the laws of thermodynamic conversation

q: what's the appropriate response to ribbing from midwestern friends "wow, washington. you guys have a governor yet? Ha ha."?

a: two words. "red state?"

Traveler, Interrupted

over about 24 hours betwixt tuesday and wednesday, i received a prolonged lesson in Being Thankful For Small Things:

christmas ornaments ~ as a general rule, i try to get by with carry-on luggage. checking in at Lambert The Sheepish International Airport tuesday, however, i did have a brief moment of "well, why not check this duffel bag?" the answer to why not was the family christmas ornaments packed therein. thus, i had all of my traveled belongings with me when i got stuck in phoenix overnight.

canned ham ~ got this in a hickory farms gift pack from mr.d's brother. frightened be stories of travelers stuck on planes for 18+ hours, i stocked my backpack with said ham, plus some cheese, crackers and cookies; i figured this would either a) give us some semblance of a holiday meal or b) play reverse psychology with the fates. thus, i had food when i checked into the phoenix airport hilton 13 minutes too late to get room service.

useful counter worker in StL ~ when the flight out was delayed by an hour, i moseyed up to inquire about my connection. pretty convinced that i would miss it, this lady seized on a couple of free seats on a morning phoenix/las vegas/seattle route and booked 'em. thus, i arrived home at noon on wednesday instead of late night thursday or friday.

not living anywhere near a coast in asia or africa ~ this speaks for itself, i think.

pimp my x-to-the-mas

"ho ho ho."
"who you calling a ho?"
"mary christmas."
"i prefer holly jolly christmas."
"that is a better ho name."

zombie christmas to all

twink had future familial-in-law engagements at the buttcrack of dawn this morning, thus circumventing our Traditional Holiday When Are We Getting Up To Open Presents? Debate.

she claims my past negotiations reveal me as stubborn and uncompromising because i bargain for a time between when she would like us to wake up and when i would like us to wake up. further, according to twink, a reasonable compromising person would just give in to what she wanted because she's the baby.

ahem. yeah. whatever.

i soothed any potentially lingering resentment away by making her milk gravy instead of water-based, and blueberry pie instead of pumpkin.

little things.

of course, i think i wrecked havoc on the good will by beating the family at Scene It this evening. four times. and i'm sure the Dance Of Victory didn't help things either.

"but! the pie has butter/brown sugar/bacon crumble topping," i defended myself as best i could. "ow!"

a cough syrup cocktail helped me through my cooking adventures and wiped away the traces of anxiety left by the dream sleeping in 'til 10am allowed me to have:

i was fighting zombies, holed up in the church we used to attend, with buffy (yes, the vampire slayer) and some kids from my youth group. my only weapons were a colt i inherited from my dad (for which i had only five silver bullets) and a meat cleaver. i was very concerned in the dream about not having enough reach advantage with the cleaver. then we discovered that spraying incoming zombies with blood from other fallen zombies would instantly kill them. when vanessa williams showed up as leader of the zombies, i knew things had gotten out of hand. she was trying to bargain or something when i got sick of listening to her and chopped off her arm...

...and was awakened by twink phoning home to quote get out lazy asses out of bed end quote.

First Annual Christmas Wake Up Call? on second thought, i think she deserved those Dances of Victory. all four of them.

simply having
or
until i come home, and i put myself to bed

ok, first? drunk. drunk, understand? drunk.

second: level of comfit, er, comfort, that goes with interactions which have a long loooong standing social basis? is huge, man, like, beatles huge. these people know me. or, they know what i can do. or, at least, in light of what i've done before, they know what i'm at the very least capable of. they give me the benefit of the doubt. yeah.

thirdZ: alcohol is much much cheaper here.

four: i wish i could bring many of my st.l friends out to seattle. because i miss them. but i don't want to live here to have to see them. the artistic environment here is the definition of deadly theatrrr. love to them, these friends. love to seattle friends.

i believe they call it the idiot light...

despite the less than optimistic tone set by the Emergency Ladders Go Down In Flames art near gate B15, the first leg of the journey went without a hitch: security had a brisk six lanes in action, F from The Job was in fact on our flight allowing me to bestow upon her the requested copy of Agent Smith's Christmas Favourites, and the plane was only half an hour late.

hey, it's the holiday season (the holiday season); that counts as hitchless.

i should've known it was too good to last.

on the second plane, which we reached just in time to board, i wound up sitting in the exit row to make collective room for a family, because they wanted to sit together because they are a family with children and this makes them very very special.

all well and good, except it placed me alone next to Determined Talker Man.

Determined Talker Man liked to tell pointless traveling stories, about bad things on planes. Determined Talker Man works for boeing. Determined Talker Man is my own personal planey nightmare, so being next to him would have been bad enough even in normal circumstances, nevermind that we sat at the gate for ALMOST TWO FREAKIN' HOURS WHILE THEY CHANGED A BULB IN THE CONTROL BOARD.

attempting to defer him by pretending to work, i had time to compose this to the item that helped me through the tough times:

oh, christmas flask,
oh, christmas flask,
thank god i brought you with me
oh christmas flask
oh christmas flask
and filled you with martini
as i sneak drinks, i say a prayer
"please don't catch me, or make me share."
oh, christmas flask,
oh christmas flask
thank god i brought you with me.

joyful and triumphant

it seems to be Official Unofficial Get Your Christmas On day here at the embassy: i'm hopping around in my Laura Ingals Wilder nightgown (flannel! blue flowers!), doing laundry, baking cookies and singing carols. later, there will be wrapping.

i was kind of down about having only a tube of pre-made cookie dough to play with, but mr.d points out the wisdom of saving the heavy baking for a time when we'll actually get to eat what i make.

happily, this solved a dilemma for me. my sense of cosmic balance and laziness prompts me to do no laundry and show up at twink's with suitcases full of dirty clothes. instead, i get to have clean clothes now, and the annual flour-drenched nightmare that is the Holiday Biscotti Bake-off will descend on my neat-freak sister's kitchen like a plague of tasty tasty locusts.

you know who can suck my cock? Robert D. Novak, that's who.

jesus was born, and so i get presents

- shopping at costco is a wonderful opportunity to observe mullets and mullettes in their natural habitat

- score one to my xmas gifting mutant power: mums had that tone in her voice when thanking me for her birthday dvd that meant i had both surprised and abundantly pleased her

- holiday radio commercials appall me and thus warp in my head:
"Hi Joanne! Happy Holidays!"
"Yeah, if I survive them."
"What's wrong?"
"I've been shopping ALL DAY and I don't have any presents."
"Excuse me? You have a house, food, an SUV, a healthy family AND enough money, or credit, to buy christmas presents, PLUS the free time to spend all of a weekday shopping for them and you're suggesting your survival is in jeopardy? No. Have a gallon of rummed eggnog and get over your bad self you spoiled melodramatic cunt."

- oddly, my white elephant gift for the office party was only 50% as elephantine as i thought; it was ditched once and stolen twice. the big love went to the cocoa gift pack, the pennsylvanian eggnog and the signing james brown doll.

And celebrate the myriad ways that I love you

clarity looms: the song? it's called slow hands, not stonehenge.

and, really. it makes a lot more sense that way.

this fire is outta control, i'm gonna burn this city, burn this city

my stomach has apparently decided to veto intake for the time being so, naturally, i'm wondering how to word a motion to open debate with it on whether i should ingest food via my nose or simply attempt to absorb nutrients through my skin (which will limit me to spreadable foodstuffs, but, ah well).

favourite classified ad ever:

astrology predicts,
voodoo gets results
call papa george

lying on the floor, lying on the floor, i come undone

i was Having A Yarn Emergency.

ok, not true. i don't think anything involving yarn can ever be accurately coupled with the term 'emergency.'

i was Experiencing Complete Yarn Failure.

also not true. i have a small bit of fluffy pink yarn left over from last christmas's twinkie scarf. i have some scratchy black yarn involved in an abortive mums scarf. i have a lot of bright blue yarn which just sits around and looks blue.

i was Jonesin' For Some Fuzzy Yarn

unable to locate the 24 Hour Yarn and Cake Emporium (We Deliver!) in the yellow pages, i settled for the distant second of:

"Joann's Fabric and Crafts."
"yeah, hi, um, how late are you open tonight?"
"on sundays we're only open until eig...hello? Hello?"

Nemesis and i were already on our way.

at the checkout with my quickly acquired fuzzyarn, the clerk and i talk small:

"oh, that stuff is so much fun."
"yeah, i hear it's hard to work with, though."
(actually i read thst on the internet, but i don't want to look like a loser.)
(anymore than i already do by purchasing brightly coloured yarn, alone, late on a sunday night.)
"oh, no, it just, well, what are you doing with it?"
"i'm crocheting a..."
"oh. no, you'll have no problem then. it just takes some practice."
(her tone became the touch less friendly, the touch more patronizing that gave me to know: crocheters are the red-headed stepchildren of the crafting world.)

project started, i find it different than i'm used to, but not so bad. the trick is finding the hole through all the fuzz.

it's friday i'm in
over my hiding under
from scratchy blankets

me here at last on the ground
or
that'll do, pig, that'll do

very oh so very true to form, i finally had my Client Service Manager's Nightmare about Major Artist last night.

earlier last night, JtotheP asked me how it had really gone really, and i stumbled a bit over my answer.

in my dream:
My theatre was very like Powell Hall (Benaroya for my local readers) and very unlike itself. PoolShark was just about to give his curtain speech when the sudden silence made Major Artist decide she was missing her cue. She rushed onstage with her hair half done and without her mic. The wrong accompanist was on-stage. Everything bad. Major Artist made it halfway through one song before freaking out and storming back off-stage.

