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archives
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kindred spirits
reading list || 101 in 1001 car-free days since 1 may 07: 48 |
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May 31, 2001 -
5.31.01
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last night i dreamt that i had enrolled in some sort of GRE study course. only when i arrived it turned out to be a combination GRE study course and entrance exam for the peace corps. it turned out that getting through the peace corps exam is really competitive, and so everyone there had come up with some sort of gimmick to get themselves noticed by the judges/instructors. there was a girl there named kim. at some point her friends whipped out a can of pink hair spray and stripped her hair fluorescent pink and she became Crazy Kimmy, and she wrote that all over her computer monitor in sequined letters. i was there, with zeke, only he wasn't tigger-stipped, he was a fluffy white cat. and he was stuffed into a big clear glass of water. he didn't seem terribly unhappy about this, but imagine what a fluffy white cat would look like, all soggy and with his face smooshed up against the glass. that's what he looked like. i became the Girl with the Cat. lauren was there too. she had decided to wear a long grey cloak and a purple felt tri-point hat (three musketeers style), drawn low over her face so that she looked like a walking cape with a purple hat nestled on it's shoulders. her gimmick, not surprisingly, was that she was the Girl with the Hat. we didn't do very much studying for the GRE or testing-taking for the peace corps, we mostly just ran around demonstrating our weirdnesses. embarassingly, i hadn't known in advance about this whole distinguish-yourself-thing, so i was lucky that i happened to have an albino cat in a jar with me when i got to the test center. |
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May 30, 2001 -
5.30.01
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a gallon of regular unleaded gas at any station in boise costs (get ready for this): $1.49 9/10 |
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May 29, 2001 -
5.29.01
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http://www.myvirtualmodel.com i am deeply amused. basically, it's a site where you can build your own look-alike barbie. you answer questions about skin tone, eye shape, height, weight, hair, etc, and it puts together a model who is supposed to look like you. you can name her and then she'll help you shop for clothing on the internet. click here to see a computer-rendered version of me in my undies. i think my favorite part is that she lectures you just in case you've fibbed a bit about the body measurements. oh, and that my choices for bust type were limited to "small-medium" or "medium-large". i mean, even swimsuits come in more sizes than that. make no mistake - this is a web site for the average-shaped person. the exceptionally-anything need not apply. now i have to go build a boy. i wonder what sort of measurements i get to specify for the male models... |
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May 28, 2001 -
5.28.01
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wow, 5.28 already. the days are slipping past quickly, in that lazy-summer vacation sort of way. i'm not working terribly hard at the the idaho shakespeare festival yet, so i have a lot of my days free. i'm kind of lonely, but i'm also getting a lot of down time that i really really needed. tasks i've assigned myself for the summer:
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May 26, 2001 -
5.26.01
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it's a little late to share it now, but miss valya sent me the following link: towel day in honor of the late douglas adams. since towel day was yesterday, all there is to do now is go to the web site and look at lots of pictures of ugly people with their towels. alas, it seems that us douglas adams followers are not the snazziest-looking group of people. actually, the european geeks turn out to be much better looking than their geeky american counterparts. my father dragged my sorry ass out of bed at the ungodly hour of 7 am this morning to go float-tube fishing. for any of you who don't know, float-tube fishing is really more about the gear that it is the actual catching of fish. it works thus: you step into a giant pair of neoprene waders that go from your toes up to your armpits, so that you're impervious to the cold and wet. then you put on flippers, and step into a giant inner tube (a real fancy affair, with a canvas cover, a big tall inflatable back rest, zippered pockets for all your fishing supplies, and a canvas seat to sit on, so that your legs dangle straight down into the water.) then everyone duck-waddles backwards into the lake, and you all paddle around, these truncated fisherman - chest and arms rising up out of a donut floating on the lake's surface. of course, i don't actually fish, because i think that catch-and-release fishing is barbaric, so i just paddle around and read a book. my father asked me what i'd say if any of the other fisherman (mostly old crusty idaho rancher-type