monday morning, 11am

wee orange
Originally uploaded by •pearl grace.

ugh... monday again. alright, i was trying to stay positive, keep my eyes focused forward, and not allow more than a moment for self-pity. afterall, so many people go through so much worse... the people of northern pakistan, for instance. then monday hit -- hit like a waterballoon launched squarely into the back of my head. the weekend was lovely... even the sitting around the apartment on sunday writing my paper while mil studied-up on orgo. but i meant to do so much more. i was going to call my friend who has both family in paakistan and family displaced by katrina. i was going to call another friend whose father graced the inimitable pages of "Continental" magazine. i was going to make plans with astrophysicist whom i haven't seen in weeks... none of this of course happened. i miss my friends. i miss having time to see them and hear their voices. i miss being able to veg-out on a weeknight without guilt. i want to go on a hike to see the leaves in connecticut or pick apples in new paltz, but i have papers to write and mil has exams to study for. in addition to the lack of free time, i'm now at the point where i can't keep my two bosses straight in my head... which one's on vacation? who needs his earthlink updated? which one needs a ticket to california at which time...?

anyway, i need to stop. thank you for letting me vent. eyes are now firmly averted from my navel. (ten more months... ten more months...)

dead can dance

lisa
Originally uploaded by atb20.

so we went... and it was as amazing as mil had made it out to be. maybe more so. rarely would i call a concert a religious experience, but this was definitely about as spiritual as i've ever felt. lisa gerrard's voice was nothing short of haunting -- i'm not sure i took a breath while she was on the stage. in addition to dead can dance, there was a full orchestra providing back-up. mil's face was lit-up the entire time. we were both completely enthralled, and i think my parents were as well.

the music is hard to compartmentalize. it is somewhere in the ethereal world between goth ahd world music with styles ranging from medieval to indian, to african, to irish folk, to country, to something that's purely dead can dance. really nothing to compare them to. if you're curious, amazon has a couple of tracks available.

my man

cue billie holiday.

my mil graduates to the 30+ club tomorrow. hard to believe that he was a mere babe of 25 when i met him. back then he was just recovering from a lifestyle of partying all night and sleeping all day with the beginnings of a normal 10-7 job. he lived in the far reaches of brooklyn with two cats and kleptomaniac roommate. his landlord was the barber downstairs who offered haircuts free of charge and only took cash for rent. his best friends were his barmates (including bestman) who had high OH tolerance and a taste for cajun. when i first met mil, i had nary a clue that this would be the man that i'd marry. hell, i wasn't even sure i'd date him given his party-boy lifestyle. fortunately, he adapted well to my lengthy sleeping habits and nerdy, ivy-league friends (though probably better to the latter than the former). he even dropped a nasty taste for menthol lights as he spent more and more nights at my cozy w. village studio. when i realize how different we were back then, it's amazing how much we've grown to be a part of one another. yin & yang. (or "john & yoko" depending on how you see it...) really, marriage just rocks.


happy birthday, baby.

yeah...

this morning i was reminded (and i will not explicate further for the sake of my loyal readers) of one of my favorite lines from absolutely fabulous--
eddy: is that what you want, saff?? a normal, old toilet-going mummy? "where's mum? she's on the toilet."

ah.. maybe you had to be there...
**
here's a shot from the concert last weekend.


the killers in blue
Originally uploaded by atb20.


mil and i are really excited about the one coming up though. it's going to be amazing. we're in the fifth row at radio city. tickets are still available if you want your socks knocked off.

sprint

see that kid over there to the right? that's what i feel like... tongue out, minnie hat in hand, shorty-shorts still in style (nair not even necessary). that's why it's so shocking to me when i look in the mirror and see this strange old woman with crows feet slowly settling in, grey hairs peaking out at her temples, and worries about checking account balances. is it really possible that in two years my fertility will have peaked? married? you have to be kidding! high school was just a couple of years ago (or ten). i can't possibly be old enough to be married. new york is still this strange, hip urban jungle i fantasized about from my pink, suburban bedroom. it can't be "home."

anyway, it's times like these that i miss my epistemology class where i was taught that i have no way of proving that i exist let alone that i'm 28 years old. (what's 28 years old? my memory? my wardrobe? surely not my cells!)
**
everyday's like sunday. "win yourself a cheap tray." share some greased tea with me. everyday's silent and grey.

gotta love morrissey.
**
here's the photo promised yesterday, btw...

Water Lilly
Originally uploaded by Jason Hightower.

sleepy...

i'm here, but boy, am i tired. don't ask me why. i had a pretty easy weekend, did minimal homework, and enjoyed several hours of reading on the couch, but still i be sleepy. my uncle suggested i exercise. my response was: i wake up at 7:30am, get to work/class by 9, get home at 7:30 - 8:30pm, make dinner, and if i can hold my eyelids open, i do about an hour of homework before it's 11pm and i have to go to bed, so uncle b, where the hell am i going to find time to exercise? nice... and i wonder why he only comes to visit once a year....

still no photos of my own. i'm sure noone else cares as much as i do. i think of all those fun pics just sitting on my camera waiting anxiously to be appreciated. poor little dears... i need a self-emptying camera if any of you techie-types are reading. not one of those darn photo printers where you just plug your camera in and it starts a-printing, but a computer program that automatically checks my camera for new photos (without plugging the darn thing in!) and downloads 'em. now that'd be cool.
**
anyway, i'll do my best to update later this week. maybe i'll drop off a flickr photo or two to spice things up... hope ya'll are digging the extra-long summer in NY (you know what that means for winter, right?)

i love fishes...

is it weird that i've been singing that jingle for the last two days substituting things such as "i love widgets cause they're so delicious! i love wid-gets." Yeah... don't answer that.
**
btw, if you haven't checked it out, flickr's explore page is amazing. some of the most beautiful shots i've ever seen. (i've been bringing a few of them here, but there are many more to enjoy.)

things i love

- mac os 10.4
- free speech
- being able to marry the person i love
- no premiums on my healthcare plan
- having a fuzzy pet that i don't have to walk
- parents that want to spend time with me
- friends that invite me to free concerts
- firefox
- widgets (i'm going widget-crazy)
- friends who love me even when i'm not very good about calling
- a job where i can wear jeans
- fall... yay fall!

Rainbow
Originally uploaded by nihilante.

railroaded

tacoma 3
Originally uploaded by brain tunnel.

well, as you can see i still haven't gotten to uploading my own pics. i tried last night, but i still have all the pics from the vermont wedding on my camera, so it took much longer than i had the patience for.
**
so, life in the fast lane is actually pretty decent. i'm exhausted, and the cold that i had three weeks ago seems to be lingering on into infinity, but i like to be busy. it makes me feel like this year will be over soon.

this placement i'm in is kicking my butt. i currently have 14 hours of field, and i have 7 clients. i've got a pretty even split between kids, adolescents, and adults which is cool, but it keeps me on my toes.
**
can i tell you how annoying these phone menus are? "do you have a confirmation number? if so, please tell me what it is. for example, if you have the confirmation number you could say 'five' (long pause) 'f as is frank' (another long pause, so you can digest what she's saying, because, you know, 'f' is a tough one) 'g as in george' (pause) 'seven' (pause) 'a as in apple' (infinite pause) 'x as in x-ray.' (pause, cause you still might not understand what she means by "x") Please say the number now. if you don't have a confirmation number, please say, 'i don't have a confirmation number'" By this point i'm screaming at the stupid *ss voice lady because if i try to talk over the message, they will say (in the most polite of voices), "I'm sorry. I was unable to understand what you said..." and repeat THE ENTIRE MESSAGE. i think i went through this about three times before i started screaming "AGENT!" in the phone. i'd better watch out, i might be seeing a therapist of my own very soon.

swimming upstream

Nature is playing with colors
Originally uploaded by Linda6769.

i'm doing my best not to become a mouth-breather, but these allergies are really getting to me. i hate having to breathe through my mouth. though i hate it even more when i can hear myself breath through my nose, so for now, mouth it is. or maybe i should start working on gills...
**
today was one of those days that started with a bang. i'd just had time to pour myself a (much needed) cup of joe, when prof #2 called reporting "computer problems." usually, "computer problems" require a brief visit to "system preferences" or the "library" and all is well, but i knew all was not well when i saw prof #2's brand new screen bopping around like it was on crack. eight hours of "apple care" later, i have now requested a "dispatch" from apple. (they like to make sure that they're not wasting anybody's time but yours by requesting various tests and "repairs" before declaring it a "problem" worthy of a real apple technician.)
**
anyway, that's been my wake-up call from a relatively laid-back weekend with the folks involving open house shopping and multiple rounds of ping-pong.

