happy birthday, old girl!

you wouldn't know it to look at her, but miss iz is 7 years old today... well, yesterday to be precise, but she is being very gracious about my having forgotten her birthday. i'm taking advantage of the fact that she has a brain the size of a peanut to shrug-off my inclination to buy her a birthday present. i have a feeling that when i have a kid who turns 7-years-old, i won't be able to get off as easily.
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most of the time my job is relatively boring. it's nothing like my brief stint as a theatre manager when there was usually at least one good story per day... the woman who wrote to us to get reimbursed for her tickets to the 1982 production of 42nd Street she missed (this was 2002)... the lady who was nearly thrown out of the theatre because she refused to keep her shopping bag in her lap (this was shortly after 9/11, and we had a strict "no bags in the aisles policy")... ah, and who can forget the ushers having oral sex between the blackout doors during a performance?

then again, there's something to be said for boring. since i left, i've never gotten a call at 10:30 on a saturday evening informing me that the sewage pump has backed-up into the backstage area... in the middle of a performance, and can i come by to see what can be done about it. (you can imagine the joy of the 60 tap-dancers who had to shuffle through poo just to get to the stage... they were sure happy to see me.) ah... the good old days.

i have to admit it...

i think i'm falling for barack obama. i've been resistant, seeing how crowds of college-age youngsters follow his every word. even my level-headed office-mate went from cheering on john edwards to plastering herself with "obama" stickers and standing out on cold, new york street corners on super tuesday. i was on guard. i don't want to be a fanatic. i like to keep my options open, but hillary clinton is starting to look more and more like a sore loser instead of a graceful politician. i wish i were on her staff... i wish i could tell her to grow-up and face this race like the practiced lawyer you are. but i can't, so i'm stuck watching her campaign crash and burn. i'm a little sad... i feel like i've been let down, not because i was ever a big hillary supporter, but because i thought, if anything, she would go out like a pro... our first serious female candidate... instead she's a poster-child for why people don't think women can handle the pressures of the office. she's letting obama get under her skin, and she's having a hard time hiding it. i know it must be tough watching a younger, smoother-talking politician muscle into the nomination you've been working towards for the last sixteen years. but if anyone should know the fickle, shallow nature of politics, its senator clinton. her husband was the smoothest, most amiable president since jfk (spoken like a true gen-y-er who can even remember reagan's campaign let alone carter's). unfortunately, you can't learn charisma in school... or in the senate for that matter. and just because you are qualified doesn't mean they'll vote for you.

that said, if by some stroke of luck, clinton wins the nomination, i will be out there in the streets with my clinton stickers, harassing passers-by. and if neither of them win, i'm voting for this guy. i could always use a little good luck!

waking up is hard to do

i'm the first one to admit that i'm lazy. i love sleep, and sunday nights are generally dedicated to the cause of getting to bed early. for some reason, last night, i flouted my own rules. there was an oscar party out in red hook, and i couldn't help but attend... despite the knowledge that the oscars never end before 11:30pm et. so here i am, monday morning, utilizing every ounce of self-restraint to keep my eyes open and my head off of my desk. this doesn't leave much cognitive-control left to actually accomplish any work, but it does at least allow for the appearance of industriousness.

this morning i woke up to this. i guess "nurse with wound" came after "carol king" on my ipod. i don't know, but i was convinced that i had been transported onto the scene of a car crash where roland -- the adorable, psycho kitty from the party the night before -- was hissing his disapproval. i generally like nurse with wound, but waking up to this particular song was the audio equivalent to a bucket of ice-water.

so, as you can see, i finally uploaded my colorado photos. i don't love the exposure on these, but at least you can see how pretty and snowy it was...