dudes) asked why i wasn't fishing. i told him i'd just say i didn't any arms. or i'd reply in swedish. luckily, they left me alone. the place we went to was absolutely gorgeous. it's a big pond formed by a bunch of springs out in the middle of the owyhee desert. owyhee county, which is this giant county that makes up the corner of southwestern idaho, has a population density of 1.1 people/square mile. just to give you a comparison value, san francisco county had a population density of 15,502.1 people/square mile in 1996. this place is empty. which is part of its charm. it's in a small valley surrounded by the craggy basalt cliffs of the rolling hills. there are virtually no trees, but the sage-covered hills are still green at this time of year. it had the potential to be beastly hot, but by about 11 am a thunderstorm started to roll in. so i just drifted around the lake watching the clouds slowly encroach. all around me giant trout rose to feed on the mayflies, breaking the glassy surface of the lake, disappearing with a little "plop" and leaving concentric circles to mark the spot in the water. two-inch blue dragonflies hovered over the water and did fly-bys on my ears, as did the swallows, who are also feeding on the mayflies. the killdeer dipped and soared overhead, making their strange, high, fleeting call. there were big goose families paddling around the lake with us, as well as an ebullient black lab. over the crest of the hill, i could hear cattle lowing from their grazing area (there's so little water in the owyhee desert that farming is impossible; but it's excellent land for ranching). of course, a man-made pond created by damming up a bunch of desert springs does not provide much of a place for trout to breed; the guy who owns the ranch stocks the pond with fish every year and charges people for a year's permit to fish on that pond. i maintain that fishing in a stocked-pond is cheating, as is fishing with one of those sonar devices that tells you exactly where the fish are. my father agrees with me on the latter point, but not on the former. but then again, i mostly come along on these fishing expeditions so that i can irritate him by telling him how barbaric i think the whole sport really is. summed up, my argument is thus: fishing for food is very different from catch-and-release. now, some might say that catch-and-release seems more humane, since it doesn't kill the fish. i accept that the in the general food chain, some creatures have to die so that others live. humans eat fish. so, while i don't care for bopping fish on the head myself, i can understand that fishing for food is simply working within the food chain that nature has created. the fish die a quick death and people get to eat them. on the other hand, in the case of catch-and-release, people tempt the fishies with what looks like food, the hungry fish bite, only to discover that they have a steel hook lodged in their cheek. then, the fisherman spends between 10 minutes and a number of hours trying to land the fish by dragging him in via the hook. once the fish has wrestled himself into a state of exhaustion, the fisherman drags him out of the water where he can't breath, removes the hook (provided it wasn't gut-hooked, in which case the fish is a goner), poses for a few photos, and then tosses the fish back in, saying, "oh, it's okay little fish, you have a big hole in your mouth, but go swim and be free and i'll trick you again on another day." okay, so maybe i'm putting those words into the fishermen's mouths, but you get the idea. the whole thing gives me the creeps if i think too hard about it. |
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May 22, 2001 -
5.23.01
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signs i know i'm in idaho: -no buffy channel, not even with cable. -no sushi (would you eat raw fish that had to be driven here from the nearest ocean? me neither.) -everything is CLOSED on sundays. i had forgotten what it's like to live in a mormon-dominated town. -i only saw two people who weren't white all day yesterday. -i actually saw a woman parking her horse in the 7-eleven parking lot last night. i'm not making this up. it's quiet here. when i wake up, i lay in bed and hear only the sound of birds chirruping - no traffic noise, no middle-of-the-night domestic disputes, no sirens - just silence and sounds of nature. don't get me wrong, i live in a suburb, not in the forest or anything, but compared to my apartment in the haight, this is a little haven of green nature. |
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5.22.01
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douglas adams dies, age 49. i read the first five books in the hitch hiker's guide series in the space of a week when i was 14 or 15, and was never quite the same afterwards. if anything, at fifteen adding the complete hitch hiker's collection to one's reading list is like an instant sentence to enternal nerdom. just ask paul - he knows everything about star trek. |
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May 21, 2001 -
5.21.01
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yay! internet access at last! more updates soon, now that my computer is no longer incommunicado. |
