- 14 July 2004 -
Money falls from the sky into my bank account tonight at midnight, which is truly rocking,
as I have either $4 or $11.51 in there right now, depending on whom you ask. I owe people
money. I owe institutions money. I owe myself food.
(I could write my own diet book. The diet would go: subtract my food budget from client's
food budget. Pay me the difference. Show client how to shop for groceries on remaining
money. Rice and beans? You like rice and beans? Oh, GOOD! You damn well better like rice
and beans! Did you know you can also eat it on toast with an egg? For a week? True!)
Other things I ate today include a cookies 'n' cream flavor pudding in a tube that I
accidentally squeezed inappropriately (whoa!) and squirted all over my hand and skirt. (Oh
dear.) Then when I tried to rinse out the skirt in the sink, I made a sort of accidental
fabric aqueduct and directed a great deal of water out of the sink, and onto my legs, and
all over the floor in rivers. Yes, thank you.
I am sorry I am not updating more often. FAILURE! Don't feel bad, the internet is hardly
the only one I am failing.
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- 2 July 2004 -
Is it a big bloggie (ech! ech! blog!) faux pas not to organize my archives by month? Maybe
I should start doing that instead of cutting off sections according to my own inexplicable
whims.
This morning (before work!) I am wearing a skirt I found at the thrift store and with which
I am deeply pleased. It is made of that vaguely seersucker-ish blue and white pinstriped
stuff, and it wraps around and is nice and long, and appliqued on the back are WHALES IN
LOVE. They are blue whales with red hearts above their heads and are swimming in a row of
red
rickrack. Whales in love!!! I think it is the best thing I've ever owned. The cats also
enjoy
untying the ties in the back as I sit here. Hm.
Today Molly comes, tomorrow my mother and her boyfriend arrive in New Jersey to stay with my
uncle. I will go and visit them, and vice versa. They are taking a big road trip in their
Chevy Prizm, which has somehow been converted into a camper-like
vehicle. I have to go see
them just to witness the Camper Prizm. Apparently the backseat has been removed and some
mattress-platform has been rigged; I really can't picture it.
Must go make my funny short hair curl under with application of many products now. Happy
Friday!
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- 29 June 2004 -
My interest in Good Eats on
the Food Network is rapidly turning to obsession. Alton Brown is my hero. I urge you all
to watch it! Right now Alton is showing me how to take care of my knives and cut vegetables
and make tomato sauce. Previously he has shown us how to make grilled cheese, bake yellow
cake, make fudge and make omelets and frittatas. Last time Tiffany and I watched together
I inadvertently said "SSSHHH! We're LEARNING!" when she started to say something. It is
back on now, so I must return to my watching position, where I sit slightly slack-jawed,
scowl with concentration and mimic various chopping and stirring motions with my hands.
SSSSHHHH! It is time for learning.
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- 28 June 2004, later -
After work I went to the thrift store near Tekserve and on my way back to the train I passed
an ad seeking contestants for the next Mr. Gay.com. So I started giggling, because MR.
GAY.COM!!! How is that not funny? I think it's the .com that makes it funny. And then
just as I walked past the ad I passed the Most Annoying
One from Queer Eye,
and he glared at me because I was still smirking at Mr. Gay.com. (Mr. Gay.com!
Heeheeheehee!) Maybe he thought I was smirking in that "I know you're vaguely famous, but I
won't make a scene" way. I hope not. I don't care that you're vaguely famous, and I never
make a scene. Thank you very much.
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- 28 June 2004 -
MAN, why do all you people (see how I fought off the urge to call
you "haters" just there?) have to be friends-only-ing your
livejournals? I like you! I can't read you! I so proudly got rid of
my own livejournal on the theory that shit on the internet should be
accessible, yo. If I'm going to put it out there, I should put it out
there, and if I don't want people reading it I should keep it to myself
or send e-mail. Which is all very well for me, but now I can't keep
track of all the people I silently stalk and NEVER EVER talk to, which
is most of them. Goddamn!
I forgot to mention earlier that while I was at work last week I began
fiddling around in sccs trying to see what I could delete to make my
account function, and while I failed at that I happened upon a directory
I'd made named "save this," which, interestingly, I was about to delete
without opening (BRAINS ALERT BRAINS ALERT!) but out of curiosity I did
and in it discovered copies of all the journals I'd kept that I thought
were lost forever with my stolen Powerbook. OH. So all that weeping at
the loss of the records of fucking-craziness was, um, unnecessary.
