8.5.2000

Black Celebration

Is it bad to wear black to a wedding? An Irish-Catholic wedding at that? My mom would be mortified. Well then again, I think she's hardly surprised at me anymore.

I did try to find a new dress for this shindig...but it's all fall colors (i.e. black or grey or this season freaky leopard print) or hot materials. So I'm in black. But it's sexy black, elegant black. I look excellent in black.

Champagne. Old friends. EEEEK...old bosses (that's the problem when you go to weddings where there are a lot of ex-co-workers). Well, I didn't burn any bridges and I'm sickeningly good at playing the political game, although I hate every slimy moment of it.

Soooo how many grandmas do you think will look at me funny when I'm not kneeling at the wedding?


9:25 AM | link | up| archives | comments [ ]

8.4.2000

Margaritaville

Met up with all the ex-coworkers tonight...even though I'm seeing all of them at the wedding tomorrow. Had a great time...argued politics with our dear misguided Russian friend (jk, dmitry). Talked about old bosses, old times, crazy new things, met a few new people...

I've been in Boston three and a half years now, and finally I feel like I am a bit at home. It takes a long time sometimes to settle in and make new friends...I never really realized that growing up in the same places with the same people all my life. Doing the bi-coastal sort of thing has been a good thing...it's shaken me up, exposed me...helped me with geography.

The wedding tomorrow. Suddenly we have six people sharing this suite tomorrow night. Talk about reverting suddenly to high school days...what a kick. Should be a raucous fun time.

I've been teasing Nicole all day...how she says my apartment (not that small) is the size of her kitchen in her house in Wisconsin. Wow.

11:55 PM | link | up| archives | comments [ ]

I'm not reallyGoth?

I do wear a lot of black. But today that is entirely not true! I'm wearing white...and blue...and any Goth worth their salt would be mortified. I'm too old to have fallen into the Goth category...but someone I know begs to differ.

I do worship Peter Murphy. But I don't really get into the Bauhaus, as much...and I actually haven't even heard Dali's Car before--although I keep meaning to. There is just something so amazingly sensual, lyrical, fluid and mesmerizing about Peter Murphy's music...

I mean really...when you find words like this:

"My mother loved it so she said
Sad eyed pearl and drop lips
Glancing pierce through writer man
Spoke hushed and frailing hips
Her old eyes skim in creasing lids
A tear falls as she describes
Approaching death with a yearning heart
With pride and no despise"
~"Marlene Deitrich's Favourite Poem"

or this:
"No way back to recall the way
Cause I threw out all the why's
Spinning with the spider in the cave
Found the scarlet thing in you
Where the birds can't reach
No words can teach
Spinning in the cave
For the scarlet thing in you

I saw you, you saw me

I saw you
You were the one
I saw you
You were one"
~"Scarlet Thing in You"

I mean really...can I ignore such poetic delight?

I've never really been Goth...even in my days of being a waver chick in the 80's...and I certainly have a long way to go before I become a Gothic Role Model.

So here I am, early, spouting some serious lack of wisdom. And it's down to random silliness now because I'm not caffeinated. I have a budget report due this AM. If I managed to get to sleep before midnight some night I think I would fall over in fascinated shock. Not that I haven't had good reasons to be up late, mind you, but on the other hand, maybe I should be thinking about napping sometime.

Margaritas tonight at the old haunt in Porter. Pitchers of margs!

Things that are good in the morning:
* Waking up with the kitty nose on your eyelids
* Driving to the Great Expectations soundtrack (Iggy and Tori on the same album!)
* Getting fuel for my car at "Gas with a Smile" *chortle*
* Successfully not waking up Niki as I'm getting ready this morning.



8:21 AM | link | up| archives | comments [ ]

8.3.2000

humid

Here with Niki, and it's hot outside and I'm showing her the wonders of blogger. She's making fun of my mouse trails on my cursor.

We're off to get food and probably margaritas...oo wait that's tomorrow...well at least something to drink. Mmmmm.


5:37 PM | link | up| archives | comments [ ]

china and sex and being hung over

So I'm at work, my belly not so happy with me, and talking to my friend Greg in China on yahoo messenger. It's 8:30 am here and 8:30 pm there (god i love technology). we're reminiscing about our past (known each other for eons now, it seems...since I was what, 16?). we're chatting about toys and stories we know of people getting caught with toys in funny situations...

I got drunk for the first time with Greg and his then lover, Jerry. I had come back from college (yeah yeah started late with the drinking) for Thanksgiving and the three of us, all dirt poor, went down to the grocery store (god i miss that...buying wine and beer in the grocery store) and bought several bottles of Boone's Strawberry Hill. We went back to their cute apartment that they shared with some guy that I remember I liked a lot (also of flaming origins) named Josh. And got very drunk and sappy and silly. Greg is a lightweight...one beer and he's nearly toast, which has always created a lot of silliness for those of us drinking with him that aren't quite drunk yet.

