One Thousand Cranes

2009-06-09T20:54:00.001-04:00

Why is it sometimes so hard to be productive?

I may need a vacation. I will be taking care of that in a couple weeks.

2009-05-17T20:16:00.002-04:00

For some reason gmail keeps giving me a bunch of baby food ads. Thanks to all my friends having babies, probably. (Are we talking about it that much? Over email? Maybe we just have to say the word "pregnant" in one email and we get thousands of baby food ads for years afterwards.) I keep wanting to yell at my computer: You can feed your baby.... actual food! You just put some veggies in the blender. Put whatever you want in there. (I mean, within reason. Maybe leave out the curry.) God only knows what they are putting in those jars. I'm increasingly annoyed at all these manufactured needs that aren't really needs. Anyway.

Saw a disturbing movie: "The Future of Food" on hulu.

Apparently it does not have to be "sunny" per se for me to get a sunburn, that is how talented I am.

2009-05-06T22:25:00.002-04:00

For Christmas I asked for a calendar, and I got one. It's got fancy astronomy pictures in it. It's hanging up in my cubicle. But then I still needed one for my kitchen, and I just took forever getting around to it. I couldn't take the 2008 one down, because the calendar in my kitchen is hiding the fuse box, which I didn't want to look at. So it remained December 2008 in my kitchen for quite a while (the least outdated thing in my kitchen. except maybe the fridge and the stove, which as you may be aware, I purchased new quite recently. the 1950s cabinets are still there though, so it's not exactly what you'd call a finished project. but I digress.) until I finally, in like March or something, got a new calendar. There are not that many calendars around in March, let me tell you. I didn't have what you would call a lot of options. You know how you are always in the bookstore in mid-February and they still have calendars up, and you think to yourself, "What fool still has not got their new calendar?" Well I am that fool. (I was going to write, "that fool is me" but then Ms. Zikhur, my 7th grade grammar teacher, reminded me in my mind that I'd have to say "that fool is I" which sounded pretentious, so I reworked.) It would be a funny ending to my story if I were to tell you how I ended up with some calendar that I would never have selected under ordinary circumstances, and now I am stuck with Xena, Warrior Princess until 2010 or something. I agree that I have set this story up like it is supposed to be funny. But my calendar is a little on the non-descript side - probably wouldn't have been my first choice if I'd had the full selection, but it wouldn't have been my last either (unlike Xena). It's sort of asian-themed drawings with fake zen sayings on them. I say "fake zen" but that is my inner cynic speaking. Okay, promise I am getting to the point soon (why is the hot water heater making so much noise?). The May saying is the following: "May the hearers awaken from forgetfulness and transcend all anxiety and sorrow."
Today is the 6th so I have been looking at that for a while, but I didn't really start thinking about it until today. Now I am thinking about forgetting. How we do it in an attempt to heal ourselves, because we don't want to deal with that shit, we want to forget it. To transcend something, to rise above it, means you actually have to travel through it, and we don't want to do that. I don't, anyway. Right now I am dealing with one of those things I tried to forget, put it back there in a box with all the other old stuff. But you can never forget forever. These things are part of us... parts of us that demand to be heard, eventually. I think there is a place for setting aside, looking away, coming back to deal with things when we are maybe a little stronger, when we have the perspective to realize it was never the end of the world anyway. But we forget, truly forget, at our peril.

2009-04-21T21:38:00.002-04:00

Here goes nothing.

Drinking a beer. I'm feeling pretty pissed. I'm not sure if the beer is making me more pissed, or less pissed. I may have to give up reading the news, I am so pissed. Now, I know I have said this before, that I'm going to give up politics, blah blah blah. What pisses me off? Oh, you know, same old same old. Wiretapping, torture, my soccer team losing. Or drawing after blowing a lead (three times). It all kinda makes me want to buy a yurt in the countryside. Maybe I need a better coping mechanism. I restarted my yoga class yesterday... perhaps that will help.

I need a poster for my cubicle. Lettuces are growing, carrots are growing, peas and parsley are getting started. I've been thinking about stuff.

2008-04-01T20:06:00.002-04:00

So, I am going on to a new job! They called me today with the offer. I am THRILLED, which I'm sure you'll understand if you've ever been the audience to a work-related rant of mine. It is a little bit surreal, that's for sure, because I've been where I am for what seems like a really long time (three and a half years). I'm just really, really excited. I also just bought a new laptop. YAY, TECHNOLOGY!!! This is the first computer I've really bought with my own money and it's very pretty. Everything is new: new boyfriend, new laptop, new job. Ok, my car is not new. My car is still the same. It just turned twelve and is ticking along just fine, for the time being anyway.

I have a race coming up on Sunday (a ten-miler) and my training has been a little bit skimpy lately, but that's alright. I'm going to approach this as a training run, knowing that when I start my new job I'm going to have a lot more time for running, because I won't have to commute! The new office is three miles from my house, under a ten-minute drive. So I'm going to get back two hours of every day that I've been spending commuting. I can't wait. I CAN'T WAIT. Everybody get excited. ARE YOU EXCITED???? BECAUSE I AM!!!!!

2008-03-13T20:30:00.000-04:00

I'm in love!

2008-02-18T11:28:00.001-05:00

So I finally went running today. I have been so, so lazy recently. I have a ten-mile race coming up at the beginning of April and I would like to do well, so I realized that I need to start running several times a week, regular. It is really warm out today, and I have the day off (yay, dead presidents!) and if I can't get up the willpower to go running in that situation, I'm obviously done for. So I got out there and as usual, it sucked, but was great once I got done. When I was back in front of my house stretching, a couple came to visit my upstairs neighbor and as they were coming down the walk, the guy said to me, "What is your resting heart rate?" and I was like, "uh, I have no idea actually, I guess I should pay more attention to stuff like that." Hmm.

Did you know that I am taking another accounting class? It is driving me a little crazy for reasons I won't get into, but I need to tell you that double-entry accounting is AMAZING. It makes an almost incredible amount of sense. I can just get really worked up about the double-entry accounting system. You know Goethe? Some famous German poet? He called it "absolutely perfect." So there.

Ok, check this out: it's a box full of bedroom furniture. Every part of the box is used in the actual furniture, so there's no packaging, and it doesn't require any tools for assembly or disassembly, and it's even got a twin bed WITH mattress. I wish I had had this when I was moving every five minutes.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/casulo_an_entir.php

2008-02-13T19:02:00.002-05:00

Ok, I'm back.

Topic one: The Twinkie Photos. They are destined to become an American Classic. Seriously, Max can be, like, the new face of twinkies. Amazing. I made the blissed-out, twinkie-blessing pic my desktop background. Just remember, twinkies are a sometimes food, not an everyday food. Did you read the ingredients list??? Kinda scary. Oh well. Anyway, the pictures are amazing. Basically if you are reading this you have seen them, but in case not they are on Jade's blog at Rebirth, in the links to the right.

Topic two: Voting is Fun. Last night I voted in the presidential primary. My vote for president has never really counted, because our primary has in the past been too late, at a point when the nominee is already anointed, and in the general it doesn't matter who I vote for because Maryland always goes to the Democrat. I won't get into the electoral college here, but, you know. It's lame. Anyway since the primary got moved up, and Virginia and DC voted the same day as us, and the Democratic race is so tight, I felt like my vote really counted for something and IT FELT GREAT. Go, democracy.

Topic Three: Eating Food. Do you know the saga of my kitchen? Not the flooding saga, but before that. When I bought my flat, it didn’t have a kitchen so much as an awkwardly shaped room with two broken appliances in it. Then last summer I bought a stove and fridge, so now it’s an awkwardly shaped room with two working appliances, and some really, really shitty cabinets. This summer I’m going to redo the cabinets and counters and floor and paint. It’ll still be awkwardly shaped but it’ll be REALLY SNAZZY. Anyway, so obviously when I had broken appliances I couldn’t cook anything, or keep anything perishable, and I was never really in the habit of cooking anyway because I lived with my parents for a bit, and my mum cooked, and before that I was a workaholic so I never bought groceries or cooked (or ate, really) because I was never home. But now, I’ve started grocery shopping, and cooking and stuff, and it’s really fun! Not to mention my leftovers are way healthier and cheaper than getting takeout every day at lunch. I can make eggplant parmesan, and really good black bean dip, and quesadillas, and cucumber salad, and cold green bean salad. And there is, like, always something to eat here, now. Whereas before it was like, “well, I could have… popcorn. Or, a spoonful of peanut butter.”

Ok, three topics is good for today. I’ve got more material, but it’s good to have an odd number of items and I don’t have the energy for two more. I have a bottle of Chianti that needs finishing and I’ve just been to the library so there’s lots of fun material to dig into. Maybe I’ll have a bath.

2008-02-08T15:48:00.001-05:00

The trans-pacific twinkie express is now making its slow way, um, across the pacific, presumably.

2007-12-16T18:03:00.000-05:00

Everybody has their own ways of dealing with the shortest days of the year. Jade told me about really hot baths, and I've been doing some of that. Also lots of red wine, I find that helps a lot. Also, this is the only time I year that I'll eat a tiny little bit of meat. With all those holiday baskets and whatnot, there is always a free summer sausage to be had somehow or other, and I just eat tiny little pieces of it. Cause it is really bad for you, but my mother always condoned eating a tiny little bit of meat every once in a great long while. She'd say, "that much arsenic couldn't kill you." It tastes very rich and special and I can only eat a small amount otherwise I will get sick, but that is my little indulgence. A summer sausage I've gotten hold of for free eaten gradually over a period of weeks, and a glass or two of cabernet every night, and now, really hot baths. Lots of candle-lighting. I sleep usually in a sweater and a hat, since it is really cold in my house. I hope everybody is dealing okay. Except all you people in the southern hemisphere. You don't really have anything to complain about right now, huh?

2007-12-14T19:34:00.000-05:00

So, if there is something better than sitting on your bed in your pj's with a bowl of homemade cauliflower soup and reading about the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, I wish someone would tell me what it is so I could do it. I think that Hillary is running just so that Bill didn't have to make a tough decision about who to support. My next request is to have one, just one, election cycle in which no one mentions Hitler. It's hard to believe that Hitler is relevant to every single election cycle, but there you have it. He always gets a mention.

We should have a movie-night sleepover. Does everyone want to come over to my place? We could just chill, watch movies, eat junk food, that kind of thing. My heat isn't that powerful so it's a little bit cool in here but I've got lots of extra blankets.

2007-12-05T21:25:00.000-05:00

The Trans-Pacific Twinkie Express

I have just been dumped by yet another man. Just thought I'd share. What are we on, now, loser number 62? That is the way it goes, I guess. Some people, I have heard, meet the love of their life on the first try. Other people, such as myself, entertain a seemingly endless string of boyfriends who turn out to be not-so-serious. I'm sort of done with it. It's time for the convent, or something.

Yeah, probably not the convent.

2007-11-25T12:48:00.000-05:00

Feedback requested:

I have fourteen pairs of gloves. I don't know, maybe I am being un-American, but this seems excessive to me. Honestly, I will be surprised if I have worn all of them even once by the time spring rolls around. In fact, I would bet that I will wear fewer than half of those pairs with any kind of regularity (more than five times in the season, say).

Did I tell you about my mother's philosophy of getting rid of twenty-nine things every day? I think twenty-nine things every week would even be a pretty good start. I bet it would be really easy. I bet you'd still have a net gain though if you got rid of twenty-nine things each week.

Recommended:
Beyond Civilization by Daniel Quinn
The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

2007-10-11T20:24:00.000-04:00

I dare you to listen to the song "Guantanamera" and remain completely still the entire time. Please report back to me your experiences.

Actually as you listen, you can imagine me sitting on my couch, drinking wine with my new love and listening to salsa. I guess I am going to put that degree in Spanish to some good use after all. You know what they say: "sleep with a good dictionary."

Ahem.

2007-10-04T11:25:00.000-04:00

I have healed myself by lying in bed for thirty-six hours straight and drinking lots of gatorade.
Thank you for all your well wishes and hugs. I also got a new toothbrush. I don't know if that actually helps but my mom always told me to do it.