"She's going to make you guys pay for that," Make-up Assistant observed calmly before following her into the dressing room.

Paying for it seemed to involve having her sulk in solitude for the next half hour or so. Instead of slogging on with the concert, we brought the house lights up with no explanation and the audience slowly got the idea and filtered out to the many lobbies to drink. Fortunately, we had hired several lesser folk singers for the evening to entertain at breaks, so they did that.

When Major Artist finally retook the stage, there was a giant projection of the potion-making scene from snow white which she did the voice-over for as she entered.

In real life, Major Artist Day went surprisingly well. It was a busy busy day and I had many crazy things to do (driving to bremerton at 7am, special pillow fetching, last-minute dinner guest adding), but I had prepped appropriately, was blessed with a very competent runner/assistant, and was in that zen stage manager "the building can blow up around me and i'll just say 'hmm' and call the fire dept," headspace that i like to be in on production days.

so, at the end of it, exhausted and jittery, i actually felt pretty damn good. like it had been a good day. like i had done good work. like i loved my crazy damn job. it was all very strange.

all is calm, all is bright

the dirty cream and peach blur restroom was an embraceable relief, one i could wrap my throat around as i took my first unguarded swallow of the evening. i sighed and relaxed and looked around me for a spot to sit for a moment with my spontaneous unprovoked panic. despite the attempt at upscale, this wasn't a ladies lounge. no couch. no chairs. just the reassuringly tiled floor which was much too streaked and wet to sit on. when i go old and crazy i expect i'll spend most of my time in bathrooms, i thought as i picked my diagonal sliding step way across the room.

Starring everybody...

hey, some s-to-the-t-to-the-l friends of mine are in this movie...not coming any time soon to a theatrrr near you.....unless you live in StL.

nobody walks in LA
part 2
the return of StuntGuy
(part one)

On pretense of grabbing, uh, a sandwich? a sandwichesque twisty thing?, i fled StuntGuy and his tender mercies and retreated to the relative safety of the other staff.

"BarFly, guess what just happened to me..."

And I related the story as I have been telling it to you. Near the point where we would've reached where we are now:

BarFly: "Incoming."

(sometimes BarFly is very helpful...)

and lo, there emerged from the dimly lit leather depths of the gameroom, the StuntGuy.

SG: "So are you a pretty good poker player?"
Me: (in an attempt to not engage, making eye contact only with the sandwich) "Not at all. I just enjoy getting drunk and playing with actors."
BF: "Oh right, 'i'm not any good. really.' the lack of eye contact is a total tell."

(...and sometimes he is not so helpful.)

SG: (leans in reassuringly) "Don't worry. We all have them."
Me: "Really. I don't play enough to know what my tells are."
SG: "As soon as I had you at the table for 5 minutes, i'd know them all."
Me in My Head: (sarcasm set on stun) "That is so hot. Do me baby. Do me right now on the poker table."
Me: "Oh, so you play a lot."

In response StuntGuy pulls a shiny thing from his pocket and clunks it purposefully on the bar. I peer politely, expecting to see a small trophy proclaiming World's Baddest ASS Poker Player, at the very least. Instead, i'm looking at a large brass die with a rainbow-faced clock in the top.

What this has to do with poker, i've no idea.

Me: "Soooo, you time people's moves? Like in chess?"
SG: "I set this on my cards."
Me: "Oh. (pause) Why?"
SG: "So they don't get turned over."
Me: "Oh. (pause) That happens?"
SG: "Or the cards get mixed up when people start throwing things in and then you forfeit your handinvegaseveryoneusesoneoftheseigotminefromblahblahblahblah....."

Perhaps i shouldn't've encouraged him. Perhaps breathing near him was encouragement enough. Somewhere in there BarFly wandered away. Meanwhile, our unfortunate heroine is trapped against a table and cannot escape. . .

let nothing you dismay

7 hour chauffeuring road trip, half of it with one quite ignorant companion, gray all day, water all day, half misting from the highway, half falling in no wind shield wipeable pattern from the sky, hitting SeaTac just in time for rush hour? yes, that kind of day.

stupidty, stupidty, stupidty? yes, that too.

a screaming silence
when broken rashly, still screams
well, that's angst for you

i've been living so long with these pictures

randomized for your protection

- hm. obviously, had some trouble with blogger last night. i was gonna erase some of the repeats, but, nah, it fits

- my commute, 520-inclusive, has become the least stressful part of my days

- when i was little, i thought the thing tied around Marley Ghost's head looked like bunny ears

- upon reflection, i still think that

- i love ballard's christmas lamp post decorations; they're so 1962 Sears Wish Book

- when there is a christmas steel drum band and a christmas jazz combo available, having one's booth next to the white bread show chior is really bad luck on a perverse level

- however, you can still request Freebird

- they won't sing it, but a Motion For Freebird is always in order

- they'll sing "Santamajazz" instead

- and then the token homeless man will come mutter at you

- and tell you to die

- which is a safe thing for a down-on-their-luck individual to wish, since it's bound to happen sooner or later

- if it were possible to freebase Life cereal, that would be the only way it could get into my system faster

things happen stress holds
sway into the gummed pressure
past embrace your ghost

things happen stress holds
sway into the gummed pressure
past embrace your ghost

things happen stress holds
sway into the gummed pressure
past embrace your ghost

things happen stress holds
sway into the gummed pressure
past embrace your ghost

and twirling, always twirling

prepping to become The Calm Center of the Universe for The Major Artist coming in sunday, i am currently the Nexus of Panicking. not only do i need to appear as if i know what i'm doing in two hours while feeling very very flail-ly, but i do in actuality need to know everything about everything.

because if i don't know, well, there's no one else who does.

and then there's this evening's fun: womanning a both at The Magikal Evening of Consumer Greed (surprisingly close to it's actual title), which BarFly is referring to as The Magickal Night of Freezing Our Asses Off.

(insert screaming here)

"Two studies showed women treated with Intrinsa had about one more satisfying sexual experience over a four-week period than women given a dummy patch, the FDA reviewers said."

instead of a libido-boosting patch for women, how's about we come up with a drugless patch featuring a brightly coloured glow-in-the-dark arrow, that one can place on one's abdomen?

for those partnered with the truly clueless, we'll have a smaller version with a target on it.

drop me in the water

aloha towel
cloaks and bares precious shivers
of electric skin

ibelievei've complained aboutthisbefore,butthe crumbs leftin my keyboard by theprevious ownerare making it veryvery hard to operate thespace key today.

what a wicked thing to do

the other night i had a rather strange dream: i was pulling out my own teeth. stranger yet, this didn't hurt or disturb me in any way. i just all of a sudden, pop, pulled out a tooth. no blood. it was kinda fun, so i pulled out several more. it wasn't until i had 5 or 6 teeth sitting in my hand that i stopped to realize that if i carried on this way, i would have no teeth left in my mouth, which might be bad. i was just starting to wonder if the teeth would go back in as easily as they came out, when i woke up.

nobody walks in LA

i was schmoozing.

more accurately, i was in a place of and was supposed to be schmoozing.

("you mean your job involves having to be 'on'?" yeah, it seems to.)

one of our board members was having a fundraiser. i didn't HAVE to go. oh, no, it was made VERY CLEAR that i ABSOLUTELY DID not HAVE to attend. but boy it sure would be NICE if i COULD.

i have a good eye; i can see a church by daylight. so i went.

really, i was just putting in an appearance, which was happily to be cut short by an audition appointment. thank you, audition. and now let us never speak of that again.

so i was cruising, i was chatting, i was tasting wine, i was nibbling, i was doing the work, i wasn't slacking.

and then i ran into StuntGuy.

or, rather, StuntGuy ran into me.

i had wandered pokertablewards to check the sign up sheet when suddenly there he was: tall, wide and totally in my personal space.

SG: "you gonna play poker?"
"ah, no, sadly i can't."
SG: "why not?"
"i have to leave pretty soon."
SG: "that's ok, you wouldn't be in that long anyway."

obviously a charm school graduate.

i honestly have no recollection of how i responded to this. i suspect i did not tell him to fuck off. beyond that i refuse to be answerable.

come and rest your bones with me

stuck in my head: Sunday Morning by Maroon 5

his name is dean.

i only know dean's name because dean's mother has a very loud voice.

(if the interaction i witnessed is typical of them, dean is going to be sick of dean's name by the time dean reaches the age of seven.)

at the fred meyer, purchasing hair dye (palest pearl 001) and frozen pizza (red baron supreme. sometimes you've just got to splurge), dean and his mother got in line behind me.

"can i help make the pumpkin pie?"
cute.
"no, we're not making the pie, we're buying it. i told you that."
ah, well, can't be helped.
(pause)
"and you can't have any whipped cream until we have the pie, so don't even ask."
ouch.

dean (nameless at this point), wanders quietly off to the nearby lighting display.

"Dean!"
ah, dean's name is dean. also, ouch.

dean does not hear this matronly bellow, because he is standing in frozen thrall of a light-covered, moving wicker reindeer.