It's gingerale for me this morning.

And then Niki rolls into town this afternoon. Niki who lives in Wisconsin now (i'm still trying to figure that one out) in her dream house with her new husband. She's coming, sans husband, to hang out till Sunday...but we're piling into the car on Saturday with our friend AJ and meeting up with Jack and going to Franklin (another fun task...figuring out where that is) for a wedding...for Neil...the guy who gave me my freak magnet status. The four of us are sharing a room...not because we need to, but because we can. Should be a fun silly girly slumber party.

Romeo will be, yet again, grumpy with me for abandoning his kitty self.

8:38 AM | link | up| archives | comments [ ]

8.2.2000

tipsy but freakless

so no freaks tonight. just normal people (normal is mostly good in my book these days). at every single show or networking thingy, my dear friend and ex-boss, Neil, has dubbed me a "freak-magnet." At the end of every night I usually have kisses on the hand, hotel room phone numbers or invitations of some sort. The worst part is that I rarely meet the non-freaks, go figure. I did have an invite for drinks after the event--I should have gone and I didn't...should I be kicking myself? or just glad to be home with my very obnoxious needy kitty? Oh but that kitty is a witty, love me sort of friend. How can I resist those damn big blue eyes? Still, I wonder.

and what's up with the new nerve.com format? I think I'm confused in my slightly tipsy state. Then again, I'm mostly confused in my non-slightly tipsy state...

11:41 PM | link | up| archives | comments [ ]

ask and ye shall receive

Seriously. Just ask Him. Him.

My mom would be proud of me.

4:59 PM | link | up| archives | comments [ ]

free beer! free wine!

Soon to be mine! little lush that I am. Heading to the MIMC cyberbrew cruise. 500 people on a boat in the sticky haze. me, 9 coworkers, lots of business cards. reasons why marketing is cool (probably much to the chagrin of someone I know who thinks marketing sucks...chuckle). I love my job. I love meeting people. I love meeting people in silly drunken places like boats. Except when they are too silly and drunken and acting like a neanderthal...and far too smitten with me--then I don't like to be on boats. I would much prefer an escape route. The worst part is that the drunken neanderthals are always boring financial types with pot bellies and mustaches and wedding rings. Eww.

So I spent last night on the cape, doing things that were mildly more exciting than watching ally mcbeal reruns. And I remember that I really love the cape, not the tourist bits, but the beach, the charming houses, the winding roads, the sleepy feel. I look forward to every single visit, no matter how short, no matter how mundane, no matter what the weather.


4:54 PM | link | up| archives | comments [ ]

sticker shock

It wasn't the sticky, mind-numbing heat haze that enveloped me as I walked back from my quick trek to the art store. It wasn't the fact that I haven't eaten all day and am working mostly on the jitter of a triple mocha. No, the faint swept over me after I realized how much money that I have spent for a mere five class oil painting foray. $185 on supplies!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No wonder artists are mostly poor...how on earth do they afford all the oils? Some of the tubes were near $20. I hope to god that I am painting something more interesting than fruit. Watch...they'll probably make me paint something inane like my shoe.


1:21 PM | link | up| archives | comments [ ]

8.1.2000

playing with uranium

"I just want to feel safe in my own skin, I just want to be happy again, I just want to feel deep in my own world" ~Dido

Great things about a 200 cd changer--suddenly you discover that you own a Pet Shop Boys best of compilation. Cool.

So I did the driving. But the wonderful thing about driving when there is no rain or there are spaces where there aren't nutty drivers...is the meditative place it puts me in. Yesterday, driving down 495, with the light low from the clouds, I fell into that sort of spot...it's almost a state of hyper-awareness rather than meditation. Aware of everything, the way the light slides through the trees, the blinking of red tail lights, the clear whiteness of the overcast sky ahead of you, parting the way with the road. It's very calming, and rare to find that spot. I like those moments of awareness, where you aren't really thinking, but rather, being. When you can see how beautiful, how near symmetrical, how aligned the world seems to be.

Fax machines fascinate me. They always have...not sure why. So I have jfax now, so that I can receive faxes in my email... (702) 975-6557 if you are so inclined. The documents arrive in a .tiff file in my email box. Wow. But plain paper faxes are more amazing to me...how the words translate themselves onto paper across a phone line. I know...the technology is fairly simple...it's been explained to me many many times, but it doesn't matter. I'm still amazed. It's like magic. Press a button and *poof* there your document is, thousands of miles away. Wow. Wow.

And what a whacked out word that is...Wow. It's one of those words that the longer you look at it, the more strange it becomes.

Oh it's bad when I start tangents like that...I realize that I am not caffeinated. Bad crystal...bad.

1:45 PM | link | up| archives | comments [ ]

7.31.2000

driving

good things: new cd player in the car
an hour's worth of alone thinking time
scenery (better in the fall)

bad things: stupid people driving
stupid people driving
stupid people driving
stupid people driving
stupid people driving in the rain
stupid people driving in the rain in my way
being scared to answer my cell phone while driving with stupid people on the road in the rain.


