A list of people killed at the Pentagon with short biographies and, very poignantly, pictures and descriptions of the objects or pets that meant the most to them. A favorite tie, a player piano, a lanyard holding a security clearance tag, a teddy bear given to an AA on Secretaries' Day, a beautifully laid Thanksgiving table, dogs, children's books, paintings, cars, photographs. This is the only kind of coverage I'm really interested in today -- I fall for the Big Retrospective Picture Analysis sometimes, but this seems better right now. Warning: This humanizes the number of causualties in a way I haven't seen done this effectively before, so don't look at it if you're trying to stay away from sad Sept. 11 stuff. For me, though, it was good for once to consider the people who died without the larger context of the situation -- to look at them simply as people who liked this stuff or that stuff, and to see what their families wanted to say about them.

God bless D.C.: Check out our candidates for mayor. I might actually vote for the Green Party Statehood guy. Then again, there are so many other attractive options: the bugle-playing stripper, the guy who thinks the statement "D.C. has a unelected president whose daughters and niece are drunks" is a reason to vote for him, the current mayor up for reelection who was just fined a zillion bucks for forging names on his petitions.

And, to make matters even better, I don't know what city ward I live in, so I'm not sure where to go tomorrow morning (let alone which wonderfully qualified candidates to vote for there). My current voter registration card has my old address and polling place on it, but my driver's license has my new address -- when I was at the DMV last time, I asked the clerk if I'd get a new card and she actually laughed at me. I repeat: God bless D.C.

Good afternoon, I'm Gwen, the worst blogger on the planet. Sorry that I will have to be your guide for today, if any of you are still out there to be guided. If it makes you feel any better, I never write in my journal any more either. This is because, I think, I'm working on other writing stuff that's using my old personal writing energy. Anyway, moving on. Again.

Alissa is having a barbeque tomorrow and it's going to be fun even if it's cold and raining. Alissa's house is always fun, and fun does not stop for weather. I am not worried. Plus, we will be decoupaging a table. (Jason, I'm sure you'll be really excited about this activity, but we can put pictures of your skydiving self on there! You'll love it.) Frank would be proud.

I moved last weekend. New house is lovely. Lovely lovely lovely. Moldy closet excepted, I couldn't be happier.

This article from The Morning News is just about the only piece I've seen resurrected from last fall -- published Nov. 10, 2001 -- that captures how I felt about two months after It and, to a lesser degree, am feeling now. It's a little dark but so very true and, ultimately, a little hopeful. Let it not be said that we pessimists can't have perspective.

H. has pointed out that we're exactly at the one-year anniversary of our vacay. A year ago today, we were in the San Juan islands. Hi, vacation. We miss you.

Hello. I'm back from vacation. I'm relaxed. I'm tan. I wrote a lot. I can now say I've been tubing, by which I would mean that I've been dragged behind the back of a speedboat while clinging to a flimsy plastic innertube and screaming. It was fun, but given a choice, I will always choose the canoe. Choose the canoe! That sounds a lot like "Take the Cannoli."

(By the way, can I just mention that I can't stand my stupid gold box on Amazon? It's such a great idea, and so eye-catching, and they're totally wasting its potential -- a company that seems obsessed with researching and cataloging our tastes based on past purchases and viewing histories and favorite ice cream flavors and social security numbers and godknowswhatelse should have done a better job with this. Why are they trying to sell me a Black & Decker GH400 12" Grass Hog Automatic Feed String Trimmer/Edger with Auto Feed Spool (AFS)? What is a Grass Hog? Have I ever done anything to indicate that I would like an Auto Feed Spool? Do I even have a lawn?)

On a more serious note, I found out one of my thesis advisors died in July. She was very ill, and had been for a long time, so it's not exactly shocking news, but I'm thrown just the same. The woman was absolutely brilliant. She could speak Middle English, was an unbelievable expert on feminism and Marxism, had read everything that had ever existed, ever. And, like many extroadinarily intelligent people, she was also very difficult. There were times that I flat-out despised her. She reduced me to tears on more than one occasion, and could be hopelessly discouraging at a time when I desperately wanted people to tell me that yes, in fact, I could want to be a writer, and yes, I could really finish a book of short stories in a year, and yes, someone someday might want to read something I had written. At a time that I only wanted yesses, nothing but mushy-smushy affirmation, she gave me a lot of nos. She could be pretty merciless in her criticism, and a few times I thought she would absolutely crush me. I don't know if she knew how much she affected me. I always tried to hide it. (As did the rest of her advisees; despite all of the emotional upheaval, she was the absolute most sought-after thesis advisor and we had to fight to get her. I saw more than one of them in tears after an hour in her office, too.) But after a while, I just got angry at her, and she gave me/us something to push against, something to prove, and I wonder if that wasn't the point.

In any case, that resistance is always in the back of my mind somewhere. I have always imagined sending her a copy of my first novel, and her sending it back with chicken-scratch red all over it, saying the one thing I can still hear in her voice: "You have talent but you don't know what to do with it. Work harder. Stop writing like you're afraid." In her own weird way, she saw right through me -- the me that's terribly scared of exposing myself through writing, of taking risks and of being judged -- and I don't know if she deliberately recognized it and called me on it, or if the way she built me up and tore me down just happened to hit on it exactly.

I really, really, really wanted to show her that novel: part revenge fantasy, part thank you, part I don't know what. I thought about it all the time. This all seems very wrong, somehow.

It's been so long that it took me a few seconds to think of my Blogger username. Apologies all around -- I don't really know what's going on, except that I'm working really hard on some new projects, and on more things at once than I knew my brain could handle. This is a good thing.

Second Sondheim weekend was fantastic, again. There's something wonderful about going to the same theater with the same (fun, wonderful, old-friend) people multiple times in a row... that theater feels intimately familiar now. I really like going to the theater in general and I really liked going to this theater in particular: a long ascent up two floors of carpeted marble staircase to red plush seats and the midnight blue screen with the little white Sondheim scrawl spotlighted in the lower righthand corner. Megan told off an usher (who deserved it) Saturday night, but otherwise it was a pretty near-perfect experience. In order from most to least, I would say my favorite shows were: Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Passion, Sunday in the Park with George and, lastly, Merrily We Roll Along. Farewell, Sondheim festival. You were fun.

In other news, anyone who ever says "women are the ones who play games in relationships!" to me is going to get smacked. Gwennie will smack! (V. subtle B. Jones reference.) Because men? They play games, too. And I'm not talking about backgammon and poker and freeze tag, although I would prefer those. It's not, like, the worst thing that's ever happened ever, but honestly, I find it more stressful than enjoyable and wish we could just say what we're thinking and skip the playing.

In other other news, I am going on a much-needed vacation Thursday and Friday. The odds of me updating again before then are not tremendous, so I will say goodbye now, and hello to the dock and the lake and the woods and the books and the friends. Can't come too soon, is what I'm sayin'.

From The Morning News:

Surrick: Malcolm, there’s already a bill being pushed through Congress to make it legal for a citizen to shoot – in the stomach – anyone in possession of a snakehead. Those little bastards aren’t going to be allowed to step one stinking creepy foot-fin in this country.
Ostrom: Well, God bless America.
Surrick: Hey. Hey. Stick your finger in this Bible and tell me where it says, ‘and lo, God created this fucked-up carnivorous snake-fish nightmare and it was good,’ and I’ll welcome it with open arms.

Hee. More working now.

House Approves Homeland Worker Amendment. Because civil rights are pesky annoyances that get in the way of our dictator -- whoops, president! silly me -- doing whatever he wants, whenever he wants, to whomever he wants! Labor protection laws are for whiners, right? Thank god we got rid of those! Whew!

Exaggeration aside, this is a slippery slope if ever a slope were slippery. First the Department of Homeland Security, then the Department of Defense (what if that guy working in the Pentagon is a terrorist? we need to be able to find out!), then the entire government ('cause if that lady cleaning trash cans at the DOJ doesn't unconditionally condone its actions, we should be able to fire her without warning!), then the whole airline industry (your friendly baggage handlers could be assisting terrorists! no unions for them!) It's endless.

I saw these bumper stickers on my drive home from New York last Sunday; a few days ago, I found them here, and this nice woman is mailing them to me for free just so they'll be displayed prominently somewhere. I usually think bumper stickers are a little naive and overly reductive -- I'm not usually a bumper sticker kind of girl, but I'm considering wearing these on my forehead, damn it.

Too bad Dante didn't stick around for the invention of, you know, roads and stuff. The Holland Tunnel at 6 p.m. on Sunday would have been its own separate level of hell, I swear. Evil dirty traffic aside, my weekend was hectic and fun. I watched one of my best friends get married -- technically, get "blessed," because he and his British wife really got married in February for greencard purposes -- and actually quite enjoyed it. See, I'm not necessarily a bitter old hag at weddings; however, I am also definitely not what one would consider a Wedding Person. I won't go into the (not interesting) reasons presently, but let's say this one was an exception. I was quite the inverse of a bitter old hag. Ross just looked so, so, so good and so happy and so everything -- I felt rather like jumping up and down and clapping my hands in glee.