2007-10-01T20:51:00.000-04:00

Happy New Fiscal Year.

I am sick, and I realized that I'm sick in the way that your parents would have made you go to school. You know what I am talking about. I have been having weird, annoying, constant chills for the past few days, and muscle soreness in my neck and shoulders, and I am really, really tired. I left work early today and went to bed at two in the afternoon. Slept until six and now it is nine and I am struggling to stay awake. So, I am about to go back to bed, trying to take care of myself, and then I realized that it's only because I am an adult that I am allowed to take care of myself, since I can't "prove" there's anything actually "wrong" with me. I'd be in school getting sicker and making everyone else sick too if I were fourteen.

We are desperate for rain, and there's no sign of any in the near future. It's also unseasonably warm. It's perfectly pleasant, but just seems like it should be a little cooler, by now.

2007-09-25T21:21:00.000-04:00

Other people are angry. I'm just tired.

2007-09-23T20:26:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the things we do. Mainly I've been categorizing these things, just as an exercise in figuring out life. You could have as few as two categories, like, "things we do to stay alive" and "things we do to enjoy life." Or you could have dozens of categories. I'm sure that this exercise is the beginning of my descent into madness, like when the narrator in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance starts parsing "quality." But it's fun anyway. There are things like sleeping, and eating, and bathing, and then there are things like going to work, shopping for food, cooking, gardening, cleaning, flossing your teeth, exercising, washing your car, and painting your toenails. Another category would contain things like reading and going to soccer games and drinking wine and sex. I also have a broad category called "paperwork." You know what I am talking about. Not things for work, but things to continue existing in society. Paying taxes and getting insurance on your car and getting the state of Maryland to believe that you exist and getting your landlord to give you your security deposit back and getting married and getting divorced and adopting children and changing your citizenship and filling out rebate forms and paying parking tickets (or appealing parking tickets) and a hundred other tasks that may be part of bigger things which are nice or nasty or neutral but then also have this extra "pain-in-the-ass" component that can only be called "paperwork." I think this is the modern substitution for, like, building your own house and not having running water and needing to grow everything you eat, etc. All this paperwork isn't something you do for yourself, it's something you do to make civilization in general and your government in particular keep running. I'm going to make a big diagram of all my categories and subcategories and go ahead and categorize everything I do. I'll need a category for blogging. I'll need a category for blogging about categorizing.

2007-09-16T19:19:00.000-04:00

I thought you might like to see some pictures of my trip. I have to be honest, I am sorry to be back in DC, and, well, I can't really tell you why in this forum, out of concern for the parties involved, but suffice it to say that my visit to Dublin was life-changing. Dublin is not depressing, but it is melancholy. It is modern and international and has a lot in common with other European capitals, but I was pleased to discover it still has a definite Irish flavor (if you know where to look) and is full of sweet and sad surprises.
From top to bottom:
I had a Guinness for you. Actually, I'm not going to lie - I had a few. Okay, several.
Next, a nice view of the famed ha'penny bridge.
And, Cliffs by Dublin Bay at Howth.
Finally, nobody panic, I would not dreaming of leaving Ireland without bringing you a picture of some sheep. There you go, all the way at the bottom, just scroll down to see the sheep.
P.S. I took about three hundred pictures on the trip, and I am not going to make all of them public on Flickr, but a lot of them will be, obviously many many more than I could ever post here, so if you are interested in that, email me, and I will send you the link to my Flickr page.

2007-09-12T20:47:00.000-04:00

O, Jade, this is a bit late, but I have a proper present for you instead of just a "Happy Birthday Lovey!" So here it is. Just for you! I call it, "Willow eating an apple on the shores of the upper lake at Glendalough."

2007-09-08T06:56:00.000-04:00

"That was Guinness you were drinking, wasn't it?"
"Of course I'm drinking Guinness, I didn't come three and a half thousand miles to talk about quantum physics, did I?"

2007-09-06T14:40:00.000-04:00

Today:

St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral
the Catholic Cathedral in Dublin is "pro" for "provisional" because it's just 'til the Catholics get back St. Patrick's, which has been protestant for five hundred years, or something.

The Dublin Writers Museum
where I am shown the depth of my ignorance as regards Irish literature. Took copious notes on authors I must begin to read as soon as possible.

The Winding Stair Restaurant
at which I spend far too much money on the most delicious and pleasant lunch I have ever eaten in my entire life.

St. Michan's Church (Anglican Communion)
I shake hands with the Crusader.

Christ Church Cathedral
quite possibly the most architecturally disjointed and confusing space I have ever been in. Particularly alarming is "the leaning wall of Dublin" - one wall of the nave has been out of perpendicular by 18 inches since the roof collapsed in 1562. I also hear evensong sung by the Christchurch choir, which was stunningly gorgeous.

This keyboard makes me crazy, but I promise more details when I'm back on the other side of the pond.

"Well I hope you haven't come three and a half thousand miles to talk about quantum physics."

2007-09-04T10:17:00.000-04:00

Well. I have spent the day wandering around Dublin with clean hair. This is in opposition to yesterday, which I spent wandering around Dublin with dirty hair. I also visited St. Patrick's Cathedral today, on the theory that I can't spend the entire week wandering and bumming around doing absolutely nothing except eating tuna sandwiches and reading Joyce. So, off I went and toured St. Patrick's. The folks who wrote the signage and guidebooks there apparantly don't know that St. Patrick was not a Protestant. It's pretty funny. In fact they do a pretty decent job of pretending that the Catholic religion ended with the Reformation. It does come up though that Catholics still exist, a few times, when they mention people who were connected with Catholic emancipation.

Everyone in my hostel speaks German. I find this to be pretty entertaining.

'Are you Irish?' In America my answer to this question is obviously 'yes' but in Ireland it's more complicated and it seems like 'my ethnicity is Irish but my nationality is American' seems a little too cumbersome so I just say 'I'm American.'

It's very tricky find the double quotation marks on this keyboard. They are allegedly over the two, where the @ should be, but the @ is allegedly over the single quotation mark, to the right of the semicolon. However I've discovered that these allegations are actually not true at all and the @ and " are in the same places as on an American keyboard, only secretly. In undisclosed locations. And actually, the person next to me just called the staffer over here and asked, "how do you get the at sign?" Just thought I'd share.

I can't get multiple windows of internet explorer open which I find extremely annoying.

I'm not tired exactly, just a little bit on the bewildered side, or something. I'm just not feeling my normal mischevious self. Some girls just walked by eating popsicles and now I want one real bad.

2007-09-02T12:15:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday, Jade!

Right now it's 2:20 am where you are and it's your birthday!
I am thinking of you and hoping you have a lovely day.
xoxo
Willow

2007-09-01T10:48:00.000-04:00

Passport: check.
Raincoat and umbrella: check.
Exact minimum number of pairs of shoes I will need: check.
Earplugs and eye mask for flight and hostel: check.
Sweater, long pants, and seven plain tshirts: check.
One sparkly top, in case I need to pretend to dress up: check.

Well, I am off to "the old country" again! This time by myself, and I am just going to bum around in Dublin the whole time. I can't wait. There's nothing I need more right now than a vacation, and what better place to spend it. I will be sure to take copious notes and share many stories and pictures too!

I leave tomorrow.

2007-08-27T21:55:00.000-04:00

You know, some people are saying that Bush can't find someone who would be a worse a.g. than Gonzales, but let me just put this out there: The only thing worse than an incompetent, conniving liar working to torture, spy without warrants, and generally erode our civil liberties is a competent, conniving liar working to torture, spy without warrants, and generally erode our civil liberties. You see my point. Political rant over. Recess appointment, anyone?

2007-08-12T18:40:00.000-04:00

in defiance of August,
I bought a sweater -
a purple sweater, and some corduroy pants,
to prove to myself I'm sure
that fall is coming.
I don't know who will love me
I don't know what will end or
what will begin
but I know I'll need a purple sweater.
in the fitting room, I looked in the mirror.
I thought about impermanence,
and the illusion of understanding,
and the folly of impatience for the future.
then i checked to make sure
the pants made my butt look good.

2007-07-14T22:42:00.000-04:00

It didn't feel like borrowed time, no, not at all.

2007-06-24T20:10:00.000-04:00

So, now, just for fun, the State of Maryland has decided to deny that I exist. Specifically, "your Maryland withholding and/or credits have been denied as we are unable to verify your social security number." How exciting. Paperwork for everyone! Isn't that what you really wanted?? It's like a special side project: proving to your government that you exist. I'm hoping that the federal government still believes that I exist, and will back me up on this one. They can write a little memo to Maryland. It'll say, "hey, it's cool, she exists, don't worry about it." Except it'll be on fancy Social Security Administration letterhead.

2007-06-17T12:03:00.000-04:00

Ex-husband? What ex-husband?
It's funny because I think of this as something everyone knows, but apparantly everyone does not know. Several bloggy friends have expressed surprise to me recently: "What? You were married?" This will probably send you back to my profile to discover that I am 25, a little bit young to be a divorcee - but it's true. I married very young and it was obvious rather quickly that we wouldn't stay married. Took me a while to admit it to myself because I was really pretty disappointed. I didn't love him the way you are supposed to love someone that you're married to, I guess, and as the friction and conflict increased I realized that at 22 years old I had my entire life ahead of me and that it was in my best interest to make a clean break and start over. So that's what I did. It was very sad at the time, but I'm so happy with my life now that I know I did the right thing. I don't regret getting married, either, because I wouldn't be the person I am today if I hadn't learned all those lessons about myself, and love, and what I want for my life. We never talk so I don't know how he's doing, but I think about him, and I hope he's doing well, and I hope he's happy with his life, now, too, because he's a good man and deserves to be happy and fulfilled. Anyway, we sort of happened into getting married, without really ever giving it a whole lot of thought, and then things sort of fell apart, and then we got divorced. Sooooo. It's always sort of a thing I'm never sure what to do with, when it comes to seeing new people. I'm so young that it's pretty unusual, which is why I've tended to date older men, who don't tend to freak out as much or think that it means I'm screwed up. Do I mention it on the second date? The third date? Not sure. Anyway, that's the story. Now you know.

2007-06-10T15:21:00.000-04:00

Congratulations, humanity. It is now possible to watch "Law and Order" at any time of day or night. You could watch "Law and Order" for the rest of your life, continuously. All you need is cable television and to lack the will to live.

2007-06-09T22:34:00.000-04:00

So I've been sort of messing about on youtube listening to some Irish folk music. And I'm absolutely blown away by some of the things being written in the comments sections, just really nasty, horrid things full of hatred. I think there's finally some chance at peace now but many people will never let go, and I just want it on record that I think it's a shame. I know a lot of people spewing all the hatred are Americans who've really no idea of the atrocities perpetrated by the English and the IRA both as well as the loyalists, and it's ridiculous this notion that hating Ian Paisley is imprinted in your genes somehow since you're Irish and Catholic. Sure and won't we all rot in hell like Paisley is sure to do, unless somewhere we find forgiveness. When Ireland is united, I somehow doubt we'll look back on all the bloodshed and feel happy for it or say that it was worth it.

2007-05-14T19:17:00.000-04:00

one pointe shoe
a cordless phone that never really worked properly
a toenail clippers
some sam adams coasters
my ex-husband's high school ring - guess I should return this
a very large cardboard box full of scrap fabric
FOUR three-hole punch devices of varying functionality
a bag of bandaids
travel pack of q-tips
metronome

2007-04-29T17:17:00.000-04:00

Cleaning this afternoon, I came across a coupon and wondered if it was still valid. I looked at the fine print and it said it was good until 8/15/06, and I was like, hey, cool, I'll use it next weekend! Then I realized that although it is not August yet, it is 2007. Crap. I don't know, but if you are like me, you are alarmed by the amazing rapidity of the passage of time, which only seems to get worse as I get older. And, of course, I am not really what you would call old, and it's already getting to me, this passage of time thing. Four months into this year, I have not internalized the fact that it's no longer 2006.

