5.12.01

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.

5.11.01

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.

5.9.01

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.

5.8.01

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.

5.7.01

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?

5.6.01

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.

5.4.01

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.

5.2.01 (happy birthday to my brother, matt)

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.

From: “p arishatesyou” &ltparishatesyou@hotmail.com&gt
To: jgadda@hotmail.com
Subject: Yes it does.
Date: Wed, 02 May 2001 23:51:09 -0000

Vous fille américaine stupide.

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:

From: “Adam Hubenig” &ltadamhubenig@hotmail.com&lt
To: jgadda@hotmail.com
Date: Wed, 02 May 2001 01:23:54 -0400

Still got the bed maing?

if so pass on a n address and i’ll come and grabs it… Im just in town for two mths so.. well.. anyways thanx

adam

i’m not even sure it’s english. what exactly is a “maning”?

5.1.01

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.

4.30.01

the sign at work this morning (sic):

this elevator is “out” of order.

the elevator came anyway. there is a ceiling panel missing inside the elevator, so you can look up in the elevator shaft and watch the pulleys and stuff sail by, and a cool elevator-shaft breeze blows down on you if you stand underneath it. the elevator also has these really cool buttons – they look like buttons but they don’t actually press in, and when you skin makes contact with the surface of the button, it lights up. but i’ve discovered that if you get really really close but don’t actually touch the surface, a spark will jump from your finger to the button and light it up. look, ma, no hands! i confess to being the person who presses all six floors before getting off the elevator every day.