Did you note the sixty zillion British-isms in that last paragraph? We have the Harry Potter reader guy to thank for that. Ten CDs of his melliflous accent and I'm "quite"-ing with the best of them. On the phone tonight with H., I couldn't stop saying "expecto patronus!" in his voice, and I've been doing it in my head since we hung up. Expecto patronus! Expecto patronus! Quite!

I stole that little Javascript footnote thing from a few people (mostly these two people who I'm sure will never read this page, but thank you just in case). Now, whenever I have some fascinating parenthetical comment to make, you will see a blue word that first appears to be a normal link. But no! It will be different! You will see a little dotted line like so beneath the words. You will click on it, and then you will be handsomely rewarded. There are two in the previous post -- see if you can spot all the clicky goodness.

The prospect of a long, long drive up evil, evil 95 this weekend was making me despondant, and I've completely exhausted
all the books on CD at the library, so this morning I checked out Talking Book World. Yes, Talking Book World. (Who, may I ask, came up with that horrific name? Hello? No self-respecting patron of any fine establishment could ever say the words "Talking Book World" without a distinct ironic grimace and a "you know, whatever the hell that place is called" wave of the hands.) For the not-terribly-cheap rate of $7 per week, I'm now the proud renter of Bill Bryson's "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" and the third Harry Potter book. The Bryson book was an easy choice because I've been wanting to listen to it for a while; the other was a toss-up between "Prisoner of Azkaban" and "On the Road." But seriously: If Harry Potter and Jack Kerouac were in a fight, who do YOU think would win?

Wow. Last post was July 2. I am negligent. Very busy, somewhat distracted and negligent.

I am supposed to know how to use GoLive now. GoLive is a reasonably complicated piece of web publishing software made by Adobe, so it looks exactly like Photoshop and ImageReady and all these applications you actually do know how to use, so it tricks you into thinking you know how to use GoLive too. But, see, then you don't. Even after taking a reasonably expensive two-day class all about how to use it (and just the teeny tiny bit of school-like-ness of that class made me long to be in some sort of school-like setting again), even when that class was extremely helpful and worthwhile -- I still don't really understand how to use it. Dirty software. And I don't have the time to figure it out the way it should be figured out, which means I really don't have the time to be blogging.

Television Without Pity is recapping the new season (who knew there was a new season? who will ever watch this show? although you do have to watch it just once to know what the loser people look like so you can visualize while you laugh your way through the recaps) of "Big Brother." I don't have time to be reading that either, so you go do it for me, OK?

If you're cute and tall and red-headed, clap your hands.
If you're funny and nice and like dancing, clap your hands.
If you're smart and you work for Bill, and you live in See-aaa-til,
if it's your birthday and you know it, clap your hands.

You had better be sitting at your desk clapping those hands like crazy, mister. Happy birthday. :)

And Jason, I am sorry I didn't have a fantastically original birthday song for you, too -- you certainly deserve one because you are also marvelous. Change "like dancing" to "like video games" and "work for Bill, and you live in See-aaa-til" to "have a dog, and I'm not sure if you like to jog" so it can be your song too, OK?

In a vain attempt to remove the image of the "baby suicide bomber" -- I am not linking to the article because I don't want to ever see it again -- from my mind's eye and counteract the numerous depressive conversations I've had recently about the state of every freaking thing ever, I'm jumping on yet another Internet trend. In no particular order, here are 25 Things That Are Good.

Pottery; irony; the word "quintessential"; Tomato Nation; moving into the big beautiful yellow room with morning light; people who talk with their hands; Friday afternoons; Jorge Posada's ears; having one's hair played with; anticipation; the fall (as in "autumn," not as in "of humankind"); fountain pens; the existence of Jim Henson and Charles Schultz; beards; iced coffee with milk; Silly Putty; feeling understood; Powell's; Rock Creek Parkway; the way my mother says "take it easy" when getting off the phone and the way my father signs emails "love love love"; thunderstorms; people who are cynical, sarcastic and smart as all get-out; Nalgenes; basil; "Pomp and Circumstance."

Baseball game last night. Was fun. Hot as hell below but very merry. Literally nail-bitingly, sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat-ed-ly exciting toward the end. Yankees lost, heart-breakingly, in the bottom of the ninth. The O's are still big losers (and their fans are big gloaters) but I will say that they're a scrappy little team and the Y's were definitely not in peak form. Have gone to four baseball games now, have yet to see them win or any starting pitcher other than Fake Yankee with Bad Anger-Management Skills Roger Clemens, but am not complaining. Yelled a lot. Watched a sunburned bald guy whack another sunburned bald guy with a plastic Budweiser bottle when fighting over a foul ball. Am tired. Quite. Baseball is lovely.

Three separate dream-vignettes from last night, somehow easily remembered:

1. I was dog-sitting for a woman in my writing group, and Ginger -- a beautiful Weimeraner, a queen among mere canines, who has more personality than a lot of people I know -- kept trying to get up on two legs and walk. By the end of the dream, she was reasonably successful.

2. I opened the front door of my apartment (in the dream, not my actual apartment) to a giant cardboard box, which was full of books. As I started unpacking it, I realized it contained the contents of my Amazon wishlist -- the entire wishlist, all 15 or 17 books. I could visualize each cover perfectly, although I'm not sure now if they were the actual covers of the actual books (I don't think so), or the dream covers of the actual books, or the dream covers of the dream books. In any case, I was extremely excited.

3. I was sitting on my bed (actual bed in actual room this time), staring at my hand, which had long glass shards embedded in it. This might not be as random as it sounds, because in the last month my roommate and I have both accidentally broken copious amounts of glass on the hardwood floors of our apartment, and pieces have lodged in my foot more than once. But I started sliding the glass shards out of my palm, and they were incredibly long, two inches or more, and buried underneath the surface. Each one made a thin line of bright red blood. All of them were horizontal and perfectly straight. And they hurt. A lot.

From azcentral.com: "On Sunday afternoon, fire crews began placing red cloth tags on Show Low homes deemed too vulnerable to save, such as those with shingle roofs or near heavy brush. White tags went on homes they felt they could rescue."
Everything west of the Mississippi is going to burn to the ground; everything east of it is going to suffocate on its own smog and pollution as we enjoy yet another Code Red Day -- when the government declares that perfectly healthy people shouldn't go outside in the ozone-clouded, heat-choked air -- and it's not even July. Once again, humans destroying the planet. I can't even describe how profoundly disturbing I find all of this, there aren't words.

But hey, let's talk about the new Google fun snagged from Jess: When you type in your name followed by the word "is," making sure to use quotation marks around the whole thing so Google recognizes it as a single idea, you get fabulous results:

· Gwen is committed to Tucson
· Gwen is recognized as an engaging, powerful speaker who is an expert at inspiring and encouraging people to defy their laws of impossibility
· Gwen is an undiscovered gold mine
· Onze Gwen is een heel aanhankelijk hondje
· Gwen's in Trouble.
· Gwen is well known in the Niagara Falls community for her charity work
· Gwen is really more of a singer than a rapper
And, my personal favorite: GWEN is designed as an ultra-high powered VLF [150-175 kHz] network intended to survive massive broadband destructive interference produced by nuclear EMP.

Awesome. I'm an acronym for some scary nuclear-age readiness network. Rock on.

Sondheim is fun. Friday night was Sweeney Todd, and Saturday afternoon was Sunday in the Park with George. I must admit -- "admit" because it's the obvious choice, and I hate liking the obvious choice better, but -- "Sweeney" was by far my favorite of the two. "Sunday in the Park" was very cool in a lot of ways, and the end of the first act where the cast poses as Seurat's painting and then the backdrop comes up to reveal the painting itself was absolutely breathtaking, but the Powerpoint presentation in the second act was disappointingly weird and it just lacked the same kind of edge-of-your-seat energy that Sweeney had. Really, that was probably one of the best shows I've ever seen... when Brian Stokes Mitchell brandishes that razor with his mad mad claws, you quiver. I never would have made it to the Sondheim festival at all had it not been for the organizational forethought of Anne, and hanging out with her and Lauren and Jenny (and Amanda and Tom and Hef, for "Sunday") this weekend was as fabulous as the shows. Ah. On the fifth and sixth days, they saw the work Sondheim had wrought, and the work was good.

So, I've purloined one of these. It is a beautiful, beautiful little iBook. It is cuter than any inanimate object has a right to be. For all of you skeptics who sneer and scoff, "Computers? They're not supposed to be CUTE," well, keep it to yourself. I even -- unexpectedly -- like OS X so far, although I've only played with it for about half an hour. And the darn thing has voice recognition software built in... you ask this teeny tiny 5-lb. computer "what time is it?" and it tells you, say "close this window" and it does. Yah. Unfortunately, there's no "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" command, but still. It does tell knock-knock jokes.

This is the first time I've ever owned a new computer. I am darn excited about it. It's such a clean slate, although hopefully I'll get my act together and start transferring my files on there tonight... the incredible deal from the computer store at the college where my father works came through so fast I didn't have time to give it all that much thought, but I went to CompUSA today and redeemed my coupons for 25% off zip disks. And while I was there, I got The Sims. I couldn't take it anymore -- it sounds so fun and addictive and bizarre, people at work talk about it all the time, it was 25% off too, I have absolutely no willpower.

