has to do with anything but it was so beautiful and I was so heartbroken that the spell was about to be broken that I just cried and cried like some kind of unbalanced lunatic. I was very composed and quiet about it, though, because I think those who make scenes in Broadway audiences should really be shot on the spot.

I'm not kidding when I say that when it ended, the audience leapt to its feet. And that lack of hesitation, that unquestioning, instant ovation was so moving to me that I had to keep crying. And I said goodbye to the stage (silently as not to appear crazy), shuffled out sniffling, and we headed home.

I'm not sure why I was such a basketcase about it, but there you go. I felt so lucky to see a show that I love with its original cast with two of the original loves of my life. It's okay that they didn't love it like I did. My love remains pure and true. It turns out that lots of people, we discovered, have the same problems that my sister did with that scene, but we all kind of agreed to embrace the ambiguity, amen.

Part of what I love about seeing a musical for the first time after only knowing the CD is that the plot transforms from uncertain to clear, the funny parts become hilarious, the sad parts become devastating, and you are close enough to see the sweat and the spit fly and really, what is better in this life than going to a Broadway musical? Not much, that's what.

I just turned on my iPod as I sit and wait on the runway to fly home, and what part of what song should be playing but "NYC, just got here this morning, three bucks, two bags, one me. NYC, I give you fair warning, up there in lights I'll be." I'll never be up there in lights, but I will always go back to see those who are and love it more than just about anything.

Honestly, I think I might be kind of inconsolable about the dearth of live musical theater in my life if not for the fact that I'll be seeing the Wicked tour very soon.

My romanticizing of New York is something I've mostly outgrown ... I realize that I could not live in such a maniacally loud, busy, crowded place, but the skyline still moves me and I still love the adventure of feeling brave enough to navigate and maneuver through the chaos if a bit spastically and with my hand sanitizer always within reach. It's so weird to think of Shelley not living there after seven years. I'll always look back on our times there together so happily, even when we screamed at each other. Even that is okay.

Overall, it was a great trip to NYC. I loved seeing Kymm and Anne, staying in Shelley's tiny and wonderful Chelsea studio, going to a museum and a Broadway show, eating Thai and Indian and Italian, going to Crumbs not once but twice, walking through the rain through some of my favorite neighborhoods all by myself without getting (totally) lost, and most of all, being with my beautiful friend and my beautiful sister before they set off for sights unseen.

More cupcakes, immigrants, and pasta

(transcribed from paper journal)

I'm sitting at LGA trying to block out the annoying anime audio being loudly emitted from the laptop of the kid next to me. It is a beautiful sunny morning in NYC.

Yesterday, my sister arrived from Mexico in the morning looking sunkissed and resplendent, and we ate some breakfast and visited and she passed out.

Then Shelley and I headed out to meet the glorious Iz for lunch because no visit to NY is complete without seeing her and also for another round of cupcakes at Crumbs.

I had the mini-strawberry buttercream, and it was possibly the best cupcake I've ever had. I also had a caramel cafe au lait.

We headed to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, which let's face it, I dragged her to. I just felt like we should go, partly because of Tateh and Little Girl in Ragtime and since we'd be seeing Little Girl all grown up later that night as Wendla in Spring Awakening. The museum was cool but not as cool I hoped it would be. My favorite part was seeing the different layers and patterns of linoleum on the floor. Maybe I'm morbid, but I wanted to hear more about diseases and squalor and fire and less about the set-up of the garment shop in the apartment. But I'm still glad we went.

After the museum, we went back to her apartment and fetched my sister and walked over to Cola's for Italian food. I had whole wheat penne with peas, asparagus, fennel, and marinara sauce, and we had bread dipped in olive oil and white beans. We had a good talk about religion, faith, and the search for and lack thereof. I started weeping and professing my love for them. My sister had penne with giant prawns and Shelley had salmon with pink sauce. Those are two smart, deep-thinking women. Then it was time to head to the show!!!

Margaritas, Cupcakes, and Samosas

(transcribed from paper journal)

So lunch with Anne at Cowgirl was really super. We had frozen margaritas (me: blood orange, her: lime), sweet potato fries topped with pecans, a grilled veggie salad, and a grilled veggie wrap. We caught up on our lives, and it was so lovely. It definitely did not feel like it had been years and years since we last got together. Anne is so funny, fun, beautiful, and wise.

We headed out in the rain, Anne eschewing an umbrella completely and me gripping mine for dear life. And it's always exciting for a couple of Annie fans to stumble upon One Fifth Avenue.

We arrived at Crumbs, from where to no one's surprise Kymm requested a plain cupcake (but with coconut frosting!), and Anne got red velvet, I got Reese's (shock), and Shelley ordered a cappuccino cupcake.

We rode the subway up to see Kymm and had a nice talk on the train about the pointlessness of seeking a life-altering event that will suddenly make you happy but rather just trying to be at peace where you are, with who you are.

We went to Kymm's theater, posed with our cupcakes, and had a good visit. I parted ways with Anne (tragedy) and Kymm agreed to meet Shelley and me at the movie later.

I fetched Shelley at her ridiculously, insanely fancy office nearby and got to meet some of her work friends and we took a self-portrait in the bathroom, and we headed down to the Angelika, eating our cupcakes and talking about life and love. Kymm made it just in time and we settled in for The Namesake, which I liked very much, and which Kymm was so attuned to that she would start crying BEFORE anything sad happened. Shelley said that it was very faithful to the book, and I'm excited to read the copy I borrowed from her. I found Jacinda Barrett's wig annoying to distraction and thought that Kal Penn wasn't up to the level of the actors who played his parents, but he seemed to give it his best shot. The parents -- God. The parents were amazing. Every iota of each of their performances was so beautiful, so perfect. I was in love with them both, especially the dad.