2007-04-22T18:12:00.000-04:00

There's a blue jay in my back yard. I don't really know what else to say. I know it's been a while; for some reason I am not feeling a need to expound on anything lately here. There is poetry being written, some sketches for the novel, a lot of deep (and not so deep) thoughts being recorded in my journal, a lot going on. It's just that none of it seems like the sort of stuff to put out there for everyone to read, for some reason.

2007-03-26T19:48:00.000-04:00

I walked out into my yard when I got home tonight and raked up some leaves. I realized I had forgotten about dirt. Such a marvelous, miraculous thing, dirt is. It goes on doing what it's always done, whether I'm paying attention to it or not. Leaves fall and plants push their roots through and bugs eat and die and rain and snow fall and nothing changes, but everything is constantly changing.

I maybe should have been paying more attention to dirt, but instead I was paying attention to men. And now it is March, almost April, and spring is a bewildering rush of life and noise about to leave me behind. There was long underwear in my last load of laundry, and now it's time to break out the big guns in terms of sunscreen and promise myself that this year, I will be more diligent about wearing a hat when I'm out. It's the birds in the morning and the crickets at night, and all of a sudden it is almost as loud out here in the country as it is on the busy street corner outside my office in the city.

He said: "Let things be what they are."
She said: "Well, what are things, then?"
He said: "Are you in a hurry?"
She said: "I am never in a hurry."
He said: "You should let those questions go unanswered, then. If there is no hurry, there is no need to ask. You waste your time defining things when they are just going to change anyway. "
But the smell of the skin of his shoulders was a constant for her, and she thought that she could make the world make sense by giving a name to this scent, defining it, holding on to it. But it was totally beyond her, remained a mystery to her, and so a few hours after he left her bed she tore off the sheets and stuffed them into the washing machine. She wrote poetry and it was all cliche, but she didn't care, because she knew that cliche only meant that everyone else felt the exact same way and she didn't expect herself to come up with new and innovative ways of saying the same thing billions of people had felt before she had.

2007-03-20T16:49:00.000-04:00

I have a pal who believes that 98% of computer problems can be fixed by rebooting. It turns out he is right.

Here I am, posting away, on my own computer, which seemed totally impossible before, but since I rebooted, everything is hunky-dory.

If my aforementioned pal reads this, I will be teased mercilessly for not trying a simple reboot sooner. So, I think we should keep it a secret. Okay?

2007-03-16T17:27:00.000-04:00

I wish I could see you as you really are
all the time

I am cardamom, I told you
maybe nutmeg
cinnamon is home
I will be cinnamon to some man
some day
cardamom is a little more exotic
maybe sexier
maybe the same degree of sexy
just a different flavor
still familiar
but outside of the everyday

everything we are
we owe to our experience

if you let yourself,
you could see me
the parts that are cardamom
the parts that are cinnamon

2007-03-15T08:18:00.000-04:00

Real quick: jelly beans, Daniel Webster. Go!

2007-02-25T16:45:00.000-05:00

I can post from anybody's computer except my own:

The cleaning ladies were here last week, so I lie facedown on my mother's kitchen floor. It was supposed to rain all day with a little frozen nastiness thrown in for good measure, a la typical DC winter, but instead we got a good four to six inches of snow, and outside is something that looks more like a postcard New England Christmas than late February in the nation's capital.
I am wearing ruby earrings that my father gave me recently and a sweater my mother's sister knit for me perhaps ten years ago. I wore these things today because they are red, the color of the soccer team I was rooting for as I sat in a dark bar this morning where British expats were getting drunk on Irish beer, which I guess is the appropriate thing to get drunk on when it isn't even noon.

This floor is part of a house that has been standing for a relatively short period of time as far as houses go, but long enough that it feels like the center of my universe, and so it's easy to lie on this kitchen floor and close my eyes and feel the footsteps of most of the people I have loved in my life, and hear the echoes of their voices, which makes me wonder: how deep are these roots. Are they deep enough so that I can stand up and not be bowed by the winds of change. Are they deep enough to help me withstand all the heartache that is bound to fill any person's life: I feel that I am, still, contrary to popular belief, fragile, delicate, held together with the tiniest of filaments that, I worry, might begin to fray at any moment. Who is listening while I lie facedown on my mother's kitchen floor and ask questions of the universe that nobody anywhere has ever had any answers for?

He says, "You worry too much, what good are you doing anyone by worrying."
He says, "I am going back to Iraq."
I hold my breath and wait for him to take it back.
He says, "Nora, don't cry."

2007-02-24T19:07:00.000-05:00

i can type one character at a time with 4 error msgs between each no caps allowed very laborious new blogger wants to silence me working to get this message to you fear it may be my last did not buy bag have much to tell you many musings still reading all of yours love willow

2007-02-10T18:49:00.000-05:00

I don't WANT to switch to the new blogger. Yall have been complaining about it, and Jade's links keep disappearing, and everything, and the old blogger works fine. Now they're MAKING me switch. Boo.

I need help with not buying this bag. Please help me. I hate to think I'm turning into the kind of person who can justify spending three hundred dollars on a bag. I hereby solicit your philosophies re: consumer culture, needs/wants, waste, indulgence, etc.

2007-02-05T20:44:00.000-05:00

Hey, guess what. I put a big update on my marathon blog. Read it. Everything you want to know. Maybe I will say a little more about my trip to Miami here soon. Right now I am just bitter that I am not still in Miami, cause it is pretty goddamn cold here, so I don't really want to talk about the gorgeous weather and the beautiful palm trees and the aqua-colored ocean and the topless beaches with gleaming white sands... sigh.

2007-01-31T22:01:00.000-05:00

In case you were in suspense, yes, I finished. Too much going on right now to elaborate. More soon!

2007-01-26T09:25:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning and it was, well, I'll just be charitable and say it was eleven degrees. So I thought, you know what I think I'll do? I think I'll just go to Miami for the weekend.

2007-01-22T20:16:00.000-05:00

Guts and goods.

It's my mantra for the week. The marathon is on Sunday. (NEWSFLASH: Y'all, I am running the Miami Marathon this weekend. Don't tell me you didn't know that)

And that is pretty much what I have to get me through those 26.2 miles, guts and goods. I have patellar and quad tendonitis in my left knee and some sort of hamstring problem in my right knee, and IT band issues on both sides, like every runner on the planet, and I could barely walk for a few days after I did my 20-mile training run, but I am going to finish this race if it is the last thing I do, I swear.

I am having private, secret doubts. I just keep whispering to myself, over and over, "guts and goods. guts and goods." What else have I ever had, to get me through anything, anyway? Besides good looks and charm. Those have been useful, definitely, but they aren't going to get me through the marathon, that's for sure. I've got to dig deeper into my toolbox for this one. Got to pull out the guts and goods. Watch out, y'all. Fierce woman coming through.

You cannot stop my marathon machine.

2007-01-20T20:04:00.000-05:00

I know you all do that thing, where instead of listening to a normal mix of songs, you get obsessed with ONE SONG and can't stop listening to it, over and over again. That is the thing I am doing right now, I could listen to this song fifty times in a row and not get bored with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4JDNYZEjZo

2007-01-20T19:34:00.000-05:00

So... it finally got cold. Knew that it would because Pitto and Jenna have been freezing their asses off for weeks, and the weather just sort of moves from west to east over here, but I was hoping for a total reprieve. No chance. IT'S FRIGID. And I am a total wimp about it, not only because it's been a few years since I left Indiana and had to live through a "real" winter, but because the weather's been so freakishly warm here, it was a shock to all of a sudden have lows in the teens.

I'm starting to think a "conventional relationship" is totally beyond me. I've got these relationships going on, which all fall into the category of friendship, but they are a little more than friendship, enough to make me think that maybe they are all I need, and maybe it's better that way because, I don't know what the deal is with men I date, but things have just not been working out lately. And by "lately," I mean, "ever." It's just... it's just, like, jesus, it's such a mess. Far messier than the men I date are the men I don't date. I have cobbled together a life, these are the men that I love, the men who occupy my daily existence and my dreams and my fantasies and my evenings out, but they are never going to need any space in my medicine cabinet or leave their shoes on the floor where I'm going to trip over them. I get this nagging feeling that I've set things up this way on purpose, because these men can't really let me down, and maybe I am afraid of having somebody in my life who could.

2007-01-15T21:27:00.000-05:00

I feel disoriented. It's easy to feel disoriented when it's January 15th, typically the coldest time of year here, and I can walk home at nine pm in a short-sleeved cardigan sweater and not be the least bit chilled, because it's sixty-something degrees.

The weather is only part of it, of course - strange dreams have been visiting me. I wake up and whisper them to myself, trying to transfer them to accesible memory. Later in the day, things happen and it feels just like puzzle pieces falling into place, the meanings of the dreams become evident, and I feel foolish for not expecting it to happen just that way.

It seems like more than one of us is submerged in that cruel and shocking scenario of:
- everything is lovely
- five minutes go by
- it's over

What can you do but let go?

In a dream, he said: "There is no way this can be real."
I said: "What is reality?"
He said: "Reality is the world that everyone sees."
I said: "You know that such a thing does not exist."
And: "When you touch my shoulder, that is real. When the first thing that I hear when I come to my senses is your laughter, that is real. When we have meals together and walk together down the streets of faraway cities; when I see you in the waking world, and you look straight at me, and I know that the dreams I had last night are your memories, how can you say these things are not real? They happened to you, and they happened to me, and you know that this is truth. Tell me what is true is not real. Show me the piece of your soul that I don't possess, and then tell me that our love affair is not real."
He said: "I cannot live without you."
I said: "If this is not real, you have never done anything but live without me."

2007-01-05T19:57:00.000-05:00

Thank you, Suze. I feel like I've been given homework. I've been thinking about this all day long, "Oh, crap, I have to write that thing. I wonder how long I can put it off." We should've started with something easier, like, "five things I love" or "five things I can't stand to eat before noon." Five things I love about myself?
1. I love my eyes. That was an easy one. I got the blue eyes from my two grandmothers. They are sort of slate-colored, rather than shockingly blue like some peoples', so I like them for being unique and pretty, yet understated.
2. I love my independence. This sometimes feels newfound, a part of my relatively recent series of epiphanies, but it's really not new. It's a personality trait I've had since I was very small - ask my mother. It's just that recently I've learned to cultivate it and draw on it in tough situations, while at the same time opening myself to others without becoming dependent on them or defined by them.
3. I love my name. Thanks, Mom and Dad. It's perfect for me. I love my first name, I love my middle name, and I love my last name. (Can I use this for items 3-5??) The first name gives the hint I might be Irish, and the last name removes all doubt. The middle name is lovely, and goes nicely next to the first. The thing I really love about my first name recently is that it's not exclusively Irish, but really an international name. I guess it's partly the Latin root. It can be Irish, or Latin American, or Chinese, and I recently had someone from Malaysia exclaim upon meeting me that my name is a Malay name. Imagine that. Makes me feel so cosmopolitan.
4. I love my musical abilities. I am not really all that talented - I tell people I am musically inclined but certainly not an artist. But I have a reasonably pretty, though generic singing voice, and I can read music and learn to play instruments pretty quickly. These things have brought me a lot of joy in my life, led me to meet many people dear to my heart, and let me see things and go places I otherwise never would have.
5. I love my sense of wonder. Some people think I am cynical, and that's partly true, but it hasn't ruined my feeling that the world is full of amazing, beautiful, simple, and special things and that it is a gift to see and appreciate them. I am easily delighted and amazed by the wonderful things in the world, and I love that about myself.

Excellent idea, Suze. That wasn't so bad.

2006-12-29T15:15:00.000-05:00

You know how sometimes, you know someone, and your feelings for them are based on what you know about them, and then, at some point, you learn more about them, and your feelings for them change? Maybe the changing of your relationship follows the changing of your feelings, or in other instances the relationship change happened to predate the change in feelings... either way. Maybe someone was your lover once, and then you were just friends, and then you realized, you really didn't WANT to be friends with that person anymore. Didn't want to talk to him, or be involved with him at all, cause it turned out that you didn't enjoy interacting with that person anymore. Maybe it is just me and my crazy insecurities, but I don't really see anything wrong with deciding that you don't want to interact with someone anymore when it turns out that doing so doesn't add anything good to your life, and in fact, does add stress and drama.