"DEAN!"
"lady," i want to say, "hello: wicker." also, ouch again.

ma dean goes over to fetch dean. dean employs the mutant power of super gravity and has to be dragged back to the checkout lane.

at this point i do not blame him.

i reflect that, while i complain about children, 9 times out of eight it is the parents who bug me.

dean und deansmutter reach the belt. as dean attempts to help unload the cart, each item is intercepted midway with an admonishment, "you'll break it!" after the bag of marshmallows is safely deposited:

"Dean! Don't be so controlling!"

i laugh all the way out to nemesis.

sunshine, lollypops and rainbows

the last thanksgiving guests have just departed. may i say, i am feeling pretty darn warm and fuzzy right now. my thanks to you who came to share the holiday, and i hope the other yous had nice times in your own places.

he knows about your party, he is calling you DUDE

i love Cake. little "l" on the love, big "c" on the cake.

however.

i find Cake's disdain for their fanbase just a touch annoying.

granted, cozy with said fanbase in the second balcony, i had disdain leaking out my armpits.

"what's going on in there?"
"oh, she's throwing up. seriously."

and

"you know, i'd rather sit in the last row than the second to last row, you know?"
"why?"
"'cause then you can tell people you sat in the last row."
"oh. ok."

however.

this fanbase had not paid $30 a piece to see my ass lecture and and be disdainful towards them onstage.

just sayin.

it's not more cleaning than you need, it's just more cleaning than you're used to

like so many others, i am essentially a company cleaner: i am not inspired to straighten, disinfect and dust until guests are impending.* this probably means i should invite people over more often.

thus, i spent last night spraying down the bathroom and gathering various bathroom-centric containers (cough syrup, nail polish, sandalwood rose lotion) from various surfaces of the living area (coffee table, breakfast bar, coffee table).

and then i get into The Job and Lo! it has been declared a Day of Cleaning.

sheesh, i don't mind doing this for people i like, and i guess the people at The Job are nice enough, but making home comfy for visiting friends is just a much better motivator.

morning was public area time. now it is afternoon and i'm supposed to be organizing my desk.

aaah...no.

*two exceptions: extreme emotional distress can prompt cleaning, and i tend to keep the bathroom relatively unfunky.

is it you? yes it's you enough i guess

it's not yet thanksgiving and mums has already started the holiday smackdown: If Mr.D and i do not get her our christmas wish lists in a timely manner, she'll just make things easy on herself and buy us a puppy.

the hell?

don't get me wrong, i like doggies just fine. in fact, it is precisely because i an fond of dogs that i find the idea of threatening one as a capricious gift a bit distasteful.

kind of like threatening to buy someone a baby.

on the other hand, i've just spent 45 minutes updating my Amazon wish list, so i can't say her little ploy wasn't effective.

she should go work for the government.

note: when i spell-checked this entry, blogger wanted to replace "smackdown" with "sanctions." hee.

do you like to pull the bandaid quick or slow? do you like to be the first or last to know?

(all composed watching
windowed backward subtitles
at the cinedome)

orange plastic chair sits
under orange fluorescent lights
at odds which is which

orange plastic chair waits
for doug and his cooler of
olympia beer

orange plastic chair fits
no shape of man created
better not to try

i don't know why Costco sells these, but i do have an idea why the tech wizard was moved to send out this link from the middle of Jugendorchesternacht.

all time spent beneath
the forest floor leading me
backward through the gloom

i don't know much...
...but i know jerry bruckheimer needs to direct Mythbusters, the Movie!

looking down on creation
or
notes from the off-site meeting

- "now, we wouldn't lie in an ad. we might just sort of, um..."

- ignore the tights fool
mister sword says: don't mess with
Phillip the 2nd

- Shamus Tucci was on the way up.

Whistling a snatch of Carpenters' tune over and over as he climbed out of his charcoal grey Jeep, he checked himself in the smoky rear seat window. Artfully tousled hair? Check. Expression of tolerant bemusement? Check. Mr. Bigwig still talking? Check, check and check.

In his burnt brown raw silk button-up shirt, he knew he was a bit nattily dressed for the hoodied and cargo-trousered arts administrators, but he wasn't there for them.

He agreed, in the I've-always-felt-that-way tone he cultivated with his card tricks in front of the sewing room mirror, with whatever Mr. Bigwig was say as he clapped Shamus on the shoulder.

Yep, no doubt about it, he was on the way up.

As they climbed the path to the meeting, Shamus took a moment to bask in his impending success, the sky blue, the sun warm on his. . .oh.

Perhaps he should have worn pants.

nobody knows it, but you've got a secret smile

"i don't think you need any more caffeine," said Barfly.

he said this right after interrupting my coffee-making with scaring the hell out of me.

"well, if you're going to keep doing things like that, i guess i won't," i returned.

he scared the hell out of me by entering the kitchen/break area/conference room quickly and speaking loudly.

ok, so i'm a little jumpy.

in my defense, my proximity detector was distracted by the conversation i was having with Hippie Accountant.

"You look nice today," she said "Very corporate. You must have an off-site meeting."

from this we derive:
corporate=nice=pantyhose + pearl necklace=obvious deviation from my norm=off-site meeting

and it's all true. but what she doesn't know is that i'm wearing my new neon green and pink oscar the grouch underwear.

so there.

run away! run away! part 2

retreat entertained me with: no-limit cookie hold 'em, left-handed ping pong, the "hands in the crotch" rap, potential puppet alliances, cupcake moonscape, and josef's obscenely normal sleeptalking.

on the drive home:

- i conclude that raccoons are smarter than possums, based solely on the road-kill ratio

- my most embarrassing/guilty pleasure cd would have to be madonna's immaculate collection

- favourite sign: Scuttle Creek. Free Coffee. (that's right up there with Teriyaki Smoothies. shudder.)

cause you stand out, out in a crowd

my first urge was to vomit,
through my psyche
or more corporal means,
not too picky just now
on to the blog
after a long broken down drive
through the land of frozen fireworked bursts
all
staring
at me
(and not the smiley ones either, boy howdy, oh no!)
my glasses effectively marking
closed for business
in my hand
signal not received
ah well
ah well
shutting the world out gets harder every day
she said and then slipped quietly out of the booth
no hitch
no notice
no problem
then why am i here
she said and then slipped quietly out of the car
and it was only the seatbelt
that made the noise
finally

run away! run away!

as i wandered away from my 150 minute drive toward the meeting house i was met on the path by jtothep. she greeted me with a hug and a glass of whiskey.

"i think this is going to be a good retreat," I said to Me.

day of rest also
pleasant unrest staying in
navy blue sunlight

friends in the woods now
later friends stay home
someone is missing
wherever you roam

the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls

today: woke up with no voice.

other than that, though, twas a very nice day indeed.

all the boys think she's a spy

i woke up this morning with lauren bacall's voice.

after expresions of sympathy, Barfly, Grover and The Amazon have taken to mocking me every time i open my mouth.

(the word "sexy" has also been used thrice, though, so i've refrained from throwing things at them.)

oh, and, go visit: Steal Your Election.

you know, if you have a sec.

and then, maybe call your local congresspersons.

if you feel like it.

Patty Murry's Seattle office: 206/553-5545
Maria Cantwell's Seattle office: 206/220-6400

(neither of them are in today, but their assistants seem very nice.)

overheard at work today:

"well you know the saying: if you throw a hundred monkeys at a typewriter eventually something will make sense."

because No Fire Alarm Left Behind is just plain underfunded

Tech Wizard emailed: Service technicians will be in to fix the fire alarm Wednesday.
I replied: And then he won't ever be able to have little fire alarms.

when i see you sky as a kite

so it's, um, kinda been brought to my attention that my new job stress is doing the physical manifestation thing a little more than is strictly reasonable.

yeah, so i'll just, er, figure out what to do about that. right.

staggering through the daytime, your image on my mi-hind

8am - I am at work. Not on the way. Actually at work. In Kirkland.

8:13 - My cellphone rings. It's the puppeteers. They are lost. In Woodenville.

8:32 - I arrive at the school, using the same directions as the puppeteers. No problems.

8:50 - I am hot-gluing yarn to paper plates. I have had no food. I have had no caffeine.

9:15-9:55 - Somewhere in here, the headache begins.

10:07 - I drive away to scout out the location of the next school.

10:13 - I drive through a McDonald's which accepts debit cards, because i have no cash.

10:14 - Their debit card machine is broken.

10:22 - I get lost on the way back to the first school.

10:37 - I pull into a gas station. Breakfast is coffee and a hot dog.

11:08 - We've just started the third workshop of the day. The fire alarm goes off.

11:10 - Walking out to the playground, the puppeteers inform me that the workshop we're taking around does not, in fact, exist.

11:21 - Back inside, the teacher complains about "that gal from the performing arts center" who hasn't been communicating enough with her.

11:22 - I valiantly refrain from mentioning the 3 phone calls and 7 emails.

Noon - Lunch at Denny's is relatively uneventful, except for the waitress having to return to the table, twice, to remind herself what I've ordered.

1:19 - We discover that the class has not read the story upon which the workshop is based, in spite of a specific request that they do so.

2:20 - I head back to the office.

2:24 - Barfly calls to ask about the price of something-i-didn't-know-was-my-responsibility and if i need a something-else-i-am-pretty-darn-sure-is-someone-else's-job.

2:25 - The headache returns.

2:59 - As I cross the office threshold, Hippie Accountant descends on me with a form for the something-else-i-am-pretty-darn-sure-is-someone-else's-job.

3:04 - I call in an order for the artists' dinner.

3:13 - The tech crew offers me a slice of unexpected cake. I accept.

5:15 - The dinner I ordered and am attempting to pick up apparently doesn't exist.

7:06 - The lobby TVCR decides to stop working.

7:17 - The lobby burglar alarm goes off.

8:02 - The lobby burglar alarm goes off again.