After the movie, we headed to Indian Row (theme) and ended up at Taj Mahal on 6th, where luckily the food was very good because the ambiance was fouled by a very loud talker who spoke as if into a megaphone about topics too profane to mention in a family journal. Ugh! We split vegetable kurma, chicken and spinach biryani, samosas, and naan. Super delicious. It was just great, despite the idiot nearby, to sit down and have a nice dinner and some wine together. That sort of thing doesn't happen often enough. Look at my beautiful friend!

In short, it was great to spend the evening with her and to see where she works and also to see Anne and Kymm. Anne and I had lots of quality time and discussed a lot of heavy things that we somehow just understand about each other in a way that was really peaceful and inspirational, and it worked out well that Kymm could come to the movie because there is truly no better person to laugh and cry beside in an audience than the Mighty Kymm Zuckert.

People Watching

Pearl River was the store. Cool place. I wandered around some more. Then Anthropologie. Then the rain came. Splashed around with my umbrella and am now at the corner of Hudson and W. 10th, relaxing and people watching through the window at Starbucks.

I dropped my map at some point like I usually do and someone blew his horn and yelled at me, "YOU DROPPED YOUR MAP! WAY BACK THERE!" So that was helpful. It's still raining. I wish I'd brought a book with me.

The music in this Starbucks is loud, almost blaring, and it is really quite agitating. Isn't my caramel macchiato stimulating enough? What gives with the assaulting music, Starbucks?

It's almost time to meet Anne for lunch. I really enjoyed walking through this 'hood despite the rain. I have the cuffs of my cords rolled up in a very dweeb-like manner because if there's anything I hate, it's wet cuffs.

Morning in the City

(transcribed from paper journal)

It's 11 a.m. on Friday, and I'm sitting in Cafe Duke in SoHo with a hazelnut coffee and a poppyseed bagel with veggie cream cheese. Feeling a bit lost and lunatical after the morning trek from Chelsea. Luckily the weather is divine. Of course I wish it were more sunny, but I'm mostly glad it's not (a) raining (b) cold or (c) God forbid snowing. Snow's nice and all but not when I'm wandering around on foot. I mean, who am I? I know, I am weak, delicate, and lame.

"Chasing Cars" is playing in here, and it's playing in every store I enter, it seems. It was fun to get ready with Shelley this morning. It was like the old sleepover days. She went to work, and I walked down 7th Avenue to Greenwich and then through Washington Square Park and thought about when I was totally coming to NYU for grad school and how alarmed my mom and sister looked through our entire walk around the area. Lord! I don't regret not coming, but I do have to wonder what different paths I might have followed in life by living here, meeting people here, taking whatever chances and opportunities that would have been presented to me here. I guess in the Felicity scenario, I did not listen to Noel's impassioned plea, "Stay in New York or perish."

I stopped and looked at some of the Tiles for America, which was a neat display.

I bought some postcards, and after eventually getting to SoHo, I started feeling quite antsy and like I really needed coffee and a snack, and I almost wept when beholding Dean and Deluca as if it were bathed in heavenly light at Prince and Broadway only to realize that it's a giant (albeit awesome) grocery store Dean and Deluca with no tables for taking a load off with a cup of coffee in a chilled-out manner.

I regrouped and spotted Kate's Paperie, thank God, which is always a salvation haven, and I walked around in there and calmed down for a few minutes. Then I ended up at this nearby cafe. There wasn't any sort of real line at the breakfast counter, and I couldn't tell who'd been there before me, so person after person kept shoving forward to order while I just stood there clutching my messenger bag, and I finally worked up the nerve to order and possibly cut in front of someone. Thankfully, I ordered without incident. Now I must find the store whose name I can't ever remember at Broadway and Broome. Which makes me think of Bialystock and Bloom.

Arriving in NY

(transcribed from paper journal)

Last night I went to B.'s. We had an excellent dinner ... I had grilled shrimp over citrus risotto and capers, a side of grilled asparagus, and a spinach/arugula salad with goat cheese, strawberries, and pecans.

This morning we parted ways, and I killed time at Morning Call, Scriptura, Earthsavers, the mall, and Borders, and I finished the absolutely wonderful Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life. (Thank you again, Melissa.)

I then went to the airport, where my flight was delayed for two hours and I saw Terry Bradshaw. I amused myself by reading the latest Vanity Fair and the Sarah Vowell book I got at Borders, Assassination Vacation. Love. Brilliant. So glad that B. played part of The Partly Cloudy Patriot for me and I was able to realize that Sarah Vowell is My People. I almost finished it on the plane ride up here, which went smoothly after the delay o' pain.

I hopped in the cab at LGA and told the driver Shelley's address and he asked me which way I wanted him to go. "...? Uh, the fastest way?" About 20 minutes and $35 later, he dropped me off at her corner. I was frightened by the giant mounds of snow on the sidewalk but relieved to discover that it felt like 60 degrees outside.

We had a joyful reunion, and I told her about my feeling emotional at the sight of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building and that I want to go balls-out tourist and do things here I've never done.

We ordered Thai take-out ... it got delivered, and she accidentally ordered an eggplant dish, and she famously hates eggplant. She drew maps for me and even fixed me a little welcome table of snacks and tulips. And her studio is to die for. And I love it. And she might be the nicest and funniest person ever to live.

I made lunch plans with Annegrrl, said goodnight to B., and have settled in for the night. I can't wait to walk to SoHo in the morning and just really enjoy spring in the city. I really wanted to go to the East Village Tenement Museum in the morning or the Jewish Museum, but apparently they don't open until the afternoon. And I am sort of fantasizing about taking the ferry to Ellis Island after hearing this amazing story about its "dark side," but I don't see that happening ... maybe next trip.