More fun computer updates to come. I'm a little wary of all the modem configuration figuring out-ness that is going to have to come soon, because I'm not such a hardware geek and don't know a lot about this stuff, and it looks really different from the OS 8's and 9's Remote Access panel thingie, but who cares. Maybe I can just ask the computer out loud and it'll tell me. I wonder if it recognizes me grumbling, "What the @#$%#@^@#$ is wrong with this freaking thing."

I've started reading The Morning News, although not usually in the morning. I like web-only content providers. Wave of the future. I'm just sayin'.

But far be it from me to rag on good old-fashioned newspapers (especially since one signs my paycheck); this story, about a board game called "Life as a Blackman," is the best thing I've read all day. And there's just no substitute for ink on your hands.

Never say it's too late to increase your vocabulary. Yesterday, most of us woke up having never heard the term "dirty bomb;" this morning, we not only know what it means, we also know how one is made, just how unprepared we would be if there was one and why they're so darn attractive to terrorists.

In that spirit, I figured we should also know what a "dirty martini" is, because if I'm going to learn these scary Cold War words, I might as well learn more about alcohol too. (That, and my roommate and I were watching "Sex in the City" the other night and whatsherface orders one, and we both turned to each other simultaneously and said, "what's a dirty martini?") So, courtesy of Webtender:

· 2 oz Gin
· 1 tblsp Dry Vermouth
· 2 tblsp Olive juice (from the olive jar) [Ew? Ew. Ew. --Eds.]
· 2 Olive, garnish

Let's stay away from both dirty bombs AND dirty martinis, shall we? Ew.

I have this little blue notebook I use almost exclusively to write down -- while driving, which is no easy feat -- books I hear about on NPR and would like to read. Today, as the notebook almost got drenched by errant water from my misbehaving Nalgene, I decided to join the age of technology and create an Amazon wishlist. It's mostly so I can keep track of books I want, but if you feel compelled, I certainly won't argue. If you're the slightly creepy (but I'm sure perfectly nice! especially if you want to buy me stuff, right?) guy who wrote to me a month ago asking me to post a picture of myself, this would be a lovely means through which to make up for said creepiness. Except that you don't know my last name. And I'm not going to tell you. So, uh, yeah. Forget I said anything unless you know me and have enough money to get me stuff for no reason, OK?

THIS week's moral, because I am apparently a sadly infrequent writer-on-the-blog these days: Your memory is a finite resource.

Pretend with me, for a moment, that you are at a party in New York Saturday night, dancing in the sweltering apartment of an acquaintance thrice-removed, in the company of a lot of other acquaintances and one very old friend. You are dancing. Dance dance dance. The music is silly and fun. You're NOT drunk, but you're in the process of drinking. You have invented a new drink involving Dr. Pepper and orange rum that actually tastes fantastic. Seriously, you like it. It's really good. Others agree. Then, to your delight and astonishment, George Michael's "Freedom '90" comes on the stereo. To your utter horror, you do not remember all the words.

You are unhappy with this. Specifically, the part of you that hung out in someone's (names have been glossed over to protect the innocent and the people you lost track of 10 years ago) bedroom and kissed the Tiger Beat poster of George, complete with earring and beard stubble and bad-boy glare, is gone gone gone. The only lines you really remember are the loud ones... "sometimes the clothes do not make the man".... "all we have to do is take these lies and make them true"... "I don't belong to you, and you don't belong to me". But that's it.

How many times have I wished I could make room in my brain for something else and get rid of the lyrics to, I don't know, the Les Mis soundtrack, or "Puttin' on the Ritz," or anything Michael Bolton ever wrote? I don't wish it anymore. It actually made me a little sad to not know the George Michael words. Everyone else in the room was apparantly suffering the same fate, although I don't know if they really knew them in the first place. Our 12-year-old selves: Not pleased.

Anyway. Lots of other things happened this weekend, including but not limited to: the very nice wedding of two very nice people; the visiting of an old friend in Brooklyn; the verdict that Brooklyn isn't bad, actually; the very first-ever taking of the Long Island Railroad, which is more satisfying when pronounced as its acronym, LIRR; the eating of a world-famous cupcake and the drinking of the best sangria I've EVER had (sorry Cactus Cantina, consider yourself deposed); the whiling away of a gorgeous hot sunny morning in Prospect Park; the meeting of another friend who had her very first story published in the New York times because she's incredible and awesome; the bailing out of a free ride to DC to spend time and $87 on a cool quiet Amtrak train with other nice people; the intense conversing between myself and a kick-ass woman who is a physicist for NASA on said train two days before. That was in no particular order, by the way, and was not particularly effective in giving a complete picture of the weekend. Better and more consise posting soon. Hopefully.

This week's moral: If you are an animal, stay away from me.

I watched a pigeon die in the parking garage at Union Station on Sunday, after running around trying to find a Union Station employee that might care even a tiny bit and help me. Needless to say, that was a totally fruitless and frustrating endeavor... at least I gave five separate people a good laugh. Someone finally handed me a phone book (after she finished laughing -- I never realized a living thing dying slowly and in great pain was so hilarious! or maybe it was just the idea of someone trying to help it that was so hilarious? someone should explain that to me someday) and I called the humane society and then animal control. I didn't really think they'd be able to do much except put it out of its misery a little faster; they told me to go back and wait with it until they showed up, and, 40 minutes later, it died. I know that animal control has more pressing things to do than care about a pigeon in a sweltering parking garage that can't be saved -- maybe pigeons in general -- but it would have been nice if they'd showed up. It was pretty horrible. And it was compounded by the Jane Goodall book I'd purloined from Alissa to read on the train, which basically details how evil people are ruining this planet, killing off all its animals and destroying everything natural because we're greedy, impatient, calloused, willfully ignorant idiots. Which, as far as I can tell and as far as the personell of Union Station are concerned, is completely true. (OK, so that's not exactly what she said, but I'm extrapolating here. And she does imply it. And I hadn't gotten to the reason for hope part of "Reason for Hope" yet, which, frankly, isn't as convincing as all the reasons for not-hope.)

Now my fish at work, after surviving his eventful trip down a drain and back up again, has gone to the big fishbowl in the sky. Meatball, everyone's favorite fish at home, has some kind of gigantic fish tumor on his back. Sigh. I'm doing OK with people, I think, but if you have fins or wings, keep your distance.

I decided more Jane Goodall might cure me, so I just bought two more of her books on Amazon. Jane Goodall rules. "Reason for Hope" was decent, but every time she started talking about God I was wishing we could just know more about the chimpanzees. Maybe the new books will help my animal karma...

I interviewed this woman tonight who had her first book of poetry published at age 78. Her poetry is fantastic, and she was fantastic, although I don't think her fantastic-ness is coming off in the article quite as well as it should. Anyway. She basically took a 30-year break from writing poetry to be a bustling married person, and she was saying something about how the poems her 20- or 25-year-old self would have written were so completely different from the ones her 75-year-old self has written. I asked if she ever tried to get in touch with that younger self when she was writing, and she kind of stopped fidgeting and looked me directly in the eye and said, "No. I leave her alone." It felt all profound and stuff.

And then, later tonight (tonight has been rather long), I was looking for something entirely unrelated when I found an old notebook I kept in Israel. It wasn't a diary or anything like that -- basically it looks like I used it to copy down the magnetic poetry fragments that my roommates and I wrote on the fridge, to write baaaaaad poetry of my own (the magnetic stuff was better, truly) and to copy down quotes from books I was reading. Weirdly enough, out of those three categories, the quotes are the most revealing of my 19-year-old self and what she was thinking and feeling at a time when a lot of things were changing for her. Some of them still speak to me; others, not so much. One interesting one, from Carol Shields' book "Swann":

"I want to live for a time without irony, without rhetoric, in a cool, solid metaphor. A conch shell, that would be nice. Or a deep pink ledge of granite. I've tried diligence, done what I could, applied myself, now I want my sweetness back."

That one makes sense -- I definitely felt at the time that I was losing sweetness at the rate of a barrel a day back then... and, in retrospect, I'm not sure that isn't actually true. Another, from some psychobabbly-sounding book by Jeanette Winterson whose title I didn't write down:

"In this antisceptic world we try to purge ourselves of difficult things. Don't dwell on it, switch the light off and go home. But this is home. I have to be a home to myself. I am the place I come back to and I can't keep hiding difficult things in trunks. Soon the house will be full of trunks and I will be perched on top with the phone saying, 'Yes, I'm fine, of course I'm fine, everything's fine.' The trunks shudder."

Hrm. And then, the big payoff, a phrase I think all. the. time. and never know where it came from:

"Tendrils of Virginia creeper crept down as far as the window-frame, and progressed on little circular suckers across the glass, at huge vegetable speed."

A.S. Byatt's "Possession," folks: huge vegetable speed. Honestly, that phrase crosses my mind at least once a week and I never truly believed I'd find its source. My 24-year-old self thanks the 19-year-old self profusely for writing that one down.