8:10pm - I escape work only to run into 35 minutes worth of random traffic on the 520.

so a voice within me keeps repeating

the tin foil and i
have reflected a bit and
perhaps we're just me

one shot

i started watching election coverage much much too early.

well, hell, i started watching election coverage when i was four years old. it's one of my earliest memories.

but i meant tonight. i started too early tonight. i started at work at 4pm PST on CNN.com.

and my first thought on getting in Nemesis to make the long trek home?

"i don't have nearly enough alcohol in the house to deal with this."

2nd thought: "i wonder if i can get results over the radio?"

two shots

now i've had some garlic mashed potatoes and some jack, which i picked up enroute to the embassy, and am flipping back and forth between CNN and The American President.

ah, warm fuzzy fantasy worl...ah! harsh cold reality!. . .ah, warm, fuzzy...and so on.

three shots

movie over. no warm fuzzy anywhere. i give the fuck up. i'm going to the fucking gym.

four. . .more years. . .apparently

fuck. fuck fuck fuck.

okely dokely, right now: all ye democrats who voted for kerry in the primary based solely on the idea that you had to because he would easily win hands down no contest (excusing all who voted for kerry because they loved and honestly believed in him): ahem. you pansies. you assholes. you have dragged us down the road of safe mediocrity and look where we are. we are fucked. we are fucked because of you. your party is dead. your tents are thrown down and made into thongs for second rate supermodels. may your ancestors' skulls be turned into martini glasses at sheeshy clubs for the very very wealthy. get back, or sign up with the republicans and let the real liberals and progressives do some work.

you can take the girl out of missouri, but...

in the office yesterday, Poolshark had gotten an email/baby picture from a former employee and was sharing the good news around.

the child's name is, apparently (and misspelled to dodge detection), Haedrian Buhbba.

my officemates wandered around for ten minutes saying "Bubba. Huh huh huh, Bubba."

my reaction, kept very much to myself: "What kind of a freaky name is Hadrian?"

a box of kleenex, a cup of theraflu and thou beside me sniffling in the dark

actually, that's me doing the sniffling.

must get better, or i will miss halloween.

you fit me like a second skin

it is a lucky thing indeed, when facing a morning bathroom mirror full of giant forehead zit which looks like the aftermath of a blow to the head*, to have already decided on attending work garbed as a corporate raider pirate.

business tie head scarf = instant non-comedogenic zit coverage

what i hadn't realized, until i had to go searching for my pirate accessories, was how many other costume options i had just lollygagging about.

locating: clip-on gold hoop earring
also found: black curly wig, cartoony mortarboard, ray gun
i could have been: Professor Space Pimp

locating: plastic saber
also found: plastic ax, pig nose, tiara
i could have been: Revenge of the Bacon Princess

locating: eye patch
also found: jester hat, black elbow-length latex gloves, feather boa
i could have been: Medieval Lounge Siren

* oddly, i _did_ hit my head really hard last night, but it was on the opposite side. everything seems to be normal, though.

playin' right field, is easy you know, you can be awkward and you can be slow

yup.

so.

it's over.

so i can blog about it now, since we're past the point where my perceived blog jinx could actually do any harm.

but really. even if i had blogged every day, twice, about the series...i don't see how it could've been worse.

it was worse than 87 and those motherfucking twins.

it was worse than 85 (the in-bred series) with that bastard call made by that bastard umpire.

it was much worse than 82, which would be the last time we won one.

(this may be obvious, but, no, I'm not quite ready to be joshed, gently or otherwise, about this yet. i respectfully request 24 hours of grace. thanks.)

so, in honor of the team i still love, though they break my heart from time to time, with particular love to Albert who never ever breaks my heart:

Good Things That Can Now Happen in the Evenings Since the Cards Got Swept By The Fucking Red Socks in the Fucking World Fucking Series Fuck Fuck Fuck:

- participating in all of Ghosty
- coming up with a costume for Ghosty
- taking care of Cat Und Rabbit in a timely manner
- Mr.D "the government finding osama bin laden, 'cause the sports will be out of the news cycle" ("mr.d, i said _good_ things!") ("sorry.")
- um
- playing video games
- finally finishing Firefly
- finding the mysterious pool at the gym
- drinking. i think i'll start that now, in fact.
- calling my mother without breaks for shouting at umpires

other ideas gladly accepted.

somethin's gotta g, somethin's gotta gi, somethin's gotta give

it seems i'm going to have to cut back on my coffee intake, because it seems to be causing a painful physical reaction which makes it almost impossible for me to consume alcohol.

and that there ain't no kinda contest.

i can not reach a pen for me to draw the line

all is joyously
super pressure in my gums
nausea all day

Tonight your ghost will ask my ghost,
Who put these bodies between us?

(i think this will wind up being the chorus to a country lament at some point...like when i find someone to write the music for it)

the pillow's other side, my dear, is soft and cool and sweet
an' i'll eat the other white meat, 'cause pork's a tasty treat
if things were other than they are, i'd lie with you all day
but my other arm keeps gettin' in the way

best sentence left on my voice mail this past week:

"roger clemens can suck my dick."

(agent smith. he was very drunk.)

she said, i've got this suitcase and i don't know what to pack

"if your house were burning down, and you could only take 3/5/10 things with you, what would they be?"

no doubt most of us have had this supposedly insightful brain bender thrown to us at one time or another. i tend to associate it with community advisor training and staff retreats, where institutionalized self-analysis was always the soup de jour.

but i imagine we're one of the very few countries where it would have any meaning at all. in less consumerally privileged lands they probably need to reword it a bit.

"when the ethnic cleansers come to burn down your house, if you only had time to kill one of your female relatives to save them from being raped, which one would you choose?"

yeah, something like that.

general malaise
becomes more specific when
confronting the source

gotta promise not to stop when i say when

me watching firefly tonight:

"there needs to be way more kissing in this show"
and
"i wish one of the special features was a 'turn off cheesy music' option."

and you're behind the steering wheel

sitting in the Zen-est spot on my morning commute, debating whether or no to hop out of Nemesis and try to sweet talk the beamer driver just ahead out of their license plate which just happens to sport my initials.

i'm willing to offer an even trade.

i think this is a fair deal.

then i see the stupid activity in the entrance ramp ahead: the traffic is stop, stop and roll. the person at the end of the ramp is stopped for merging purposes, since it makes no bloody sense whatsoever to accelerate to match the speed of traffic when the speed of traffic is, in fact, intermittent nothing-to-5 mph.

of course, the impatient driver of the, of course, white SUV right behind them decides "oh no, i'm Mr.(or Ms.) Very Important SUV Driver blah blah blah. The SUV dealer assured me that purchasing this vehicle meant i would never have to wait in traffic again, bloopity bloo" and with that, zooms wildly around the little stopped car, and down towards the bridge where the shoulder ends.

and i wonder what exactly they think they're doing. i'm assuming they won't _actually_ smash into anyone, so eventually, like 5 or seven cars down the line, they're going to have to stop. just like the rest of us are now doing. so essentially, they are just cutting in line.

and this behavior made sense when we were in elementary school and the school day lasted eleventy hours, and saturday afternoon went for weeks and it was five million years 'til christmas. by cutting you gained a crucial hour more of recess in subjective time.

but now? we're grown-ups, yo, and the 4 months since i last went home went by in a week, i haven't seen Mr. Chairperson in a month-long year and for gods sake i know it was only two years ago i got out of high school and not the ten the reunion committee is claiming. so those 5 car lengths are gaining you maybe, maybe 9 nanoseconds.

and even if they weren't, where are we going, work? yeah, and the hurry was what again exactly?

i just hope no one gives them "ups."

perhaps i am for
training wheels, or exorcise
really, i don't mind

yours sincerely, wasting away

buzy crasy buzy today.

but, i have to share this: ladysmith liked my soup.

whoop.

find the eyes

not sure why, but lately i find myself somewhat compulsively involved in these 2 behaviors:
gum chewing
taking bubble baths.

it's, what, 11:30? the most strenuous thing i've done since the bath i took right after i got home at 7:15 is walk to dinner 4 blocks away.

yet i really really really want another bath.

and some gum.

(ok, dinner involved curry, so the gum might make sense right now.)

feelings are such real things and they change and change and change

as of friday,

after 21 years (discounting 3 months), my baby sister Twink is moving out of our Mums' domicile.

after 20 years, Mums will be laid off from the utility company where she works.

i don't know the textbook definition of an "era" but i feel confident in saying this is the end of one.

ps, anyone know of the existence of a "congratulations on being RIFed" card or flower arrangement?

where the pretty girls are those demi gods

so i'm going to this fancy and schmancy dress-up fundraiser tonight for The Job.

and i have a pretty dress and shoes and gloves and every intention of looking quite spiff and schmoozing gently and being on.

but i can't yet seem to shake the feeling that i'm playing and being a grown-up.

does this mean i'll still be squeeling when i get a bendy straw and getting down to "jump around" and spinning, spinning, spinning, falling on the floor to watch the room spinning spinning spinning when i'm 84?

Though I'd like to look down at the earth from above
I would miss all the places and people I love
So although I may go I'll be coming home soon

nicest thing "said" to me all day:

you can make me laugh from clear over there on the other side of the country.

accomplishment about which i feel most proud:

finding the word "nudge" in the office's magnetic yiddish set

'cause i don't want to live on the moon

Lesson #1 Learned Empirically By Me While Teaching Myself to Ride the Red Unicycle: wear pants

there's nothing here to thrill

- Q: why am i learning to ride a unicycle?
A: because my parents wouldn't let me play the flute

- i've decided i'd like my poker name to be blind mango jackson. or captain overbet. hmmm.