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May 17, 2001 -
5.19.01
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ah, i am just barely resurfacing amid a tower of boxes and suitcases. the road trip from san fran to boise wasn't as traumatic as i'd expected; after a half hour of frantic meowing, zeke settled down into a pretty decent car cat. some of the trip's highlights:
so now i'm back in idaho, and the reality that i'm going to be here for the next five months is starting to sink in. i miss california already, but this is a nice way to vacation. idaho is beautiful in the summer, and life here is just so much easier. well, with the exception of this household. we now have two cats, a bird and a dog in the house, which doesn't sound like much until you consider the logistics: the younger cat, zeke, wants to eat the bird, but the elder cat, midnight, does not because once the bird cage fell on him and he has been afraid of it ever since. midnight has FIV (feline version of HIV, which is rampant in outdoor housecats), which he could communicate to zeke if they were ever to get in a brawl. serra, the golden retriever, wants to eat both cats. zeke wants to eat the golden retriever. so at this point, we have to keep midnight away from zeke but not the dog or the bird, serra away from zeke and midnight but not the bird, and zeke away from everyone. this will not be a simple task. went to see my friend stephanie get married yesterday. she married this wonderful british chap named simon, and all the american groomsman had begun acquiring british accents by the end of the party. the wedding was pretty much picture-perfect, and the reception was held in the boise depot, which is this classy old train station up on a hill with a fabulous view of the boise front (the mountains that wrap around the north-west side of the valley). there were lots of people i haven't seen since high school there, so the party took on a sort of high school reunion feel to it. did you know that it's environmentally unsound to throw rice at weddings now? apparently the birds eat the rice and then it swells up in their tummies and can kill them. so the proper choices are birdseed or bubbles. we blew lots of soap bubbles into the wind whilst stephanie and simon ran out the steps of the church and were whisked away in a horse-drawn carriage. i have the house to myself tonight. so what am i planning? i'm going to blockbuster to rent the last four tapes of the BBC pride and prejudice, since i only managed to see the first two at carolyn's pride and prejudice party last week. pride and prejudice happen to be the names of the breasts of a friend of mine, who probably prefers that i not name her. mine are named sense and sensibility. the left one is sense and the right is sensibility. i'd like to blame alcohol for this, but i think that would be a lie. |
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May 15, 2001 -
5.15.01
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hehe, it seems that libraries are finding the most-frequently stolen book to be the bible. go figure - those gideons must be getting slack on the job or something. courtesy of the san francisco chronicle: "In Salt Lake City, Carson City, and Jacksonville, Fla., copies of the Bible tend to walk out of public libraries and never return. Never mind that "Thou Shalt Not steal" stuff. In Fremont, it's exam-preparation books to become a police officer. "Gives one pause," a librarian in that East Bay city said. In Benicia, books about "the occult, car repair and sexuality" disappear regularly, while in Oakland, it's anything about how to grow pot at home, pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases." my car is in the shop today, so i'm back to riding the muni, so...that means it's time for the Muni Freak of the Week: today's freak was this young man, about my age, walking down market st between 8th and 9th. he was carrying a bunch of flowers, all wrapped up in paper like he'd come straight from the flower market, and was wearing a crash helmet like the sort that serious skateboarders wear. in his right hand, he held a rope which was connected to what looked like giant, cylindrical stone, about two feet wide and maybe a foot in diameter. there was a hole drilled through the middle so that the rope came out each end of the column, and he was rolling it down the street like you might walk a dog. it couldn't have been stone, because it didn't look very heavy, but it otherwise looked just like one of the wheels of a flintstones vehicle. |
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5.13.01