yum...

tasty
Originally uploaded by Mary Catherine.

so, one of these days i'll get back to posting my own photos, but lately i haven't had the energy to load them off of my camera. in the meantime, i'm paying tribute to folks with more talent than me (and oftentimes fancier cameras).

blueberry pancakes are one of my favorite weekend treats, only recently topped by lemon ricotta pancakes, but those don't photograph as well.
**
the folks finally decided against going to texas for the hurricane -- i mean, wedding. this is good. it means they won't have to deal with airports during an evacuation order, and i might get to escape the city for a few minutes. here's to hoping rita is much kinder than katrina... it's already taken 24 lives in texas, and it hasn't even hit land yet. that's a good sign...
**
a little poi for the weekend:
you should wear with pride the scars on your skin
they're a map of the adventures and the places you've been

this pretty much says it all...

indeed, i am tater tots.

how i feel

Maren Crashed
Originally uploaded by J.Bird.

i think i have my cold back. actually, i think it never really went away. it's different now though. exhaustion is once again the most prominent symptom, but it's more of a cough-y, sore throat thing instead of a nose-dripping-gallons-of-snot thing. i guess i'd prefer this since it means i don't have to have tissues permanently at the ready for fear of public outrage.

at the moment, i have plenty of work to do, but all i can think about is how much i want to be in bed right now. i actually laid my head on my desk momentarily and even over the incessant plink of my swatch, started to drift off.
**
so, my folks are planning to fly to texas tomorrow... is that dumb, or what? what kind of moron flies towards a category 5 hurricane? for a wedding, no less! granted they changed their flight plans such that they don't fly to houston today in favor of flying into san antonio tomorrow (the wedding is in middle-of-nowhere, tx), but is that much better? i mean there's going to be horrid travel conditions and a distinct possibility of losing power and potentially the roof overhead. it's like flying to baton rouge on august 28th... dumb.

in the trenches

i feel like i am awaiting rifle fire. it's less than two hours before
my first client in this placement, and i am quite nervous. i don't
really know what to expect. i spoke with her briefly on the phone,
i've seen her intake information, but none of that really tells me
who's going to be sitting in the waiting room and who's going to be
sitting here next to me in a matter of hours. am i going to be able to
help her? will we be able to connect in a meaningful way? will she
like me? will i like her? it's almost like a blind date -- though
she's probably better than most folks you meet that way because at
least she's admitting that she needs help. anyway, it's rather
nerve-wracking not knowing what to expect, so i get hung-up on things
like agency protocol and paperwork. will the client be billed
properly? how soon do i need to draw up the treatment plan? silly
stuff that has very little to do with the great unknown which is what
happens in this room when it's just the two of us.
**
in other news, we've had a couple of friends staying with us the last
couple of nights. it's been great catching-up, but given our insane
schedules (and the ridiculous number of people they have to visit while
in NYC), we've really only seen them for a total of about two hours.
it's impossible to catch-up on a years worth of stuff in two hours...
so we had to make do with discussions of family guy and the utter
hopelessness of the situation in new orleans. since doodle-bug and i
are both from houston, we made numerous comparisons with the great
hurricane of 1900 that bulldozed galveston and created the thriving
metropolis of houston, texas. surely, the only constant in life is
change.

oma's house

occasionally i just get overwhelmed by nostalgia. this morning as i was in my morning stupor i had this vague sense of having re-visited my oma's house at some point in my sleep. as my senses returned, i was reminded that the house was now owned by strangers and oma and opa were long since buried. lately, i've been thinking a lot about that house. it's the only physical structure i feel a strong emotional attachment to, the only place i visited consistently from birth till age 16, the home my mom grew up in and where she lived when she met my father -- and i imagine that today it would be changed beyond recognition. there are certain scents that exist in new york that bring to mind with clarity moments in that house. a waft of moth balls and oak, and i have visions of playing "restaurant" in opa's basement bar. crisp, fall air makes me think of helping oma with the gardening (or at least searching for fresh raspberries while she did so). i can easily imagine myself sitting on the red, vynil bench in the kitchen watching as oma shuffles about the stove cooking various wursts and tarts -- or if i was really lucky, spetzle. i can sense my feet not anywhere near reaching the floor. i can see opa sitting next to me with the paper while 1010 wins plays on the radio. it's not difficult to imagine myself lying in my basement bed, staring at the radiator on the cieling, waiting till i heard the creak of footsteps overhead to roust myself and see what's cooking. i remember thinking that the aqua toilet paper oma bought to match her aqua bathroom must have been as old as the house because where else could you buy aqua toilet paper except in the 1950s. my heart breaks a little when i realize that i'll never be able to share those experiences with my husband or my kids. that those experiences exist firmly in the past seems to require regular reminding. i feel like i should be able to go back and visit whenever i want, but i guess that's what memory is for...

sleep blogging

i think i might be dream blogging. my eyes are not really open and my body seems to be sending me messages that i am in bed. i think i'm really on the couch though because i just watched a pretty crappy episode of six feet under. i hope it gets better. mil and i are slowly catching up as the dvds come out. we're on season four i think. they just had some law and order type of episode where instead of doing anything interesting, david gets himself kidnapped by a hitchhiker. lame. i feel gypped. i don't watch six feet under to be like "no! stupid david! beat the sh*t out of that guy! friggin' drive away, you idiot!" i watch it to be like "jeez, clare, you knew he was an idiot in the first place, why are you sleeping with him?" "ruth, can you shut up already about the shit and the kyle? it's not winning you any points!" and "nate, come'on you barely even liked lisa, what are you doing moping about for a year. get over it. sleep with brenda already!" see? very different.

anyway, clearly this is a boring post. even i don't know what it's about, so i will end it with this, a quite from poi:

And you who say that in death we will pay,
The dead they can't hear a word that you say
Your words are not kind, sober or giving,
they only put fear in the hearts of the living
So put away your tongues and roll up your sleeves,
and pick up your shovel and bury me deep.

awakening

*

well, i may not be pretty (or showered, for that matter), but i made it through the majority of my new and improved schedule. since i am done with class and field for the week, i feel like i'm home-free. namely, i can once again wear shorts and not worry about offending anyone with my stench (purely because there's no one here in the lab to offend). though one week is far from a thorough analysis, i think i might, in fact, survive this year. i don't want to get excited -- well, because who the h*ll knows what will happen, say, next week, but this whole working & going to SW school seems almost doable at the moment. then again, i haven't had any papers to write or clients to see, so i really have no ground for that statement at all. i guess i'm just feeling good because my boss didn't freak out at all this week about my new schedule which i had been fully anticipating. so, anyway, yay!
**
i'm not sure how mil is doing because i only saw him for a few minutes this morning, and most of them were spent berating him for not waking me up in time. ("ung, honey, what time is it?" "8:20" "what!?!? i'm supposed to be at work at 9! why didn't you wake me up!?!?" "um, i didn't know." "oh, yeah, right....") maybe i should read his blog.
**
bird's not dealing with the new schedule well at all. she's started angrily plucking feathers from her back. she prefers to do this while she's on my shoulder, so i'll be sure to see how pissed she is that i'm not around during daylight hours. i'm not sure what to do about this whole situation. i love the bird (despite her many flaws), and i made a commitment to her when i bought her. at the same time, is it really fair for her to live in a home where she's by herself 80% of the time? i dunno... i dream of someday having a big aviary where she'll have friends and she can stretch her wings, but right now we don't have the money or space for either of those things. perhaps, she'll just have to suck it up like i am -- one year of hell for a chance of a better future. hmm.

happy 101st post, moosk!

so right now i feel like soup... full of liquid, vegetable-y soupiness... i guess that's what twelve hours of work feels like. it was actually a relatively easy day because it was my first. for instance, i got out at 7:45 instead of 8 (but, shh, don't tell my boss). i had my first supervision and got the full tour of the office (these are the filing cabinets, bob, key to the bathroom, jeff, your office, sally, etc.). i even called two clients to set up appointments for next week (i love having a waiting list!). last year i felt like a salesperson trying to unload useless wares on unsuspecting passerby... "don't talk to that lady -- she'll try to get you hooked on some time-sucking, non evidence-based, free psycho-mumbo-jumbo" i wouldn't have talked to me either. anyway, this new place has a waiting list -- meaning that people actually want to be there and want to pay for my psycho-mumbo-jumbo. well, not necessarily mine but someone at the clinic... and i happen to be the only one available. so there you go!