Cutting off a relationship when you feel like it's the right thing for you doesn't change or negate what you had. I'm self-aware enough to understand why I wanted that person in my life to begin with, and I don't regret a moment of it. It was a shitload of fun. Until it wasn't, and that's when I decided I didn't want to be a part of it anymore. I get to make those kind of decisions, cause I am an adult and in charge of my own life. And, you know, I don't owe anybody any explanation for how or why I made that decision, including the former lover. That's just not the way life works. Sometimes, offering an explanation is the right thing to do, and sometimes, it's not. Guess who gets to decide whether or not I should explain? That's right, I do.

I know what love is. Are you really so sure that you do?

2006-12-24T10:01:00.000-05:00

I am still waiting for someone to explain to me what all this means. Why do I do that? No one is going to explain anything for me. I wonder if I'll ever learn. Why do I even care what all this means? What is all this, anyway?

If someone waltzed in here today and started explaining my whole life to me, I'd hate them. I don't know what I'm looking for, but this isn't it.

Feeling very contemplative today, and not very celebratory. I guess there is still that feeling that my time is not my own - a feeling that I don't particularly like. It's easy to sit here and say that I want to do only what I want to do, and I don't want to have to do things because other people want them. But what's left of all your relationships, after all, if you tell everyone to shove it because you're going to do what you want?

To those who celebrate, let me wish a very merry christmas and many blessings through the season.

2006-12-23T16:30:00.000-05:00

Alright, I give in. Here are the five things my internet friends may not know about me (not all of them are things most people don't know):

1. I drive the same car that I learned how to drive in. It's a '96 Saturn with 138,000 miles on it. It's been very good to me - it's never stranded me even once and it's continued running like a champ even though I've neglected it sometimes.

2. I am making an unusual collection. In our subway system, we have rail-to-bus transfers - little pieces of paper you get inside the train station that you can give to a bus driver in order to ride the bus for a quarter. Each transfer is marked with the date and time and the name of the station where you got it. I am collecting one from every station in the system. The rules are, I have to get the transfer myself, and I have to actually visit outside of the station - I can't ask others to get transfers for me, and I can't just hop off the train, run upstairs and grab a transfer, and then hop back on the train. So far I have quite a few of them and I am always looking for reasons to go to stations I haven't been to before so I can get a transfer. There are a lot of stations, so it is going to take me a while to finish. Sometimes I write on the transfer what I was doing visiting that station.

3. I have scoliosis. It makes my left hip higher than my right, and my left shoulder lower than my right. So my waist appears uneven, as though I have done more conditioning for my obliques on my right side than my left. But I can't fix the appearance with any number of crunches, it will always look this way. You'd never notice while I'm dressed, but I always feel like it's very obvious anytime my stomach is exposed. So I buy two-piece bathing suits that have the tank top, and it has to be long enough to overlap with the bottoms so no one will notice.

4. I worry that I'll get trapped in a sinking car. My car has manual locks and windows and I've never considered getting one that has automatic ones because once the car goes in the water, the automatic ones won't work anymore. I also have a little device I keep in my console right where I can reach it that has a blade in it that will cut through seatbelts, and the other end will break windows.

5. I still have Christmas shopping left to do. I took a four-hour nap this afternoon and now it is nearly twilight outside, and it's Christmas Eve Eve, and I am about to venture out to the mall, where the stores will be filled with panicked adults and screaming children and exasperated store employees who all had their shopping done weeks ago because they knew they'd have to work ridiculous hours when it got down to crunch time.

2006-12-06T14:28:00.000-05:00

I love my new commute. My train ride is above ground for part of the time. Right now in the morning, the setting full moon is to the right of the train, the rising sun to the left. I sit and look out the window at a lake that holds a hundred memories for me. My dearest one is of skipping biology to go fishing with a friend. He's dead now, but gazing at the mist over the water I can almost hear his laughter. We continue on and I can see, a few miles distant on the crest of a hill, the hospital where I was born, and I can feel my roots stretching out all over this place and I can't believe I thought I could live somewhere else. Everywhere I turn here the air is full of memories. I breathe them in and they fill up my soul. I belong here. Am I living in the past? Am I being overly sentimental?

2006-12-05T08:21:00.000-05:00

I want to eat bread and cheese and chocolate, fresh fruit, and good soups. I want a good cup of coffee, which is obtainable if you know where to look, and a proper cup of tea, which unfortunately does not seem to exist in this country.

I want a normal job. One where mind-reading is not the preferred method of communication, in an office where there is not a crazy homeless person wandering around on the invitation of the president of the company.

I want to take Tuesday mornings off to go work on the farm. I want someone to teach me to play violin, and I want more friends who read and will loan me books they like. I want someone to come over to my house and share a bottle of wine with me while we sit under crocheted blankets on the couch and talk about life and everything.

I want to learn to let go of the past. I want less stuff and more time. I want my life to be something more than an endless string of projects.

2006-11-14T08:04:00.000-05:00

Still so many things dark and beautiful. I forgot that. Was thinking everything was either dark or distracting. Some beautiful things maybe. I forgot about the beauty in all the darkness.

I found my heart. It was in San Francisco. No, just kidding. I didn't find it. God only knows where it is. Actually, probably he doesn't.

Starting to find some strange satisfaction in filling notebooks with paper and putting labels on the spine. It makes me worry about my soul. Guess it means I should get. out. now. But I know I won't.
Reason for leaving: irreconcilable differences.
Reason for leaving: mutual and voluntary separation.

In a dream, he said: "Say what you see. Just say what is."

I said: "We're here at the same time. Maybe that is good enough."

He said: "This shouldn't be enough for you."

I said: "We're here at the same time."
And: "More wouldn't be enough anyway. If you were mine, it wouldn't be enough. If you were mine for the rest of our lives, it wouldn't be enough. If you were mine for the rest of eternity, it wouldn't be enough."

He said: "In dreams is not enough."

I said: "In dreams is what we have."

2006-11-07T21:43:00.000-05:00

One thing I am really looking forward to about moving into my new place is finding out where all my stuff is. The seasons are changing, and I have been doing the gypsy thing since August, so I have no winter clothes. They are all packed away... somewhere. I had to buy a hat and gloves. Another hat and gloves is pretty much the last thing on earth that I need, but since I don't have access to the nineteen sets of hats and gloves I already own, you know, what are you gonna do. I did find my green fleece pajamas, which made me pretty happy. I am rocking out the green fleece pajamas right now as I sit at home and watch the returns from the midterms roll in. We are all going a little bit nuts in this town right now, it is a little crazy. Politics makes me nervous.

2006-10-31T18:29:00.000-05:00

This is my favorite festival time! Halloween rocks. The pagans call this festival Samhain, and it is definitely my favorite on the pagan calendar. It's midway between the fall equinox and the winter solstice, and is said to be a time when the veil between the worlds thins, thus allowing the dead to visit the living. Cool. I really like that idea of there being a veil between the worlds, sometimes thinner than at other times. My second-favorite pagan holiday, Beltane, is also midway between the equinox and the solstice (this time between the spring equinox and the summer solstice) and is the other time when the veil thins, only instead of the dead visiting, it's the fairies. But that is not for another six months. Unless the Austrailians have it now. Do they? Are the pagan festivals reversed in the Southern Hemisphere?

ANYWAY, you've got your standard totally fun American Halloween, you've got Samhain, you've got the Mexican festival of Day of the Dead, which is pretty rad, and then of course the Catholics have All Saints' Day followed immediately by All Souls' Day. What is the difference. Please, people. All the Catholics in the house, can I get a 'what!'

I am sensing a theme here, involving death. It is unquestionably a great time of the year to be thinking about death, so maybe that's why everyone is doing it. In fact, going back to my cool book of Native American meditations, November's great path of the moon is mortality. Yes!! Mortality, y'all! I don't know if you are as excited about this concept as I am. (Sarcasm.)

So if anyone has thoughts on what is on the other side of the veil, you know, give me a holler. I am interested to hear. I say that, you know, consciousness is the product only of our brain chemistry, and following the death of our bodies there's nothing surviving of us as individual entities. That is my occam's razor theory of death, just, you know, it seems like the simplest and most logical way to look at it. If you're gonna think something else about death, you have to, I mean, I don't want to say make it up, but it is not exactly going to be based on empirical evidence. I mean, you know, Plato can just eat my shorts. Plato can leave a comment on my blog if he has something to say to me.

2006-10-15T12:10:00.000-04:00

A dude from Belgium stopped me on the Metro this morning to ask me for instructions/directions. After I left the station I realized that I had told him almost the exact opposite of what he really should have done. I do this all the time. Invariably, every time a tourist asks me what to do, I tell them the totally wrong thing. I don't know how I do this. I have been navigating this subway system since I learned to walk, and by myself since I was ten or so. I ride it every day, all over the city. I go in every direction, on every line, can recite every stop on the orange line in order from east to west AND west to east, and have worn out four smarttrip cards in the past eighteen months. I can go anywhere I want to without even really consulting the map. And yet, every time a stranger asks me what platform to go to, or which escalator to take, or how they should get somewhere, I cheerily give them totally misleading information and don't realize it until several minutes after we part. These people all think I am a total jerk or else just really stupid. The only thing I can figure out is that navigating the system is so innate to me that I just have trouble vocalizing instructions to people who aren't familiar. I can't explain how to get where you want to go. I just do it without even really thinking about it. It's frustrating, because I like strangers, and I would like to help them out, but I realized that as much as this is old hat to me, I am totally useless as a reference unless I personally accompany you to where you are trying to get.

2006-10-03T21:38:00.000-04:00

Okay, so here it is, my new blog about the marathon thing (I am insane for doing this): Marathon Blog

I am going to put a link over on the sidebar, too, so it's always there for you guys. You know what I am not going to do? I am not going to put a link to this blog on the marathon blog. It is sort of a separate venture. So all those people over reading my marathon blog, you do not have to tell them about this blog. This blog will stay our little private club. Okay? Okay. But you know what would be cool, is if you put a link to my marathon blog under the link to this blog, on your blog. We will weave a tangled bloggy web. We will call it the world wide web. Oh wait.

Are you reading my blog, and keeping your own blog, and I do not have a link to your blog on my blog? It is because I am lazy, not because I don't like you. I am putting Jenna's over there right now. I keep forgetting. Jenna is a cool girl. Anyway, if I am missing you, just holler. I will add you. We will spread the love all over our tangled bloggy web.

"The internet?! Is that thing still around?"

You guys, do you remember when we didn't have google? Yeah me too. But I do not know how I ever found anything out. It usually included a lot of time on the phone, or at the library, or poking around lexus-nexus. Man. Dark ages. Uh, my parents grew up without a color television. The world is crazy.

2006-10-01T17:58:00.000-04:00

Happy new fiscal year! My boss was actually saying this to clients on the phone on Friday afternoon. Went out with some co-workers on Saturday night, and as one of them and I were walking home after midnight, I suddenly thumped him on the shoulder and fairly shouted, "Hey! Happy new fiscal year!" and he said, "We are really the biggest government nerds ever." I live and breathe the bureaucracy every day, and I am actually starting to make peace with it. It's pretty ridiculous of course, and I will always think so, but it has its own charms, I am finally learning. Government is not meant to function on this scale. Sometimes I lean back in my chair and look over at the wall next to my friend's desk, where there is a U.S. map hanging, gathering the dust of disintegrating papers and the grime of cigarette smoke, and it strikes me again how ridiculously huge our country is. I tend to think it will only get more and more dysfunctional until we realize how much better it would work governed as four or five separate countries. Oh, my gosh, nobody tell the fbi I am saying stuff like this. ;)

2006-09-30T17:36:00.000-04:00

So. I guess this is proof that I am crazier than you originally supposed: I am going to run a marathon. I have never been a runner, though I consider myself to be an athletic person, sort of. I was a swimmer in high school, and I continue to take ballet class for fun and for the body that it gives me. But I was never a runner, having considered running to be, for the most part, abject misery.