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ah, yes, i apologize for allowing the gin to post last night. gin never writes things that are untrue; it just doesn't check with me first. i have no idea when this post'll actually go up since blogger has been about as reliable as aol lately. my impending move is finally real: the bookcases are empty and i'm surrounded by towers of boxes. damn, i have a lot of books. how did this happen? i always tell myself that i ought to start getting books from libraries, but the truth is, i love owning books. after i finish a book, it's like a little trophy for me to put on the shelf and occasionally refer to or loan out. and the paperbacks are so pretty, compared to ugly old bound library editions. i have a moral (well, financial, really) obligation not to purchase hard cover books because they are just too expensive not to mention heavy and large. but that doesn't mean that i won't spend double to get the nice paperback edition rather than the cheap super-market edition if there is a choice. in college i'd always opt for the new books if the used ones actually looked used and had other people's insipid notes in the margins. right now i'm wading through neal stephenson's Cryptonomicon. i just read his earlier book, Snow Crash, and really enjoyed it but i'm having a tougher time with Cryptonomicon. i think that it's not a book that you can read in short 10 minute bursts, which is the way that i get a lot of my reading done, on bus stops and such, plus it's about world war II, which i didn't know before i'd started it. and i have a rule not to read literature or watch films about war, basically because contemplating how shitty humanity can be really gets me down. unfortunately i also have a rule that i always have to finish a book once i've started it, so i have to read it. same thing happened to me with martin amis's Time's Arrow the other day. an ex-boyfriend recommended it to me, and i picked it up at a used bookstore without actually knowing what it was about. now that i've read it, i suspect that he suggested it out of some sort of vindictive ex thing. incidentally, time's arrow is actually an amazing book, just in that terrible sort of way. the basic premise is that it tells the store of a man, Tod T. Friendly who once was a doctor in a nazi concentration camp, who later moved to america, changed his identity, and spent the rest of his life living out the guilt of what he'd done. but here's the hook: the story is narrated by this doppelganger, this alternate being with a separate consciousness but no physical presence, who is trapped inside Tod T. Friend's head, condemned to live out every moment of Tod's life backwards. as in, the book starts the moment when Tod dies, and moves backwards through life ("everyday when we finish the paper, we take it to the store") until the moment when Tod is born. weird, upsetting shit. but there's no doubt that martin amis's got talent. it just might be talent that i can do without, squeamish as i am. |
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May 13, 2001 -
5.12.01
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all those junior-high-school-what-if-no-one-comes-to-my-party fears were very nearly realized today, as guests kept calling and canceling or just going MIA. somehow i guess i failed to communicate to the people i invited that this was my going-away-for-an-unspecified-yet-long-period-of-time party, and that it actually meant a lot to me that they came. there were plenty of valid excuses: out of the state/country, stuck in the theatre, theses are due tuesday, and so forth, as well as some that were just plain flaky. but it all adds up to the fact that i'm moving away on wednesday and won't get to see a lot of these people again for some time. the gang showed up tho, and 7 of us managed to chomp through most of the food i'd made, and we had a very merry time. we watched the KFOG-Kabom fireworks from alma square. fireworks are the only thing in this world that can still make me feel like a child - thrilled and awed and overwhelmed and very very tiny. as the last of the guests left, i stood on the street and watched them move away as a group, and a voice in my head said, "they are my family now. what am i doing moving away from them?" what i'm really doing of course, is running away. running away mostly from all the bad shit that happened in the past eight months. i realize it's irrational, but there's a part of me that imagines that being back in boise will make everthing better, just because life was once easy when i lived there. and i supposed i'm running away from all the un-fun parts of being an adult that the past year entailed, as if leaving san francisco behind will somehow erase all of that. somehow, i just felt like i needed a chance to catch my breath in a place that moves at a slower pace. slightly teary, i walked inside. zeke was waiting for me in his usual place in the front hall, mewing, his mouth open like a baby dinosaur. "guess you're my family now, babe," i told him. it sucks when you can't pack your whole family into the car and take them with you everywhere you go. |
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May 12, 2001 -
5.11.01