Sometimes you can't help but think about what you can't and aren't and don't. That is all.

A Salon article on weblogs -- pretty much the first article about them I've read that didn't make me vaguely ill. Interesting:

... to lazy reporters, the world of blogs represents their worst nightmare: It's an endless parade of experts in every conceivable subject they might write about, all equipped with Internet-style megaphones ready to pounce on errors. Careful and thoughtful journalists will nevertheless welcome the advent of blogging: At worst, it should keep them on their toes and give them an incentive not to slip up, and at best, it should give them a chance to do their job better.

I never really thought about it that way -- and I don't think Take It Easy really has the kind of audience that's in a position to hold sloppy journalists accountable, and not that I'm an expert or anything -- but just in case, could someone please write something that's a little less biased and a little more thoughtful about the Middle East conflict? Because the media's treatment of Arafat's "announcement" has been pretty wretched. Do it, or I'll beat you over the head with my Internet-style megaphone.

This egg is made of blue packing bands, silver string, wire, metal discs, wooden beads, cigarette filters, and resin, and all of the (thousands and thousands of) others are so incredible and cool, I can't even begin to explain it. You need to go to wabi-sabi.net yourself and take a look. I'm sure it's a zillion times cooler in real life, but when you click on the cities where the artist's exhibit is going to be, all that pops up is a box that says "art is interesting... art is fun..." Heh. Her web site itself is wabi-sabi. (If you're looking for a definition of wabi-sabi, click on "Public Relations." And be sure to check out the picture of her studio, too. Go thither!)

Larry King is a freaking tool. OK, buddy, we get it, there are a lot of straight people playing gay people on "Queer as Folk." They're ACTORS, and if I understand the meaning of the word, it means that they get paid (sometimes) to PRETEND to do stuff like be in love with people they aren't actually in love with no matter what their gender, so does it really matter all that much if a straight guy is kissing another straight guy on TV? And even if you find this totally fascinating, could you please not preface every single stupid thing you say with "as a straight man" or "as a gay man"? Could you please ask a question about something besides the actors' own personal sexual preferences? Loser. Pretend I didn't link to that article. Even though most of the actors came up with intelligent answers to his lame questions, reading it is definitely not a worthwhile use of your time. Moving on...

I need to summon up some self-discipline this weekend and get some writing done -- two short things for my writing group, a preliminary draft of one freelance article, notes for another and a proposal for a third. Unfortunately Lancaster, where I will be spending said weekend, is not usually conducive to getting work of any kind done. The couches in my parents' house are too comfortable and the dog is too adorable, and there are too many nice people who make me want to hang out with them and watch seven consecutive hours of Trading Spaces and go to the Linden Diner at 3 a.m. Alas. We'll see. Here's to a relaxing, fun, productive, Larry-King-free weekend.

Just got back from taking a friend on a say-goodbye-to-D.C. tour. She's moving to Indiana to go to law school, and has had to leave suddenly because she needs to take a summer class. S., although not one of the only friends who's taking part in the annual summer exodus from D.C. and will be sorely missed, is one of the only people I know here who feels very affectionate toward (parts of) the city the way I sometimes do. She's been here a few years too, a long time by D.C. standards, and was feeling nostalgic tonight -- egged on by yours truly, who never passes up a chance to be nostalgic -- so we went for a little drive down Mass. Ave. to Pennsylvania to 15th Street to Constitution Ave.

It's so foggy and rainy outside that it felt like the inside a snow globe of D.C., with the Washington Monument illuminated and towering in the mist, the Vietnam Memorial lurking invisibly in the darkness, the Lincoln Memorial's pillars glowing from within. "Home in the rearview mirror," she says, halfway joking, halfway serious, already halfway in the next place, already halfway gone from this one.

A new journal entry. I was about to preface it by apologizing for yet another round of Gwen Talks About the Middle East, but you know what, this is my weblog (my journal, as the case may be), and if I want to rant depressively about scary matters I can't control, I'm going to. So if this doesn't interest you or makes you upset or causes you to think I'm a lunatic, just don't read it. Hey, I never promised you a rose garden. :)

If your birthday is in October, there is nothing quite so fine as a birthday present -- a beautiful, funky, hand-made, fabulous birthday present -- on a cloudy morning in May. Thank you, lady, I love it.

Happy birthday to my favorite hairy arm lover! She's turning the big two-three today. Woo!

A link courtesy of my favorite link-provider: Legends of Ahimsa. Before I take my whiny self home, I will leave you with my favorite Ahimsa pottery story. Let's all contemplate its wisdom over the weekend.

The Master's former apprentice Soba was visiting. He said, "Master, would it be too much to ask if you would give me the recipe for that green glaze?"
"Of course not," said the Master, and wrote it out for him.
Later, Soba came back. "You remember that green glaze? It looks entirely different when I use it."
"When I gave you the glaze, it became yours. Why do you now complain because it looks like your green glaze instead of mine?"

Hail the size of babies' heads and thunder so loud it woke me up last night. Whew. What will they think of next, Clinton taking over for Oprah?

I heard this report on NPR yesterday while driving home: A condor, which was captured 15 years ago, is being released back into the wild. He was the last free condor before he was caught, and now, after fathering about 70 zillion baby condors in captivity, he's supposed to go back and demonstrate to his offspring *how to be wild*. After not being wild for 15 years. It just struck me as a huge burden for this bird -- he's basically been charged with saving his entire race, first through genetics and now through being an example of something I'm sure he feels is a little rusty. Poor Igor/AC9. He's really cute (looks like he's mugging for the camera, actually, check out the pictures on the right-hand side of the article) and seems like he'd be flying around thinking, "I save an entire population and this is the thanks I get? A bunch of little brats following me around and no more free food from those ugly things descended from apes."

Everyone needs to have a moment of sympathy for poor Kelly. Her Evil Dentist story surpasses mine, unfortunately. Sigh. There are too many Evil Dentists out there in the world. I know there are good dentists out there (like someone's dad), but the bad ones are running amok (amok amok amok) and ruining everyone's day. Gr.

I saw "Monster's Ball" Saturday night, and I've been thinking about it ever since... not sure what about it, exactly, just about it. About limits, I guess, and how far people can be pushed before they fall off the other side of what they thought they could handle. And what happens after they do fall. Hm. It really is quite a movie.

The Friday Five didn't seem inspiring to me today -- the concept of hobbies makes me feel kind of blechy -- so I did something else I saw on smattering.org: The Poem Tag Project.

Sad news for all the Hogwarts fans out there: HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX delayed indefinitely.

Two writing-related links: Chicklit.com and afterDinner.com.

I'm happy to report that the third and final FilmFest movie, "Graduating Peter," was fantastic, thought-provoking, original. The director was at the screening, and took questions afterward, and the whole thing was great.

It's really a shame that web radio broadcasting might be legislated out of existence. A thousand dollars a day. Gah. Do the big guys always have to win?

You two have fun in Miami. Find good apartments and vets and beaches and things.

Thanks to the DC International Film Festival, I saw two of the strangest movies of my life this weekend. "Karmen Gei" and "Platform." The first was an African version of Bizet's "Carmen," and interesting but kind of incomprehensible; the second was from Hong Kong/Japan/France, about China, and utterly incomprehensible. And long. Oh so long. Three-plus hours long. At one point, H. leaned over and said, "I've been doing math in my head..." and even though there was an end to that sentence that made it make more sense, I couldn't stop laughing enough to listen. I feel like an uncultured boob. But we do have another FilmFest movie tomorrow night, so we'll see how that goes.

In News of the Definite, I'm definitely going to be in DC another year, I'm definitely leaving my current apartment at the end of the summer, and I'm definitely moving in with the friend in the five-person house in Adams Morgan. It's a beautiful house and a great area, and it's cheap as hell. There will definitely be trade-offs (can anyone say "parking nightmare"), but I'm quite excited for now. And a little sad. As Sarah Harmer would say:

Look at the day dropping away
hear the traffic pass along
a distant sideroad down the way
But I don't care, it was so calm
I knew I wouldn't stay forever
I knew I'd get some things together
and move on...

Because I had to pay for a dumb mistake last night and come into work obscenely early to rectify it, I feel like I've already been here forever, and it's time for The Friday Five.

1. What's your favorite TV show and why?
"Six Feet Under," along with the recently discussed "Queer As Folk." The first is my favorite because the writing is so compelling and the actors are so, so good; the latter because it just has this inexplicable power over me. Sometimes my roommate tapes "The West Wing," and I still will occasionally catch "ER" even though it's dumb now. Those are pretty much the only shows I ever watch deliberately, except when someone sends me six campy hours of "Trading Spaces" on tape.

2. Who is your favorite television star?
Hm. I dunno. Keith or David or Claire or Nate from "Six Feet Under"? I don't know any of their real names, so I think that means I don't really have one.

3. What was your favorite TV show as a child?
A tie between "The Cosby Show" and "Family Ties." And "A Different World" and "Head of the Class."