Goodnight, NY!

Uttering joyous

I've now been to the crazy exercise class five times. Each time, I feel this weird combination of weakness and strength, slowness and speed, pain and elation. It is bizarre. I have become obsessed with being able to jump rope for the full 60 seconds of the station without messing up. I finally did it on the last station of the last class, which was kind of a triumphant feeling. I tend to get it all caught up in my ponytail and stuff. I also am fascinated with seeing all of the fancy ways that people in the class jump rope. They do some crazy stuff, like banging it on the floor and flipping their feet around and doing things sideways and I am in awe of them. I still have to do it like I did when I was a kid, which is the basic move of two little jumps, but I'd like to do it with just one jump and do some fancy footwork. I am pretty much incapable of fancy footwork in any activity (dancing, jump roping, life) so I'll probably not try that but surely I can work up to one jump. That would make me feel proud. I am so glad to have discovered this class because I was really in a running rut post-half-marathon and this is exercise I actually get excited about doing. And there's plenty of running in the class, just shorter bursts of it at greater speed. I am not very good at the step aerobics part when they start doing complicated routines of turning around and shit like that, so I just do more basic moves. So far my heart rate is always in the 85th percentile as soon as we stop, and I don't know if that's good or bad. I hope it's good. It probably means I'm kind of out of shape. Or maybe it just means I'm working hard. Who knows? Nobody is judgy, and it's all just very brutal and also very funny.

I finally finished The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank, and I definitely recommend it. (I think I first learned about this book from Chiara.) I'm really looking forward to reading What Is the What and Human Croquet (also birthday gifts from my boyfriend) and Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life (from Melissa).

Mostly I've just been working, eating too many Thin Mints, worrying about Daisy's love of carrying dead animals around in her mouth and her getting old, and trying to get rid of some stuff around my house. After helping my boyfriend pack up some of his stuff last weekend, I realized how even someone with not that much stuff has too much stuff. And I am a person with a lot of stuff, so for sure I have way too much. If that makes sense. So I've been slowly boxing up un-needed tchotchkes (I'll always keep those tchotchkes that mean something to me, so I'm definitely not anti-tchotchke) and things like extra vases and t-shirts and candles that I never burn and books and stuff like that. I'm barely making a dent, but it feels good to do a little bit at a time.

Last week I had sushi with Maryelizabeth and her little girl, who never ceases to amuse and entertain me. I always decide, whatever age she is, that it's the perfect age for a kid. She used to be 2 so that was the perfect age, and now she's 3 so it's really all about being 3. It boggles my mind how we can carry on a full conversation with her like she's a grown-up person. I wish I could remember some of the conversations that adults had with me when I was 3. I wonder what I said and what they said to me. It's a shame she won't remember much, if anything, from these conversations when she's my age because she is so hilarious and smart, and I hope she will always know that about herself, that she was always that way.

This weekend my boyfriend was here. On Friday night, we shared crawfish etouffee and a spinach salad with dried cherries and walnuts and had some ice cream. On Saturday morning, we got a scone and a muffin and played a game of Scrabble. We went to my old roommate's son's first birthday party. The shirt I gave him was a big hit. We then headed to downtown to take some pictures at the Capitol, which was fun. It was a gorgeous day, and the Spanish moss and the pink azaleas and the sunshine and blue sky and the way that the oak trees made me think about Walt Whitman were just knocking me out. Then we went to get sandwiches and he went running and I mowed the backyard. We drove out down River Road for dinner, which was very good. (I had shrimp primavera and he had a hot crawfish salad and chicken and andouille gumbo and we shared an appetizer of shrimp and peppers in spicy sauce in a bread bowl and then we ate flan and it was all just really quite fantastic.) Then we watched United 93, and what can I say about this movie that hasn't already been said? I watched it with what felt like an elephant sitting on my chest. It was very well done and filled with me dread and then a very powerful sadness. That sounds very lame but it's hard to put into words. I thought that it's probably not the best movie to be watching shortly before getting on an airplane but then I realized that was a pretty gross example of making it all about me.

This morning we headed out for my favorite Sunday morning drink, cafe au lait and hot chocolate mixed and a banana nut muffin and to buy a new comforter and we ate leftovers and watched a few (sad) special features and then he went home and I went running. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful day outside -- beyond beautiful. I'm now sitting out on my back patio typing all of this up and listening to The Weepies and Zuko is lying at my feet and Daisy is doing that thing she does where she takes a few pieces of food in her mouth, runs a few feet away, and then spits them out and then runs around and then goes and eats them. And then sticking her paw in the bowl and knocking it over and then running to chase some birds which hopefully she won't catch because that would really ruin a very beautiful and peaceful afternoon.

And now, a few pictures from our day downtown.

Pickles and Screws

My mom called me when I was at work the other day.

"I'm at the store," she said, "And I'm buying some pickles for Dad and just wanted to know if you needed any."

She knows that this store (that I rarely go to) sells my favorite pickles.

I told her I was all stocked up on pickles but thanks.

Last night I went over at her request to pick up a plate of leftovers, and she presented me with a scarf she'd bought on sale that she knew I would like. It is a very cute and warm scarf.

When I got home from Target the other night, my car's headlights fell upon my dad, who was bent over in my carport looking for something on the ground with a flashlight. Upon my questioning what he was doing, he explained that he came over to change my outdoor lights and had dropped a screw. He was afraid I would get a flat tire if I rolled over it with my car when I got home.

Love is your mom fixing you a plate of leftovers, buying you a scarf, calling you to see if you need pickles.