anyway, with the new schedule sleep is at a premium, so off i go...

it begins...

well, it went by fast, but i enjoyed my summer. i enjoyed having a flexible schedule and getting home before 6. i especially enjoyed waking up at 8:45 in the morning... i took full advantage of my boss's absence by bringing my bird to visit and meeting friends for lunch. i enjoyed being able to make doctor appointments and have weeknight cocktails without fearing for my job. needless to say, all of those fun and games are now over. classes began last week, and this week i start my internship (or "field" as we social work students like to call it). additionally, i have finally heard from professor #2. apparently, he is ready for me to start working for him this week. i guess this means i'll start looking forward to these days when i'm only working from 9-7 because they will be my short, quiet days. woo-hoo!

i know i don't have it too rough. i think mil has it worse. his classes are definitely more painful, and his schedule requires him to go back and forth between times square and the upper east side multiple times a day (with a backpack full of orgo and physics books, no less). i'm also beginning to see the glimmers of the end in sight. i now have less than a year of this work + school foolishness. (for all those twenty-somethings who are getting to that itchy place where you feel like school is the answer to your 9-5 drudgery, come talk to me, i will knock some sense into ya. school is not the answer, job change, perhaps, but not school.) my professor last week made mention of our impending job search (hallelujah!). i must admit it made me a little giddy. of course given my work situation, i have to wait a little longer than most students for that joy, but at least i've been given permission to think about it. (ah, life with a living wage... imagine that...)

the reason i mention this whole ridiculous schedule of mine is so that my two loyal readers will understand my growing absence from the blog. i will do my best to keep it going, but i make no promises. i'm even planning to hem down my blogroll to the mere necessities. scary, isn't it?
**

anyway, i won't bore you with any more school nonsense. who really cares about that anyway? we were blessed with a gorgeous weekend in the city. it was in the 70s with the sun shining and a pleasant breeze -- a little fall was in the air. while mil grew paler in the library, i joined some friends at the bronx zoo. after ten years in the city, i figured it was about time to see what all the fuss was about. it is actually quite beautiful. the sheer size of the place was astounding, and all of the animals had beautiful natural-looking habitats. the high point of the day was when my cheapness won me a free full-park pass. seeing how small moosk's entertainment budget is, it's easy to understand why i opted for the $12 "limited pass" (which apparently doesn't get you into much) versus the $21 full-park pass. unfortunately, all of my friends had purchased the extended pass, so i was s.o.l. when it came time for the gondola ride across the park. i was actually happy to walk, but my friends figured that they'd find me a way on via one of their tickets. when we got up to the ticket-taker and tried to explain why she should allow me to ride on my friend's full-park pass, she just handed me a full-park pass that had fallen on the ground. from that point on, no clever shenanegins or pitiful stories were needed, and i got to experience the pleasure of the gondola (and gorillas, and butterflies, and tigers) on the back of someone else's misfortune. the moral of this story is not to be cheap like me and hope that a full-park ticket falls into your lap, but to buy the full-park pass in the first place, so you can see more than a couple of monkeys and a camel.

yay spam!

sad that i'm leaving these little spam comments up because they make me feel like this place is happening...

btw, why "spam"? what happened to plain old
**
two lessons learned today:
1) email blogging works
2) html tags don't work on email blogs

oh, well, it's still pretty cool.

email post

let's see if this works... can i really send an email to my blog? that would be so friggin' sweet.

i've also added mil to my "blog team" in case he ever feels like adding to my blog. could be fun...

does anyone know how you can add the books you're reading to the template? i think that's really fun, though mine would get boring because i'd be showing the same book for years and years. for example, i am currently reading the source. so you ask, when, moosk, did you start reading the source? well, i think it was sometime around august 2003. yeah... you read right -- 2003. sad... but true. fortunately, i have read other books while the source has sat collecting dust underneath my nightstand, so it's not as pathetic as it seems, but most normal folks would give-up after two years.

if you could see me now...

you wouldn't stick around for long. i just went to the bathroom and i noticed that i have that lovely, i've-been-sick-for-days pallor, and that glassy-eyed look that comes from every orifice of my body leaking, not to mention the beauty of the red, swollen rudolph nose. yeah, combine these with the limp, scraggly nap hair, and you have a good image of me right now. a modern-day audrey hepburn, that's me. i'm now wishing i had that woman on the subway's shirt: brown-eyed beauty.

i think that sh*t's kind of funny, don't you? i mean if she were such a looker, would she need to announce it on her shirt? i mean unless she were wearing a bag over her head? makes no sense. at least those "flirt" shirts might be telling you something you don't know. i need a shirt that says: i look... and feel... like sh*t. yay!

anyway, i need a nap, so this is all i've got.

here's a photo from a better day... don't look too closely.

(sniff)

well, i have returned from the land of the midnight stars. yes, they have stars in vermont, and they are gorgeous. i had forgotten about those little lights in the sky. we don't get to see much of them around here.



i survived the wedding, and the bride had the wedding of her dreams. well, almost. the weather was beautiful despite early reports of weekend storms. the food, the music, the setting were all perfect. unfortunately, the bride's grandmother who has been confined to her home for the last couple of years but made the four (plus) hour trip to vermont anyway went into the hospital shortly before the rehearsal dinner. her declining health cast a shadow over the otherwise beautiful event, and i know it was hard for bride to leave for her honeymoon not knowing whether her grandmother would survive till her return. hopefully, her fears will prove unwarranted.

Here's a little peek at the gorgous garden bride chose for her wedding:


the best part of the weekend (for me) was the day after the wedding when i got to go down to the quarry and swim around in a swimming hole. (we don't seem to have those here in new york either.) i've now decided that if mil and i every get enough money together to buy a country house, we're doing it somewhere near a swimming hole. those things kick *ss. better than a beach because you can dive off cliffs and the water feels clean and clear. better than a pool because there are little fish swimming around and no chlorine to dry you out. anyway, i'm now an advocate for swimmingholes.org...
**
so, now here i am back at work. no stars to gaze up at or swimming holes to plunk down into. to add insult to injury i have a doozy of a cold that just started early this morning. blech. AND i had my first class of the fall semester... ooh, am i in for it.

though, as we've all been saying for the last week, it could be worse... so much worse.

gracias, damas

so first week of singlehood seems to be going relatively well thanks in large part to my lady friends. tuesday, astrophysicist, came by to make burritos with me, and last night, cat and crimson swung by for some yummy cheap eats. (thanks, metsfan, for parting with cat for a few hours there!) a good time was had by all, catching up on all things work, love, and family related. hopefully, this will remain ongoing throughout this sure-to-be-painful school year. lawd knows, i'll need it!
**
so, this weekend is the second to last wedding on my calendar. (woo-hoo!) it should be quite nice... vermont in september. no colors yet, but we should be in store for some brisk, breezy evenings -- a n ice break from the city humidity. in ncase your feeling a bit green, just remember that this is what i get to wear.

speaking of which, has anyone sold a bridesmaid dress on ebay? what's that ebay process like? not that i'm thinking about it for this dress... of course not. but you know, it might someday come in handy.
**
also, in moosk news, starting next week, my visits to the blogworld will likely be decreasing thanks to the commencement of the fall semester. fun, fun, fun. i'll do my best to substitute quality for quantity, but don't get your hopes up. i haven't managed quality yet, so i don't know how i'd learn now. old dog, new tricks, whatnot.

n'awlins

can ya'll believe what's happening in new orleans? it just seems to be going from bad to much, much worse. the reports from the area are staggering. in our little consumerist, gadget-loving paradise, it's impossible to believe that something like a hurricane can destroy one of america's great, historic cities. how quickly civilization devolves in the event of such a disaster is also mind-boggling. i still cannot believe that our great nation cannot cope with the displacement of half a million people. we can't feed our own people. we can't offer them a safe, sanitary refuge from the flooding. who are we? what the hell are we doing? i thought after 9/11 our country was supposed to be learning how to deal with large-scale national disasters?