4. What show do you think should have been cancelled by now?
I can't believe "Survivor" is still on. The first two seasons were such delicious folly, but they should have stopped while it was still interesting.

5. What new show do you hope escapes gets the axe this season?
Is "Fear Factor" a new show? I've never seen it, but its promos are horrific. If I never again saw a Playboy bunny suspended from a cliff in a glass box with worms crawling in her mouth, that would be fine with me.

Would anyone be interested in restarting some kind of dream weblog on leafygreen? I don't know if it's the heat or what -- in my greenhouse of a bedroom (in an apartment building that will not turn the air conditioning on until May 1 no matter what, thankyouverymuch), I've been having to sleep with a fan blasting five inches away my face for the entire night, and that's bound to do something weird to your mental state -- but I've been having the craziest dreams lately and I'd like to record them. Wanna?

Anyway, I've been meaning to post this for a while: Book Magazine's list of 100 best fictional characters in literature since 1900. It's a piece of junk. They're trying to cover themselves by saying "best" instead of "most famous" or "most influential" so they can argue the semantics of the word "best," but it's still a piece of junk. Rabbit Angstrom comes before Sherlock Holmes, Peter Pan, James Bond and Atticus Finch? Some lady from "The House of Mirth" comes before Lolita? Humbert Humbert comes before Lolita? What are these people smoking?

Do you believe that things happen for a reason? Do I?

Am taking tomorrow -- today -- off for a (say it with me, Jason) three-day weekend. Am seeing Sarah Harmer and Billy Bragg at the Keswick Theatre. Am going to relax and not think about the following: future-deciding letters that have not yet been sent and/or the potential shortcomings of the DC postal system, living arrangements of any kind, people who try to view my paper's website using Netscape 3, and large rats with red eyes. You all have a nice weekend, too.

A woman was talking about wine on the radio the other morning, and said the following: "Just because you like a wine a lot doesn't mean it's good. Don't confuse the two. But we like lots of things that are not quantitatively GOOD -- that doesn't mean you shouldn't like them, and that's what makes us human."

That's so completely exactly how I feel about Showtime's Queer as Folk series, it's uncanny. See, the show is bad. Badly written especially, although the actors sometimes rise above their terrible material. It also toes this sketchy line between soft gay porn and a crappy soap opera, falling intermittently between the two sides. And I love it. I may have to move sometime in the near future and the "oh no, I won't have Showtime any more! I only have it now because of our weird cable set-up -- no one normal gets Showtime!" thought crossed my mind not so incredibly long after the "oh no, I'm going to have to move all my junk and uproot my whole life!" thought. If I were moving into my own place, which may or may not happen, I would seriously consider buying some exorbitant cable package to watch a 45-minute show once a week. Frightening, truly.

One might think this is very unusual, a straight white 20-something female having a teensy weensy obsession with a (bad) show about extremely sexually active gay men. But last weekend, when I was renting a video of last season's episodes (hey, I had to get caught up), a very adorable and effeminate video store clerk engaged me in the following conversation:

Him, gushing: I love this show! Do you love this show?
Me, looking embarrassed: I do love this show.
He then proceeds to *pull out a copy of The Advocate from under the counter, already turned to an article on Queer as Folk.* Yah.
Him: Look! There's a whole article here on the demographics -- 1.8 million of the show's 2.5 million viewers are straight white 20-something females!
Me: Huh, I guess I'm not that special, then.
Him, winking: Honey, you're absolutely special! Now who's your favorite character?

...and we proceed to have a 10-minute-long conversation on the merits of each of the characters, their various acting abilities and, uh, other stuff. Shut up. I told him about the unremitting joy of Queer as Folk recaps. And then he gave me another wink, called me "his special customer" and sent me out the door with the video free of charge, right in front of his manager. Too bad I don't inspire that kind of behavior in straight men, hm?

Just because I held a cell phone to a mug of sangria in the middle of a restaurant at 1 a.m. and told someone to talk to it doesn't mean I was trashed or anything. I was just letting her say hi. By "her" I mean Alissa, not the sangria. :)

Saw an interesting production of "Prometheus" Saturday night, with Angie's roommate Jo starring (sort of) as one of the 16 Daughters of Ocean. It was pretty cool, actually, although our seats being about four inches away from the stage resulted in a few of those god-please-don't-let-me-start-laughing-right-now moments (specifically in relation a questionable view of Hermes', um, costume). Good times, good times.

And now another friend is visiting for the next few days, so I'm going to try to take off a bit early -- without even reading the new Trading Spaces recap on everyone's favorite website, Television Without Pity. If you already read it, don't tell.

In the I-can't-believe-I-feel-this-way category: Bush makes it a little better. "Bush appears to have concluded that the cost of continued inaction outweighs the cost of a possibly failed intervention." I would add: "...and that he will look like an unabashed hypocrite to the rest of the world if he doesn't *do* something." Sending Powell there, although it might not do anything concrete, at least makes it look like the US is trying. Better than nothing.

Anyway, the Friday Five.

1. What are the first things that you do in the morning to start your day?
Um... wake up to NPR, stretch, yawn, shower, that sort of thing. I realized after looking at other people's answers to these questions that I don't actually have a snooze button because I use my stereo as an alarm clock -- if I'm really tired, I'll turn the alarm back five minutes and reset it, but seeing as that takes a fair degree of brain power, I don't normally do it. Instead, I'll lie there with my eyes closed and listen to the soothing voice from the radio for a while.

2. What are the last things that you do at night before going to bed?
Read, flip on the environmental noise machine thingie, flip off the light.

3. What daily routine have you recently added to your day?
A vitamin. And a Viactiv calcium chewy chocolate.

4. What routine do you wish you get rid of?
Taking out the trash... emptying out the dishwasher... cleaning of any kind... :)

5. What's the one thing that makes you feel like something is missing if you don't do it some point within your day?
Talking to certain people on the phone, emailing certain others (although that only feels weird during the week). Driving, unfortunately. Feeding the fish -- I woke up in the middle of the night last week thinking I'd forgotten, only to remember I was on another continent and a few zillion miles away from said fish.

Oh, and I updated the books page, finally. I'm not sure if anyone ever looks at that (I'm not sure why you would, come to think of it), but I'm finding it's my favorite part of this new site -- already I'm finding myself saying, "yeah, I remember reading that... sort of... "

And then Sharon makes it so much worse. I realized that just about 5 years ago, the first week of April in 1997, my father visited me in Israel. We toured a lot of places I hadn't seen, including the Church of the Nativity. Weird.

But it's good when a blog can make you laugh out loud -- the Fabulous Hulk. Hee. Brad (of The BradLands) makes my day sometimes, and he doesn't even know it.

However you say hello in Celtic! I did make it back this weekend, but I haven't made it back to posting until now. Hello, Blogger. Hello, leafygreen. Hello, take it easy.

Anyway, it was a wonderful trip that felt a lot longer than a week. Irish coffee: yes, yum. Tate Modern: yes, fabulous. LSE: yes. Cliff walks: yes, unbelievably beautiful. Book of Kells: yes, interesting but overly touristy. Guiness factory: no, too far away and too expensive. Weird tower place: oops, totally forgot about that one, but we did get to the Dublin Writers' Museum. Seder: yes, hilarious. Bowling: no, and no punting either, but seeing Cambridge was great. I would absolutely love to go to school there -- the place is like a dream, honestly. Iceland Air: um, not again. Five hours of delays due to a snowstorm in Reykjavik does not make for pleasant travels, although I did meet several amusing fellow passengers and learned about international yarn and fabric exhanges. Who knew?

Also, I learned that I really like this:

If anyone has the burning desire to purchase it for me, please feel free. :)

Also, I am still exhausted. And actually kind of happy to be back.

Also (shifting gears now), the situation in the Middle East has me really worried, angry, unhappy. I tense up every morning before looking at the paper, and I react to the media's rhetoric and vocabulary instead of the situation itself because that's easier to handle. I can't believe things are this bad... I can't believe Sharon thinks isolating Arafat and rolling tanks into West Bank towns will accomplish anything, or that Arafat and other Arab leaders can continue to call for the destruction of the state of Israel and condone suicide bombings and NOT be condemned for it. I can't believe the media continues to use uninformed, ignorant, biased language like "occupation" and "offensive."

(A preface to the next paragraph: Way too many Palestinians have been killed, too. Way, way too many. I'm focusing on Israel and its casualties, though, because they're comparable to the US side of the equation.)

Israel is the size of Rhode Island, and hundreds of Israelis have been killed already this year. There have been suicide bombings -- acts of terrorism, if you prefer -- every day for the last week. Every day. How would this country be responding if this was done to the US on a comparable scale? Bombings? Invasions? Nuclear weapons? And our government has the nerve to sit back and urge restraint, to ask Israel not to respond with violence, to continue to try negotiations, to offer a hand of peace. I think the Israelis have been pushed to their limit and are responding with too much violence, and I believe in these pacifying actions in varying degrees. But to have the US request them is the ultimate in hypocrisy.