Love is your dad in his sweatsuit in the cold with a flashlight, searching for fallen screws, standing on ladders, changing burned-out bulbs, letting there be light.

Random

This is going to be a post of randomness.

Another thirtysomething episode has been added on YouTube, blessedly. It's "Second Look," otherwise known as one of the best and saddest episodes ever on television. So if you need a good honking cry, have at it. (An interesting old article about Nancy's cancer storyline can be found here.)

Here's a Sheriff Seth Bullock Alert: He's appearing in a movie called Catch and Release starring Jennifer Garner. I am a sucker for both Jennifer Garner and Sheriff Seth Bullock, so I'm sure I will end up seeing it even though once again I have to state my hatred of trailers that give away the entire movie.

This amused me deeply.

I've really been enjoying Cold Feet on DVD, and I'm all set to start season three, but I'm bummed to discover that seasons four and five aren't even available on DVD. So I'll have to stop mid-series. Which is frustrating. I could buy them used from the UK, but they wouldn't play in my DVD player. Piss.

Much suffering in human life results
from a fruitless attempt
to retain a note that has
already ceased to sound
or to anticipate a note
that has yet sounded.
I found this quote in a little plastic table card rack at lunch the other day, handwritten beneath a drawing on another card. I liked it, so I wrote it down on a takeout menu. Supposedly it's from a book called The Theory of Conscious Harmony by Robert Collin. The only place I can find it online is on a single MySpace page of an 18-year-old. So it might be made up or misquoted. I have no idea.

I like it.

I've been won over by The Office (U.S.), okay, it only took me a few years. I really like it, and I really like reading Jenna/Pam's blog. I've also decided that other than The Office, the best sitcom on television is How I Met Your Mother. I like it more every week, and last night's made me laugh out loud. Especially the way that Barney says, "Uh, dance?" And in case you missed it the first time, this remains one of the best talk show appearances ever by anyone.

I can't stop going to the memorial site set up for Helen Hill. I can't stop reading about her and her family and what a wonderful person she was and how many people's lives she touched. I did not know her, but the stories of her life and death are filling me with both inspiration and despair. My boyfriend told me this afternoon that there is much to be happy about and thankful for even in this messed up world, and I am trying hard to remember that.

(Photo by B.)

Many waters

Many waters
Originally uploaded by Elizalou.

This is what my backyard looks like right now.

I'm not really sure what is causing this flooding as it only started raining last night. In six and a half years, I have never seen my backyard fill with this much water. It's kind of scary.

I just got back from running 8 miles at the gym. My plans to run outdoors were obviously thwarted by the weather.

It was difficult, but I was definitely helped along by songs from a new running mix I got for Christmas and the Friday Night Lights marathon on Bravo. There's nothing to keep my sad, slow ass chugging along like seeing Coach Taylor yell at his players as they ran wind sprints through the mud and rain, "Champions don't complain! Champions never quit!"

I can't believe that tomorrow is New Year's Eve.

Emily

Emily
Originally uploaded by Elizalou.

Emily the great grey cat is now gone. My boyfriend made the best decision he could in letting her go, there is no doubt about that, as she was suffering. Even though she was pretty old and I knew in the back of my mind that she would not be here forever, her last illness came on rather suddenly and it was stunning that she was gone so quickly. I tried to be strong for my boyfriend, but when I first walked into his house the day after she died and she was not there, I was overcome and had to excuse myself to the bathroom before properly greeting his mother and cry my eyeballs out for a few minutes. She was not mine, but I loved her.

I have only known Emily a relatively short while, so it is not my memories of her that matter most, but I will always remember her. She stayed with me for about two months after her hurricane rescue, living in my room away from the other cats most of the time. She would venture out sometimes and they would commence a triangulated staring session. She warmed up to me during those months for the first time, coming out from under the bed for treats and even sleeping with me for the first time on the last night of her stay.

Since then, she has never loved me with the mighty love she reserved for my boyfriend, but she would come to me sometimes when I wiggled my fingers and let me brush her occasionally. She loved being petted and drinking water out of the bathtub faucet. She would jump out with a wet forehead, her thirst happily quenched. She also liked sitting on the back of the futon and lying on the bed in a shaft of sunlight from the window. She loved lying on B.'s chest most of all, I think. One of my last memories of her was laughing at the way she crouched down and approached the new Christmas tree as if an explorer or a stalking tiger. How do you comfort someone you love who's lost the cat he had for, like, 15 years? I don't know. She was very well taken care of and loved and just one of those very good, sweet cats. Life will not be the same without her.

Mexico: Cancun

View
Originally uploaded by Elizalou.

Le Meridien! It took us about four hours and 15 minutes to get to Cancun after breakfast at Rancho Encantada, which we didn't even realize was right on the water until we saw it in the daylight this morning. It was very peaceful, and we dug the school of catfish.

After leaving the jungle it's certainly a huge change to be here in Cancun. Our hotel is surely luxurious and is almost Disney-esque in its perfection. They charged us $10 each for use of the spa, and it turns out that the fee covers amazing his-and-hers showers and towels, a steam room, an aromatherapeutic sauna, a whirlpool, and a Scandinavian bath -- all very decadent and wonderful. I did some Ham Sa-ing in the sauna and felt very cleansed, especially because I took one shower at the beginning and one at the end. Totally worth the $10.

Before that, we ate lunch at the St. Trop restaurant overlooking the beach, eating the most expensive quesadillas and salad in the history of humankind and enjoying a mojito and mango daiquiri. Then we headed to the beach, where he relaxed in a padded chair and I swam for the first time in the Caribbean Sea. Glorious! Totally salty, mildly wavy, and somehow cool and warm at the same time. Perfect.

