In a few hours I board a plane to California for a week's stay. I just realized that this is the longest I have ever gone without seeing my family: just shy of 8 months! Even when I lived in Paris I saw them more frequently than that. I can't wait! I miss my parents a lot, although I'm pretty sure they'll drive me crazy inside of 3 days. But that's half the fun, of course.

What's the longest you've gone without seeing your parents?

I was just asked by my boss if I could caterpillar-sit at their house this weekend.

We may not have won but at least I made it on TV!
And the interviewer told the cameraman to get a shot of my muscles, saying "she is jacked!" (?)

And here we have one thing I will be missing when I leave Boston:

Don't worry, buddy, the Redcoats stopped for ice cream too.

Our radiators kicked on again today. It is June 3rd and our radiators kicked on. It's rainy and cold and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of being cold all the fucking time! I never feel like doing anything because it's always cold, or rainy, or just grey and depressing or windy and cold, cold, cold. I hate being cold in my own house, so that I don't even want to get out from under the bed covers. I hate not feeling sexy for almost the entire year. I can't wear my sandals and skirts, I can't wear my tanktops and sunglasses, I'm sick of being white, I'm sick of nobody even KNOWING that I'm white because THEY CAN'T SEE MY SKIN, I HATE cold weather clothing, I hate having to wear layers constantly, I hate wind blowing my hair in my face every time I try to cross the fucking intersection, I hate indoor pools, I hate going to the beach on my one day off and it always, always, always gets cloudy at 2pm sharp and the cold rain starts dripping on the beach, I hate hate hate this fucking weather and I can't wait to live where it's summer all year round again!

I AM SO MOTHERFUCKING SICK OF COLD FUCKING WEATHER!





It is supposed to be HOT in JUNE! People are supposed to BBQ and eat at outdoor restaurants!

Only people coming from ENGLAND would think this fucking place was worth settling!

I just wrapped up my two-night viewing of Bridge On The River Kwai, and man, that's a hell of a movie! Fascinating. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the psychology of war. I'm glad I finally got around to renting it.

Anyone else seen this one? Now I'm off to find out whether it's based on a true story or not (not that it matters). Also, this is a good subtle film (except for one line), so don't watch it if you're just looking for war action.

Once upon a time there was a little boy named Reggie and his constant sidekick, Nugget. Poor Nugget had extraordinary mental powers but was unable to communicate this fact to his master. (As the dog's name might suggest, Reggie was not known for his powers of imagination.) To help cope with his leashed existence Nugget self-medicated with snackings on the garden poppies. Nugget's days of idle opiated dreaming were happy ones and calm, but eventually he starved to death from lack of appetite. Reggie, cast into sudden extreme poverty by a Republican-initiated reversal of the Union victory, was forced to eat his dead friend. He sat in sadness after the meal, staring nowhere as his digestive juices silently engulfed the thin strings of retriever meat in his stomach. A strange thing soon took place. The branches of the tree outside his window began to flap up and down; the tree pulled itself up from the earth, leaf-wings straining toward the clouds, shaking off cobwebs of power lines and throwing them with an electric crackle down to the street below; roots yanked up from under sidewalks, buildings, around sewer lines, snaking up from the bowels of the earth and shaking themselves free of dust and dirt and broken chunks of concrete. YOU! said the tree to Reggie. This day, February 23rd, is the date of your rebirth! You shall be one of the chosen! One of the sons of Imagination! Go forth from this day and share your visions with your soulless fellows! Imbue them with dreams and fill their minds with questions and hopes! Captivate their hearts with your poems! Do this, and you will never die. And the tree flapped up into the heavens and Reggie went forth and dreamed of the world.

Happy Re-Birthday, Reggie. May it stand out in your endless life!

Get this:

You don't need any kind of ID of any sort, picture, non-picture, nothing to get through TSA security at airports.

All you need is a boarding pass. All you need at the airlines to get your boarding pass is your original confirmation code from purchasing. This is typically a combination of five letters and numbers.

That's it. You'll get patted down, but they'll let you through with a boarding pass only on domestic flights.

Now: explain to me why I can't accompany friends to their gates, go watch the planes take off, access the food and the shops in the terminals with my friends while I'm waiting for a flight? The terrorists had boarding passes. (They also, presumably, had ID's for that matter.) Everyone gets patted down, everyone gets herded shoeless through metal detectors. Apparently you could have a boarding pass in someone else's name, pretend to be them, and still fly. WHY won't they let family members through security, exactly? Bomb-free family members with IDs?! What kind of non-threat does the ownership of a boarding pass signify, especially one wholly unaccompanied by any kind of corroborating ID?!

I think next time I fly, I'm going as C. Everett Koop. Why let them track my movements through this country if I'm guaranteed neither comfort nor security as a result?

I got a picture text wrong number at 1am the other night!



Anyone know (217) 220-0040?

Today, for the very first time in all 24 years of my existence, somebody wrote down my name correctly when I gave it to them.

INCLUDING THE "Y".