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in my cd player this week: the murmurs: self-titled album this morning started with that omigod-they're-going-to-tow-my-car moment of horror, where i sit straight up in bed and scare the bejeezuses out of the cat. i jumped out of bed and ran outside in my p.j.s, happy to discover that they hadn't yet got to my part of the street. i moved the car, still in p.j.s. these are the parts of city life that i will not miss at all. i haven't been posting because 1) blogger's been down and 2) my life is boring these days - i supposed the fact that i haven't had to ride the muni hardly at all this week would account for my lack of interesting news. i'm having a going-away bbq for myself tomorrow, which should be fun but in actuality causes all sorts of "what if no one comes?"-type paranoia, left over from junior high school years in which i didn't have parties because i didn't have any friends to invite to said events. i bought a case of corona at safeway today, and the guy didn't even card me. man, i'm getting old. acquiring the recipes for the guacamole and chicken marinade necessitated several phone calls to england. mari (provider of the magic recipes) was wandering around oxford talking to me on her mobile phone. ohh, envy - i miss oxford. i really really need to marry a british citizen some day so that i can work in england. or just get to be a really really famous director and be so good that everyone wants to hire me regardless of my nationality. yeah, right. |
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May 8, 2001 -
5.9.01
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ooh, traumatic day yesterday. started at 5 yesterday morning with the domestic dispute across the street. then i had to take zeke to the vet, which is always as traumatic for me as it is for him. for the first two blocks he howls..then he winds up into his i'm-sick-or-hurt meow, which makes it impossible for me to drive or do anything competently. the drive to idaho is going to be really rough. then, there was a trip to the dentist to have this massive cavity filled, and although it didn't actually hurt thanks to the anesthetic, i have this theory that general trauma to the body still wears you out as the body tries to cope with the massive hole that was drilled into your tooth. the day got better after that - lauren and i went to the flower market, met joe at work, ate lunch at a cafe downtown, went shopping for ridiculously expensive shoes at macy's (camper shoes at 50% off are still out of my price range...too bad i cracked and bought them anyway), and then watched buffy and angel. this morning i'm trying to decide whether to return the shoes or not. they're these neat flat mary-jane style shoe, in a super-shiny dark green patent leather. but i realize that i could buy approximately 10 paris of velvet china flats in china town for the price of these shoes, and the china flats have almost the same shape. i think i've just talked myself out of the shoes. well, back to macy's and china town tomorrow i guess. |
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5.8.01
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i woke up at five this morning to the sound of screams and shouts coming from the street. hooligans, i assumed at first, but it occurred to me that the noises had gone on too long to be jovial. now fully awake, i lay in bed trying to identify what i was hearing. i opened my window and the muffled sounds became sobs. i started to think about calling the police, wondering what i would tell them. i got up and went into the living room and the voices were louder. as i was peering down the street trying to identify where the voices were coming from, two cop cars pulled up - evidently some other neighbor had called first, to my relief. across the street a figure was hugging the lamppost and sobbing - i don't think i've ever heard anyone sob that loud. i could hear her through the closed windows of my room, which is on the backside of the house. the words were mostly unintelligible; the only phrase i did discern was "and then he poured alcohol on me...". domestic violence sucks. to say that man has an inherently violent nature is a cop-out. it's time we start evolving into peaceful creatures - by teaching our children alternate ways to solve disputes, by ending the glorification of weapons and violence in the media, and by having a zero tolerance policy for men who beat their wives. |
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May 7, 2001 -
5.7.01
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back from prom night in iowa, trying to get this garrish red nail polish off of my toes. about once a year i put nail polish on, and then promptly remember why it is that i never wear it. every time i look down it's like my toes are bleeding. the things we do in the name of beauty. aside from prom, the weekend was filled with rain and book-buying and a spontaneous trip to grinnell, iowa. shopping trips through the used bookstore, the new-yet-independant book store, and paul's own lending-library resulted in a nice, heavy stack of new books for me. the summer reading list now contains: Love in the Time of Cholera -Gabriel Garcia Marquez A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius -Dave Eggars The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle -Haruki Murakami A Room of One's Own -Virginia Wolf To the Lighthouse -Virigina Wolf Sophie's World -Jostein Gaarder Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence -Nick Bantock Galileo's Daughter -Dava Sobel naturally, at the time it made sense to acquire all these books in iowa city. later, when i had to carry them all on the plane, it made less sense. i'm particularly pleased about the discovery of the griffin & sabine book - i absolutely adore nick bantock's books, but usually they are prohibitively expensive. it was half off at the used book store and in nearly-perfect condition. the dedication scribbled into the front page reads, "thank you, lara, for being such a fantastic friend. you have my love, if not my vision, forever. merry x-mas, 1994 -matt". i feel kinda bad for matt that lara went and sold his christmas present. maybe because he drew little round circles above each of his i's, and his handwriting was definately girly. and what does it mean that she has his vision forever? did he give her one of his eyes? |