listening to randi rhodes while i write, she makes a very good point. so, sunday, before the storm came, new orleans had a mandatory evacuation, but the question remains: how do you evacuate the poor people of new orleans when they have no cars and no access to an automobile of any type? hmm? how 'bout the sick people who are bed-ridden and can't leave their homes? planes and trains were diverted away from new orleans long before the hurricane struck leaving thousands tranded? anyway, obviously, i -- like most -- am still trying to get my head around what's happening down there... i'll let you know if i come up with any answers.

today's grunts

a) birds who insert themselves between me and whatever i'm doing
b) birds who track honey all over the apartment (and my clothes for that matter) due to grunt (a)
c) people in cars who yell curses at feeble-looking elderly folk as they're crossing the street
d) presidents who "fly over" a national disaster area (i remember when he did that here -- i knew we were in good hands from that point on)
e) bosses who get noticibly irritated when i prove unable to read their minds
f) conference calls

well, that's it for now. not too bad, really. any grunts you'd like to share?
**
on my way home from the grocery store today, i noticed this guy walking toward me. he was not a particularly attractive guy, late thirties, early forties, dark-ish complexion and the most icy blue eyes i've ever seen. the effect was quite creepy in a deranged killer sort of way, but i found that i couldn't look away. i was more than a little unnerved when he noticed my attention and looked back directly at me. i quickly averted my gaze and sped up my gait, leaving the scene quite perplexed.
**
i'm re-reading one of my favorite books, veronica. at first i couldn't recall exactly why it was at the top of my list. it moved a little slow, and i wasn't sure i was following all of the subtle little clues, but now that i'm more than halfway through, i am reminded. the plot is engaging -- a story of a young man who gets pulled into a dangerous world of magicians by a enigmatic woman named... well, you guessed it. the characters in this, his first novel, are a little flat, but what's most unique about the book is not the plot or the characters, but the way the author (primarily a poet) describes the magical landscape of new york. you get sucked into the fantasy in a very subtle way that you don't realize until you put the book down. anyway, i'm going to get back to it... if your reading list is needing some perking-up, though, i highly recommend it.

taking the cheap way out

so, for now, i am going to steal a large chunk of hilzoy's post from obsidian wings. it's one of my favorite political blogs because not only does it lean in my direction (though not fully), but the level of the discussion is so much higher than on most. no name-calling or cheap shots -- just facts and intelligent discourse. usually, i'm too much of a wuss to comment because i know most of the commenters are better-versed in the political discussion than i am. this post was particularly intriguing because it spoke of the historical events that shaped hilzoy's perception of foreign policy today -- interesting to me because most of these events happened prior to my birth. i am quoting the part where she discusses the lessons she learned living in israel during the 1980s.

before i quote hilzoy, though, i'd like to take a moment to offer up a link to the red cross in case anyone can make a donation on behalf of victims of katrina. though nothing close to what happened last december, this is still a loss of epic proportions.

ok, now onto the post:

living in Israel taught me a lot. First, I was there during the war in Lebanon. When I arrived, I concluded more or less instantly that I had to throw away all my previous thoughts about the entire region and start from scratch, so I just shut up and observed. Probably because of this, I went through one of those periods in which everyone decided that I was the person to whom they had to pour out their life stories. And some of the people who did this had come back from Lebanon. They hadn't been killed or wounded, obviously, but most of them had been horribly damaged psychologically. I also listened to people, both Israelis and Arabs, to whom something unforgivable had been done by people on the other side, and I could not, for the life of me, figure out how so much bad blood could ever be overcome. Lesson: war is always worse than you'd think. Always. No casualty figures begin to hint at either the damage or the long-term poison.

Second, I came to believe (rightly or wrongly) that there was at least a decent chance that if Israel had, from the outset, treated her Arab citizens as equals, and had not taken over the West Bank and Gaza (or, alternately, had taken over some small bits and given the rest back), that things might have worked out. But who could possibly blame Israelis, during the 50s, when they were dealing with survivors of the Holocaust and assimilating Jews from the Arab world, for not stopping to be that prescient? Not me. But I did conclude: always, always try to get things right at the outset, even if you have every reason to be preoccupied with other stuff. -- I didn't get anywhere near blaming the Israelis for this, as I said, but I thought: this is a lesson I want to try to bear in mind, for my own future use.

Third, I also believed that the Palestinian leadership had made a horrible mistake in choosing to engage in violence against Israel. A Gandhian approach, I thought, might very well have worked; at any rate, it would have been as likely to work in Israel as anywhere, especially since choosing it would have made the Palestinians seem a lot more likely to be good neighbors. Violence, by contrast, was attacking Israel at its strongest point, while throwing away the Palestinians' greatest asset, their moral case. As I saw it, the decision to engage in violence and terrorism was due partly to a lack of imagination and partly to the fact that when you feel aggrieved, you want to strike back, and anything else can feel like "being nice", or appeasement, or a failure of nerve. The lesson here was: do not trust those feelings, and do not assume that what looks like the most extreme solution to an extreme problem is in fact the best one. That Palestinian terrorism was wrong went without saying, to me; that it was also pragmatically stupid was an important lesson.

Fourth, I tended to think that the Palestinian leadership had been absolutely disastrous, and one of the disastrous things I noticed was this: that they had been running refugee camps (e.g. in Lebanon) forever, and yet instead of trying to raise kids who could actually be citizens of a country, they had raised them to be soldiers, and to settle things with Kalashnikovs and RPGs. This relates to the third point: one of the things I like about Gandhi is that he thought of political struggle as necessarily involving preparing yourself and others to be moral people, and citizens in a functioning country. One of the things I hate about bringing kids up to fight is that it makes the transition to their being ordinary citizens who settle their differences peacefully much, much more difficult than it has to be. I thought this was both immoral and desperately short-sighted. As before, I could see how people might think: this should not be our priority now; but I thought: oh yes it should.

Fifth, I came to believe that it was impossible to understand the Middle East without understanding the depth of humiliation of the Arabs. And not military humiliation, but cultural. I said something about that in a comment that was promoted to a post, long before I joined the hive-mind, here.

the stink

it's here. and, ooh, is it nasty. turns out, it is indeed "not the heat, it's the humidity." the stink on the streets of new york is at its most pungent. let's hope that fall is on its way, because i won't be living here much longer if it isn't. i need to start wearing perfume or something to mask the street stink. sometimes it's a urine-ish waft; other times it is just an unidentifiable, humid funk. blech. i'm hiding out in my apartment just to escape it (well, a/c doesn't hurt either).
**

izzy pic of the day
**
not much to say today. sorry. here's a funny little post from random_speak.

au revoir, mon amore

so, starting today, i am a single woman once again -- well, single in effect, not in spirit. mil starts his fall courses today, and that means between work and school i will probably only see him as "that lump" sleeping beside me. this semester he gets to enjoy the glory of physics, calculus II and... hold your breath now... organic chemistry. yes the unbridled joy that accompanies a whole semester of carbon-based compounds. i can sense the jealousy from here. anyway, even though i am really glad that i am not him, i am a bit sad to be me, too. because, as those who know him are well aware, mil is fun. he's entertainment in man-form. fortunately for him, i have a few friends... though most of them either work too hard, live too far away, or are busy making babies (or all three at once!). perhaps i will re-join my other single-lady friends, trolling the bars. then again, these days i seem to have more of an eye for cute toddlers than cute men (johnny depp, notwithstanding). sad, isn't it?
**
in other news, the class of 2009 arrived on campus today in all their fresh-faced glory -- four years of government-loaned goodness has just begun! i temper my disbelief that it's been ten years since i had that look upon my face with the fact that someday (if they're lucky) these freshmen will be 28, too. they too will look upon the class of 2019 with the same kind of mixture of jealousy and disbelief that i have now. (let's just ignore for the moment the fact that I will be 38 when that occurs... please.)
**
finally, here are a couple of articles i found interesting in my morning read:
- a nytimes op-ed piece underscoring how lame this "controversy" over evolution is
- an article about how differences of opinion are handled in w's army
oh yeah, and you should check out "the observatory" from last week's new york observer... it's priceless. (and a download, fyi)

thoughts on employee relations

i am starting to learn that as i age, i am not the only one who's changing. this fine saturday morning, i went to help an old friend/bride-to-be pick up her dress form a local bridal store. she hasn't asked much of me as her wedding approaches, so i was happy to help, but i hadn't spent much quality time with her in the last few years. it was fine overall, but i was somewhat surprised by her attitude toward her employees. she's still under 30, so she's a young boss with her own relatively new, but quite successful small company. she was telling me a rather entertaining story about how her friend (and other bridesmaid/bride-to-be) fell into the gap between the subway and platform while shuttling to her bridal appointment with her dress and manolo blahniks. her friend had asked her to join her at the hospital when she went to get stitches (after her fitting, of course), but my friend couldn't go because she had her own fitting, so she sent her assistant instead. granted she didn't tell her assistant that she had to go with her friend but asked if she would. if i were her assistant, though, i would have been royally peeved. you can't exactly say "no" to your boss, but you can resent her for the rest of your employ. being in the "assistant"category myself, i was quick to point out that i would have had interesting things to mutter under my breath if my boss had asked me to do such a chore. she seemed surprised... she felt that the assistant was freeing up her time which was more valuable for the company. i replied that that's fine, so should she do your laundry because that frees up more of your valuable time?