I could continue in this vein for quite a while, but I'll refrain. I'm feel like I've been forced to clarify my beliefs, and own up to them in a way I never had to before... and although it's certainly my choice, in a way it feels like being pushed. To be pro-Israel at all, even a pro-Israel leftist who believes a Palestinian state is the only way to have lasting peace, is to be on the defensive now.

The long-awaited England/Ireland jaunt is now 24 hours away -- I think it may be time to start packing. Everyone behave while I'm away, and a week from now I'll have some tales of Irish coffee and the Tate Modern the London School of Economics and cliff walks and the Book of Kells and the Guinness factory and James Joyce's weird tower place where he only sort of lived. (Maybe I'll be able to explain that one better after seeing it.) I might also have tales of having a seder -- that should probably be "seder" seeing as how we will probably lack 95 percent of the elements that comprise one -- in a hostel in Dublin. I'm also supposed to go bowling -- "bowling" -- on the Cambridge green, or something like that...

Anyway, the only thing I'm disappointed in is that I won't have enough time to get out and see Reykjavik during my layover on Iceland Air. I'm hoping to like Iceland Air a lot -- cheap, and the accent is the coolest. OK. Really going to finish up so I can go home and pack. So long, farewell, however you say goodbye in Celtic.

Look, I remembered this week -- the Friday Five.

1. What is your favorite time of year?
Fall and the beginning of winter.

2. What is it about your favorite season that, well, makes it your favorite season?
After the long summer, that first whisper of chill in the air is incredible. The first time it's appropriate to wear a sweater, falling leaves, etc., etc., etc.

3. What is your least favorite time of year? Why?
Probably the end of the summer -- the humidity of July and August -- but I've always thought February was the worst month of the year. (Look, two Dar references in one sentence.)

4. Do you do anything to celebrate or recognize the changing of seasons?
Only in my own head, although some of the Jewish holidays coincide with them nicely.

5. What's your favorite thing to do outside?
Can sea kayaking be my answer if I've only done it once?

OK, time's up:
"It depends on what your definition of 'is' is" and "I didn't inhale". Some of you cheated by looking it up online, but others of you legitimately got one or both of them. Whatever your opinions on Clinton, you have to admit that those quotations are a pretty sad reflection on a presidency. Then again, this article that Scott found explains that most recent presidents don't have much of a quotation legacy.

A first-ever contest here at take it easy! (You can tell I'm feeling inspired by the late hour...) I heard Joe Klein interviewed this morning about his new book -- I'm not about to run out and buy it or anything, but the guy is definitely a good conversationalist and a font of Clinton trivia. Here's the best item: Bill has three quotes in Bartlett's book of quotations. (Don't try to look it up online, you slacker, it's not there yet.) I'll give you the first and easiest one: "I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." Can you guess the other two?

You think about your answer quietly in your heads, or email me if you want to be official about it. I will reveal the answer in my next post. Sing the Jeopardy theme music to yourself while you ponder.

A journal entry on the whole aggression in girls thing. I'm finished talking about this now, I promise.

Oh happy day -- Sara is back!

Shamelessly borrowing her link, some of these Simpsons blackboard openings have had us cracking up, too. "The Pledge of Allegiance does not end with Hail Satan." "I do not have diplomatic immunity." "Spitwads are not free speech."

A really interesting NY Times Magazine article on aggression in girls. For some reason, this seems to be a hot topic these days, and I'm also currently reading a book about it. It's interesting, and I think most women (and certainly some men) have experienced it in some form. NOT that I believe all, or even most girls are horrifically catty and cruel -- and I think that underlying assumption is a big problem with "Odd Girl Out" -- but this relational aggression stuff is definitely evident in elementary- and middle-school girls.

I had a long phone conversation tonight with a friend who recently moved to Portland after finishing medical school in DC. Talking to her (even though I was very glad to) made me a little sad, and I can't put my finger on why... something to do with distance, I guess, and friendship, and what happens when vague possibilities become realities or (in my own case) start to look increasingly like they're not. The feeling of being left behind, and, conversely, leaving something you weren't ready to give up. Relief and disappointment in both cases.

I also watched "The Anniversary Party" tonight. I had high hopes because I so loved Jennifer Jason Leigh in "Proof," and I thought I liked Alan Cumming, too, but maybe they should forget about this writing/directing stuff and stick to acting. They produced one of those movies that makes you want to turn your face away because it's so painful and awkward, but doesn't leave you with a damn thing. Hollywood people shouldn't be allowed to make movies about themselves, it just winds up self-serving and gross and false.

It's raining this pure spring rain outside my open window right now -- blowing fast with big, loud spatters and then receding slowly to a wet silence, gusting up again with double the force, falling back with a tinny shatter of sharp drops against the walls and glass.

I'm going to start doing the Friday Five. Why? Well, dear reader, for you! I am suffering a severe lack of worthy content on this page, and I like reading it on other people's pages occasionally, so I figured why not. Anything for you.

1. What makes you homesick?
Being away from certain people, of course, but other stuff too -- when I was living in Israel, the sight of the little mail basket in the sunny front hallway of my apartment building used to give me a pang every time I passed it.

2. Where is "home" for you? Is it where you are living now, or somewhere else (ie: Mom & Dad's house, particular state/city)?
In a way, it'll always be my parents' house in Lancaster, but I also feel very at home here in D.C. (and Gaithersburg, sort of, sadly enough).

3. What makes it home for you? People? Things?
Yes to both. People are number one, of course, but lots of places, too. There are places I know I'll be homesick for when I leave here: the Clara Barton Parkway, Glen Echo, Dupont Circle, the Key Bridge, the sculpture garden outside the Hirschhorn.

4. Where is the furthest you've been from home, miles-wise?
This cool distance counter thing says Cairo, which is 5824 miles away from here.

5. What are your plans for this weekend?
Making dinner with a few friends (using copious amounts of bok choi and swiss chard -- don't ask), a going-away party tomorrow night, kickboxing on Sunday, and laundry laundry laundry.

When I arrived at work this morning, I discovered a box of these on my desk, with a post-it note that reads, "Treat for you. From, the Treat Fairy." Who is this marvelous and mysterious Treat Fairy? I've asked all the likely culprits and everyone seems innocent enough. I really have no idea who it was. How great is my life that I have a surprise box of cookies on my desk? I love my co-workers sometimes. I love them even more when, during the official inquiry into the identity of the Treat Fairy, one of them manages to mention, "You know, syringe-holes are miniscule. Undetectable, even." Heh. Generous, loveable, sarcastic bastards. They're the best.

I went to out to dinner last night with some friends -- to a place in Adams Morgan called Pasta Mia, which turned out to be delicious -- and I'd left really early in the hopes of finding a parking space remotely near the restaurant, because I hadn't brought a coat and wasn't relishing the prospect of a 10-block walk to the restaurant in the freezing cold. Of course, when you have 20 minutes to find a spot, one directly in front of the restaurant opens up immediately. I think it's that whole "never rains if you remembered your umbrella" deal. Anyway.

The place (think teeny, tiny, trendy) had only opened at 6:30, and I arrived right about 6:40, so after the initial seating I was first in line to get a table. When the four people I was meeting each arrived individually, it caused much consternation among the zillion other people who piled up behind me -- they shot us evil looks, as though we'd stepped on all their teeny tiny trendy toes on the way in. They were probably jealous of my parking spot. Anyway again.

This is a direct transcript of a very real conversation overheard during the wait:
Him, a middle-aged balding nondescript sort: So how was work?
Her, a much younger but also not-so-descript sort: Aggravating. See, I'm working on this something something about going over a registry of gifts given to Bill Clinton. [I am wondering why this is relevant to anyone now, but whatever.]
Him: Why was it aggravating?
Her: It was just aggravating. See, this aggravating woman was trying to help me blah blah more stuff about someone trying to help her and apparantly not doing a very good job.
Him: Wow, that does sound aggravating.
Her: Totally aggravating. See, there's blah blah something something woman woman aggravating aggravating AGGRAVATING!

OK, do you see where I'm going with this? I'm sure I overuse certain words just as much as everyone else, but please! If any of you ever catch me doing this, in writing or in speaking, just put me out of my misery. I can't tell you how unpleasant a perfectly good eavesdrop becomes if you have to hear the freaking person say "aggravating" every four seconds and "see" at the beginning of every second sentence. Aargh. Aargh. I wanted to stop listening, but, as previously mentioned, it was crowded and they were about three inches away from my ear. God help us all.

Television Without Pity, for those who haven't yet seen it, is good stuff. The new West Wing recap is hilarious -- I just spent a good five minutes paging through the whole thing trying to find an excerpt to demonstrate its hilariousness (né hilarity), but the individual lines just aren't as funny out of context. Oh is it funny. The made-up dialogue this particular recapper uses is absolutely the best.

And we're back! Almost as though we'd never gone away, except now I am the proud owner of a domain name and POP accounts and a few other things I don't know what to do with. Hurrah!

So what's new here. Hm. Been a sad few weeks. I apologize to any of you I haven't spoken/written to for a while -- I've been awful about answering emails and phone calls, but I should be back on the proverbial horse again. I also definitely had the I-am-so-lucky-to-have-such-wonderful-supportive-friends feeling about 4 million times (thank you thank you thank you), and that also extends to those with whom I've been sorely out of touch. I do apologize.