3:22 PM | link | up| archives | comments [ ]

7.30.2000

vivid

I did the dishes. I despise the dishes. I'm not sure why...it is rather cathartic, but I hate the way my hands feel, the weird wrinkly (if I were to have wrinkly skin, I would MUCH prefer it to be the result of a hot tub complete with liberal champagne and strawberries) sensation. Maybe it's the half-eaten food that slides across my skin. Ewww. I'm sicking myself out just thinking about it. I would rather be cleaning the toilet than doing the dishes. Sick and twisted, I know. It is, quite literally, the most loathsome chore I can imagine. I am, however, excellent at drying dishes.

I bought a jar of canned dark morrello cherries when I was at Trader Joes. Oh my god. OH MY GOD. I thought I had died and went to heaven when I opened up that jar. Pure mouth music, truly. It threw me into two disparate places nearly simultaneously.

* Back into the memory of my childhood. My mother used to can cherries when I grew up...from off the tree in our backyard. I grew up in a little town called Nine Mile Falls, WA. We had a big backyard with a huge garden and several fruit trees. We trained our little dog, Cocoa, a brown and white cocker/corgi mix to chase the birds from the cherry tree and from the strawberry patch. Those canned cherries were always so amazing when my mom got them out mid-winter as a treat.
* What an amazing state of sensuality...those cherries...the texture, the flavor, the way they felt on the tongue. I felt like I had the hottub all over again for one brief moment.

I also watched Chasing Amy today. How come I sort of missed that movie? Jay and Bob in Clerks, in this, in Dogma...


10:31 PM | link | up| archives | comments [ ]

It's sprinkling, but not frogs.

I haven't done the dishes. I did go to the grocery mecca of Trader Joes, however. I'm always amazed at that place. I always spend way too much money on food that I would never normally buy. Well hell, at least I'm eating healthy.

I haven't done the self-evaluation of my annual review. I need to do that but the form is so damn long. If I don't do it this week though then I'm going to be waiting a long while...my manager is on vacation for two weeks starting next monday....wooohooo! Not that it matters anymore.

I haven't done any of the rest of the stuff on my midnight list. I do that...I write lists that never seem to get anywhere. Truth be told, I don't want to be doing any of it. I want to be out, having a good time with someone but the transition between living with someone and not living with someone is a slow process. I need to make friends with single people...I need to build that network. God, I know a TON of people but they're married, they've got boyfriends, they have lives that meant I had to PLAN in advance when we got together. There are no spontaneous friends and when I don't plan, my apartment is empty, my cat meowing, my phone line bare. It is a long slow transition.

Lately these days I feel like I'm living some strange episode of Sex and the City...the episode that they cancelled.

At least I'll call my brother...and see if he got the watch that I sent that the UPS guy LEFT ON THE DOORSTEP. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. That will make me VERY unhappy if someone swiped it.

Dammit...just called my brother...I sent it to the WRONG address. FUCK. Not cool. I spent a lot on that watch. He's going to go over to the old house, but since they dropped it on the doorstep they can just lie...dammit.

Thwarted again.


3:33 PM | link | up| archives | comments [ ]

Partly cloudy, 82% chance of rain.

It will sit with me for awhile, I think. Magnolia--finally I managed to see it. It was long, it was artistic, but mostly it was so slick and masterful...I will think about it, turn it over in my head, savor it, realize it. It IS reminiscent of American Beauty...the way that it all splices together, the commentary on what is normal and what is not, the curious mixture of life and death. AB was much more tragic and surreal in ways that Magnolia was not. I keep seeing that word associated with Magnolia...surreal...and yet, I didn't find much of that within the movie at all. Save the frogs, those were situations, that, however bizarre, could happen in life. Hell, my own life is some massive fucking melodrama...much more surreal in retrospect than that movie. What I found within Magnolia is amazing love and pain, forgiveness, and the realization of how people's actions affect others in their lives. Even more so...a tremendous searching and restlessness that each character shared. That I find that I share. Restlessness.

things that I need to doooooooo

*The dishes. ewww.
*Write.
*Change the dates on my automatic bill pays, now that my paycheck is biweekly instead of bimonthly.
*Write.
*My annual review of myself.
*Write.
*Get the supply list for my oil painting class again.
*Write.
*Call my brother for his birthday.
*Write.
*Finish the Witness of Poetry.
*Write.

I am the master of procrastination when it comes to writing, methinks. I can find any other excuse than to do it. Cleaning, writing emails to long lost friends, surfing art sites, organizing my cds. Why? Why is it thus although the tug of my pen, of my fingers, of my mind to write...is strong, so strong that it is like a weird burning in the center of my forehead. It is an anxious sort of waiting...my head, waiting for my body to sit down and write it.

But what the fuck am I supposed to write?

12:10 AM | link | up| archives | comments [ ]