she then told me another story about another new employee. apparently, this employee was told when she was hired that my friend would be busy planning her wedding for the first few weeks but would later have a chance to train her and get her more involved. my friend was put off however when this new employee who spent most of the day cutting cards for the wedding, asked if she would be done by 6:30pm (yes -- 6:30!) because she had plans to go out with her boyfriend. i really didn't know how to respond. i was disgusted by my friend at this point. had she totally forgotten what it was like to be a grunt? i mean it's one thing if you told the employee when she was hired that she would be expected to do personal errands, but if not, then you are totally taking advantage of your situation as the employer. yuck!

so i ask you, am i over-reacting? should employees of small firms be expected to run personal errands for their boss? (i'm still bewildered by the whole idea that my friends have assistants.)

lucky moosk

i'm sure i've mentioned this before, but i'm totally spoiled rotten. i was pretty spoiled by my folks growing up, but it was nothing like the spoiling i get from good ole mr. moosk. take for example last night. last night i encountered a strange chirp coming from a tree near our apartment building. after several minutes of staring into the summer foliage, i finally notices a sweet-looking cockatoo hollering out to passerby. not being your normal bird kook, who might spend a couple of minutes whistling toward the avian in an idiotic attempt to call the bird down, i proceeded up to my apartment where i quickly gathered my pink-feathered friend and an old bag of millet (like ice-cream for birds). rushing back down, i dial mil in an attempt to get a number for animal rescue/humane society. he kindly obliges -- unfortunately both close at the ridiculous hour of 4pm. so what does moosk do? she stands on the busy street corner making painfully poor attempts at whistles and throwing handfuls of millet in the general direction of the winged miscreant. the bird of course makes no notice, so i feed a handful of millet to the obliging izzy in an attempt to show the miscreant how yummy said millet is. izzy proceeds to draw attention of all the locals (both homeful and homeless, young and old, english-speaking, not english-speaking) while creating copious quantities of bird-crap with which to decorate my white skirt and brown t-shirt. where does mil come into this whole insane moosk picture? well, not only did he provide useless humane society contact information, but when he came home (an hour after i took up the "escaped cockatiel rescue mission") he actually didn't pretend not to recognize me, but offered a quick peck and stood on the corner with me long enough to convince me that it was a lost cause -- and that we were both hungry. he rocks, doesn't he? funny ending to the cockatiel story: the bird was still there this morning, but as soon as he spotted me, he flew off to parts unknown. hopefully, he's not hawk food.

another reason mil is awesome, is that he cleaned all of the dishes after i decided i had to make an extremely messy version of asparagus risotto. fortunately, it was quite yummy as well.

the third example of mil's beneficence is from this morning when he woke up at 7:45 to start clearing the corner for our new piece of furniture (kindly dedicated by those other moosk-spoilers, my folks). moosk meanwhile was still well esconced in various shades of sleep. mil has also spent the last hour and a half waiting for said piece of furniture to be delivered and is now spending the last few minutes before his hospital stint reconnecting computers, modems, printers, etc. yeah, he pretty much rocks.
**
i am currently enjoying:

did you know that there are precisely seven squggles on hostess cupcakes? i didn't.
**
the ever-expanding list of places that i want to visit... someday:
- vietnam
- australia
- new zealand
- vancouver
- toronto
- seattle
- amsterdam
- hawaii
- buenos aires
- st. lucia
- japan (tokyo very briefly, mostly countryside)
- hong kong
- panama
- spain
maybe i'll make virtual trips to each once a week... what do you think?
**
final note for the week: what do you guys think about mil and i combining blogs? i think it might be fun, but who knows? weigh-in here.

so, lately i've noticed that there's this weird phenomenon where some blog readers give some blog writers gifts. is it just me, or is that really weird? i've never been looking for new people to give gifts to? between all of the weddings in the past year, i'm lucky if i can give gifts to people i actually know. why is it now customary to send gifts to fellow bloggers who happen to be having a baby? i just noticed last night that one of the bloggers i read got a nursing stool (or some such thing) from another blogger i read. doesn't that seem a bit much for someone who refers to you as "miss doxie"? i guess it's just me. (needless to say i will be posting my baby registry on my blog as soon as i get knocked-up -- you know... just in case).
**
you know how i started this blog because i was starting to feel old. well, some things just make me feel even older. i mean these are the people i'm going to run into on the steps or see in my hallway. mere babes...
**
things i still like even though i'm old: poi dog pondering, veronica, u2, rollerblading, birds, showgirl (friends since preschool), msjudo, (elementary school), and garnet (high school).

tardiness

sometimes i bug myself. i am habitually late, and i don't always like it. i want to be one of those people who can wake up at 7am and feel happy and refreshed. instead, i'm one of those people who rolls out of bed at 8:45 (though really closer to 9am) only because if i don't i will pee in my precious bed. once i'm out of bed, things are slightly better, but i still don't move quickly. first, i go to the bird's cage and let in the first rays of lilght. i'll pop open the door and invite izzy out to stretch her wings. after that five minute affair, i'll head to my laptop where i'll proceed to check my email and the weather. if there's nothing interesting in the inbox, this will usually only last a minute or two. where i am most preternaturally slow is the whole shower thing. i usually bring my bird into the bathroom with me where she has her own special shower perch. this means that throughout the shower and drying off experience, i am sprinkling her with water or scratching her fuzzy little head. after the shower itself, izzy will hop onto my towel in hopes of getting dried off (not that this is negotiable, as she will scratch my eyes out or shriek until i'm deaf if i don't). fortunately, it is incredibly cute -- though quite time-consuming.


once she is satiated that i have adequately dried her, i am allowed to dry myself, but this does not mean that i can do so in peace. while i go through my assortment of toners, moisturizers, and hair gels, izzy is often pecking at the floor mat or knocking items into the sink. mil often wonders why i even let the bird into the bathroom while i shower, but i tell him that it would be cruel not to. on weekdays, she only gets a few hours of freedom a day -- how can i take some of those minutes away from her? the truth is that, i love the distraction. distraction is my favorite thing. if i didn't have the bird to distract me, i'd probably bring a book into the shower with me or at least a wet tunes radio. it's my innate ability to be easily distracted that makes it so hard for me to be on time. usually, i'm quite accepting about this not-so-good part of myself, but today, i was not. i had totally forgotten that despite the fact that my boss would be out of town, the copier guys was coming to do maintenance on our machines -- at 10am! i of course didn't remember this until 10:05, when i was still at home goofing around with my bird! aragh! anyway, after sufficiently brow-beating myself, i called the maintenance guy and rescheduled for this afternoon. i hate eating crow...

plttht!

sometimes things just suck. one thing that sucks is finding out that you didn't get into an internship program that you had your heart set on. another thing that sucks is having someone you love more than anyone else find out that he didn't get into a program that he had his heart set on. to that, i say, "plttht!" with all of the spit and slobber it implies.

august reverie

mmm... salt & vinegar chips... i've had a hankerin' for these for the last few weeks and have finally found my fix. does the fact that they're "sea salt" make them better for me? i hope. 'cause i'm eating a lot of them. mm..mm..mmmm....


ok. now i've forgotten what i was planning to write about. do you remember? maybe it was about the weekend... mil and i went rollerblading yesterday. he went around the park four times...