Craig has a weblog! Yes, my dear, I am liberal as ever, and hoping like hell that doesn't change...

Must be working again, but I'm glad to be back here, in a way. It feels like a return to happy normalcy -- I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Hi. We've moved.

From Salon: "The most heartbreaking thing about faithful moviegoing is that awe, beauty and excitement, three of the things we go to the movies for, are the very things we're cheated of the most. The great wonder of "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" is that it bathes us in all three, to the point where we remember -- in a vague, pleasurably hallucinatory sensation from another lifetime -- why we go to the movies in the first place."

OK, I'm sold. Any Lancaster folk want to go this weekend?

The seventeen most beautiful words in the English language: "Delivery Status: Your item was delivered at 8:00 am on December 17, 2001 in MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55455." After you have purchased 30-some dollars worth of intangible tracking service and flimsy white envelopes, I think the Postal Service intentionally delays packages several days after it promised they'd get there just to provide the huge rush of relief when they actually do arrive. It's really quite smart, business-wise... it give you satisfied customers who are just too thankful and relieved to complain about what was, in reality, extremely bad service. There's an element of that post-trauma forgetfullness. Who cares about all that stress and the checking of the Web site 6 times a day, and the 49 backup plans about what to do and who to call if it isn't there by this or that deadline -- it's there! After all that, my package made it! God bless the USPS! :)

In unrelated news, I gave the fourth-grader I mentor her Christmas present today. Although it's not particularly extravagent, it's in four parts -- two books ("Misty of Chincoteague" and "Misty's Foal"), 5 of those gel pen things, a bunch of sticks of modeling clay and some weird shiny, bronze-colored, Silly Putty-esque substance called Mars Mud that just looked amusing -- and she elected to open one of the four parts today and put the rest of the stuff underneath her tree at home. She opened the pens, and she liked them, and she said all the stuff you'd think kids would say when they open a present they like, such as "this is so great, it's just what I wanted" and "my friends have pens like this and I always wanted some"... but the look on her face was just incredible. She. Was. So. Excited. About pens that cost $3 at Staples, and I didn't even know she wanted them, and and and. I don't know. It was just the greatest feeling in the world. It makes me understand, just a little, how these holidays became so commercialized and gift-centric -- if I could put that look on her face every single time I saw her, I would do it in a heartbeat. And if I had to outdo myself time after time after time for fear that I wouldn't see that look if the gift wasn't as good as the last one, I might start spending obscene amounts of cash and buying obscene amounts of stuff and just doing too, too much in the hopes that it would come back.

Procrastinating is not my strong suit. I never do anything useful with the time I'm not using -- I don't wash dishes or do laundry or research silverbacked gorillas on the web. Mostly, I mope around the apartment and whine to my roommate about how I'd rather be outside on one of the first beautiful truly winter-ish days we've had and get absolutely nothing accomplished, let alone the primary task I'm avoiding. In the end I just wind up driving myself insane and I do whatever it is I'm putting off because I can't stand myself anymore.

That's why I won't go to bed until I'm done with this stupid thing I'm trying to write. I won't. So I am here, doing yet another useless thing, at 1:17 in the morning. Ta da! I'm also trying to download that awful mochachokalalala song from Moulin Rouge, a song I can't stand from a movie I did not enjoy, because it's been stuck in my head all day and I have this idea that listening to it will get it *out* of my head. An act that's doomed before it starts, if I do say so myself. Like a few other things I can think of, to be negative and vague all at once.

Allright. I think I am annoying myself (and now probably you) enough to go do this now. I will write like the wind. Or at least like someone who's driven herself to the brink of insanity.

Has anyone noticed that Salon is getting really good again? I was convinced it was going under once they started the subscription service, which I reluctantly split with several other people mainly because I couldn't bear the thought of never being able to read another Survivor update again. For a while, I'd scroll down the list of new stories and not see one single headling that really caught my eye. But now, somewhat suddenly, it's back to its old self. The coverage of The War, Etc. -- a lot of it told in a first-person perspective by a reporter stationed there -- is excellent (when used as a supplement to and not a substitute for straighter news reporting, in my opinion). The features are really solid. The opinion pieces are really really solid. The books section (which I hope to freelance for someday so as to contribute my brilliant insights) highlights a lot of off-the-beaten-track stuff. The Brilliant Careers series is wonderful and insanely thorough, and I read articles about people I've should have heard of but haven't. I never thought I'd catch myself saying this, but once a week or so I go through Amy Reiter's gossip column, which is funny and trivial and perfect. I even listen to the audio downloads sometimes.

Was there a point, here? Oh yeah. A feature on the pathetic state of women's magazines. I just added an excerpt to that long-neglected list of quotes on the bottom right, too.

I also just read the Adam Sandler song in its entirety from the link on Anne's page, and I must say that this is the best verse, hands down:

"Tell your friend Veronica, its time you celebrate Hanukkah
I hope I get a harmonica, on this lovely, lovely Hanukkah."

I actually remember once trying to write some sort of Chanukah poem as a lame-ass Sunday School assignment, but I don't recall coming up with either "Veronica" or "harmonica". Those rhymes are pure genius.

Also, I just scoured the Web looking for a picture of Giuliani lighting that menorah in Israel and couldn't find it... the closest I got was a picture of him in some crowd on Ben Yehuda Street. I think my celebration will never be complete until I actually see it with my very own eyes, so if anyone else has, let me know where and how and if it was as amusing as I think it must be.

Also also, from VirtualChanukah (which is actually a little weird despite its innocuous name, but who cares): A great rabbi once remarked, "You cannot chase away darkness with a stick, you have to turn on the light."

You know, you think you've seen it all until you read Giuliani to light Hanukka candles in Jerusalem. Then you realize that you never, ever, ever will... :)

Missed Dec. 1 by an hour and a half -- dinner took longer than expected, went to later movie than expected, movie was lengthier than expected. Anyway. Link and Think.

Since Sept. 11, the skew of statistics has changed in my head. Four to five thousand is the number that sticks out now; it's the new means of comparison. (Eight million people, the number of people who died in the Holocaust, is my old means.) So when I was reading Kofi Annan's article on what the UN plans to do about AIDS, I couldn't help but be struck by a new number: 8,000. Eight thousand people a day. Six hundred new people infected every hour.

I know a lot of people who've done AIDS Rides in various cities, sometimes biking hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of miles and always using huge amounts of time and energy in the training. Nosily enough, I always want to ask them what their motivation is for that kind of committment and self-sacrifice. But with numbers like those, there's no need to ask why, is there.

"What we must sustain now is the political will. Life after Sept. 11 has made us all think more deeply about the kind of world we want for our children. It is the same world we wanted on Sept. 10 -- a world in which a child does not die of AIDS every minute."

-- Kofi Annan

Posted a new series of dreams on Starrynight. I've been getting massive amounts of sleep lately -- we're talking 9,10 hours a night. No idea why, I just can't keep my head up. Last night I went to sleep at 11:15, which is incredibly early for me, and when the alarm went off at 9:30 I had to force myself to get up and go to the playground-gym, where I could barely stay awake as I was swimming. Cause of death: drowning due to interminable somnolence. The next 5 hours of work are looking challenging.

All the suggestions for fish names are lovely, but I still haven't settled on one. I'm thinking of "Uncle Sam," or "Cousin Bob." "Pesci Butter" is still in the running, as are "Zwei" and "Second Course." :)

In a rare moment of cosmic justice, Anne has gone and gotten herself a weblog. If anyone in this world was ever born to have a weblog, it is Anne -- she is a marvelous storyteller who expresses herself in writing like nobody's business. Think innate humor and quirky thoughtfulness and general hilarity. Anne. Go!

It hasn't been a good weekend for pets in my world. My aunt had to put her dog to sleep yesterday, and (much less sadly), my fish at work died over the weekend of a mysterious mold-type affliction all over his body. I'd noticed a tiny spot on Wednesday morning and changed his water before I left, but alas. I'm told it was quite disgusting -- fortunately, some kind and unlucky co-workers who had to be in the office Friday gave him a nice burial at sea.

And so, in the spirit of jumping back on the fish horse -- fishorse? -- I went to PetSmart and got myself another betta, this one with pale blue stripes. No one can take the place in my heart reserved for the old fish, but he's a beauty, and very fiesty. I don't know what to name him, though... the old one's name was Honey, although it never really stuck and I usually called him, somewhat uncreatively, My Fish. I'm thinking of Also My Fish or My Second Fish for this one. :) Any ideas?

Patriotic things I did to aid our economy this weekend: Bought several gifts and the makings of several other gifts. Spent Barnes and Noble gift certificate on book about Taliban fighters, "O Brother Where Art Thou" soundtrack. Rented two movies -- two mockumentaries, in fact. Received new winter coat and VCR (one that will tape things! ooh!) as early Chanukah presents. Here's a question: Why, in World War II, were Americans urged to save their money, and in this one we're being encouraged to spend it? Discuss.