Then we went in the pool for a little while before heading to the spa. I don't think we're getting massages as they're truly one million dollars, but that's okay. I feel pampered enough by our beautiful room and this balcony overlooking the water on which I'm sitting at dusk in this robe and slippers smelling of grapefruit lotion and the sea. I feel blessed.

Mexico: Laguna Bacalar

Arch
Originally uploaded by Elizalou.

Writing from Rancho Encantada in Laguna Bacalar, our stop between Rio Bec Dreams and Cancun. We ended up spending the day at the former after a nice breakfast and a fairly restorative night's sleep, what with the crickets and frogs and jungle breezes blowing the curtains in a dreamy and billowy manner through the screens. (And in spite of the thunder and lightning.) The bed and sheets and pillows as I've said before quite frankly rocked the hizzy.

We went to the ruins at Becan this morning, which were cool. It was very drizzly and grey outside, and that added to the mysterious atmosphere of it all. We climbed to the top of Structure IX which was tiring but afforded quite the spectacular view.

We drove around Xpujil aimlessly in a search for the possibly nonexistent gas station, ate lunch at the bar counter, and spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in the outdoor restaurant (the scene of last night's monstrous emotional breakdown) reading our books. I am so in love with Behind the Scenes at the Museum that it's bordering on the maniacal.

Finally Roberto the Campechano accountant arrived with the passport, and we set out on our merry two-hour way here. We listened again to our one CD (Mariachi music), purchased in the Mayaland gift shop once we figured out we had no radio antenna and which we now know entirely by heart. (Viva México, viva América! Oh suelo bendito de Dios!) (Ay ay ay ay! Canta y no llores!)

When we arrived at Rancho Encantada, the restaurant was already closed, so we headed into the town of Bacalar and ended up at La Casa Nostra, where L and Pato, the owners, introduced themselves and chatted with us. They were very nice. I ate spaghetti with red sauce (surprise), and he ate enchiladas in mole sauce and we had salad and garlic bread and it was very pleasant even though I spilled a bottle of orange Fanta all over him. Now we're settling in for the night and preparing for our drive to Cancun tomorrow.

Mexico: Calakmul Biosphere Reserve

Cabana
Originally uploaded by Elizalou.

We arrived at Rio Bec Dreams in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve after a four-hour drive. Our stay began with a jolt when B. realized that he forgot his passport at the hotel in Campeche. Oops. We went to the bar to talk to Diane, who advised that an effort to have it mailed would be futile and concocted a scheme wherein Roberto the Campechano accountant would fetch it and bring it with him tomorrow when he comes here on business. Crisis averted! Big phew.

We drove to Chicanna this afternoon because Diane told us the gods would speak to us there. The gods did not speak to us, but the mosquitoes sure did. Thank you, Off Wipes. We returned to our cabana and took a brief siesta. I love our cabana! The sheets and towels are super nice and soft, and the decor is lovely and relaxing, and the bed is sort of a magical tropical princess sort of bed. There are many small bug carcasses atop the canopy that look startlingly prominent when facing heavenward so I'm just avoiding that view whenever possible.

Which leads me to the topic of bugs. Sweet merciful and holy Jesus. We sat down to wait for dinner, along with a Chalmatian and a trio of Utah Mormons. And Tally the most awesome Jack Russell. And I noted that there were lots of little bugs crawling on the (beautiful, elegantly set) table and in the water glasses and such, but I resolved myself to their presence as we are in fact in the jungle. It was with a mounting horror, though, that I realized that buzzing about the overhead lights in that agonizingly loud, slamming way was an unspeakably enormous flying cockroach. I knew because I just instinctually know these things. It's like radar. I've honed it since childhood. I didn't even have to see it -- I knew. I asked B. if that sound I was hearing was a giant flying cockroach and he assured me that it was just a big bug. But I knew. I knew. I could hear it careening overhead, and I knew that something very bad was about to happen.

And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw it coming in for the dive-bomb. I knew it had made some sort of contact. I leapt out of my seat instantly and practically flew to the opposite corner of the dining area. I think I made my way back to our table after apologizing to the Utah family, foolishly assuming that the offender had since hurled itself away from our area. But I saw it. And I asked with my back turned, "Did it land on our table?" "No, it did not land on our table," B. lied. But I saw it. IT WAS RIGHT THERE ON OUR TABLE. I again sprinted to the Mormon corner while he heroically trapped it under his glass and somehow killed it with a magazine about Mayan ruins.

I begged some more pardon from the other diners and somehow managed to choke back the vomit and continue to sit there. Then as Rick was at our table talking to us, another one flew down and landed on his shoulder in a shudderingly awful-sounding vibrating descent. I huddled over into B.'s lap in terror lest it fall on me. Then a praying mantis somehow ended up crawling inside B.'s shirt. I don't even know. He was handling all of this with great calm. Then our food finally came ... pork chops yucatecan for him with rice and corn and guacamole and spaghetti for me with tomatoes, onions, and peppers. All yummy.

Then I'm not sure what happened. I was so shaken by the giant cucarachas that a small bug hit me in the face mid-bite and I jumped so violently that I ended up slinging half my enormous plate of pasta in red sauce off of the plate and onto the white tablecloth. Then I started crying. I scooped up as much of the pasta back onto the plate as I could, desecrating two pretty yellow cloth napkins in the process, and started shoveling it into my mouth in misery and mortification. The white tablecloth looked like something had been slaughtered on it. I was still sniffling and recovering from all of this indignity when something loud buzzed in my ear and I knocked over my water. Which was just as well as there were bugs floating in it anyway. Then dinner was decreed officially over.