I was wrong.

I got this crazy idea that I would join this program wherein you train to run a marathon and raise $2,700 for Whitman Walker Clinic, an AIDS charity. They say that they can train normal, non-running people to complete a marathon, and it's a very good cause, close to my heart because I love my city (one in twenty DC residents are HIV-positive, twelve times the national average) and because my godfather has had AIDS for many years and is living proof that it is possible to have a full life for a long time with this disease, given the proper treatment and care, which is what Whitman Walker provides for those with inadequate support. So, I signed up, and after a few weeks of training, I can report an amazing discovery: running is fun! It is not like swimming, because you can get to know the people you train with, because you can talk to them. Running and talking are not mutually exclusive the way swimming and talking are. ANYWAY, I am having a great time. I ran six miles this morning and it felt awesome.

I am going to chronicle this experience on a separate blog, which will be up soon. I hope all of you will read it and give me encouragement! If you feel inspired by my committment to this (admittedly halfway-insane) goal, I hope you will also donate towards my fundraising goal. I will provide a link to the new blog (which will contain instructions about how to donate in my name if you feel so inclined) VERY SOON.

Of course, I will keep writing here about everything else. I know I have been pretty absent lately, but I hope to be around a lot more soon. After all, the world is full of everything, and I can't help but notice and, well, say something about it.

2006-09-29T15:44:00.000-04:00

I really, really, really miss spinach. When are we going to get spinach back?

2006-09-22T07:53:00.000-04:00

I mean, I figured an explanation would be nice. So here, I give you the precious gift of three-and-a-half minutes of my morning.

September 30 is the end of the government's fiscal year. All sorts of nasty things happen at the end of the fiscal year. People's purchase orders expire, and their government credit cards stop working, and their funding isn't good anymore, etc. etc. So people really need to get billed, and they need to pay, or I turn into a pumpkin next Friday at the close of business. Meanwhile, huge, ongoing, paradigm-changing project is at a critical stage and very, very behind, and also meanwhile, we move into one of the busiest times of the year. So, there you have it: I have been getting very little sleep and I'm basically holding onto my sanity by the skinniest, most fragile of threads. It's a nightmare, and at some point if I'm extremely lucky it will end.

Hey, you know what I think would be fun? I think I'll just work all weekend long. Yeah, that is my next big idea.

2006-09-10T19:34:00.000-04:00

So, I am busy, and tired, and feeling sort of unispired, but more just busy and tired and lazy. I keep composing posts in my head while I run, but then I never come in here and write them out for you. That is gonna change soon. I am going to start treating myself a little better. I am going to try, anyway.

Meanwhile, I wanted to share this, from a book called Dancing Moons by Nancy Wood. It is great, full of great poems and paintings, but my favorite part of it is that there is a little meditation for each month, in a Native American genre/style. So here is September, which, incidentally, is Corn Ripe Moon. Who knew?

September's great path of the moon is awareness.
Lie down in a secret place with your head pointed towards the east and stay there until you learn something. Then move slowly to the south, facedown. Notice what is in front of your nose: leaves, pine needles, dirt, insects, pebbles. When you turn to the west, dig into the earth with your fingers. Smell the richness of history. Imagine what this spot was like ten thousand years ago. Who came this way before you? Do they speak to you? Watch the way shadows move. It's history stirring.
Now turn to the north and stay there until you can imagine every drop of rain, every flake of snow that has fallen there. Imagine the animals that have walked by; the snakes and insects and rodents who live nearby; the plants and trees that grow; the earthquakes and the floods, the blizzards and the heat. Imagine fire and drought. Think of how the earth endures.
Complete the circle with your body. Turn to the east and listen for the Voice That Awakens the Land. When you hear it and know what it means, turn over and look at the sky. Think of everything that has happened there. The birth and death of stars. The rising and setting of moon and sun. The birds that have flown by, the clouds that have formed in various shapes and sizes and colors. Consider the darkness beyond.
All time, all place is present in these two circles, expanding from your body in both directions, above and below. These two circles finally join together in the sky. It's called the seam of life.
Just think: In these circles, you have created your own universe. That's what awareness is all about.

I don't know, this seems like it would take a pretty long time, I don't have too much time to lie in the dirt and think about all that stuff. I am pretty intimidated by people who can lie in the dirt and imagine every drop of rain that has fallen in that spot. Dude, that is a lot of raindrops. Still, I really like this, it is nice to read and think about. It makes me feel sort of peaceful to just think about lying in the dirt and creating my own universe.

So, tomorrow, you know. I don't even really know what to say. Sometimes it feels like yesterday. These moments, that circumstances far beyond your control create, that are seared into your brain just never seem to even fade. So when I close my eyes, I step outside of the student union where everyone is sitting silently in front of the televisions, and I am standing on the brick patio, and I look up and the sky is blue and clear and cloudless. And silent. And I look over to gaze at the Indianapolis skyline, and it is whole and perfect and unchanged, but it all of a sudden no longer seems quite so permanent. I try to call home but all the lines are jammed. I think it is sometimes given to us to know when we are living in a moment that will never leave us, and it was certainly true in that moment, as I stood there in the bright September sunshine as chills ran down my spine and I realized that for the rest of my life this would be my answer to the question, "Where were you when?"

2006-09-01T19:02:00.000-04:00

So, I have been working a lot lately. I mean, it's possible that some people would classify the amount of hours I have been putting in as excessive. You know how people are always saying something like, "no one on their death bed ever wishes they had worked more." But every time I come home at "a reasonable hour" I regret leaving work. I sit on the train home and just think, "crap. I should've taken care of that one project." I do! Does this mean there is something wrong with me?

Anyway, this weekend is a holiday, Monday is Labor Day. Most weekends I have been working. This weekend I am not going to work. I just got home and I am already freaking out about work. Why didn't I stay a few more hours!?!?! It was chaos when I left. I hate doing that. That's why I always end up staying so late, because I prefer to stay until the chaos is dealt with and I can attain a sense of having things under control.

ANYWAY (soon I will get to my point), the reason I left on time, and the reason I am not going to work this weekend, is that I am supposed to be out on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, relaxing on a long holiday weekend. However, there is the small matter of the tropical storm. Ernesto is dumping a fair amount of rain on us right now (let's hope the Constitution once again stays dry) and it's very windy and the roads are sort of dangerous, so I am sitting at home, alone, waiting for morning and the storm to pass so that I can drive out there.

Then I am going to get in the hammock and stay there reading trashy novels all weekend long.

YESSSS!!!!! Trashy novels in the hammock. That is going to be so sweet.

2006-08-29T07:21:00.000-04:00

Ladies, there are certain activities for which men's boxer shorts are appropriate attire. These include sleeping (alone) and doing laundry, if your washer and dryer are in the privacy of your own home. They do not include grocery shopping, walking the dog, getting the newspaper, or any activity that involves being in public. PLEASE STOP WALKING YOUR DOG WHILE WEARING BOXER SHORTS. Boxer shorts are underwear. They are not shorts. Just because they are not your underwear does not mean you can turn them into clothes appropriate for leaving the house. Even a bathing suit is appropriate for some public venues. Would you walk your dog in your bathing suit? No. Would you go grocery shopping in your bathing suit? No, you would not. I am not trying to be a stick-in-the-mud, I am just saying, boxer shorts are underwear. Secondary concern: boxer shorts are not attractive apparel. They are not flattering, at all. They look gross on you in addition to being socially inappropriate. It is mostly the baggy butt. Gross. No one wants to see you walking around the streets in men's underwear with a baggy butt. I cannot even imagine what possessed you to think that this would be a good idea. What is so hard about just putting on a pair of goddamn running shorts to walk your dog? It's not like putting running shorts on is more work or something. Running shorts are designed to be outerwear, they are appropriate for public venues (some of them anyway), and they look much cuter on you. You know who else I bet does not want to see you in boxer shorts? Your boyfriend. Walk around your house in your own underwear, he will be much happier that way and let's face it, on the spectrum of things you can do to please your boyfriend, walking around the house in your own goddamn underwear is PRETTY GODDAMN EASY. It is not that much work. Okay, is everybody ready for a group whine? "But Willow, boxer shorts are comfortable." Oh, please. Let me get out my violin and play "My Heart Bleeds for You."

2006-08-21T20:12:00.000-04:00

Uh, you guys, it has been brought to my attention that the Aussies among us DO NOT KNOW THE JOYS OF MIMOSAS. Holy Crap.

A mimosa is a glorious cocktail composed of champagne and orange juice. It is, as a friend of mine recently pointed out, the mixed drink that delivers the best results with the least input of effort and talent. I mean, you basically cannot mess it up, and it always tastes good. It contains both ORANGE JUICE, which is good for you and also means that it is never too early in the morning for drinking, and CHAMPAGNE, which renders the beverage automatically classy, and you almost instantly tipsy. The mimosa is, quite possibly, the pinnacle of human achievement. It's for when you cannot quite get away with boozing it up, but the occasion nonetheless calls for, uh, celebration. And drunkenness.

In the unlikely event that you were not present at the papal audience on Sunday, I would like to inform you that the message His Holiness wishes to deliver to the faithful is this: don't work too hard. Working too hard will crush your soul. I mean, he did not put it quite exactly like that, but close enough. I would not have known about this little speech but for the Washington Post. Thanks, Washington Post dudes. Click on that link. I made it look like it is just a link for the paper, but it's not, it's a DIRECT LINK for the article about Benedict's "don't work too hard" message, so you should click on it, it will take you right there, and then you will know I am not making this up. Dude, I don't HAVE to make this stuff up. Have you noticed that the world, it is just crazy all by itself. No fabrication is even necessary. No fabrication, you guys. None.

2006-08-21T19:02:00.000-04:00

Hey you guys, I realized that what we really need in midtown is a few more chain lunch restaurants and some overpriced condos. Oh, wait, someone already noticed that. Well. Great. I am glad you dudes are taking care of that, I was really starting to wonder if we were ever going to get some more chain lunch places and overpriced condos.

2006-08-17T08:07:00.000-04:00

Okay this is pretty fun. It's a fill-in-the-blanks exercise. I got the idea for it from the data about people's aol searches that was released and is now all over the internet. Someone searched for "i hurt when i think too much i love roadtrips i hate my weight i fear being alone for the rest of my life." Wow. Try writing your own, it is really fun. I have two for myself so far:

i hurt when i can't have what i want the most
i love wanting it anyway
i hate when people who don't know me think they understand me
i fear love

i hurt when i trip on the escalator
i love october
i hate moldy cheese
i fear losing the good in pursuit of the perfect

2006-08-13T20:42:00.000-04:00

I'm listening to Little Steven's Underground Garage on my Indianapolis radio station. The wonders of the internet. "The internet! Is that thing still around?" Yes, Homer, it is, scarily enough.

This weekend I got a lot of sleeping in. I have been giving up my copious amounts of sleep lately on account of work and school, but this weekend I took MORE THAN ONE nap, as well as over eight hours of sleep each night. I forgot that the best thing about sleep is the dreams. People I love are always teaching me things in my dreams. I didn't listen when they were saying these things while we were awake, but they whisper them over and over again in my dreams, and things start to fit together and make sense. Sometimes in college I would feel like my separate professors were conspiring to teach me things at the same time. I'd be sitting there with Professor Newton and think, "wait, Professor Garcia just told me this last week." Well, that is what the dreams are like. I realize that all of my companions have been making the same point, only it never made sense until my unconscious mind picked up on it and told me.

I got picked for a pool for jury duty. It doesn't mean you're on the jury, but you are in the pool and you have to go and be one of the prospective jurors. Then the lawyers ask everyone a bunch of questions (this is called voir dire) and decide who they don't want. Here is the thing you guys: the trial they want me to be on is supposed to last for NINE WEEKS. I am gonna have to figure out some way to get out of that. I mean, no way can I do that. If I were a federal worker I'd have no choice, because they get their regular pay, and have people to replace them at work, and things like that. The city is of course full of federal workers. They can serve on a jury for freaking nine weeks. As for me, I am getting out of it somehow. If I would get paid my normal salary, and it weren't such a critical juncture at work, it could be pretty interesting I suppose. NO READING ANY ARTICLES ABOUT FEDERAL TRIALS. That's what they tell you in the letter. Nice. Tell a bunch of Washingtonians not to read the newspaper. Good luck with that, dudes.