...this is near the end of his third lap (when i joined him).

we spent the rest of the day vegitating (and eating taco bell), but we felt that we were entitled given we'd already gotten some exercise and fresh air. it was also about 150% humidity yesterday, so who really wants to be out in that?

i also finally saw "march of the penguins" on saturday. baby penguins are *officially* the cutest animals on earth. can you deny it?

we also watched ungodly amounts of "coupling". phew, is that a good show. if you haven't watched it, you must. at first mil and i weren't sure what all the hype was about, but once we hit the "giggle loop" episode, we were hooked. not sure how anyone thought an american version would work though... why is america like that? anything that's good must be reworked for maximum profitability -- even if that means that it's no longer good.

the fella and i also found ourselves in the fortunate position of having several of our closest friends depart their chosen borough just to hang out with us. we chucked our no-take-out rule, and plugged in the scene-it. despite my inability to remember anything from any movie, it was a fun evening. i also had the rare opportunity to watch someone else fall unconscious during a social activity. this was awesome because...well... it's usually me.

boring bird

well, my boss came in for about 2 minutes today, and for the first time i was actually really happy to see him. i've been so tired and lazy these last few weeks that i've actually been boring myself. (blah, blah, house, blah, blah, politics... i know you're feeling it too.) he didn't actually have a lot for me to do (hence my speedy return to the blog world), but i enjoyed the two minutes of intellectual stimulation.

just one question: does this mean i like work?

idle hands...

mil and i are working our way toward academically-induced asceticism. it's amazing what a little penury will do to ya.

i’ve always had reverence for the simplicity of the quaker lifestyle and the rejection of consumerism that it entails, but i have been self-aware enough to know that i do not have the wherewithal to actually live like that . in the last few months, however, mil and i have had to cut back, not just on the frivolities (movies, dinners out, clothes), but on the essentials (cable, take out, dvds). we’re doing our best to hoard enough money to pay rent next month… what’s amazing is that even though we’ve been doing all this scrimping and saving, our apartment is still overrun with crap we don’t need and never use. i opened my medicine cabinet today and noticed that despite the fact that we’ve been eating mac n’ cheese for the last five weeks, i still have ridiculous quantities of lotions, toners, hair goops, and moisturizers overrunning my cabinet(s). hell, i could go into business! mil has a collection of simpsons dolls… i mean figures, that would put comic store man to shame, and despite his recent restraint, our dvd collection still puts most of our better-employed friends in awe. i guess after a lifetime of reflexive purchasing (of which, izzy was the largest of all), it’s hard to change one’s ways.

this is most obvious when i am here at work without much to do. i start thinking about all of the things i want… first on the list is that house i mentioned in my last post, but once i remember how impossible that is, i start thinking about puppies and searching petfinder.com. once i realize that we live in a small one bedroom apartment and that i’d have to pick-up dog poo, i start looking at the real estate section of the ny times to see what we might be able to someday afford. it continues like this for a while. occasionally, i’ll start looking at birds or kittens when the puppy thing passes. sometimes i’m off my rocker enough to start looking at cars to see how expensive they are nowadays.

are we all like this? looking for the next big purchase? the next thing that will make our normal lives a little more exciting (for about five minutes)? is it just me that thinks this is pretty sad?

a stoop of my own

last night i had the pleasure of drooling over my uncle's old brownstone in brooklyn. sometime in the 1970s, my uncle and his wife at the time decided to rebel against their suburban backgrounds and find a charming old 1870s, 4-story brownstone in the 'hood in brooklyn (now the hipster haven known as clinton hill). when i used to visit as a kid, i thought their house was so much cooler than the house we had in houston. how many of my friends had three sets of stairs in their houses? how many of them had houses that were over a hundred years old... in the middle of new york city no less? ever since then i dreamt of one day owning a brownstone of my own... of course now that i'm old enough to consider buying any piece of property (notice i didn't say wealthy enough), the price of a brownstone in any of the boroughs hovers around a million dollars if not infinitely more... so sad to see that dream squashed.

my widowed aunt is now selling the place, so i will not even have the pleasure of visiting in the not-too-distant future. i guess that's how it goes...

etcetera

isn't it weird to see it spelled out like that? i sorta like it... it looks like what it is (an onomotopoeia of sorts).

anyway, i will begin today's post with a discussion of lids. not "lids" like that crappy mall store, but lids like those on a jar or soda bottle. i take a moment to talk about lids because mil seems to have a special connection to them -- so special, in fact, that i am not allowed to close any important items in our apartment for fear that i will let a little of that bane of freshness and carbonation...air...in. last night i got a talking-to for not closing the plastic container protecting our precious oreos tightly enough. fortunately, i don't take these things too seriously, so our marriage goes on without a hitch. fortunate, as well, is the fact that mil accepts these little deficiencies with only mild ire (though thank goodness, it wasn't a seltzer bottle -- then i'd really be in trouble).

**
on an entirely unrelated topic, i will mention the things i enjoy most in a blog:
1) frequent reference to the self in the third person. (moosk really likes that)
2) anthropomorphism of animals or small children (yes, i know that children are people -- i'm not that much of a lefty -- but by this i mean the providing of infants/small children with verbal capacities beyond their years).
3) funny names for spouses/significant others (e.g., "the queen" or "the squirrely")
4) humorous bits of remembered dialogue (i think i respect this most because my memory is like a sieve -- periodically throughout the day i exclaim, "this would be hysterical on the blog!" only to have the entire conversation fly out of my head mere seconds later.)
5) presence of verbal exclamations in written dialoge (e.g., gah, hurmph, pshaw)

**
finally, a rather fightening post from edward at obsidian wings... an interesting update on the unfortunate individual who was shot by the police on the tube last month.

start fighting!

not something you expected me to say, eh?

seriously, jeffrey yamaguchi has a great list of 25 things you can do to fight corporate control. i think most of us born and bred consumers will have a tough time with all 25 (i will cut down on my old navy duds, but i can't go cold turkey), but i'm for any list that has "surf the web" as a rule.

what race is pink?

lately i have been thinking a lot about race and ethnicity. one reason is that i am working on our annual progress report which requires us to calculate how many study participants we've had, stratifying them by race and ethnicity. (since our project is government sponsored, we have to prove that our participants are racially and ethnically diverse.) this report often proves challenging because we always lump hispanic/latino in with race, not ethnicity, when we ask the study participants. the gov't., however, wants to know how many white hispanic/latinos we have versus black or asian (?) or native american hispanic/latinos. what's interesting to me is that hispanic vs. not hispanic is the only ethnic category requested. when i look at wikipedia to figure out exactly what it means to be "white", it lumps together all people of european, middle eastern, and north african descent. it also describes it as an ethnicity versus a race. but if "white" isn't a race, what is? well, it seems we're not quite sure. wikipedia does its best to explain here. i'm still not convinced. which leads me to the other reason i was thinking about race and ethnicity...

i was reading middlesex this past weekend, and i noticed that the central character did not think of herself/himself as american in the traditional sense because of her/his greek background. (i'll just refer to her as a "she" from now on since that's what she was thought to be at that point in the book, and it's just a pain in the *ss to keep writin "she/he.") she hung out with the other outsiders -- the indian girl, the asian girl, and the jewish girl. this struck a chord with me because i realized that that configuration mapped almost precisely onto my experience growing up in houston (through the murkiness or memory i see my lunch table: three indian girls, two asian girls, a jewish girl, a sri lankan, a unitarian, and a lesbian). i put that together with my social work professors remark on my genogram assignment that i am not "white," and i finally realized at age 28 that i am not the plain-jane, all-american girl that i always thought i was. i realized that all of the popular girls in my private school were of the freckly, protestant variety. my half-jewish, half-catholic, mostly agnostic background put me into my own category or "otherness." i guess what's so strange about this is not that i'm "other" -- h*ll, most of us are, aren't we? it's that i didn't realize it until now.

anyway, that's my revelation for the week. anyone else have any dramatic self-discoveries that didn't occur until adulthood?

what happens in vegas...

i'm so exhausted right now that i can't really think of anything interesting or witty to write. i've uploaded some pics onto flickr if you're interested in seeing them. i actually took a whole set of photos of the call girl cards that were all over the street, but i was afraid they'd close my flickr account. showgirl and i thought it was hysterical that the streets were littered with tons of these little 3x5 cards containing pictures of scantily clad women with such enigmatic captions as "pink passion -- $49 special!" or "affordable blondes direct to you!" one topless britney look-alike with a pink baseball cap (aptly named "star") is only $47. i knew that "what happens in vegas stays in vegas," but i didn't know that the "escort services" came so cheap and so well publicized. interesting that given the location of these cards (on the ground, propped up on trash cans) it would actually be easier for a 4-year old to catch sight of them than a 40-year old. i can only imagine what the passers by thought when they saw me and my hot friend snapping photos of the exotic "lola" and the well-hung "vicky."