B. exhibited the patience of a saint, the other guests and Rick and Diane were utterly gracious about my total spazosity, and it's really quite beautiful here despite the bug mayhem. The bed is unbelievably comfy, and there are stars by the zillions.

Mexico: Campeche

Francis Drake Hotel
Originally uploaded by Elizalou.

We're relaxing in our room in Campeche at the Francis Drake Hotel. It would be a lot more relaxing if we didn't have a balcony door that doesn't close all the way overlooking a very busy street where apparently the Campechano tradition is to rev your engines and honk your horn in an ear-splitting and nonstop fashion. The shower was a nightmare. The shower door doesn't close all the way, either, continuing the theme of very aggravating ajar door ridiculousness and I had to use one hand to hold it closed while getting blasted in the eyeballs with the shower nozzle that cannot be repositioned. AUGH. Thank God the bed is large and comfortable or this hotel would get a big fat zero from me.

But I don't want to focus too much on the blinding (shower) and deafening (horns, motorcycles) aspects of Campeche because the truth is that I love it! The colors, the buildings, the people passing you on the sidewalk who smile like they mean it. The walls with the cannons that protected the city from pirates. Very deliciously cool. It's a really nice place, and I'm very glad we came here. I probably won't sleep much, but what in the hell else is new?

Photo by B

We ate a very yummy lunch at La Pigua ... the best on our trip so far. Seafood crepes, coconut shrimp with applesauce, and stuffed shrimp. It was a camarones extravaganza to be sure. We each had two beers and then good strong cafe con leche and coconut cake. DELISH. The guidebook described it as "the place local professionals come to linger for lunch," and that is dead on. Laptops and the whole bit.

:::

It's now 10:40 pm, and we had a nice stroll around the historical centre -- along the water and through the park/plaza/whatever it's called. The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception looked beautiful all lit up for the evening. We ate at Casa Vieja, which had a great view but unfortunately had food that tasted like ass. Shrimp the size of corn kernels and teeth-breaking bread. We got out of there as quickly as possible and left a giant tip for the elderly waiter who looked like he might keel over from the frantic pace at any moment.

Photo by B

We took a leisurely stroll back to the hotel and stopped for ice cream -- chocolate and pistachio. Overall, it was a lovely day in a very beautiful, friendly, and lively city. I recommend Campeche to all.

Mexico: Chichen Itza

Hacienda Chichen
Originally uploaded by Elizalou.

We are here at the Hacienda Chichen. I'm sitting by the pool after a quick dip. The water was surprisingly chilly considering that while walking around Chichen Itza earlier it felt approximately like one billion degrees outside.

Anyway, the trip here was pretty smooth. We watched Big Love on the plane, and I read a lot of Gilead. We drove two hours or so to the hotel and ate dinner at the hotel restaurant -- I had some shrimp and he had chicken with honey chipotle sauce and I ate three of some of the best rolls ever. We watched a little more Big Love before bed. I slept like bung, partly because that's just who I am and partly because the pillow was apparently constructed from a leftover slab of rock from Chichen Itza and the sheets were so sandpapery that it felt like I was getting brush burn every time I rolled over.

We headed to breakfast -- fruit and more rolls and coffee and kickass orange juice and huevos rancheros. Then it was off to the ruins! Despite the scorching heat and the rivers of sweat pouring down our faces the entire time, it was super cool and fascinating. Sort of hard to process how the temples and other buildings were built and how they're still standing and what they all mean.

Photo by B

The experience probably would have been a bit more magical, mystical, and mysterious if not for the endless rows of vendors, but those people have to earn a living and it's their country after all, hello. Tonight we're going to the light show, and tomorrow we head to Campeche. Oh, and we ate lunch at the crazed Mayaland buffet. The steamed carrots were really, really good.

:::

Okay. After relaxing in the pool and in the room, we headed to the light show at Chichen Itza. It was very windy and cold and B. had to enter into a body-slamming frenzy for chairs in the pitch-dark blackness. The lights were pretty cool; the narration was over-the-top and somewhat comical. We beat the rush and came back to the Hacienda to eat. He had steak, and I had shrimp and fettuccine in tomato sauce and we had chocolate ice cream. Oh, and earlier we made wishes in the old wishing well. We came back to the room and got organized. Tomorrow we head to Campeche.

Egrets

Not a bad view while running
Originally uploaded by Elizalou.

My favorite part about running these days is running past the egrets as they settle on the tree branches in the lake for the evening at sunset. I wish there were a way for me to capture how white and glorious they are. I love them. I will be sad when Daylight Saving Time ends and it's too dark to run outside after work anymore. I'll miss the egrets in their trees.

It should be a nice weekend. I'll go on a 54-minute run. My sister is here. My boyfriend is coming. The sun is out. The air is cool. All of that is good.

Brotherly Love

This morning I woke up early and ran 3.5 miles. That is the longest distance I have ever run without stopping in my entire life. It was cool, and my ears hurt because I think I've inherited my mother's ear freeze affliction. But I ran, and I watched the sun rise in the sky, and I listened to Annie Get Your Gun and thought about how Irving Berlin was a brilliant lyricist, and it was swell.

My little brother called me today to talk about last night's Grey's Anatomy and asked what I've been up to. I told him about my morning run, and he said, "HOW far?" And I said how far. And he said, lowering his voice into stunned whisper, "Eliza. That is awesome. You are a maniac." And he sounded so awestruck that it made me feel very proud of myself. He is good at making me feel good.

Sometimes I wish I could run farther and faster, but then I remind myself that I've only been doing it for six months. 3.5 miles is a perfectly respectable distance to get to in that time period when starting from the couch, right? I have to believe that. Of course, I have to more than triple that distance in the next five or so months, but I have to believe I can do that, too.