- um, i can't really blog about it, 'cause my blog is a jinx, but, um, sports are nice sometimes. yeah.

we move like cagey tigers

stuck in my head: the song Love Cats by The Cure

humming it to myself as I checked my home email this morning, the cat hopped into my lap, snugged down and fell asleep.

I don’t know if the music summoned him, or if he was just drawn to the fact that I’m in a good good mood today.

enjoying the ride-along with the inevitable relationship betwixt the gravity and the other shoe.

even when the shoe hits waaay sooner than i expected it to.

like now.

On the plane again

- you thought only you dreamed about rob lowe being massaged by Swedish ghost triplets. . .until you opened the skymall and saw it on sale for only $3499.99

- dear people with the chubby blond toddler sitting across from us on the plane to Chi: I don’t think you overheard anything but, in case you did, rest assured that we were only pretending to be Satanists

- we made a hard touch down at O'Hare. Immediately over the loudspeaker: "Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to apologize for the bumpity landing. It wasn't the pilot's fault. It wasn't the co-pilot's fault. And it wasn't my fault. It was the asphalt."

Hey, let's pretend I blogged from the road!
Or
I hate to abuse an old cliché, but it's been a long, long day

Morning. SeaTac.
~ I've developed a low-level anxiety about this trip, based on the concern of others about my attending the wedding of an ex-boyfriend. I know this has the potential to be weird, I just don't expect it.

Contrary-paranoidy wise, I'm afraid that my lack of concerns means I'll be taken by surprise by something bad.

Which does concern me.

Naturally, we'll respond to the fear by proceeding to analytical examination:

What could make this weird?

Weirdness from me. Do I still love this guy? Well, I'm sitting in an airport at 5 in the frickin' Saturday morning so I can go to his wedding, so, yeah, I'd say I love him. But I don't crave any change in the current state of our relationship. I don't want to "be with" him.

Weirdness from him. Nah. We've so thoroughly and healthily dealt with the many incarnations of our relationship, I don't think there could be anything else lurking in the depths.

Weirdness from her? Truly, this is the X-factor (pun not originally intended, but gleefully acknowledged). I don't know her that well. I can only hope that if there were any serious lingering problems here, I'd gracefully not have been invited. Right?

Weirdness from his family? They're fabulous people. I expect no weirdness here.

~ Lots of servicemen on our flight in khakiflage. Made my heart hurt a bit, truth to tell (and unexpectedly, too, so hurray for being unstuck). Too-young guy saying goodbye to his wife and 2 itty kids. Loud mouth Texans chatting up another too-young soldier. Former navy pilots coming over the loud speaker to lead a round of applause for our men in uniform.

And I was torn. Because here are real human beings who are potentially going off to die horribly, and I have no wish to be unkind to them. In fact, I'm tempted to offer them my raisins. But I don't think this action they're engaged in is right or just. I don't like that they're going to be off harassing and killing people in our country's name. I'm not proud of them. I can't, with any honesty, thank them.

Social non-confrontationalism won out, of course, as I clapped lightly. The subtext of my applause was "I hope you don’t die."

Afternoon, Dallas Airport
~ Ah, stale urine. One of my least favourite smells. Ever.

~ Why is the French word for "bread" the same as our word for "physical anguish"? do they know something we don't?

Still Afternoon, plane to Des Moines, Iowa
~ Tasty treats from the blair witch cheddar snack pack.

~ Did they used to serve peanuts on airplanes as an offering to Ganesh?

to be continued

there's no crying in baseball

these funny things were said in the office today:

"you've gotta smell the moose's butt. that's where the flavour is."

and

"she's feeling a little bashful this morning."
"oh, did you have some shy tea with breakfast?"

that is all.

my only comfort is the night gone black

irish gal, who was a good good friend in college and whom i have not at all kept up with said once, a few weeks after The Most Traumatic but not The MOst IMportant Break-Up of my life, that i was a good friend in crisis to have, cause i didn't make anyone take care of me.

heh.

what i might have said was that this meant that, although i'd traveled 7 hours to spend 2 weeks with her and i found her mildly attractive in a not compelling enough way to do anything about, she wasn't in my personal inner circle.

in the same crisis, Mister Chairperson had put me up for a month and dealt with me drunk, sobbing and raving. Twink, my sister, had humored me on white russians as i hatched a plan to drive 2 hours and cut a certain person's brake lines and, very important, kept me far away from any motor vehicle until i sobered up.

and it's a rare and vital thing, and i know it, to have people in my life who will do that. but there seems to be a limit, both on the number of them who'll be allowed, if that's the right word, and also on the ration of that crap i'll allow myself before i'm sick of my own voice. in my head and out.

and then, sometimes, everyone just has to go the fuck away, you know? so i go away instead and sleep or something until it is all better somewhat.

g'night.

sleepy day anagram games!

ashmead (as in college) becomes ashamed

the edge of the cool

a half-done annie quote the other day was ably assisted by The Amazon.

Grover will gleefully catch anything that comes from pulp fiction.

and a reference to the princess bride will get the whole office going for 7 and a half minutes.

but today i was bouncing around singing the trogdor song, and they all looked at me like i was a larouchee.

and this is why she doesn't keep a journal:

the alarm went off this morning at 6:45. notice that i don't try to claim i woke up at that time, or anything ridiculous like that. i actually woke up sometime between the 2nd and 3rd hits on the snooz bar long enough to think "shouldn't i be getting up soon?"

when i found my glasses, (they had somehow gotten away from the copy of The Rum Diary i was reading before sleep) the clock read 7:09 and the cd was whirring up for another go at the wake-up track. this song was chosen by mr. d, so i have no idea what it is. i do know that somewhere in the middle of it, my mental lyrics kick in with "gertrude dear, your son i fear is mourning his father's death." obviously my brain thinks this piece is from the Gilligan's Island where they did a musical Hamlet; as i've never seen this episode, i have no way of knowing whether this is true.

and we're already in paragraph three and i've yet to get out of bed. see?

got up, made a half-hearted email check, showered/brushed my teeth, managed to locate enough unbroken eggses in the fridge to have breakfast.

if i give my self breakfast/tv time at home, which is rare since i would usually prefer to trade the extra ten minutes in sleep, i tend to watch things that will annoy me (the today show) or music videos (vh1) for the wake-up value. watching mtv gave me the best of both worlds there.

long-ass commute to work, where nothing much interesting happened except having AN ENTIRE FREAKIN' DOUBLE BUS accelerate up and force itself ahead of me where the express lane disappears going over the bridge on montlake.

traffic was only at alert-level yellow, so i made the office before 9. then i had to leave right away to get to the bank as it opened. which, it turned out, was 10 and not 9, so i had another back-and-forth in store for me before i could settle in.

and that was _still_ less annoying than the time i spent in a middle school yesterday.

watch me unravel, i'll soon be naked

i need more sweaters. how have i managed to live here for over a year without acquiring more fall clothing?

also, it is perhaps time to start wearing a coat when i leave the St. Louis Embassy.

(hmmm, shall i wear the ugly shell, the too-big hoodie, the pleather with torn pockets, the peacoat with shredded lining, or the 80's raintrench?)

perhaps it is time to hit bargain berg for a new-to-me coat.

"It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going." Hunter S. Thompson in The Rum Diary

Hunter S. Thompson is a dangerous writer.

I don't mean this in the sense that he is a Gonzo human being who gets hopped up on various substances and indulges in reckless driving, random shooting and other destructive behavior. . .though he apparently does these things.

I mean he's dangerous in a William H. Macy sort of way.

William H. Macy is a brilliant naturalistic actor who makes it look very very easy.

Because William H. Macy makes acting look so easy, he causes David Mamet, an otherwise very smart man, to write stupid things such as "Actors just need to say the lines."

And because Hunter S. Thompson makes writing look so very very easy, he causes me to say stupid things to myself like "I guess all I really need to do is get totally pissed in some exotic locale and then the words will just flow in brilliant, uh, brilliantness, yeah i need some more whiskey."

it's a small small small small world

exactly two years ago, i was in a rooftop pool, fuzzy from champagne and soaking in the humidity and the drizzle from the peach-lit night sky.

a handful of hours before that, i sat restlessly basking in the flourescents of the miami international airport's lower level, waiting for my carried-on-by someone else luggage to appear. our flight to barbados had been canceled due to hurricane, a fact They hadn't seen fit to tell us while we were still at home.

Randomly, out of the mass of people milling about, i was nearly trod on by a distantly familiar face, er, foot.

it was The Other M. i'd gone to elementary school with him, and up through high school as well, but by that time our social circles were distinct enough to be basically separate.

it was strange that i even recognized him. it was odd that he recognized me. it was very very weird that we were both in the miami airport, far from the midwestern suburb where we both grew up.

we exchanged mild grown-up pleasantries, and got on with our lives. warn't no thang.

2 days ago, i got an email from my friend Uncle Pants. Uncle Pants grew up in Seattle, works as an actor and book pimp in St. louis and is basically the funniest person alive.

2 days ago, he sent me an email asking if it was alright to pass my email on to this girl who worked in his office.

i had previously run into this girl who worked in his office in the only method class i've ever taken. i stood the class for about 3 months before running for the hills.

oh, and i happened to have also gone to high school with her.

this girl was seeking my email because she didn't have any current contact information for me and, apparently, my ten year reunion is brewing.

so, shrug, i told Uncle Pants to feel free to pass my e-nfo along.

this morning i got an email, not from the girl, but from The Other M.

he mentioned seeing me in the miami airport "awhile ago," probably not at all aware that it was exactly 2 years.

these sneaks were made for barbie

where, exactly, does pink camouflage help you to not be seen?

fear and loathing at the ckarnival

editted too many times to too little effect

I was 2 blocks from the theatre when the caffeine kicked in.