babysitting, part 2

so, my brother, his wife, and lmsp have come to nyc for a visit. lmsp seems to just get cuter by the day. she's still a wiggly, giggly little thing, but now she can speak. she says "hat," "ball," "up," "out," "mama," "dada," and "amah." you know what that last one is? me! she apparently repeats my name over and over again when i'm not around, hoping i'll climb out of the cabinet i must be hiding in. it's pretty spectacular to be a kid's first name after mama and dada. it's a bittersweet victory for me, knowing that it should have been "gamma." as i lay next to her, rubbing her back as she tried to fall asleep, wiggling her little tush as she settled into place, i couldn't help but think of how my mom should be there in my place, snuggling and shushing lmsp into dreamland.

being in that apartment... laying on the couch she so often napped on, drinking from the cups she always set out at dinner, seeing her handwriting on little notes jotted down on her "bird lover" stationery... feels like walking around in a haunted place. the ghost of my mom is everywhere there... even in lmsp's gigantic, life-loving smile. there's a pang every time i see something of hers... sometimes it's a big pang that catches my breath in my throat. others, it's just a little poke at the bruise on my heart. with lmsp, it tends toward the latter... it's just hard to get caught up in my own grief when she is shuffling around in my over-sized shoes with my mom's basket-weave purse dangling between her feet and a big, goofy grin spread across her face.

frustration

i have yet to load my colorado pictures onto the computer, so i apologize that you'll have to wait for photos of the thriving metropolis of minturn, co.

in the meantime, i thought i'd express my frustration with what strikes me as a very ignorant, sexist campaign against hillary clinton... not from the obama camp, or even the mccain camp... i think it comes from the same brilliant minds that refer to obama as "b. hussein obama." yesterday, as i went shopping for birthday cards in the conservative mecca of new york's upper west side, i ran across several cards emblazoned with unflattering, grainy pictures of clinton remarking how disasterous it would be if she were president or with a tear photoshopped in to remark on how sad it is that you are growing older. best yet was the clinton nutcracker... "is america ready for this nutcracker?" wow, what a jab. are men really this frightened of a powerful woman? i'm not saying that she's the best person for the job, but come on, we can do better than novelty gags, can't we? look who we have in the white house now:



no matter what you say about hillary, it's hard to be more comical than that.

eco-travel

so, you may have gathered that i travel a lot. this is not because i am a jet-setting kind of woman... since most of the trips are back and forth between houston and new york, but it seems too be the nature of my life. after the guilt of playing the eco-game i mentioned back in november, i decided to pay the $7.32 it cost me to off-set my plane travel to vail this weekend. given the price of airline tickets, $7.32 seems like a small price to pay to ease my eco-guilt.

week 3

so, i am now three weeks into my photography class, so i should have something to show for it. here are a few products of my most recent homework assignment... i wanted to do arty photos of people on the streets of new york, but i found that being limited to a 50mm lens and manual shutter/ aperture/ focus makes for pretty painful portraits. no one has the twenty minutes to wait while i adjust everything "just so" while still looking natural and not pissed-off at the stranger trying to take their picture. hopefully, as i improve my technique, i can start including surreptitious shots of people passing by. i'm a little cowed by the fact that one of my classmates had a homeless woman threaten her life for taking a picture of her -- in rockefeller center, no less.



one guess as to where i was last weekend...

i'm a sap

i love this little video... happy year of the rat!

and if you're uncommitted...

you might find this little tool handy

huh?

really? somehow getting further into debt is better for our domestic security and our economic position? wow, now i didn't take economics 101, so maybe this is right... but i fail to understand how owing china and saudi arabia more money makes the american economy better. unless by "better" they mean "worse." any closet economists? i'd love to learn if there is data to support this conclusion...


this weekend i discovered a new bird store in my neighborhood. this is a dangerous thing. i have fantasized about getting another bird since... oh... the month after i brought izzy home. i don't know why... one bird seems to make enough mess and cause enough aggravation. i'm sure there are better, less destructive, more cuddly pets out there, but these feathery, gawky-looking animals always tug at my heartstrings. these two were rolling around in their paper prior to my bringing out the camera (isn't that the way it always happens?)... so cute.

don't forget to vote on tuesday (or whenever your state holds its primary)... we democrats are getting a pretty exciting race this year. have you picked your favorite yet? if so, i'd love to know...