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May 6, 2001 -
5.6.01
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those free internet terminals in the denver airport are dangerous - not only did i sign on today and promptly get access to the previous user's email account (i was nice and signed off for him), but then i stayed and played with the terminal and damn near missed my flight. when i got to the gate they were closing the doors after the final boarding call. so i'm back from my 48-hour trip to iowa. zeke's pissed off at me for deserting him, and he just left an eight-inch scratch across my forearm to remind me of that fact. the pilot on the denver-to-iowa leg of my trip had this muppet-style puppet named otto (get it? otto the pilot? haha) whom he stuck on his hand and used to greet everyone as we boarded and deplaned, and all of the in-flight announcements from the cockpit came over the loudspeaker in the puppet's voice. it was a little surreal, i have to say. gotta go play fetch with my angry kitten. |
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May 4, 2001 -
5.4.01
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whee i'm posting from the denver airport's free internet terminal...just because i can. there's a reason these things are free, which becomes clear as soon as one tries to do anything useful on them - they suck in a big way. the keyabord is this indestructible hard rubber surface, so you have to really bang on each key, sort of like old fashioned typewriters. and the keys are all in the wrong place, which is agonizing. left san francisco this morning andit was shaping up to be another clear sunny 80 degree day, of the sort one only gets in may and septembr in sf. landed in denver to the tune of 39 degrees and fog so thick thhe pilot described the visibility as "zero". there's something comfortably familiar about the people in denver - some sort of northwest mountain sensibility that is still have lurking deep in my idaho bones. there are far fewer of the scary-overly-made-up woman type that the bay area is crawling with, lots more women in levis and polar flesse vests. a very dear male friend of my recently told me that he finds nothing sexier than a good looking woman in a baseball cap. ah, it warms my heart to know that men like this still exist. i'm actaully getting elbow strain from pounding on ths keyboard. UAL flight 1096 Denver to Cedar Rapids, IA. Departs in 20 minutes. |
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May 2, 2001 -
5.2.01 (happy birthday to my brother, matt)
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boy, and i thought my first piece of fan mail was exciting - this is even better: my first piece of hate mail. i assume that it's referencing my notes on paris from 4.25.01.
of course, as paul pointed out, chances are that this email is actually from someone i know (who is not french). perhaps it's even paul. but i prefer to think that i actually have french readers, and that i've actually managed to incite one of them to create a false email account just to call me, of all things, a stupid american girl. aren't there better french insults that that? (boy, if that wasn't an invite for offensive emails, what is?) more random email for today. since i'm moving to idaho, i'm trying to get rid of all of my furniture (the total replacement cost is less than the cost to rent a u-haul to move the stuff around in). i posted something on craig's list that said "futon mattress - free if you haul it away" and got this in reply:
i'm not even sure it's english. what exactly is a "maning"? |
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May 1, 2001 -
5.1.01
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cool new anagram for today: American Online = Re: Mail in Ocean. which might explain where all those dead emails are. think of all the potential romances, relationships, human communication - all lost in the electronic blips. i agonize over such things. i had a boyfriend once who said that he thought that the notion of letters getting lost in the mail, molding in some dead-letter office, never to be delivered and irrevocably changing the course of history was romantic. i think that's the first clue i had that we weren't meant to be. last year the stanford post office endured a rather embarassing scandal after one of the postal workers was caught throwing out buckets of undelievered mail, presumably because he was too lazy to sort it into individual mail boxes. hey, maybe that's why my college romances never worked out. |
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