"bastard," I thought. "where were you 45 minutes ago when I was hauling buckets?"

I was trudging to the plastic gazebo I would call home for the next 8 hours.

"these buckets feel like they're filled with cement!" i thought 44 minutes before. i looked down. they were filled with cement. "how about that?"

44 minutes later, i was carrying a wicker hamper filled with rocks and towels.

Gazebo Gazebo was conveniently located near but not too near the restrooms.

Gazebo Gazebo was inconveniently located near and too near the Let's Torment Rae Stage.

To wit: At 1pm, 2 soccer moms appeared. They had, apparently, devoured Laura Bush and Madonna, respectively, before making their entrance. They spent the next HOUR leading 2 dozen little children in endlessly varied percussive activities such as "shake, shake," "click, clack," and (my personal favourite) "stomp stomp."

They were followed by the Humbert Humbert Dance Revue: 13 pre-pubescents, overpainted and underclothed, gyrated awkwardly to sextastic songs. The finale involved line-dancing by girls dressed in bandana. Yeah, one bandana. Six girls. Apparently. Oh, and cowboy hats, 'cause lard knows we wouldn't want their heads to get cold.

At 3 pm, Reptile man was misnomered, not being reptilian himself, but he did come accessorized with 15 mint green RubberMaid tubs full of really big snakes.

Then he took them out of the tubs.

I stumbled for the solace of a funnel cake and a chair massage. Not at all in that order.

I had 2 hours to go when the funnel cake kicked in.

ps. since i recall them fondly from a water park visited in my adolescence, 'dippin' dots' can no longer accurately be called the "ice cream of the future." at best they get "ice cream of the now" and i fear may in truth be "the ice cream of 5 minutes ago."

...and then the little kid said what i was thinking:

worst carnival ever.

but what if i'm a mermaid

scooters are, at best
flimsy things which get you wet
fun, but no faith here

bite my lips and close my eyes

it's really hard to not like working at a place where, during the course of the day, there's a nerf gun battle and a nice lady stops you for a full minute to tell you in great detail how beautiful your eyes are.

there's fire in every finger

hopped up on adrenaline, caffeine and sugar, here is a list of my favourite candy. just for scause.

- reese's peanut butter cups
- pop rocks
- pixie stix
- candy buttons
- twix, any flavor
- lik-m-aid fun dip

one caress, miss piggy

i haven't the foggiest whether or no she was good at her job, but the woman who used this desk before me was a freakin' slob, yo.

and i know from slob.

i've spent the last, oh, i dunno, 30 minutes digging crumbs and hair (?!?) and some mysterious gooey stuff out of my keyboard with a paper clip.

but wait. haven't i any work to do?

you may well ask.

yes, but after 3 days of ten-hour, balls-to-the-walls working, i'm a touch fried.

plus, i don't even have any balls, so it's been a challenge.

also, i'll be in for 15 hours tomorrow.

and eleven hours the next day.

then eight hours on sunday.

if i have any will at all to come back to work monday, that'll officially mark this job as a keeper.

my avatar and
i seem to have switched places
odd, she tastes of pine

any way you look at it you lose

happy voting day!

here at the st. louis embassy, we ask the hard-hitting election questions:

"Is this pen thing supposed to be a girl with a ponytail or is the clip just some sort of tribal accessory."

"It has eyelashes. That's usually an artistic representation of a female."

"Also, its hands are rather saucily on its hips."

"Also, it's wearing a top."

(later)

"Ah, it appears on the website calling herself Penny."

"Penny the pen? That's a name worthy of Captain Kangaroo."

"Mr. Rogers wasn't any better. Like...ok, what were some of the names on Mr. Rogers?"

"How about Mr. McFeely?"

(hysterical laughter)

we thought he was a goner, but...

after arthur, king of the kittons' recent extreme vet visit, he's supposed to have been on wet cat food for the health and well being of his urinary tract. i've compromised with a half-time plan since he doesn't actually like the wet food as much as kitty kibble.

yes, he's a frickin' weird ass cat. i know.

anyway, to make up for the partial non-compliance, i've gone the extra mile with the "special diet" line from friskies. you know, the one that is supposed to be better for them. the one that is even more protective of the fuzzy monarch's vulnerable UT. the one that has a cat on it that looks almost exactly like him.

the hell?!? sometimes the consumer demons are just too too scary.

holy matrimony, batman!

as i type, the collective brain is busily trying to book a 2-day crazy trip round trip flight to mason city, iowa.

this marks the beginning of a trend; over the next 12 months, a handful of the longest standing most important people in my life are getting married.

this is a bit strange to me, since i and my close friends don't tend to be marrying types. . .no stranger than my being married, though, i guess.

when i mention this year o' the wedding to random other people, said people say things like "oh, well, these things go at certain ages you know." this is pretty meaningless on 2 counts:
1) the traditional 'certain ages' for this to happen where i come from are 18, 22, and 24, none of which apply to me right now and
2) the people getting married here range in age from 22-32 which seems too widespread to qualify as a "certain age".

anyway. the iowa wedding is that of media man, my first serious boyfriend. yes, with all that implies. it's cool. we stayed, in the vernacular, friends. yes, with all that implies. he was invited to my wedding and only a last minute business trip kept him from attending.

the extra irony to this whole situation (as least from my side; the extra irony to his situation entire is faaar toooooooo extensiiiiiiive to go into here) is: part of what caused me to break up with him (hindsight speaking) was a feeling that he was going to want to settle down and live a normal life, which would naturally scare the pants back on the pagan, no-child-wanting actress.

and then i go and get married 2 years before he does.

then again, they bought a house first.

so, you know, life. yeah.

it's alright to feel things, though the feelings may be strange

Talking to mums yesterday afternoon, I was very thankful that i had come unstuck the night before.

Thursday night i turned on magic window in search of 20 minutes worth of mindlessness, all the better to entertain me with, my dear, as i did crunches and curls and such.

What i found was The Major Death Scene in one of my favourite chick fliqs.

Instant heaving racking sobs, just add water. Which i did.

Odd. Despite the fact that i generally avoid crying, even fight it, that i hate the utter lack of control it occasions, i felt much worse all that time i couldn't cry.

Kind of like love.

I’m not a Viking wench

- Dear Elderly Caucasian Lady at Safeway, While I honour with no trace of irony your courage in wearing small cute sundresses at your age, I did find it extremely disturbing to witness you in frozen foods having an Elderly Asian Lady rescuing part of same dress from your (covered, thank god) butt cleavage. Please don’t do that ever ever ever ever ever ever again ever.
- Spideys are fascinating, which is something I often forget since my normal response to seeing them indoors is: set phasers to squishinate. However, the giant plate glass window outside SP Land today was generously festooned with them - safely outside for the comfort of both spideys and racheys - and they were fun to watch.
Best idea I came up with last weekend: sell my ova as a gourmet treat. Just try telling me there aren’t tons of rich freaks (ahe-REPUBLICANS-m) who’d enjoy feasting on the reproductive parts of the middle and lower classes, just try.

scientific progress goes boom

I watched this episode of Mythbusters last night. They basically bust the idea that using a cell phone while pumping gas can cause an explosion. . .getting in and out of your car while thus employed, on the other hand, appears to be very very dangerous.

So there I was, filling Nemesis with gas today, conscientiously staying out of the car (though admittedly more than a little curious about whether the whole static electricity thing actually works). I got bored, which is why I generally pop back into the car in the first place, so I started looking around and there, on the gas pump pavilion pole, was a warning about turning off electronic devices.

Right under it was a warning to ground yourself before touching the gas nozzle to clear any static electricity.

And stay out of your car.

And if the thing catches on fire anyway, for god's sake leave the nozzle where it is.

And I thought, wow, they move fast, the show was just on last night.

mistrust all enterprises which require new clothes, part 2

So, right, as I was saying, I was out on the observation deck of the Space Needle when I got the call.

the other day ~ Jade: So, how's your show going?

On the phone was Barfly.

Me: (pause) (pause) Oh. Good. We had good houses last weekend.

Barfly was calling to offer me The Job.

Jade: This was totally you just now: (makes face as blank as the children on the unicef box) (makes face of thinking) (makes face of enlightenment and says) Oh!

Thus, Barfly is now my boss.

Me: I kinda forget about the show between weekends...

I call my boss Barfly because his boss, Poolshark, thinks it funny to call him that.

Me: ...since I don't do very much to prep for it...

I call his boss Poolshark 'cause he is one, as I found out my second day on The Job, when the office took me to lunch and billards in honor of my joining them.

Me: ...and I've kind of had a lot going on lately.

In honor of my joining them, or perhaps in apology for so swiftly tossing me into the pool. . .with the wolves. . .before showing me how to use the xerox machine.

Mr. D says I should write this down for posterity:

My poetry reminds me of phlegm or cat urine: I've too much of all three, and wish I could come up with some use for them.

I've seen this room and I've walked this floor, part 2
(part 1)

the lady on the wheel
fearless, faultless, frowns
she defies
her flush and fringe
and spotlight fastened vertigo
suffered
for fools
front and fingers
and daggered looks
her facade
feint revolution
or frank disguise
self sacrificed
she feels
her fate whistling past her ears
her fate reflecting in their faces
their faces frankly bloodthirsty
every night she feels
better
her heart in her throat
then
her life in their hands

“If your mother gets run over by a bus the night of the opening, you cry a little, you go out to the press and you say ‘It’s a tragedy. She would’ve really loved this play.’”