I said "tall mocha", she asked for my name, I said "Myriam", and in the midst of all the coffeeshop noise, and the pressure of the waiting line, and my probable mumbling, she wrote:

Myriam

I am flabbergasted.

I have the hardest time getting up out of bed in the morning. No matter how stressful my life seemed the night before, and how many times I told myself, "you HAVE to be at work by nine!!! Otherwise there's no way you'll get all your work done!!! Have to have to have to!!" ...when I wake up I invariably feel like I have all the time in the world to get things done. I cuddle up under the covers and watch the minutes tick by on my big clock. Eventually I take a shower and then deliberate for a while on what to wear. It's only when I finally get out of the house and start walking to work that suddenly my tremendous work load hits me again, and by then I'm already off to a late start.

Does anyone else have trouble leaving warm bed-heaven? How do *you* get yourself out of bed in the mornings?

I had a really, really good time visiting family and friends in the Phoenix area for Thanksgiving. Pics in the responses.

Someone is munching on something inside my wall
and it is driving me crazy.

He stops and pauses periodically, just haphazardly enough that I can't quite tell if his pauses coincide with my movements, and his movements with my pauses.

We commune in this way, a tentative orchestra of slight floor creaks, minute bed rustling, and tiny insulation-gnawing, at 4 in the morning together.

I hate him.

I'd call my landlord and have him killed, but I haven't paid rent since September.

Oh well. I guess we are nothing more than two free-loaders squatting together in this crazy mixed-up world. It's you and me, Muncher. You and me.

Rick and I stumbled over the Best Costume Idea Ever tonight, when discussing Jess' "sexy noun" costume complaint:

Sexy Terri Schiavo.

That's right.

Sexy Terri Schiavo.

We're talking red high heels, messily applied, drooled-all-over lipstick encircling her periodic moan-issuing lips, eyeshadow smudged over slack eyelids, glittery mousse in the ole "my vegetative hands chopped this themselves" hairstyle, and a hospital gown all pinned back into a tight little nighttime number (comes with revealing backside slits!). She can play "Follow the Balloon", waving it around in a sexy manner and fluttering her eyelids suggestively. She cultivates mystique by only communicating through head-bobs. Her silky moans will be siren calls.

Best of all, this costume works well when both sober AND drunk!

So, who's down?

I turned on the TV for a little relaxing Sunday night viewing, and what did I see, but one of my FAVORITE Muppets songs being used to SELL DIET DR. PEPPER in a new ad!



Click for the original video. Someone else will have to find the Diet Dr. Pepper ad, I can't stand to think about it any longer.

These little lines on virtual paper, these meaningless scribbles that came out of the end of my pencil at 5 am on a summer morning,
after wailing and headaches took place on my living room couch,
these little lines will be neat rows of wooden sticks at the end of this week.

A few weeks after that they will be touchable walls that contain the life of a woman. They will be the backdrop to her family feasts, they will watch while she puts on makeup in the mornings. They will tremble slightly as doors are banged in them by visiting nephews. They will host works of art. Hopefully they will bring happiness.

They may have been warped and mutated by money and urgency and misguided construction desicions, they may not entirely resemble this drawing in their final, cool-white-plastered form, but they are mine. And they mean something!

So, today I finished my very first construction drawing entirely of my own design.

Soon it will actually be built.


And that feels pretty damn good.

The following email is from a friend of Julie's currently living in Australia. Thought you guys might find it interesting.

***********

I'm having a tough time being on the other side of the world. The media here
(and people I know, even) are really excited to get some new reason to point out the States'
faults. As if we should have been able to control the weather-- or the Mississippi. As if
we have ever denied having poor people at all. Everything has been oversimplified. I feel
like I have engaged with issues of race and poverty for a long time and now I am turned into
the bad guy simply because I am white. The good guys, apparently, and according to
themselves, are the Australian media, who have been rescuing stranded Oz citizens.

"AMERICANS were yesterday waking up to the painful truth that hurricane Katrina had dramatically exposed the racial and economic fault lines that exist between blacks and whites in the world's richest and most powerful nation."

"It wasn't until Channel Nine reporter Robert Penfold arrived yesterday and
helped them get to a staging area and on a bus that they felt safe."

And best of all, the opinion page:

"That any American city could descend so quickly into anarchy will surely have
stunned many. That it exposed a social underclass so desperate just to survive that
looting became necessary must surely shame them."

One Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, I sat bored at work, thinking about the abysmally empty weekend ahead of me. Luckily, inspiration struck. I made a few inquiries, checked the credit card, and eleven hours later was on a flight to Chicago. Voilà les resultats!

Warning: many, many, many pictures inside.

Actually, the meeting was yesterday, but I didn't quite believe it till I woke up this morning and it was still real!

My lovely client needs a brand newly redesigned first floor for this cool Victorian country house. I shall be providing schematic design services. Yay!

Today's After-Work Errand: Buy a Good Flea Collar.

Anyone have a good trout recipe? I bought some fresh the other day and don't know what to do with it. I am making an herb risotto to go with it in case that makes a difference. Please help!

Happy New Year!