anyway, that was about is vegas-y as my vacation got. i spent the majority of the time out by my grandmother's pool (hooray for the new, tanner me!) or finding creative ways to decline her chocolate chip cookies (which had a texture somewhere between pralines and cardboard thanks to her last-minute substitution of maple syrup for the usual brown sugar). i got to catch-up with showgirl as well who is no longer a showgirl, but an elementary school p.e. teacher. she is rather desperately trying for her second child, so i got to hear quite a bit about basal body temperatures and recommended timing for home pregnancy tests. i tried to be encouraging without revealing my own not-so-latent desire for mommyhood. i kept reminding myself how nice it will be to enjoy another year of having mil all to myself before pregnancy and parenthood take over. one of the highlights of the trip was a show involving lots of carnival-esque acrobats and esther williams-style aquatic dances.



i also got to enjoy one of the occasional treats afforded friends of the showfolk -- petting and cuddling with a bouncing baby white tiger. well, this one wasn't exactly bouncing...

sitting... on a jetplane

well, i have returned. a little redder, a little fatter (thanks, grammie), and a lot more tired. thanks to the weather system moving through the new york area, i took an unexpected two-hour trip to cleveland en route back from vegas. my dad gets the award for best father ever for waking up at 1am and driving from westchester to newark to pick me up -- after all these years i'm still a little amazed at how much my folks love me. i finally climbed into bed at 2:30, only to be awoken at what seemed to be a painfully early 8:30. despite the early hour, the man and the bird seemed grateful for my return, though i'm looking forward to seeing both of them later today when my brain regains its normal functioning. i'm mainlining coffee at the moment. my buddy, coffee, takes good care of me...

till the photos arrive, i will leave you with the things I miss most about new york when away:

10) my blogs… I know I can access these elsewhere, but that requires effort, and I am not good with effort.

9) my hazelnut coffee… (see comment above)

8) my ability to get wherever I want to go without an automobile (and therefore without the resultant expensive gasoline and war-causing oil)

7) good food… cheap

6) my bed

5) my bird

4) the prevalence of the leftist views I’ve come to know and love

3) my ny friends

2) my folks

and this one’s a gimme…

1) my man

btw, thanks to the 9 hours on the plane, i'm nearly finished with middlesex... if you haven't read this one yet, i highly recommend it.

comments

ah... now i get it. i'm flattered that someone thinks that i get enough traffic to warrant advertising on my comments, but since i'm not really interested in having non-paying advertisers, i shall return to my practice of allowing only registered users to comment. sorry if this is a pain for those actually wanting to... say... comment on my site. that's still more than welcome!

vegas, baby, vegas

well, i am off for a long weekend in -- you guessed it -- vegas. i'm not much of a gambler, so this trip is more of a family vacation. perhaps you remember a while back when i posted about my grandmother's slowly fading memory.... well, she has returned home to vegas where she is most happy. she can tap dance with "the girls" and play nickel poker when she's feeling like a night out. this, of course, makes the rest of us worry sick since none of her relatives live anywhere near vegas. our compromise was that she can continue living like the showgirl that she is, so long as she lets us come and visit her every few weeks. now is my turn. it should be fun. like all grandmothers, she tends to spoil me rotten. of course, i'll miss mil like mad, but that's the duty of every spouse, so i'll do it with panache (and phone calls several times a day).

i'll report back on my return. in the meantime i leave you with this hot pic of my friend, showgirl, who i will also be visiting while in vegas. (gentlemen, she is a married woman, so stop your drooling now. ladies, she's a mother of an eight-year old, so you may commence your drooling... life is just not fair.)

boor-dum

does anyone else here have a case of the summer blahs? i remember getting this back when i was in elementary school... august hit and half of me was anxiously awaiting the start of the school year and the heightened activity levels that came with it, while the other half of me was in dread of the months of homework and lack of playtime ahead. despite the mixed emotions, both halves were equally ready to get this party started.

this time around, i must admit that less than half of me is excited about the year to come, but the entirety of me just wants to get this whole thing over with. i wish i had one of hermione's time turners, so i could just flash forward to the me a year from now. the one who's finished going to school and working at the same time. the one who's found a nice high-paying job in the social work field (preferably at columbia, so i can keep my benefits). the one who's husband has already aced the mcats and started med-school applications. yeah... that would be nice. instead, i'm me now. waiting anxiously for the unknown...

a couple of weeks ago, i managed to negotiate a return to my full-time salary. unfortunately, i did so at the cost of my future sanity. another professor here in the psych department needs a part-time assistant, and since right now i have increased my blog-roll tenfold out of sheer boredom, it seemed like an easy enough thing to do. of course in four weeks, i will start my classes, and in six weeks i will be knee-deep in my field placement, so i will have about thirty hours a week to do twice as much work as i'm doing now. yay! reading this blog, you'd think i'm none too smart... but really, it's the appeal of that extra $5K a year (combined with the fear that mil and i won't have enough dough to pay next month's rent) that kicked whatever forethought i had out the window.

see, one of the best things about keeping a journal or a blog is that a year from now, i can look back on this moment and sigh. it will feel as though i did indeed have a time turner, and time really did flash forward -- well, one can dream, can't she?

knitting whimsy

some folks put their creative talents to good use... take for example this vibrator cozy complements of mes projects! and you always thought your grandma was knitting booties...

park life

after a week where it was so hot and 'umid that i felt like i was going to melt into the ground every time i walked outside, it was nice to have a weekend where we didn't get above 90F. to celebrate, mil and i spent 90% of the of the daylight hours in one park or another. yesterday we met one of mil's school buddies and his girlfriend. girlfriend and i spoke about the good and ills of social work school while mil and buddy tossed a frisbee. i of course took a few breaks from the conversation to snap some park photos. this is my favorite.


what actually made the less than 90F weather even better was the fact that 75% of the new yorkers escaped the city to their country homes in new hampshire or their beach homes in the hamptons for the weekend. one of the best things about living in a city where gentrification has reigned supreme is that most of the residents are too rich to stay in one place all summer long. yay us! we practically get the place to ourselves!

mil and i actually had quite a day yesterday. we spent most of the day processing the pregnancy scare of the month (i.e., arguing). this one was a doozy... several days late, some achy boobs and nausea to make it feel authentic. blech. after realizing that there were no little mils or moosks on the way, we felt relieved, but i also felt a little sad (i'm sure hormones had nothing to do with it). as a result of the emotional upheaval, i started to question my whole social work plan. since mil is laying the groundwork for a long and grueling medical training, i'm wondering if it's worth the time, energy, and money that will go into my finishing my msw -- especially since msws are not known for their high salaries. who knows if i can even afford to take an msw job once i get the degree next year.

anyway, we got past the upheaval. we're back to the original plan. one year of hell, and then we can move on to family and future stuff... today was good. we spent some time in prospect park with good friends. mil got to play catch with metsfan, and i got to catch-up with cat, crimson, and archivist. we also got some all-important puppy and baby time.


btw, i just witnessed one of the most beautiful moments of my life. mil just carried izzy over to her cage and gave her a carrot... and i'm still alive. i will carry that moment in my heart forever...

life in the big city

welcome to our living room. with the influx of new money and new architecture to our 'hood, we now have to pleasure of living in the new times square. our local deli has now become an american apparel. our old biography sign with the time and temperature has turned into this:

the light from this sign is so bright it lights up our fridge in the middle of the night. here's a straight, daytime shot...

mmm... sushi

homemade sushi
Originally uploaded by atb20.

for our first anniversary, mil got me a sushi set. we were very intimidated at first. gotta buy the right fish, gotta use the right kind of rice, turn it and fan it just right... seemed like a lot of work. last night, with nothing better on our social calendars we decided to break in the rice-maker and sushi set and this was the result. may not look like much, but in taste our spicy tuna rolls almost rivaled yoshi... almost.

why i love northern exposure

ruthann: my other son, matthew... he had such promise...
ed: oh, what happened?
ruthann: he moved to chicago. he's an investment banker.
ed: i'm sorry...

intelligent design

hi. i was just listening to air american radio this morning and reminded of how frighteningly ridiculous our government has become. it's this whole concept of teaching "intelligent design" in public schools as if it were some alternative scientific theory on par with evolution instead of just a load a bullsh*t. pardon my french, but intelligent design is not a theory. it is an article of faith, and whatever "evidence" these bible beaters conjure up to support their "theory" really just undermines their religious belief if you ask me. the bible never said that it was proposing a scientific theory when it told the story of genesis and the creation of the earth. it was an allegory meant to inspire reverence for the grandness of god's creation. the folks on air america were mentioning how "days" as we know them cannot exist without the sun which was created on one of those "days." makes sense, but that just proves my point -- you can't argue science against faith. they exist on different planes -- one rational, the other spiritual, both valuable.