So I wander over to Starbucks for a taste of evil and naturally my mind turns to marketing. I recall my excitement yesterday when finding out a touring actor had a local connection. I reminisce fondly over my rant regarding not being allowed to exploit a national tragedy for theatrrrical gain.

And then I remember last night, when I saw a trailer for the Ray Charles movie and thought, in this order: “Is that Jamie Fox? He’s doing a really good job with the physicality. I wonder if the movie was rushed to release or if it’s just a coincidence that made some marketing person pants-wettingly happy?”

coming soon: actual details about the new job! a post longer than 3 sentences! sleep!

oh, who am i kidding?

bang the gong

if Mr.D and John Galt had a bastard lovechild, it would be stephen colbert.

eric the half a bee

I don't do the link thing very often, but do yourself a favor and go listen to this...but not while at work, perhaps.

can't trust that day

newsflash to self: just 'cause you started your new job, doesn't make it monday.

does anybody really know what time it is?

i am wearing a watch, for the first time in almost two years. it is strange how strange it is to glance at my wrist and have the slow realization that this shiny pretty thing is communicating to me the time.

update: the watch is comfortable for sleeping, very important for any watch-like item in my world.

everyone likes movies, that's why they call them movies

(preparing to watch The Spanish Prisoner, a factoid re: David Mamet's using a metronome in rehearsal to train his actors flashes on-screen)

Me: (laughs uncontrollably)
MrD: This from Mr. Don't Act Don't Do Anything But Say The Lines Just Say The Lines Mamet?! Fuck you, Mr. Mamet, fuck you.
Me: He'd embrace that sentiment.
MrD: He would.
Me: He should. If he had any, if he had just a scrap of that, what?, self-analysis, self-honesty he espouses in his writing, he would, he'd totally embrace that sentiment.
MrD: Right.
Me: As he appears to be an asshole, perhaps not so much.
MrD: (reading opening credits) Felicity Fucking Huffman.
Me: Wait, no, no, look, wait, look: we like Felicity Huffman.
MrD: Is Felicity Huffman the one with William H. Macy?
Me: Felicity Huffman's the one married to William H. Macy.
MrD: We like her.
Me: It's the other one. It's Rebecca Pigeon.
MrD: Rebecca Fucking Pigeon.
Me: Yeah, fuck her.

mistrust all enterprises which require new clothes

i was at the top of the space needle when i got the call.

i was hanging out with sgnp, benlau, and sgnp's visiting sister when my pocket started to vibrate. my current cell phone is the first i've ever owned that a) actually fits into my pocket and b) has a vibrating option. the whole point of getting such a phone was to render more stealthy the ringing of said phone, a point I ruin by jumping every time the damn thing buzzes.

i wound up hanging out with the group on the space needle through the simple position of being unemployed. the call was to change all that.

i'd been thinking about getting a part-time job. i'd been thinking about going back to school. i'd been thinking about pursuing acting more professionally than i have been this little while. in the middle of all this, i had a revelation so sudden i don't remember when it happened. just, one minute it wasn't part of my world view and the next, it was:

i'm too poor and in debt to do anything i want to do.

i needed a real, full-time, grown-up job. this presented a problem, as real, full-time, grown-up jobs tend to turn me into a raging hypochondriac. so, i needed a job that might, perhaps, invoke some interest on my part. bouncing through links off a non-profit website, i came across a job listing for a pr person on the eastside.

i applied. i was given an assignment. i enjoyed completing it. i bought a nice sweater and shirt to go with my only suit. i got called in for an interview. i agreed i could do without my blue hair. i heard back from my references. i stressed and waited.

i was at the top of the space needle when i got the call.

long, dark, slug trail to
apartment three-oh-seven
it must be trash day

i can't read! pleeeeeease gimme what's in the bag

best bacon, st. louis:
uncle bill's pancake house

best bacon, seattle:
the hurricane
and
jitterbug

i thought you'd know this already, i will not be afraid of women

what are you about?
is there an alpha dog here,
you ask? damn skippy.

while the memories linger, forever more

so.

due to the nature of the show i'm currently sort of acting in, i'm getting a lot of reading done.

i tend to read a lot in any case, but as i'm sitting for over an hour every night with basically nothing to do but read, this mad pace is ripping me right through my current on-deck list.

i'm not complaining, really, i'm just in desperate need of book recommendations.

pretty please.

fiction, if you don't mind.

Alright don't worry even if things end up a bit too heavy we'll all float on alright

I woke up as Jane's Inexplicable Mild Panic Attack.

Not 'inexplicable' in the sense that I have nothing about which i could/should/would be panicky, but 'inexplicable' that out of the 5 or 6 possibilities, i can't isolate the one.

This worked quite well on Wednesday, as i prodded around my brain like a second year med student: does it hurt there? does it hurt here? does it hurt when i press this?

And when my stomach clenched, presto bingo, we had a winner. Wednesday it was waiting to hear about the job.

Today I press and poke and probe, but no good, no sudden clenching reward. Just Jane's Tummy Stress Song and Dance "No, you ain't gonna eat no food, don't gonna put food in here, oh no oh no oh no no no" going on and on and on.

Oh, and as the day wears on, we're joined by Jane's Mounting Geyser of Rage. Looks like a juice and popsicle day, then, fer sure.

didn't i realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness?

it's quarter after 2 when the nausea kicks in. is it the 4 cups of coffee, the book i've been reading, or the plethora of other stuff?

i've been reading (in fact, just finished as i type this) Fight Club. a lovely book, i found it compelling and stomach-turning in much the same way The DaVinci Code wasn't.

it reminded me most sharply of the 2 days i spent reading A Clockwork Orange one summer. july in my unairconditioned maintenance van, already woozy, was probably not the wisest time for reading myself into an unwillingness to eat, but i couldn't put the damn book down. instead, i forced pretzels into my mouth with one hand and kept going.

(interestingly, i might have found Fight Club far more inspiring in my then-guise of fire hydrant maintainer. fortunately, it wasn't published 'til the next year. lucky miss, county water.)

whatever the cause, i was Jane's Sense of Pervasive Nausea for the remainder of the day, rehearsement and all-inclusive. obviously, throwing a beer and slice of pizza on top of that was the smart thing to do. or, not.

so, you know that I can be less than pleasant

entering tech week, i realized this morning that i'm on my last pair of clean undies. 3/4 of the time, this would not be a huge problem. woo and hoo.

i have set aside everything i love, i have saved everything else for you

At Target this weekend, my eye was caught by the Bratz Tokyo-A-Go-Go Sushi Playset. Really. A little faux sushi bar "with real working conveyer belt!" and little plastic sushi rolls for the little Bratz dolls who, for some unknown reason, are all dressed like the cast of Pippin.

In the next aisle I could have found, if I hadn't been scared away by it on a previous trip, the Happy Family or, as I like to call it, ThirtySomething Barbie collection. It features nuclear familial units with 2.5 kids and dolls with grey hair and crow's feet.

On a different front of weirdness, Care Bears, Transformers, He-Man, Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Pony and now freakin' Cabbage Patch Kids are all back from the mists of my childhood. . .but in heavily accessorized mutations.

I used to enjoy shopping in the toy department.

and don't it make my brown hair blue

i s'pose there's possibly a potential i might have to give up my superhero-blue hair sometime soon. if it is so, i will sorely miss conversations like these:

Me: I need to get a haircut soon. My hair's grown out to a point where it's looking weird.
Jade: You do realize it's still blue?
Me: Yeah, but I've kind of gotten used to it.
Jade: Me too; it makes it really easy to find you in the food court.
Me: Really?
Jade: I'm pretty sure you're the only person in this building with blue hair.
Me: One of my friends said that the other night at the opera, but then I pointed out all the senior citizens in attendance.
Jade: Not the same.

I've seen this room and I've walked this floor

the lady in the box
sweetly sickly smiles
she assists
all sweat and sparkle and
sharp observed focus
reduced
to extremities
hands and feet and
guarded expression
her center
bright mystery
or dark potential
her fate thundering over her stomach
her fate flashing in his hands
his hands surely misleading
just before the plunge
or the cut off
captured she catches
her eye in the blade bright
ready
steady
inscrutable

oh, the things i don't say

"20 dollars for a baby, that's a good deal."
"For the person getting money it is."

the dark of the matinee is mine

and back to the present, where i'm listening to a lot of franz ferdinand.

today i had the fun of being a voluntary victim in a disaster drill. you can see what that sort of looked like here. playing a panicker, with not terribly serious injuries, i went 3for3 in the energy vampire game. sense of accomplishment level: higher than this deserves.

presently blogging to procrastinate the work on a practical test pursuant to a job application. more on that if it goes anywhere.

Day 3, Dillon to Seattle
and
there's a pie in the pantry and the coffee's always hot

- the hamburgler beenie baby at macdonald's was kind of cute, but the blue one with the mcnugget patch over its heart just confused me

- sign beside the road: FLEA (large arrow over this appearing to point into the ditch)

- sign on a trailer licensed in florida: Just Married...50 years ago!

- lunched at the 10,000 Silver Dollar Bar. there are 10,000 silver dollars embedded in the bar top. 35,000+ on the walls. no idea why.