2006-08-12T20:17:00.000-04:00

You guys, I just did that thing again, where I put all my crap in boxes and then pay some dudes to drive it across town. I'm a little tired of doing that. I'm going to do it again really soon, too, in the next couple of months probably, but fortunately in between now and then I'm not really going to take any of the crap out of the boxes. So instead of having to put everything in boxes, I can skip straight to the step of paying some dudes to drive it across town. Then after that I am never moving again. I mean it.

If you know me well, you know that my I only have two requirements for a man I spend my life with: 1) good man, 2) makes me happy. I tried to add 3) not an Aquarius to that, but a freakish twist of fate made me realize that there are some very nice and handsome Aquarius men in the world (well, at least one, anyway) and I probably shouldn't rule them out, on account of it's not really fair. SO, my new list is, 1) good man, 2) makes me happy, 3) shares my conception of the perfect Sunday morning and is willing to partake in same most Sundays with rare exceptions. And the perfect Sunday morning is this: sleeping late, doing the NYT crossword puzzle, and having mimosas, preferably with not many clothes on. As for mass, well, that is what Saturday evenings are for, if he insists, which I prefer that he doesn't.

I hate obsessing about the weather, but I do it pretty often anyway, and I have to say that the weather right now is pretty much paradise. Not something you really expect at this point (August) in this city (DC) so it's especially a treat. It's beautiful out and I am drinking it in and rolling around in it. Glorious!

2006-08-08T22:44:00.000-04:00

You guys, all my boys are over there in the desert, getting blown up. And coming home in body bags and without all the limbs they went over with, and losing their minds. And it is so goddamned unfair. And I just want to point out that they are a good many of them younger than I, losing their lives and their innocence for no fucking good reason.

2006-08-08T22:39:00.000-04:00

You've heard this song, right? (from Gnarls Barkley)

I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that phase.
Even your emotions had an echo
In so much space
And when you're out there
Without care,
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn't because I didn't know enough
I just knew too much
Does that make me crazy
Does that make me crazy
Does that make me crazy
Probably
And I hope that you are having the time of your life
But think twice, that's my only advice
Come on now, who do you, who do you, who do you, who do you think you are,
Ha ha ha bless your soul
You really think you're in control
Well, I think you're crazy
I think you're crazy
I think you're crazy
Just like me
My heroes had the heart to lose their lives out on a limb
And all I remember is thinking, I want to be like them
Ever since I was little, ever since I was little it looked like fun
And it's no coincidence I've come
And I can die when I'm done
Maybe I'm crazy
Maybe you're crazy
Maybe we're crazy
Probably

2006-08-05T22:18:00.000-04:00

And I don't know if I have mentioned this, but no more Aquarius men. I mean it. No more.

2006-08-05T21:57:00.000-04:00

More Ireland pictures! At the very top is Kylemore Abbey. Everyone sees this picture and they immediately say, "Wow!" Then the next thing they say is, "Did you go in?" No. We did not go in. We had to KEEP DRIVING. If you do not keep driving, that is, if you stop, you are further decreasing your speed of travel. In Ireland, no matter how far you go you will never average faster than thirty miles per hour. I. am. not. exaggerating. When we stopped on the side of the road to take pictures of Kylemore Abbey, we were on our way from the very northernmost part of County Mayo down to our home base in County Tipperary, which I think is maybe a hundred miles. It took us I think close to eight hours. So, yeah. We did not stop to go in Kylemore Abbey. But it looks pretty darn cool, huh? Along with these other amazing vistas. Unbelievable. I don't know who invented Ireland, but I give them major props.

2006-08-05T21:30:00.000-04:00

2006-08-05T20:10:00.000-04:00

So, lately what I've been thinking about a lot is the way we reveal ourselves. How can we figure out what to let other people see? Sometimes I see people revealing themselves in certain ways and it makes me uncomfortable, and then I realize that there aren't any objective criteria for how much of yourself you should let other people see. So when other people's openness makes me uncomfortable, it isn't about them, it's about me, and the ways in which I've been hurt.

Recently I was having a drink with two male friends, and we were talking about trust. I don't remember exactly how it came up. The one said, "Do you trust him?" (the other friend who was with us) and I responded, "No. No way." Then he said, "Well, do you trust me?" and I said, "Maybe." Later when I was thinking about it, I noticed that the person I said I trusted not at all, I reveal myself to enough that I must trust him a little bit. And the person I said I maybe trusted, I trust so deeply that my answer probably should have been not, "Maybe," but more like, "With my heart, my life, and my honor." That would've been a lot more accurate. Where did this difference come from between how much I say I trust people and how much I really trust them?

Of course, just because I reveal myself or give of myself to someone doesn't necessarily indicate that I trust them. I noticed, it's more indicative of the fact that I trust myself. Other people may betray me and let me down, but I need people close to me anyway. So I have had to learn that I can trust myself, and that I will not be destroyed by the betrayal of anyone I've revealed myself to. Hey you guys, I just realized, I did it. I got back the keys to my emotional health. Oh, man, it didn't even take that long. You all should totally do it too. It's pretty fucking empowering. This revelation is making me giggle.

I totally want a bike that folds in half. In fact, I want this bike that folds in half:
http://www.citizenbike.com/catalog.asp?product_category_id=1&product_id=1
It. folds. in. half. You guys, that is pretty awesome. I don't know if you can tell, I am excited about it.

2006-07-27T19:31:00.000-04:00

Look you guys! It's Ireland! This is what every road is like, only you can't necessarily see here the winding-ness of it. Look carefully, there are the sheep. They are just on the side of the road there, chilling. There is no fence or anything. They just hang out wherever the heck they feel like it. And they just amble across the road if they want. This scenery that we drove through was really amazing, and like I said before the pictures don't really do it justice, but I think they turned out okay anyhow.

This is the Shannon River. We are looking upriver at the bridge that crosses the Shannon between the twin towns of Ballina and Killaloe. In this picture, I'm standing in Ballina, and Killaloe is on the other side of the river. This bridge is one lane only (there is a traffic light to regulate it) and it is the only connection between County Clare (Killaloe) and County Tipperary (Ballina).

Then this is me, in front of Croagh Patrick near Murrisk. St. Patrick supposedly spent all of Lent one year (a really long time ago) camped out on this mountain, just chilling. While, of course, not eating anything, cause that is the way saints roll during Lent. Now on the last Sunday in July people walk up this mountain barefoot for penance. I wanted to walk up it (with shoes on) but we didn't have time, because it takes forever to get anywhere, on account of the whole one-road syndrome.

2006-07-26T20:45:00.000-04:00

Pictures of Ireland soon, I promise! I am still taking pictures on film, I know I am the only one, but that is the way it is. And I sent them out to have them developed, so it takes a couple of days. The first thing I noticed when I got off the subway on the way to work Monday morning was the smell. Hot garbage, mmm. Of course I wasn't appreciating the smell in Ireland, and I hadn't noticed before I went how really terrible the city smells. I mean, it stinks you guys. Don't move to DC, it smells bad. I mean, if you already live in a city, then do move to DC, because it's kinda neat and probably doesn't smell worse than the city you currently live in. But don't move to DC from the Irish countryside.

Of course the trip home was eventful. I forgot all that crap about how when you land stateside, even if you are connecting to somewhere else, you have to claim your bags and go through customs, and then recheck your bags. And then go through security again before you can go to your connecting gate. From the time we landed in Philadelphia until the time I got to my connecting gate was almost three hours. My flight left Shannon two hours late, so I was already going to miss my original connection, so I got rebooked on another flight (almost missed that one too) but even if my flight to Shannon had left on time I wouldn't have made my connection because my layover was only two hours. So, give yourself longer than that when you fly into the U.S. and need a connection to somewhere. Especially if you fly into Philadelphia, which according to fellow travellers is really inefficient as far as customs is concerned.

I am being totally unproductive at work, which I really hate, but never do anything about even though I think my productivity is probably at least 80% in my own control. I think tomorrow I am going to start keeping a log of what I am doing in ten-minute increments just to make myself realize how much I screw around. I think it's kind of a lot of screwing around. I'm not totally sure though. We'll see. I shall share my findings. It'll be like if I were a lawyer, those guys keep track of every minute what they are doing. Then they bill you.

I am on a salad kick. We have our fancy organic grocery store a block from my office, and I have been getting these salads of just mixed greens and mediterranean vinaigrette. The dressing is never mixed up, all the feta is at the bottom of the bottle and you can't shake it up because there's no lid. The greens have been tasting really good to me lately, I'm not sure why. They have a taste that reminds me of the farm, I think. I keep wanting to say they taste like dirt, but that makes it sound like they taste bad. So I need to figure out how to explain it better.

At any rate, back to ordinary life and its everyday absurdities. Sigh.

2006-07-22T15:17:00.000-04:00

Wednesday night we went out to see some Irish set dancing (not step dancing) and it was a blast. It's sort of like step dancing, and sort of like square dancing, and it was really fun to watch. I am going to see if I can find a group to do it with when I get home. Because it is just my kind of thing, since I am, in general, both dancey and overly enthusiastic.

Also, driving home from County Mayo we drove through some absolutely amazing scenery. Everything, really, every vista I see is absolutely amazing, just breathtaking. One of the main things we've done is drive all over the western half of this country, and I keep trying to take pictures but they really can't do it justice. I will post them anyway, when I get back, but it's nothing to being here.

We stopped in a little village called Leenane and I bought a sweater, which I keep telling people is the me-est piece of clothing I've ever seen. Really, you'd think someone made it expressly for my taste and style. Maybe my taste and style are Irish at heart. Every time I turn around, it seems, I see someone who could be my sister. The hair, and the face shape, I suppose, and of course the complexion.

We can't stop remarking over the flowers. There are bionic petunias. The petunias we have in DC don't even seem like the same plant. Every single building in this whole country has multiple hanging flower baskets and they're all full of absolutely enormous petunias. Here in our yard there are also beautiful sweet peas. AND, a raspberry bush! I just stand there and eat.

We went on a short pleasure cruise into Lough Derg (a lake that's part of the Shannon River) yesterday, at least I think it was yesterday. The views were extraordinary. I think it is getting old that I keep saying that, but it's true, everywhere I look is just gorgeous countryside. We are on the County Tipperary side of the river, and on the other side is County Clare, which is called "the true soul of this magical island" which I think is a really brilliant piece of p.r. I can't say specifically as we haven't spent much time in County Clare, but it's, uh... really gorgeous. Sorry. You guys, Ireland is beautiful, I don't know what else to say.