what scares me so much is that i am reminded of high school. i grew up without any sort of organized religion. when i had questions about where we came from or how the earth came into being, i looked to science. i never knew any other way. i assumed everyone else was like me in that regard. but i was wrong. amazing that growing up in texas my theory that everyone was like me wasn't challenged until high school. i went to a private prep school that claimed no affiliation with the episcopal church next door (despite our weekly "chapel" excursions to said church which included a rote recitation of the lord's prayer...hmm...). once over lunch, i found my friends arguing with one member of our group over evolution. i'm not sure how the topic came up, but i was shocked to learn that 9 out of 10 of my friends did not believe in evolution. they were attacking my one friend, w, pointing at a glass of water and saying things like, "so you believe we came from this???" i couldn't believe what i was hearing! you mean you don't? you think that the first man was made out of clay and women were made from this guy's rib??? they then went to go get one of our history teachers to prove their point. i thought, phew, at least she'll knock some sense into them. but, no, she didn't... more shocking than my barely post-pubescent friends believing that evolution was questionable, but our history teacher believed that there was geological proof of genesis. geological proof of genesis!!! what? where? how? i thought all geological evidence proved that the earth was billions of years old?!? it was this moment when i decided to leave texas for good. there's no way i'm raising my children in a state where more than 50% of intelligent, well-educated folks think evolution is questionable because there's "evidence" for genesis.

anyway, you can imagine the fear that set-in when i first learned that individuals within our federal government thought that "intelligent design" should be taught as an alternative to evolution in our public schools. i realize that i just ended any hope of having a reasonable discourse with folks on the other side of the debate -- you know, beginning by calling "intelligent design" bullsh*t and all...

next post will be a fun one... i promise!

and i present to you...

zee afghan
Originally uploaded by atb20.

well, it is finally complete. my own personal masterpiece -- The Afghan! begun in november of '04, The Afghan found it's way home this july. i am now staring at my blank knitting needles in disbelief.

posting fiend

courtesy of madeyouthink

a little gross, but you have to admit it's quite hysterical. this article provides a little more background. basically it's a public art project with a political message. see those germans can be creative!

anyway, i'll use this as an entree to the political discussion of the day. with so many hot topics, where does one begin? despite my political outspokenness (and occasional vulgar imagery), i really do want to understand the other side's point-of-view. i even took to checking out redstate.org a couple of times and surprisingly didn't find my blood pressure rising out of normal range. (then again i limited these visits to five-minutes apiece.) i agree that we should "value every human life," but i don't understand why "the sanctity of the unborn" should have more value than the "individual freedom" of a living, breathing human being? i agree that zygotes, embryos, and fetuses are lives and i agree that they shouldn't be dispatched without thought for the consequences. i feel the same way about animals... no animal's life should be taken without consideration for it's being. but i'm not a peta freak. i think that animals can be eaten, i think it's okay to keep birds in cages (so long as they're given ample social interaction and time outside of the cage), and i even think that it's okay to test products that can save human lives on animals -- but the suffering of these animals should be limited as much as possible. on the other hand, i don't think non-life-saving products should be tested on animals (mascara comes to mind). i don't think animals should just be killed for their hides, and i don't think animals should be kept in unhealthy or confined conditions. at the same time, despite what i see to be serious issues with the treatment of animals, i value the human life more highly. just as i value it more highly than a fetus. i think those folks who spend time and money to fight against fur coats would be better served to fight for humane treatment of human beings. just as i feel those individuals who fight so stridently for the sanctity of the fetus at all costs, should keep in mind that full-fledged human beings suffer great hardship as well. human beings who suffer mental illness and starvation in the streets of my own city. human beings who are kept in git'mo for years without being charged. children who are provided with a shabby excuse for an education and then blamed when they drop out. children who are not provided with adequate sexual education and get blamed when they find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy at 12 or 13. civil liberties being trampled in my front yard as politicians argue for racial profiling. with so many wrongs going on in the world -- n. korea developing nuclear weapons, the sudanese fighting for their lives in darfur, american troops sacrificing their lives in a distant desert... why are we worrying about unwanted, unborn fetuses -- according to a 1995 georgetown study 77% of abortions occur before the embryo even becomes a fetus, and 94% of abortions occur before the fetus is said to feel pain -- when there are fully formed, fully-functioning human beings who need our love and help. is there some religious significance of the fetus that i just don't understand? what if that fetus grows up to be a woman who wants an abortion? should we have aborted her before she had a chance to become a murderer?

strange sightings

my two feet
Originally uploaded by atb20.

on my way into the subway this morning, i saw a rather butch guy wearing sparkly, feminine slippers like these. i didn't quite know what to think -- is it creepy in a i-want-to-wear-your-skin kinda way or cool in that i'm-secure-in-my-masculinity sort of way? i still haven't quite decided. the comment board is open if you'd like to weigh in.

btw, i've noticed how hot that comment board has been lately (ha!), and i'm still trying to sort through all of the blogs that my friends have set-up (ha-ha!). but, seriously, this would be so much more interesting to me if it were a dialogue and not a monologue. politics are a particular favorite of mine if anyone's interested in starting.

ok. my brain is pooped. back to hp1 -- i mean work...

party time

griswold and the green ballon (part deux)
Originally uploaded by atb20.

mil and i attended our first real "baby party" this weekend. there's nothing to make you feel more adult (and, btw, less parental) than a baby party. what is a baby party, you ask? a baby party is a birthday party where the number of people under age 4 is greater than the number of people over 21. it actually started out as a rather pleasurable afternoon in the suburbs, catching up with a couple of friends who late last year absconded with their baby, bought a puppy an moved out of the realm of public transportation. they are now gestating baby #2. baby #1 has gotten cuter and more interactive as she broaches those terrible twos, and our friends are very mellow parents who don't chase after their child with wet ones non-stop, so all was well. we were also accompanied by four other childless adults, so we remained in our comfort zone.

moments later, the other folks started to arrive. the first with one child... (of course, they had #2 on the way as well). we chatted for a moment before all eyes were revited to the two adorable two-year olds. then more folks came, each bearing at least two little tykes. it was entertaining at first to be at my first baby party in 20+ years, but soon enough, all activity was focused around the chillen': making sure that they dog doesn't eat any of them, making sure that they don't go to close to the grill, making sure that they play in the pool, making sure that they come out of the pool, making sure that they had enough juice boxes, making sure that they don't have too many juice boxes, and making sure that their hamburger bites weren't too big... phew... i got tired just watching the parents shuttle around after their young'uns. there must be some special parental hormones that kick into gear because i was ready for a nap after that party.

hearing voices

do any of you have weird biases? things that tick you off or turn you on despite all logic? this afternoon i was reminded that i am easily irritated by high-pitched voices. particularly, the paris-hilton-don't-ask-me-i'm-just-a-silly-girl voice. i've been known to go from all-out crush to "not in a million years" based on tone and timbre alone. i have a hard time maintaining conversations with overly loud voices, dinstinctly feminine speech patterns, or folks who's "s"s cut through a sentence like a knife. i'll run from a room if i hear a girly "woo-oo!" (i almost had to change lanes at a bowling alley once, when we were stationed next to a gaggle of high-pitched squealers.) on the other side of the coin a low-gravelly voice can make me weak in the knees. i'll become friends with a lady just because she's got a kick-ass voice like demi moore. strange, right? makes no sense... i'd love to hear other folks thoughts on this one.

the environment, revisited

purple flower
Originally uploaded by atb20.

in my usual bout of blog-reading, i found this post on obsidian wings. now, personally, i started reading this blog solely because they have an adorable picture of a sniper kitten in their profile. (aww, idn't dat da cutest thang?!) but, i've stuck around for the interesting points of view. i hadn't been keeping track of where congress was with this energy bill, but it sounds like it has bushie's greasy oily little fingerprints all over it. take a look, and if you're as peeved as i am, you can take action here.

btw, i'm on p. 204 of hp6, so give me another couple of days, and i'll be reading everyone's spoilers. it must be good if no one can wait to blog all about it! even people who have just had babies...