My brother also announced to me that he hopes he never gets so out of shape that he has to stop drinking Coke. "I love it so much," he reported.

Vegetables

Vegetables
Originally uploaded by Elizalou.

Sometimes you realize you need to eat more vegetables.

Puppies and Plans

Puppy!
Originally uploaded by Elizalou.

My neighbors got a puppy. She was really sweet. Then they got another puppy! And shockingly, even Daisy can't hate them. Zuko loves them so much he wants to adopt them. They touch noses across the picturesque chain-link fence. This morning, they were shaking like crazy. It was cooler than it's been in ages, and I wonder if puppies just shake or if they were really suffering. I hope they were okay; I wanted to scoop them up and hold them inside my t-shirt. I want to lie down on the grass and let the puppies run all over me. One puppy = cute. Two puppies = make me want to die with the cuteness. The cuteness exponentially multiplies. Even when they squeal like lunatics, I just want to writhe around with them and squeal myself. I've never had my own puppy; I never want my own puppy. But Other People's Puppies + Me = True Love.

One puppy!

Two puppies!

Pamie's awesome marathon story is making me want to (and foolishly entertain the notion that I could) train to run a marathon. I even rashly ordered the book she linked to. I just want to check it out and see if it inspires me. I mean, I can barely run three miles. But then, a few months ago, I could barely run for ten seconds. Who knows? Something inside me feels like setting a totally insane goal and then working to reach it might be sort of fun. Torturous and painful and possibly dangerous and crazy-making, but also fun.

My sister ran the Chicago Marathon a few years ago. She got blisters the size of small potatoes on the arches of her feet because her insoles shifted slightly when she was running. She still finished. She took a picture of the potato blisters when she was done and displayed it in her room. Awesome. My sister is totally awesome.

The thing is, though, I don't even like running all that much. I like listening to the music I run with, and if I'm outside, I like looking at trees and flowers and stuff, but the running? I like it not so much. I only do it because of how I feel when I'm done, which is great. I think you probably have to like running a hell of a lot more than I do to train for a marathon. I think you probably also cannot like to spend so much time doing things like watching TV and eating slices of American cheese melted on tortillas and fudge pops. Because that is time you will have to spend running. You have to spend time running instead of practically everything else in life. But I feel like I need a focus. Something to work for. Something that would be good for my body and my mind. If not this, because the odds are lousy, I get that, then something else.

I'm in vacation fantasy mode today. We're thinking possibly Mexico or some place in Central America. Any suggestions?

Parks and Pie

Having now finished The Comeback, I can say without reservation that there must have been no better female performance, comic or otherwise, than Lisa Kudrow's on this show last season, and it is making me sit here and fume inwardly that she did not win every possible award for her brilliance. After getting over my initial discomfort both because of and on behalf of the lead character, much like I had to do with the BBC's The Office before falling head over heels in love with it, I came to really love this show. I grimaced, I put my hands over my face, I teared up, and I laughed belly laughs on multiple occasions. I definitely think it's worth it to stick with this show through the end, and I totally recommend it, if only to witness the teeth-gritting but somehow loving patience of Valerie's husband, the unforgettable punch in the gut, and Valerie's rendition of "I Will Survive," which made me laugh almost as hard as my original viewing of "Free Love on the Freelove Freeway" when Gareth and then Tim started doing their back-up harmonies (which you can watch here).

The weekend started Friday evening. Mellow. We ate sushi. There is something comforting in the predictable tastiness of a crunchy roll and a dumpling dipped in ponzu sauce.

We woke up early on Saturday morning. He headed to work, and I headed to the park to do my "long" run for the week -- 35 minutes. I hadn't been to this park in a long time. We took a walk in it on one of our first dates. Told some of our sad stories. My sister used to run in this park, so I kind of went in her honor. Even that early in the morning, the park was full of people. People running, people walking, people on roller skates, and people on bikes. Pushing babies in strollers, walking dogs. Sometimes I would get tired and want to quit running and then I'd come up on an old lady in a sun visor walking with a cane and I'd force myself to keep going. I walked to my car when cooling down and grabbed a bottle of water and my camera and walked around the park a little bit, panting and taking some pictures. It it a beautiful place.

Once the sweat had sufficiently dried (I know, gross), I went to the vet to buy his cat her food and to the bookstore to buy us each a copy of All the King's Men. I then went to the coffee shop and settled in with a vanilla iced coffee. I went upstairs where there weren't many people so I wouldn't stink up the joint too much. It's a highly cool building, and I like it very much even though the staff typically appears unshowered on the whole.

I read for a little while while a man behind me said, "Is that an old Mac or a new Mac? Is that an old Mac or a new Mac? Is that an old Mac or a new Mac?" I thought he must be on his cell phone with a bad connection, but finally I turned around when he said loudly, "EXCUSE ME MISS IS THAT AN OLD MAC OR A NEW MAC?" I said, "Are you talking to me?" He said yes. I said, "Uh, I got it in December, so I guess it's ... new?" (Showing what a dumbass I am about computers.) He assured me that it's not new, something about a processor, blah blah, then engaged me in a conversation about how I like my iBook and I said I love it and he said he's been using Macs since 1989. I just nodded and turned back to my coffee, and he said, "Spread the word!" So I guess he is just a major Mac lover or some kind of viral marketing operative sent to coffee houses by Apple. Who knows? Who knows.

Eventually we were reunited and headed to a family gathering at my cousin's apartment, where we ate Moroccan stew and lots of pie.

We tried to go to roller derby, but it was sold out, so we went to see The Last Kiss, bile about which I have already spewed.