2006-07-21T17:45:00.000-04:00

So, here is one of the things about Ireland: there is one road. No matter where you go you always get this feeling that you are on THE one road. Almost every road is one lane each direction with no shoulder, and it's for: cars, people on foot, bicycles, farm equipment, lorries, and livestock. It can be sort of... intense. Also there is very little signage. And the whole driving on the left thing, it's hard to get used to. It's not for the faint of heart, the driving on the one road. There is actually a song about being on the one road, and it's funny in a way because it's a very fitting metaphor for Ireland since there really is only one road (and it might be the wrong road because there is NO SIGNAGE) but the song is really about what my cousin was telling me about how every Irish man wants to see a united Ireland. God grant I may live to see it. Here are the lyrics:

We're on the one road
Sharing the one load
We're on the road to God knows where
We're on the one road
It may be the wrong road
But we're together now who cares
North men, South men, comrades all
Dublin, Belfast, Cork and Donegal
We're on the one road swinging along
Singing a soldier's song


Though we've had our troubles now and then
Now is the time to make them up again
Sure aren't we all Irish anyhow
Now is the time to step together now

Tinker, tailor, every mother's son
Butcher, baker shouldering his gun
Rich man, poor man, every man in line
All together just like Old Land Syne

Night is darkest just before the dawn
From dissention Ireland is reborn
Soon we'll all be United Irishmen
Make our land a Nation Once Again

I was in Galway today. It's a big city, stuffed with people, including a lot of tourists. And it's fascinating, and still very Irish despite its big city feel. I put my toes in Galway Bay and took pictures. Yes. Of my toes in Galway Bay. Can't post them from here, I'll do it when I get back to the States. (Or, as the Irish tend to call it, America.) Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers sing a lot of very fine songs of Ireland, and one of my favorites is their version of Galway Bay:

Maybe someday I'll go back again to Ireland
If my dear old wife would only pass away
She nearly has my heart broke with her naggin'
She's got a mouth as big as Galway Bay

See her drinking sixteen pints of Pabst Blue Ribbon
And then she can walk out without a sway
If the sea was beer instead of salty water
She'd live and die in Galway Bay

See her drinking sixteen pints at Padgo Murphy's
The barman says I think it's time to go
Well she doesn't try to speak to him in Gaelic
In a language that the clergy do not know

On her back she has tattooed a map of Ireland
And when she takes her bath on Saturday
She rubs the Sunlight soap around by Claddagh
Just to watch the suds flow down by Galway Bay

2006-07-21T04:51:00.000-04:00

A couple of days ago we drove to County Mayo to meet my father's cousins - their mother and my dad's mother were first cousins, so, you know, I am really bad at all that cousin terminology, they are just the Irish Cousins to me. Anyway, I got my education about peat, Sinn Fein, potatoes, the famine, Irish politics, etc. etc. I kept saying, "I'm sorry, I'm completely ignorant about this" and getting them to explain things to me. It was amazing. Before the famine there were eight million people living in Ireland. I was told that potatoes were everyone's entire diet, a man might eat twenty pounds of potatoes in a day. So when the crop failed (btw, potato blight is a fungus, I learned) it was a major crisis, that's what prompted everyone leaving for America. I definitely need to do a lot of reading now and learn more about everything, it is so amazing to me to finally be hearing about all this. I wish I had made an effort to educate myself a long time ago. One of my favorite moments was when one of the cousins said to me, "Every Irish man would like to see a united Ireland," and I just felt this very powerful sense of history running like fire in my blood. My history. The history of my people.

2006-07-17T14:50:00.000-04:00

So, here I am in the Old Country! It is amazing. When I was boarding in Philadelphia for the flight to Shannon, the gate agent took my passport, and looked at it, and then looked up at me, and then looked at my passport, and then back at me, and then he said, "Yep, you're Irish alright." I have a very Irish-sounding name. I guess I am Irish-looking too. Then this morning, I was walking along the street here in the town where I am staying, and a there was a car passing by with someone sort of sticking his head out the back passenger side window, and just as the car passed, he yelled my name. It is a very common Irish name, so I don't know, but I was like, whoa, who is calling my name? And I turned around and he was waving, so I waved back. But it was ran. dom. Weird. I was half like, gee, is there any way I could know this guy?

So, of course everything is green, just like they say. Green and wonderful. It is totally beautiful. And it's amazing to be here, finally. I waited too long. Several dispatches to follow, of course, maybe I can even post some pictures. Of palm trees! There are palm trees in Ireland! And we are so far north that it's light for a really long time, and so there are tons and tons of huge flowers, just like it were still spring, because it doesn't get very hot here. The weather is really nice right now, it's actually pretty hot by local standards, but it's a hundred degrees and humid back home, so eighty-one is making me pretty much love life. More soon, when I am not so jetlagged, and also when I am doing more than wandering around starry-eyed and feeling deja-vu-y.

2006-07-10T20:58:00.000-04:00

I think there is something to be said for just eating a donut sometimes. You know, I am the sort of person who wanders around the neighborhood at lunchtime, getting hungrier and hungrier but not being able to figure out what to eat. That is why there is something to be said for eating a sandwich and an apple every day at lunch. There is no drama, but on the other hand, there is no drama. So, the donut. I just sort of got it in my head that I would like a donut. So, I bought a donut. It was seventy-five cents. There was no tax on the donut. It counts as a grocery item. I ate the donut, and it was not particularly tasty. I mean, I would not say it tasted bad, but I did definitely feel a little let down by that donut. However, I do not regret eating the donut. And here's why: I can now stop thinking about the donut. It is not going to do me any permanent damage to have eaten that donut, and now I am in charge and the donut is not. I know that I don't particularly enjoy eating a donut, so I never have to eat one again if I don't want to. I mean, if the right donut came along, and I wanted to eat it, I could. But the donut will not be a daily habit. It's pretty convenient for me to be not all that enthralled by donuts. I feel that life is too short to be eating food that isn't amazing to you, and I guess if I found donuts amazing I could get sort of fat pretty easily. Donuts! Hey, you guys, it's cool, donuts are okay, but they are nothing special.

2006-06-27T14:07:00.000-04:00

If you make your home somewhere near here in our fair capital city, you may have noticed that it has been raining lately, sort of a lot. Everything is pretty wet, including the Department of Commerce and the IRS, and the National Archives, where original documents from our nation's illustrious history are stored. Supposedly although the Archives is flooded, and the Metro stop at the Archives is flooded, and half of the city is flooded, the Declaration of Independence, which is at the Archives, is "safe and dry." Granted, this amount of rain is a little unusual. I mean, there are only four more days in June for it to pour constantly and add to our monthly total, but there is not a whole lot of suspense about the final number because we already are in the wettest June ever. It's almost the wettest month ever, in fact. I guess we can have a little suspense about that. We have about four inches to go. The way it has been going, I will not be at all surprised if we make it. ANYWAY, the idea of building this city on a swamp was probably not the best plan ever. I mean, if you live in a swamp, your basement is probably going to be pretty damp. Don't put the Constitution down there. (p.s. Moisture is not the threat to the Constitution that I am really worried about right now.)

So, the reason I bring this up is, it is pretty exciting. And something novel to talk about. No one else seems to have said anything about it, at all. It is not like every news outlet, and every blog, and every person in the whole metropolitan area is talking nonstop about how much it is raining. You guys, it's okay, we all noticed that it is raining.

2006-06-11T20:52:00.000-04:00

My electric toothbrush is possessed. The other morning I was getting ready to leave the house, when I heard a loud buzzing noise apparantly coming from the bathroom. I hadn't heard my roommate get up, but I thought, "Maybe roommate is shaving." I walked out of my bedroom and looked into the bathroom, and there was no one there. So I went in and looked around, and realized that it was my toothbrush. It had spontaneously turned on, just sitting there on the shelf. Which was weird enough, but then, when I picked it up and tried to turn it off, it wouldn't turn off. Time for a cold boot. I took the batteries out. I put the batteries back in. It still wouldn't turn off. So I left the batteries out. Now I have to put the batteries in when I want to brush my teeth, and then take them back out when I am done. I hope I'm not bringing a curse upon myself by brushing my teeth with a possessed toothbrush.

Also, if you look at this year's Washington National Cathedral calendar, the picture for June is of the girls' choir, and the fourth girl from the left looks just like me. I guess it's not so strange that sometimes people look like each other. Actually it's pretty nifty and crazy the way people really don't end up looking more like each other. I mean, how many different ways can you look. Really. Only a finite number of genes, people. Probably there is someone out there currently living on this planet who bears an uncanny resemblance to you, right? I mean, I am not a geneticist. So someone can tell me I'm wrong and I won't mind. But that choir girl does look like me. So, yeah.

2006-05-25T18:12:00.000-04:00

So, this morning I went to court for my divorce hearing, so that was cool. Pretty soon I will be officially a free woman! But going to court is always sort of stressful, because it's just a hassle all around. Like this morning, we had trouble parking, and you had to take a shuttle to the courthouse from the parking lot. So we walked in exactly fifteen minutes before the start of the docket, which was when my lawyer asked me to meet him. Then I had trouble getting through the metal detectors because I had my mp3 player in my little purse that I had with me. No, Virginia, you can't take your mp3 player into the courthouse, and no, we don't have a good reason. And they wouldn't hold it for me, either, the guy was like, "well, you will have to take it out to your car." My car was in a satellite lot that you had to take a shuttle to. So my mom was like, "go hide it outside somewhere." So I walked outside and I'm looking around, thinking, and there were these concrete barriers with little recesses underneath them, and I was going to shove it under there, but then I thought, "Someone will see me and take my mp3 player." Then I thought, "Oh, my god, someone will see me and CALL THE POLICE and the courthouse will be evacuated and I will be arrested as a terrorist and declared an enemy combatant and be held indefinitely without access to a lawyer and my mother will be crying on the six o'clock news." So, I'm glad that occurred to me. Duh. I ran across the courtyard, there was a little hill, on the other side of the hill there was a driveway, and on the other side of the driveway there were woods. At the edge of the woods there was one of those little birdhouses and a lot of thick vegetation and I dropped my mp3 player in there and ran back to the courthouse and got divorced. Then afterwards I came out and went to retrieve my mp3 player. I was really glad I thought to put it right by that birdhouse, because geez, I knew exactly where it was and it still took me like five minutes to find it. So, yeah. That was my day.

2006-05-01T22:12:00.000-04:00

Someone has been listening to me rant, or else others feel the same way I do, because the new voice is back on the Metro, and it is very different. It has been reworked. Its factor of obnoxiousness has been reduced several times. It is quieter, for one thing, with more polite wording, and Randi whats-her-name now sounds like a human instead of an alien. So I'm happy. I can definitely now let the new voice seep into my unconsciousness and not even pay attention to it. The new bing is still pretty annoying, but what are you going to do. You cannot have everything. And I thought I was stuck with the totally obnoxious new voice, but now I get the mildly annoying new new voice, so I'm just happy for small favors I guess.

2006-04-30T19:08:00.000-04:00

If you know me well, you have heard this story, but in case you have not heard it I will tell it because it is a necessary prerequisite to the point I want to make. Basically it goes like this: I originally went to college to become a commercial pilot. So what I did the first year of school was fly, a lot. I logged eight or twelve hours a week in a small single-engine plane - a Piper Cadet. I had never done it before I went to school and so I started from scratch and learned how to fly a plane. One day in May, several months after I had earned my private pilot's license, I went up to practice takeoffs and landings and some manuvers in the field. My plan was to do six touch-and-go landings and then fly a few miles south of the airport to practice turns and things. But after six landings I wasn't really happy so I stayed in the pattern to practice a little more. After a few more landings I took off and about 400 feet above the ground, just as I was getting ready to turn to crosswind, something went wrong. I was at full throttle and all of a sudden I lost about half my power. The plane started shaking violently. I looked out the window and the wings were shaking. I'd been trained to recognize certain common engine problems that you can sort of fix in the air (like carb ice) and I just thought to myself, "this is not carb ice. Something is really wrong." I called the tower and identified myself and said, "I'm having extreme engine roughness and I'm losing power. I'd like runway five please." And the controller said, "You're cleared to land on the runway of your choice." Which is, I think, pretty funny when I look back at it now. Right then I was so terrified I couldn't really appreciate the humor. Anyway I landed with no problems and after taxiing back to the hanger, which seemed like it took forever, the maintenence guys figured out that a cylinder had cracked and I had lost all compression from that cylinder. A four-cylinder plane is not meant to run on only three, so after a little while the engine would have caught fire, the cabin would have filled with smoke, and I would at that point have had about forty-five seconds of useful consciousness in which to land safely. I was like, "dude, thanks for telling me I almost died." I never got in a plane by myself again. How many people have a serious low-altitude emergency involving engine failure after only a few months of training? I was not meant to be a pilot, I think.

Anyway, the point of telling you this story is, the guys gave me the cylinder that cracked. This was six years ago and I have been carrying the cylinder around ever since, having moved several times. It weighs a lot, and it is sort of unwieldy and a little greasy too. And if you have been paying attention, you know that I just moved again. So I had to confront the cylinder. Usually it just sits in a closet. I was getting ready to take it down to the car and I looked at it and I thought to myself, "This thing almost killed me, and now I have to carry it around with me for the rest of my life." I always have plans to turn the thing into a planter or a little end table or a lamp, but instead I just let it sit in the closet. At the new place it is in the basement, next to my SEVEN HUGE BOXES all labeled "kitchen." That is what happens when you get married, you end up with seven boxes full of superflous kitchen equipment. That is after giving several more boxes' worth of kitchen stuff to my ex. It is ridiculous. Whenever you get married, uh, I don't know. I do not really have a strategy for getting married while avoiding the tradition of people giving you seven boxes full of extraneous kitchen equipment.