- the silver dollar restaurant featured lacquered wood jesus plaques. john wayne and elvis were similarly artistically represented on other shiny wood plaques, most memorably The Duke's head floating in clouds over a wagon train. draw your own conclusions from this; anthropologists will.

they say the highway's just one big road
or
Day 2, Dillon, MT
still not back to present-time

- checking in to the Dillon Super 8 at what we thought was 5 am, the clerk, fairly, asked us what we were doing in Dillon. when we explained our theatrrrical quest, he told us his friend was president of the "drama club" at the local college. we politely refrained from laughing.

***note: not noticing that one is going to cross into a new time zone is a sure sign of a not very well planned trip.

- we breakfasted at 1 pm, mountain time, at the Paradise Garden of Eat'n. really.

- running into friends when you're both somewhere you've never been before, hundreds of miles from anywhere either of you are likely to be, is odd.

***killing time in historic downtown Dillon, i saw a bicyclist go by. i wondered if it was likely to be a university student. i noticed she looked familiar, like one of our friends from the international theatre collective. i said "hi liz." she looked, said "hi," looked again, said "hey!" and circled back to ask what we were doing there.

******interestingly, what she was doing was bicycling to take a picture of the Longhorn Saloon, where she'd been working for the past month. that out of the way, she had us follow her to the collective's house.

- we dinnered at Papa T's family dining, which had an old Chuck E Cheese carousel and an entire wall of video games. "that must be the 'family' part," said MrD. at Papa T's you had your choice of sides: french fried potatoes, cross-cut potatoes, or Jojos. "what are jojos?" i had to enquire of the waitress. "quartered potato wedges."

- after the show, we came over all anti-social (i had an allergy attack and, well, casts are kinda tight and sometimes you just don't wanna intrude) and pretty much vanished. so, to make it up to them and show them our esteem, we bought them muffins, orange juice, and a penguin card, and left these on their porch

It's a mad mad mad mad roadtrip

Seattle to Dillon, MT and back again in 49.5 hours. Insane, you say? Yes, quite. But I'm backdating and sharing my notes anyway, so you can pretend you were there. . .or I was blogging en route. . .or something.

*Note: to achieve full madness, imagine hours of intermittent along-with-the-radio singing.

- dinner "on the road" was, cheatingly, only 7 blocks from home at the place of beautiful noodles and my favourite slightly incompetent but nonetheless charming waitress

- drank a toast to my father, whose 62 birthday it would've been. during the thunderstorm we drove through later, i told mr.d about watching thunderstorms from lawn chairs in the garage with dad when i was little. so, obviously he was more gently on my mind than usual this night

- Van or AstroVan?

- MrD: "I'm going to Issaquah...
Me: "...seven nation army couldn't hold me back."

- only eaten here
on road trips pothole cratered
chocolate moon pie

- ghostly old mission
surely you took a wrong turn
in Albuquerque

- if the sun hatched out
of a robin's blue egg
each morning
it could not
delight me blindly more
as i zoom east
faster, harder to catch
than its greased self
my wonder
the definition
of thunderstruck

he's in love with the world, and sometimes these feelings can be so misleading

my latest link in the "people i don't know" section gave me a rather complimentary 'blogback, which i found to be kinda pretty darn cool.

as for his blog, i went for the title, i stayed for the articulate anger. and the bile. and the "praise" sidebar. i'm not into the sailor schoolgirls so much, myself, but then, i don't have to be.

i cannae change the laws of physics
or
the entry formerly known as "holding"

This evening, I found the following bit in my copy of Basic Physics, A Self-Teaching Guide "the most practical, complete, and easy-to-use guide available for understanding physics..."

~~ digressing for just a moment, this gives yet more evidence of exactly the shape and scope of nerd i am to a) be going over physics concepts in my evening freetime and b) find something in my study to be "laugh aloud and share on the blog" funny ~~

Anyway, I'm zipping along, merrily learning about vector addition, when all of a sudden, "Suppose two cars push on the huge pie in part 1 of the figure at the top of page 9."

Uhhhh.....yeah man, phew, I gotta say. Giant Pies, what a pain. They're never where you want them to be, ya know? And what're you gonna move it with? You think one car's gonna do her? Oh no. No no no no no no no. And then they're never the flavour you wanted, either...

(I'll admit here that I'm not sure which amused me: The fact that 2 cars pushing a "huge" pie is The practical real world Example they felt would best illustrate the concept, or just the calm assumption of the giant pie.)

(Which begs the question: what examples did they discard as too, er, outlandish?)

(Also introduces a new catch phrase: Inevitable as a giant pie.)

if i wait, this could die, if i wane, this could die

Have you had it happen, sitting in a show you've been told was very good, that not only do you not consider it "very" or "good" at all, but also that it's so far from what you'd like to do with your A(a)rt that you don't know how to judge or even discuss it?

And if so, where did that lead you? Did amazing things happen? Were you bitter and dissastisfied from then on? Was there an artistic schism? Compromise? Back to school? Out of school?

(I feel all Jackson Pollacky when I wonder these wonders, but i assure you I'm not drinking (too) heavily, nor smashing up cars or furniture.)

i'm just a cross hair, i'm just a shot away

i am grateful for: plentiful hugs, a comfy bed, good scotch

a game the whole family can hate

arthur, king of the kittons, is being medicated for the next two weeks after what was intended to be a simple check-up/vaccination update/vet visit got way out of hand.

dr. catsenjammers called right before lunch, with some findings which would involve a) surgery and b) observing kitty overnight.

this upset me a bit, beyond the obvious: anytime anyone goes under for invasive surgery, they have that small chance of not coming out. what was really eating at me was that i told mr. arthur this was going to be a short, not too bad visit.

he is subjected daily to sarcasm, mockery and, occassionally (horrors!) pookie talk, but as a general rule, i do not lie to my cat.

five syllables here
seven quietly follow
empty of meaning

a jug of bread, a loaf of wine, and thou beside me whistling in the dark

watching Iron Chef
"What's today's ingredient?"
"Given what they've just said was in those 2 dishes, it's either soy sauce or duck."
"Probably duck."
conveniently-timed flashback of the ingredient announcement
"Yep, definitely duck."
"Oh!  Were they alive?"
"That would be an extra challenge."
"I think having to cook with duck would throw me a bit."
"Oh, you mean more than, say, squid or sea urchin?"
"Isn't this the same chef who got bitten by the squid?"
"Yeah, I think it was the Red Chef."
"He's the French Chef."
"That would explain why he just spent 15 minutes arranging 2 tablespoons of food on the plate."
"It keeps sounding like the announcers are saying 'dog'."
"Now that's a secret ingredient we'll never see."

"You're ruining my play!" screamed the ex-carnie

There was a moment I knew it had all gone mediocritly wrong.  I was sweating.  I was in the booth wearing as little as I possibly could standing absolutely still and yet sweat dripped gently from my elbows, oozed from behind my knees and crept stealthily up the roots of my hair like a fluid chia pet.  I winced periodically as I watched the actress who seemed to have the least idea of what she was saying.  Suddenly ". . .like the shoes, the nails are. . ." went by and she gestured woodenly to her feet.  She was barefoot.  I gave up, turned my back and rested my head against the cool white wall.

we're very wide awake, the moon and i
it's funny.  i've a ziplock bag and a shelf full of things that would supposedly help me sleep, if that's what i wanted.  but i've no solid handle on any teas or other liquid assists which would help me get past being unable to cry.

the hazards of paper mache-ing naked

these should be pretty obvious

ten ten ten ten
everything everything everything everything

on a personal level, this weekend has been so unbelievably crappy that i can only imagine the rest of the week will be exceedingly fantastic, if merely by comparison.

Cupcakes are tasty and good.

oh, joy, oh rapture
take care
take a breath
hold tight
plunge
but while in the hidden depths
let no scream escape
it has no place

and if you've got no other choice, you know you can follow my voice

this might be the laziest blog entry ever.  or my laziest blog entry ever. thing is, i've really nothing in mind to chat about.  however, there are many things i could be doing, and perhaps should be doing, that i'm avoiding doing by doing this instead.

lazy, i am.  contrary as well.

it's in an odd form tonight, though.  i'm slightly, or maybe almost, nauseated and the only thing i really feel like doing is curling up with a blankie and a book and some vodka and reading until dawn, when i suspect i'll finally be able to sleep.

but what is the role call of responsible activity i'm avoiding? 
finishing butt bows: i really didn't want to be production manager for this thing and stuck as i am i'm dragging my feet on every little task;
starting programs: ditto previous explanation;
art pin~ata: no balloons and i'm not up for putting on pants to go out and buy some even though the walgreens is only 2 blocks away;
acting application: well, the resume file is in the other computer, which is waaay on the other side of the office...moreover, the last time i worked computer hopping i got what is probably going to turn into a sizable scar.

i have 2 already-scars, and both of the stories are quite lame. 
on my right index finger, between the tip and the first knuckle: i was at day camp and, undersupervised, my group decided it was a good idea to have a water fight with babyfood jars.  
on my forehead, at the hairline: ring-around-the-rosie, sad but true, age 3-ish, i fell early and my partner's front teeth jammed into my head.  the team doing the stitches on me had to call in an extra adult to lie on my legs and keep me from kicking the doctor doing the actual sewing.

seriously, though, is there any real reason i can't drink vodka and read until daylight if i wish?  thinks.  answer: no.  buona notte, then. 

The Rate of Conversion

I have lived in Seattle for 1 year, 5 months, 1 week, 5 days, and some number of hours less than 24.

Just returned from the Safeway where, for the first time ever, I purchased coffee beans for myself to use to brew coffee at home that will be ingested by me.

Also, I rode a public-transport bus thingie for the first time yesterday.

What will I do tomorrow?  Start a band?  Buy some hiking boots?  Think the Designated Hitter is a good idea?