On Sunday morning, we walked to the market for a newspaper and breakfast and once we parted ways, I headed home to go grocery shopping for the week, do two loads of laundry, and get my life in order. I'm looking forward to re-reading All the King's Men. I haven't read it since junior year of high school, when I did my big final paper in English on alienation and self-discovery in the novel. I don't remember it very well, and I guess that's okay considering that it was fourteen years ago. I know that my grandmother loved Robert Penn Warren a lot, and that's enough to make me want to love him, too.

(More park photos are here.)

Weekend

Signs of Life
Originally uploaded by Elizalou.

It's late on Sunday afternoon. I'm doing laundry and watching The Comeback.

It was a lovely weekend. On Friday night, I arrived at my boyfriend's and was served a kick-ass dinner of pasta and homemade pesto and a salad full of things like sunflower seeds, bell peppers, onions, and dried cranberries and apricots with homemade salad dressing. YUM. For dessert, we had chocolate-covered cherry ice cream. We met one of his co-workers here for a beer, and I realized once again how intolerant I am of smoke. I am an old lady.

On Saturday, we went running around the bayou, and then we went to the library. It's probably the best library in the world. I want to spend more time there.

We also made a brief stop at the book store, which is a very neat place.

Then we had lunch at Babylon. Bread and vegetarian grape leaves and spinach pie. Excellent. We went to the hardware store and here, where I wanted to buy everything in the store, as usual.

We took a nap, went grocery shopping, played Scrabble, and watched Friends with Money. Out of the three movies I've seen by Nicole Holofcener -- this, Walking and Talking, and Lovely and Amazing, this was my least favorite, but it wasn't terrible or anything. It's just strange to slap Jennifer Aniston among Catherine Keener, Joan Cusack, and Frances McDormand and expect her to hold her own. Those three are like three spitting explosions of charisma, and she's like -- not. It had some interesting things to say, I think, and the other three actresses are so strong, but Jennifer Aniston does not do it for me on film. I liked her in The Object of My Affection, but I think that's mainly because Paul Rudd makes everyone in his atmosphere so great.

This morning we went to the market, and I loved the flowers nearby.

On my drive home, I stopped for a frozen Coke and called my friend because I was listening to the Bye Bye Birdie soundtrack and "Honestly Sincere" came on and that obviously merited discussion for the 500th time. I went to the gym and listened to the French Kicks while doing the weight machines. Then I went grocery shopping and came home to try and get my life in order.

Did you know that there are parrots in New Orleans? I never did, until today. There they were, perched on top of the telephone pole by my boyfriend's house, chirping away or making whatever sounds that parrots make. It was pretty stunning to see big green parrots hanging out on a telephone pole in the middle of a city.

Is it wrong that I am insanely excited about the season premiere of Grey's Anatomy?

New Beginning

Ah, yes. It was only a matter of time. My songs were "I Believe in a Thing Called Love," "Fame," "Pieces of Me," and "It's the End of the World as We Know It." Oddly, "Pieces of Me" was definitely the hardest. I can see why this game is like crack to many people. You don't really have to be able to keep up with the verses in the REM song as far as the words go -- as long as you can maintain the sort of monotone pitch.

I'm caught up on Battlestar Galactica. Now I'll just need to watch Season 2.5 when it comes out in two weeks. I am really sort of baffled by my love for this show. Sometimes it seems very stupid, but sometimes it's really great. Whoever cast Olmos & McDonnell is a genius. They are so excellent, especially McDonnell. She is brilliant. Sometimes watching this show gives me squeezing sensations in my chest. I even get anxious when bad things happen to characters I don't like. Or characters I shouldn't like -- but somehow I do. I like all of the tension -- civil government vs. the military, faith vs. science. This show makes my head hurt, but in a good way.

I just tried to watch about five minutes of Nip/Tuck, and it made me so uneasy that I had to turn it off. I don't know why it shocks me so much to see such graphic sex scenes on regular old TV, but it does. I flipped to TBS instead and watched the end of a Sex & the City episode I've seen a million times (the one where Carrie kisses Alanis). I just can't watch Nip/Tuck. It upsets me. I know that Rosie O'Donnell is guesting on it soon, but I don't think I can watch it even for her.

Speaking of Rosie, I've enjoyed her on The View this week. It's strange to see her in the role of talk show host in a format that's so different from how hers was. But she looks great. She looks happy.

This week I've gone to a Habitat meeting and officially started the hour running program. First I had to build myself back up to thirty minutes over the last two weeks. After the rubber band holding my hair in a ponytail popped open and flew off and I had to clumsily pull my hair back with a bandana, I made it through the first night of the program by the grace of Big Brother on the gym TV and good old "American Idiot."

Here's a link to an animal rescue organization sent to me by a reader who's a displaced New Orleanian. She says they're doing great work. Check it out.

I've started watching The Comeback. Lisa Kudrow was robbed of the Emmy this year. That said, it makes me want to crawl under the couch and die because it's so mortifying. I can see why it was cancelled -- it's because no one can stand to be that uncomfortable watching something for any long period of time. It's hilarious, but it's in a heartbreaking way because it's so painful to watch -- you just want to die a thousand deaths for her character with pretty much every passing moment.

I'm beginning this attempt to write online in a different format. I felt I could no longer be a slave to the ancient ways. It's nothing too pretty, but I tried to make it as similar to my old look as possible because that look is comfortable and familiar to me. I still know nothing of feeds or some of the other newfangled trends. I'm sure I'll have to tool around with things some more. Also, I'm doing this on my iBook at home, so it might look insane in some browers, and I don't have a clue. I have no idea if I'll stick with this, as it makes me feel vaguely nauseated to abandon the old-school format, but I'm giving it a go because it's both easy and free -- and for the sake of trying to leap (at least somewhat) into modern times. Don't hate me.