Ok.
I read some of them over the weekend when I meant for myself to be
writing, and boy was I a tool. Also astoundingly self-absorbedly crazy
and miserable. I wonder how much has changed.
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- 26 June 2004 -
Tiffany left for Florida in the extremely wee hours of Wednesday morning, so I continue home
alone. On Wednesday night I was so tired that I turned off the lights at 7:30. Twelve
hours of sleep on a weeknight is a moderately miraculous thing. Last night I indulged my
most embarrassing home-alone desires and cleaned like (?) a crazy person. It is possible
that I shined the garbage
can with Windex, it is possible that I scrubbed the grout in the bathroom floor with
bleachy spray, it is possible that I did laundry until 2 a.m.
All this PALES, however, in comparison to what I have just done. I hauled myself out of bed
relatively early and finally went to the farmer's market that comes every Saturday to a lot
about a block away from here. A block away. Unlimited fresh cheap produce. AND I HAD
NEVER GONE. I honestly nearly wept, standing there staring at the heaps of shining produce
and smelling the fruit-smell instead of stale grocery-store-smell. Instead I grinned the
dopey grin of a small child who thinks that smiling means displaying as many teeth as
humanly possible. Hello! I am just fondling these bright red tomatoes and grinning a
maniacal toothy grin! Don't mind me!
I have offers to do other things this weekend, like go to the recently returned Monica's
house (she is recently returned, the house to my knowledge has stayed put) for a chocolate
party (real chocolate! German chocolate!) and so on. And I may. But
the funny thing is how utterly content I am alone. I am also happy when there are people,
but that's a riskier and more intense happiness that threatens to become overwhelming at any
moment. They both have their charms. I am infinitely reassured by my capacity to be all
right, and that makes me laugh. Once the only thing I found reassuring was my
consistent and familiar capacity to be not all right at all.
Well. I'm going to go eat nectarines or something.
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- 21 June 2004 -
Yesterday I gave close to a foot of my hair away to people with no hair. Now I keep trying
to lift the weight of my ponytail out from my shirt collar and there is no weight to lift.
Shocking! And delightful!
Would type more but must go sit quietly on the couch while Tiffany cuts vegetables for
dinner as I have managed to slice both my left index and middle fingers open just in the
past hour and now they are both bandaged up and not cooperative. Finger 1 fell to chipped
glass on coffee pot (now thrown away) and Finger 2 to clumsy bandaged-finger slippery
avocado chopping with good sharp Wusthof knives.
Goddamn! Ow! But my hair's cute.
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- 18 June 2004 -
Weather = too warm.
Work = very busy.
Me = very sleepy.
Cats = damn crazy.
Free time = Animal Planet.
Email = still broken.
You = missed.
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- 9 June 2004 -
If I owe you email I apologize; something has gone madly wrong with my sccs account and it
thinks I have thousands upon thousands of messages in certain folders and none in other
folders and I've deleted many things out of desperation and stopped using pine because the
poor sccs staff told me to use webmail while they figured out why I was using, like, 6 gigs
of space when I hardly keep anything. And now keep less.
WHO KNOWS! More later.
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- 1 June 2004 -
See, the thing is there's no way to write anything here that will
satisfy me. It's not that I'm too busy, or very busy at all. I think
too hard and too much. This is the smallest part of it. What can I
tell you that's not too vague, too detailed, too dull, too lyrical, too
wordy, too whimsical, too fucking clever? Or
self-congratulatory or self-deprecating or self-satisfied or
self-conscious? You have no idea how harsh I am when I am being quiet.
And however critical I am of other people and their writing, I am many
times more critical of myself because it's ONLY FAIR. So what am I
going to write? If anyone has stumbled upon a medium that permits both
honesty and clarity, feel free to let me know. You might be spared
these rants in the future, so it's really beneficial for all of us.
I can say without hesitation, however, that I really enjoy cooking.
REALLY. Bring me some food to prepare! I can whip cream with one hand
and melt chocolate with coffee in a double boiler with the other, and
stop occasionally to separate eggs! I can clean and peel and chop
asparagus, cook it with garlic and lemon and things, toss it with
boomerang-shaped pasta! I can do many things. I can cook! I cannot
write! But I am working on it.
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- 30 May 2004 -
BACK FROM BEYOND...
Nothing, just having a lot of shit to do. Right now Malia and Tiffany are playing Mario
Party something-or-other, and we just ate Bittersweet
Chocolate Mousse Brownies that I made and so it's like a chocolatey heap of death in my
stomach right now. Splendid! Wow have I ingested a great deal of heavy cream. WOW WAS IT
GOOD.