2006-04-25T08:43:00.000-04:00

First of all, if you have not heard the new Metro "doors closing" voice, you should feel very grateful. I have been hearing it only occasionally and that is more than enough. I fully expect a rash of people killing each other on the train because the voice makes them realize how much they hate life and every other human on the planet. The voice is that annoying. It is about ten times louder than the old voice, for starters. The words and phrasing are extremely grating. This is the text, and I will attempt to indicate the bizarre phrasing by the way I space the words here. Okay. Are you ready? It goes like this: "STEP BACK! ALLOW CUSTOMERS TO EXIT THE TRAIN BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO BOARDWHENBOARDING MOVE TO THE CENTER OF THE CAR" It is maybe not the worst thing ever, but it is close. The best part of it is that with all the ambient noise in the station, you can't really hear the message from the platform, so the message about letting people get off is totally wasted... on the people who are already in the car. The chime has changed also, and I can't decide whether it is almost as or just as obnoxious as the voice. It could be more, I don't know. I think the voice and the chime are supposed to be menacing now, like, the tone of the previous voice and chime was "please be courteous" and the tone of the new voice and chime is "BE COURTEOUS OR ELSE" which if you ask me sort of defeats the purpose. But no one asked me.

Also, I am riding my bike to the metro now, since it's too far to walk. I did an experimental trip yesterday evening, and I saw a deer! I actually saw two deer. They were not twelve feet away. Deer like an "edge" environment, where woods meets meadow. This is why sprawl is actually increasing deer habitat. I think people have the idea that the deer problem has to do with development encroaching on deer habitat and thus bringing them into closer contact with humans, where they quickly make pests of themselves, but actually development increases deer habitat, which causes the population explosion. Deer don't like deep deep woods. They have to be close to open areas. If you have dense forest that's hundreds of square miles, you won't find deer living in the middle of it - you'll only find them on the edges.

2006-04-22T18:42:00.000-04:00

Thomas Circle is actually starting to look like something. I mean, I am not going to come out and say that it is almost done, because I'm sure that it will still be months and months yet or possibly a few centuries or so. But it has reached some sort of tipping point where it looks better every week instead of worse every minute. Motorists probably do not appreciate Thomas Circle right now, but I like walking through there because it's cool to see the progress that has been made. I just appreciate things looking like they might be done some day, because the whole neighborhood is sort of a war zone right now. You cannot walk two blocks together up fourteenth street without having to cross because the sidewalks are closed. My favorite restaurant is right next to some huge construction zone going on so when I eat lunch I can listen to jackhammers. I am not going to miss those jackhammers when they are gone, that's all.

2006-04-21T12:49:00.000-04:00

We have this local, sort of quirky store and restaurant - it's like the anti-Ikea. The restaurant part is actually on the generic side, but the store side has been there for longer and is far quirkier. It's crowded and tiny and jumbled-up with a really odd assortment of stuff. Last night I was wandering around there and a woman who was a complete stranger stopped me and said, "Okay, should I get the regular or the deluxe version of this?" And it was a librarian action figure. No joke. It apparently has sound effects. My mother said she heard about it on NPR and it goes "shh!" So, there you go. I told the woman she should definitely get the deluxe version. It had a bunch of extra accessories with it and was just generally more impressive, and it was only $3 more. Personally, I probably would not buy a librarian action figure, but that is just me. And if you are going to go out and buy a librarian action figure, you should go for the deluxe version.

The other day I told a pal of mine that she was number 4 on my speed dial and I thought she should make me number 4 on his speed dial, for karmic balance. Of course karma doesn't have anything to do with it. But it's some sort of balance. A pleasant symmetry. Utterly useless, I guess, like a lot of things I come up with. Then I saw another pal of mine and she looked like she had had a really crappy day, so I said, "Let's go out to dinner and drink a whole bottle of wine just us," and she said, "That sounds great. Let's do that on a day when I don't have a deposition in an hour." I guess it's always a better idea to go to a deposition than to go out to dinner and drink a bottle of wine, at least if it's keeping your job that you're after. These two conversations don't have anything to do with each other which is just more evidence of my increasing scatterbrain-edness. No, there is some sort of neural connection between them, just not one that I'm aware of or can point out. But I might as well tell them together anyway. Maybe my two pals had similar shirts on or something. Maybe they have something in common that I'm not conscious of. Maybe if I can learn to yak a little less life will make more sense.

2006-04-16T09:01:00.000-04:00

Moving actually went reasonably well. I am always surprised when things like that don't turn out to be unmitigated disasters. Nobody dropped anything, everything got to where it is supposed to be, and it was over pretty fast. Quick and (for me) painless. I have moved myself several times, renting a truck and having friends help, and it is pretty terrible. I was really, really happy that I hired someone to do it for me this time. I was giddy, even. I had a bunch of things that I basically could never think of moving myself or with any friends. My dresser is solid maple and quite large and I bet it weighs four hundred pounds. It is ridiculous. And most of the time, things you think are pretty heavy, the movers get there and just move it like it is nothing. But I could not say that about the dresser. They did not move it like it was nothing. It is a beast, and you could tell that watching them move it.

Fortunately the new house is not quite as small as it looked two weeks ago, when my roommates first moved in and everything was full of boxes and furniture in random places. Now that everything is arranged it does seem big enough for the four of us to share comfortably. So I'm pretty happy about that, even though it does not change the fact that the shower is really really tiny. I guess I will just get used to that. The most stressful thing about moving in with people is that they have a cat. And I have a cat. The cats have not met each other yet, but I am not exactly what you would call optimistic. We will just see how it goes. My cat is staying at my parents' house right now. When I get all unpacked and everything I will bring her over and chaos will ensue. Chaos and hissing and spitting and a lot of angst. And I will wonder if the nice neighborhood and the amazing decor and the hardwood floors and the yard with vegetable garden are enough to make me happy to have moved there even though my cat has to learn to live in an uneasy truce with another cat that she doesn't like. Maybe they will become friends. I suppose maybe there is a ten percent chance that they will actually like having each other around. I will be happy if they both seem happy ignoring each other. I think that is probably the best outcome that I can reasonably expect.

2006-04-12T08:42:00.000-04:00

Here is the thing about Ikea. I like Ikea. I really do. I know a lot of people get mad at Ikea when they have to put stuff together, and there are no words in the instructions. If you have never put a piece of Ikea furniture together before, be assured this is absolutely true. Every instruction book for every piece of Ikea furniture is totally devoid of words. It is all pictures and they can be pretty confusing. But I have put together a lot of Ikea furniture and although the whole no words thing bothers me, I actually like putting that furniture together. I think it is fun. So, I have sort of a thing for Ikea, because I like putting their furniture together, and I really like their stores. Especially the showroom. And especially the restaurant. And especially marketplace. The whole thing is just cool. It is my sort of thing, I guess. I think it is sort of a personality thing, whether or not you like Ikea. When I was a kid we used to go on these annual pilgramages to Ikea, and we had to drive all the way out to Potomac Mills, which is far, far away. But NOW we have an Ikea in College Park and it's less than ten minutes from my house. I can go there once a week if I want . I can go there every day! It is a big deal to me. I almost never actually buy anything, but I just love to be there. EXCEPT.

There is one thing freakish and scary about Ikea. It's not really the whole Sweden thing. Most aspects of the Sweden thing do not bother me. Things have Swedish names, and, well, that is a little bit annoying, but not really. It is like calling shoes "the Jane" or "the Audrey" which is silly but who really cares. There are a few pieces of furniture in there right now that are just atrocious, and I am not sure if they are due to some Swedish design theory or just bad taste in general. Most things though are pretty simple with clean lines and that is sort of Swedish I guess, and I like that. BUT. The next time you are in Ikea, you have to check this out. It is borderline disturbing. It is creepy. Really, really creepy. There are tags on some things that have little cartoon characters printed on them. They are just line drawings, usually they are depicted using whatever thing or piece of furniture that the tag is attached to. These characters are not humans. They are creepy, bizarre hominids with three pointed toes and strange, scary faces. They look like something out of a four-year-old's nightmares. I hate them. They freak me out. I don't know whose idea they were, but that person is not my friend. I have to limit my exposure to these things, and that means limiting my exposure to Ikea. Which is okay I guess. I probably should be careful not to overdose on Ikea.

2006-04-09T08:49:00.000-04:00

So, I don't know if you have noticed, but I have noticed recently that probably upwards of 60% of the stuff everybody owns is totally useless junk they never use. Well, I don't know if it's fair to call it totally useless, because it could be useful, a lot of it anyway, I suppose, but it's just unused. So that makes it pretty useless to the person who owns it because it is just taking up space. I noticed this because I am moving soon. And I am in the process of packing. There is nothing that will make you realize how much stuff you have that you never, ever use than putting it all in boxes and paying someone to drive it across town.

The first three months of this year my main project was something I called "streamlining" and I did it because I knew I was moving soon. So I went and I got rid of a whole bunch of clothes and some other stuff, you know, the stuff that is in the junk drawer in your kitchen, and that drawer of your dresser that you never open, and on the shelf in your hall closet. I discovered that I have eight winter scarves. I am not what you would call a fashionista, in fact I do not remotely resemble a fashionista. I wear pretty much the same thing every day. I mean, I am cute and clean and stuff, I'm not sloppy or anything, but I just do not really get into clothes and things, and if it doesn't have holes or wrinkles or big stains then it is good enough for me to wear. So anyway, eight scarves is pretty much way, way over the line as far as excessiveness. I wear the same scarf all winter I'd say 95% of the time. So I gave four of the scarves to Goodwill. Now I only have three scarves I never wear. But that is what I did this winter, is get rid of things. And I felt like I really made a lot of progress. But now that I am putting it all in boxes and paying someone to drive it across town, I am noticing that I still have an awful lot of stuff that I don't need.

I drive over to my parents' house once or twice a week, and it is maybe a three-mile drive. There are six storage facilities along the way. I think that is pretty indicative of what America is like as far as every single person having way too much stuff, so much stuff that it does not fit in their house, and the mindset is such that it seems perfectly justifiable to pay money to someone to keep all your stuff that you never need or even think about. JUST IN CASE. People cannot throw anything away, and I think it is sort of sad. I think Americans are sort of held prisoner by all their stuff. I'm sure it's not just Americans, necessarily.

But my companion is in Ecuador for Peace Corps, and during training he lived with a family that does not own forks. Or an oven. And they have three children, but only two drinking glasses for the whole family. I am wondering why I need so many scarves I don't wear when I could get along just fine and be perfectly healthy and happy without even having forks. I am not saying, "oh, why should I live in such luxury when others don't have forks," no, that is not what I am saying at all. I am saying, "I don't even really need forks, so why do I need twenty forks, and why do I need a bunch of clothes I never wear, and books I never read, etc."

2006-04-06T10:20:00.000-04:00

So, here is an interesting article about the soil/agriculture crisis in Africa. The article quotes a source that suggests the solution to the crisis is... wait for it... fertilizer. Yes, children, fertilizer. If that doesn't sound patently and obviously absurd to you, you should also read this and this. If you don't have time for that just now, I shall summarize the reasons that this idea is pretty darn silly. Fertilizer costs money. The production of fertilizer uses petroleum, which, just as a reminder, is a non-renewable resource that we are running out of (hopefully not as quickly as many fear we are). It also enriches the soil here at the expense of nutrients from soil elsewhere - that doesn't really help us too much. Also, with such poor and hard soil, fertilizers don't do much good anyway because they can't be absorbed by the soil. What will help is sustainable practices that allow farmers to build soil health while working towards self-sufficiency. If your success depends on a program that provides you with low-cost fertilizer, then your failure is merely postponed. A success like this one is something I have a lot more confidence in.