On the drive back, I couldn't help but notice how sad most of the Americana is looking. I'm not nearly as aware of its presence as I once was, but all the rain is making the hand-painted "United We Stand" signs on the highway overpasses run into puddles of drooly mud. The flags on people's cars are becoming tattered beyond recognition. And my notice of this was coinciding a little eerily with a passage from Bill Bryson's "In a Sunburned Country" -- which I'm listening to in the car, and is fabulous -- about Australians' excessively negative view of themselves. When driving alone under a thickly cloudy and oppresively warm November sky, through alternating mist and torrential rain and a good deal of post-holiday-weekend traffic, don't listen to books about Australia. It doesn't make you want to embrace your life. :)

I'm not sure why I felt compelled to share that story below, but I didn't want to share in the same paragraph as this: Link and Think. I was all proud of myself because I'd read an article about the National AIDS Day project The 59th Minute, which sounds incredible -- a bunch of one-minute videos projected onto a huge screen in Times Square -- and the Day With(out) Art. I'd heard about it, and about its connection to Link and Think, and I was all set to mention it. But this morning, I saw it on Blogger. So there goes my originality, but it doesn't make it any less worthwhile. And someone I didn't know emailed me a few months ago about the link to Banned Books Week they'd seen here, which encourages me to continue to promote these weblog community projects or whatever they are. Stay tuned on Dec. 1 for thoughtful links, etc., about AIDS. (Remind me, too, because I might forget.)

You know it's going to be a long day when one of your co-workers, when asked what he'd like on his pizza, good-naturedly screams "meat and mushrooms! meat and mushrooms!" -- probably your two least favorite foods -- just to antagonize you, and the thought of it actually makes you gag. For-real gag, like precursor-to-actually-throwing-up gag. That's never happened before. Not a good thing.

This picture is very close to what we saw early Sunday morning -- obviously no picture could really do justice, but thanks to the photographer for posting that on the Web.

Anyway, a lovely weekend. Our pre-Thanksgiving dinner was a good time, although I think the freaking turkey wouldn't be done if it was STILL in the oven. But we managed to not give anyone salmonella, as far as I know, and there was tons of good food and good people and goodness all around. And then the meteors viewed while lying on freezing asphalt in the middle of a side street off of Massachusetts Avenue. More sleeping (although not for you guys, heh heh), brunch, Harry Potter. Yes, I liked it very very much. (Requisite clarification: not as much as the book, but). I thought it was absorbing and well-acted and visually breathtaking and just a good experience in general. I also loved the two little girls sitting next to us who were interacting with the movie as though it was happening to them... at the end of the movie, when Hagrid is standing next to the train and waving, they were waving back...

New comments -- we have fickle tastes in commenting systems, apparantly. Although I daresay that each incarnation of these comments gets progressively easier to use and more customizeable. Capitalism loves everyone, even seemingly cost-free Web utilities.

If any of you poor souls out there don't catch the Sesame Street reference with the peanut butter sandwiches, just ask. I mean, if you can even read this. Without Sesame Street, I can't fathom how. :)

I had written a whole long thing about my lovely weekend in New York and inadvertently erased it yesterday. I was too annoyed at myself to recreate it. Cliffs Notes version: beautiful walk around the Cloisters at sunset, good conversation with old friends, very little sleep, more good conversation with old friends, a tremendously wonderful play ("Proof" -- go see it). Big gape in the skyline when flying in and bright white floodlights when flying out. The x-ray guy at LaGuardia took every single item out of my backpack, including the six bagels I was purloining from the city, touching each one with his latex-covered hand and scattering sesame seeds all over the conveyor belt. I offered him one. He declined.

Tonight's amusemet: Although I'm usually an aimster devotee, I was on limewire tonight and discovered the tab that lets you see what all the other users are searching for. Hilarious. Some highlights (the PG-rated highlights):

asian
sex
asian sex
asian twins sex
azalea bushes
silent bob
horse pony donkey
x.jpg
all i want to do is make love to you.mp3
quark janet jackson
panties
jappanese [sic] panties
german panties

It would be a tremendous writing exercise to take 10 random terms from this list and have to connect them in 50 words or less. Unfortunately, most of the resulting stories would have to be about teenage lesbians from foreign countries listening to bad '80s music...

Today's topic: beaurocracy. Discuss.

Yesterday I was filling something out on a Web site that required me to put down my college GPA. As some of you already know, I had a major that didn't give out grades -- it was supposedly taught in a colloquium style á la ancient Greece and we were evaluated in words instead of numbers, but this is not today's topic so we can discuss that later -- thus making it difficult for me to fill in the required portions of the GPA screen. I try leaving it blank, typing N/A, clicking on the nav bar to try to skip it and jump to a different section. No dice. Can't get past it. I call the office of the place of the online thing. I get through to the right person, and I'll give the other people in the office credit because everyone was really nice and attempting to be helpful except, perhaps, this guy. Here is a brief transcript of our conversation:

Me: Blah blah blah here is my whole story what should I do?
Him (abrupt): Try leaving it blank.
Me: I did. That doesn't work.
Him (more abrupt): Try typing N/A.
Me (trying to be jokey): I did. That doesn't work.
Him (getting annoyed): Try skipping that section entirely.
Me (feeling dumb for trying to joke with an individual obviously incapable of amusement): I did. That doesn't work.
Him (getting more annoyed): Well, what do you think your GPA would have been?
Me (intelligently): Huh?
Him: If you had had a GPA, what would it have been? If you had gotten grades, would they have been good? Did you do well in college?

Now, let us pause for a moment to reflect. "Did you do well in college?" Excuse me? I don't know, did you, you dork?

Me (also getting annoyed): I guess so, but I really don't know how it would translate into—
Him: It doesn't matter, just make up a number. Do you think you would have gotten a 3.5? That's half A's and half B's.
Me: Well, see, I would prefer not to do that—
Him (thinking I am insane and not listening to what I'm saying): OK, then, just write that down. Just write down 3.5 in all the blanks and then make a note telling whoever looks at it that *I* told you to do that.

Another pause: Since he is obviously oh-so familiar with the online process, he must realize that there's not actually a lot of opportunity to write mash notes to the people reviewing the finished product. These people are going to be making an important decision about my future based on this thing. There are big, mean disclaimers all over every piece of material in this thing about how important it is that you stick to the format, that your social security number and date of birth and your randomly-assigned 36-digit number be in the upper right-hand corner of every single thing, and that if they're not, it will certainly be counted against you because there are so, so, so many prospective candidates trying to do the very thing you want to do.

Me: I'm sorry, but I don't really know where a notation like that would fit into the online application. You'll be receiving a copy of my college transcript, which kind of makes this part unnecessary anyway — how about if I just fill out the regular paper forms. That way I could write N/A.
Him (no longer listening): No, no, we want everything to be online. Was that all? -- doesn't wait for answer -- thanks. Good luck.

*Dial tone in my ear*.

Grrrrr beaurocracy grr.

From a NY Times Magazine article about Aaron Sorkin and "The West Wing": When I ask others involved in the show about this apparent gulf between Sorkin's experience and his work, they quickly get defensive and object to the media's radical-chic bias for vicarious darkness. 'Ooh, violence -- I went to prep school but I'm down with that,' mocks Bradley Whitford. 'Aaron is pushing the envelope of intelligence and hope, and that's so much more radical than the envelope of violence and sex.'"

The article is really interesting, mostly for the larger implications about the do-we-write-what-we-know-or-what-we-want-to-know question, but also for the specifics. I didn't know anything about Sorkin's issues with drugs. And I never really considered the show to be all idealized happiness and light. I think the author's a little off the mark with that... the characters are almost universally "good" and the show has a very positive tone, true, but it's not as though nothing bad ever happens. Then again, I only started watching the show this season, so maybe I don't know yet. And who's Bradley Whitford, the one who's cuter than Rob Lowe but doesn't know it, or the older balding Jewish guy?

OK, I'm saying it, you... the Diamond... the Diamondbacks... the Diamondbacks happened to win the World Series tonight. They are not, however, the best team in baseball, and you know it. Talk to me once they've won a couple more. :) But they did play really darn well and I have to say I enjoyed watching the playoffs way more this year than last -- if the best team can't win all the time, at least the games can be exciting. More exciting, in fact, because they *don't* win all the time, and that's as much of a concession as you're getting. Go 2002 Yankees! Heh.

I'm sorry, I couldn't quite hear you.... what's the best team in baseball? Say it, out loud, to your computer screen, right now. SAY IT! SAAAAAAAAAAY IIIIIIIIITTTT! :)

I don't buy into any of this "it's magic! it's the ghost of Babe Ruth!" rubbish, by the way. And it's not luck, because luck like that wouldn't happen twice in a row. Is the collective energy of a lot of people who really, really want something positive to happen in their city a factor? That one, I wouldn't completely discount. I definitely hesitate about forcing some kind of larger context onto this; baseball can be a forum/outlet/stage for emotional expression/release/projection, if you will, but I don't want to make it something it's not. Still. How great are they? I don't care if the Yankees never win another game, in this series or for the rest of their existance -- these last two games are the best thing ever.