Lately: two weeks ago Sarah was here for a long weekend, and that was most excellent, as I
had not seen her for a good year and a half. We did many exciting things, but most of them
were eating. (Spice for Thai, Mama's for loads of food, Tick Tock Diner, Pommes Frites for
the beloved fries, ice cream, pizza, more, more!) The
weekend after that Tiffany's friend from home visited. The week after
that I had a cold. Oh wait, that's now. Dammit.
There is much drama at work, but it will resolve itself eventually. Soon I will be on my
own for a few weeks as the trusty and ubercompetent Monica will be going to Germany to
visit her family, but I
did it before when I was less smart in the ways of Tekserve and it was fine then, so it'll
be extra-fine (like SUGA!) now. Someday I will do something I love to do (and by extension
will have realized that I love to do something!) but for now I will do not terribly exciting
work with fun people and pay the bills. (As I said before to Tiffany, I can see the shining
debt-free future in the distance, and it's a good thing it's shining, because otherwise I
wouldn't be able to see it as it is SO FUCKING FAR AWAY! Or something to that effect.)
On recent trips to Strand I bought:
Electric Light and The Spirit Level by Seamus Heaney
Reasons for Moving and Darker in one collection by Mark Strand
Radio Sky by Norman Dubie
some collected things by W.S. Merwin
and Notes from the Divided Country by Suji Kwock Kim
and these things please me to no end. More accurately, the Seamus Heaney pleases me beyond
all reason, and the other ones I like well enough. I've reread the Heaney collections so
much that I get the language itself stuck in my head. Not specific poems, not lines or
turns of
phrase, just the particular flow of words running low in my mind when I'm not even paying
attention. It's really one of the best things ever.
OH SHIT I nearly forgot: when Tiffany's friend was here we went to eat at Zen Palate and it
looked like the guy at the table next to us was bringing a child prostitute out to eat. It
was really baffling: small Asian girl with hair curled, as much glitter and makeup
as you can
imagine, a fake leather skirt about five inches long so she couldn't really sit down, a
weird gothic hook and eye closing
shirt, high-heeled shoes far too big for her feet. She looked no older than eleven. Eating
dinner with old white stringy-gray-haired tattooed man. I don't know. What do YOU think?
Lest we end on that scary note, I will close with the word that means exactly the opposite
of
scary: TACOS!!
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- 13 May 2004 -
1. I have become one of Those People. I didn't care (or even know
much) about it when they started making The Lord of the Rings
movies. I don't care that they're making a movie of The
Talisman, either (shocked as I am that Stephen King has agreed to
let one of his novels be adapted for a film! Oh. Never mind.) BUT THEY
ARE MAKING AN
EARTHSEA MOVIE and I now I will have to hit people. At least it's only
on the Sci Fi Channel. The last thing I read about it was that Isabella
Rossellini was cast as High Priestess Thar, described in the article as
"one of the many wizards on the Isle of Roke." FIRST, WRONG! ALSO,
INCORRECT! Not a wizard. Not on Roke. Did they read the books? And
notice the near-total lack of women, until the follow-up fourth book
years later? And also, wrong? Oh god I am one of Those People.
2. Today is my Friday, although it is Thursday, because I am not working
tomorrow, because Sarah is coming today. (!!!!) Hijinks will ensue!
I am excited.
3. Last night I was bustling around and cleaning things and I scooted
the couch back and underneath were two fur mousies (no surprise) and a
gutted red pen (surprise!). The cat had somehow UNSCREWED the pen,
taken the red ink barrel, and left the outside parts under the couch.
What??
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- 8 May 2004 -
Look, I archived! Everything's at the bottom, just like before. I imagine I should
really put archive links up near the top so they're accessible, like all the cool kids
do, but too bad.
A quiz: SOMEONE unrolled an entire roll of toilet paper last night and spread it all over
the bedroom floor. Who do you think it was?
(Hint: Tiffany is away, Pigeon isn't that industrious. IT WASN'T ME EITHER.)
Two nights ago Tiffany called me at midnight when I was asleep and I tried valiantly but
ultimately unsuccessfully to answer the alarm clock.
Today I help Greg move, tomorrow I clean the house so Sarah doesn't think we live in a
fur-covered and stinky hovel. We don't! We just have fur-covered and stinky roommates!
Gray and black cats don't mix well with white couches.
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