a bit of Russia in DC

I donated blood this morning, as I do every eight weeks. Ever since 9/11, there has only been one entrance to the National Institutes of Health campus that non-employees can use, and going through this entrance means going through a rigorous security checkpoint. Today when I first turned into the entrance, there were guards at the initial sentry point, which is something I’ve never noticed before. Generally an NIH visitor sails through the sentry point and proceeds to the security checkpoint ahead. I wondered if I should’ve stopped to ask these guards if it was okay for me to proceed, but then I decided against it and sailed through as usual. When I hit the security checkpoint, it was abandoned. It was the spookiest thing. And I wondered, “Should I have stopped at the initial sentry point? Is that how they’re doing things now?” It seems like every time I’m there, they change some facet of the security process or the blood bank parking situation, so it’s possible the whole process has been turned on its ear since my last donation. I started to panic, wondering if the sentries were going to come chasing after me, SWAT team in tow, to haul me off to the Homeland Security headquarters. I expected them to shoot out my tires and fell me with a tranquilizer dart (it wouldn’t have been needed; I’m so out of shape, it would’ve taken them all of a millisecond to catch me in a foot race). But rather than turn around and return to the sentries, I simply proceeded to the blood bank’s parking garage, which I guess was okay, because nobody tackled me after I parked my car.

I headed inside, and the woman who did my intake had me recite my full name and birthday (to make sure I’m not an imposter, I guess), and after I did so, she exclaimed, “Oh, you’ve got a birthday coming up!” I unenthusiastically grunted/snorted an affirmation and she replied, “I just had a birthday recently, and I was born the same year as you. 33 isn’t bad!” I felt like screaming, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN! 33 WAS THE AGE AT WHICH JESUS CHRIST WAS CRUCIFIED!!!!!!!” But I didn’t. I was just like, “Yeah, I know.”

And really, she’s right. Especially since—as she pointed out—the alternative (not living long enough to see one’s 33rd birthday) is much worse. I have no genuine complaints about my impending birthday. Truth be told, I’m a lot happier than I was at age 23, when my life was a pathetic mess, or at age 13, when I was trapped in the vile purgatory known as junior high, or even at age three, if you consider the fact that at age three, I was still being dragged to Hershey Medical Center a few times a year for neurological testing because of my craniosynostosis, I was on the cusp of developing acephalgic migraines, and I was on the cusp of having to undergo occlusion (ie, eyepatch) therapy for exotropia.

Anyway, the blood bank staff really wasn’t on the ball today. Alone in the intake cubicle, I had to ring the buzzer for them twice, and they can’t claim they were too busy to respond to the first buzz because there were no other patients in the donating room. It’s not that I’m an overly impatient person—I just wanted to get the donation over and done with so I wouldn’t be too late to work. Once I was in the chair, it took the phlebotomist forever to get started. After she finished getting all the blood she needed, she did something that caused the blood to spurt everywhere out of the tube. It was on the floor, on my hand, and on my pants. Blood on my freaking pants!! Thanks, lady.

In the snack room, as I was wrapping up my post-donation snack, she poked her head in and said, “Uh…I forgot to get your iron sample.” (I’m in an iron study at NIH and they have to withdraw a sample every time I donate blood.) So I had to go back into the chair, and this time she wanted to get the sample from my other arm, which has, like, no veins in it. I didn’t think she’d have any success, but to her credit, she did manage to find a very small, buried vein and managed to pull a small sample from it, and this time she did it without spurting the blood everywhere. Yeah! But it means that I had to show up at work with both arms bandaged, which made people gape at me. I simply shoved them aside and headed straight for the pile of unbelievably delicious chocolate my boss just brought back from Prague.

Over the long holiday weekend I did some freelancing, spent lots of time vegging on the couch with Netflix DVDs (the best of the lot: Pan’s Labyrinth) and my Lost DVDs, and spent Saturday at Marjorie Merriweather Post’s Hillwood Museum and Gardens in DC with Mom and Bill (photos here). It was kind of a bitch to find, and the parking situation made no sense, but nonetheless, everything was so beautiful—I barely even minded the outrageous heat (thank god I thought to slather SPF 50 sunblock on my face and arms in advance; I would’ve been roasted alive without it).

I was really pleased to learn that Post had a huge interest in collecting Russian art. A Russian dacha was even built in her gardens! Her mansion had a huge portrait of Catherine the Great hanging in her stairwell and rooms specifically devoted to Russian icons, Russian liturgical items, and Russian porcelain. Many of these things were sold to her by the Soviet government so they could raise funds for industrialization. Basically—no shocker here, to be honest—they pillaged the Russian people’s past in order to fund their future. The items in question really ought to be given back to Russia, for display in museums and churches.

With all the beautiful Russian artworks around me, I almost felt like I was back in St. Petersburg—especially since a bus loaded with Russian tourists was there at the same as us, and so everyone around me was chattering in Russian. Considering my Russian skills are limited to saying thank you, good-bye, train station, yes, no, lamp, cat, aunt, and raspberry, conversing with any of these folks wasn’t really an option.

After touring the gardens (including a pet cemetery!) and the mansion we hit the gift shop, which sold a wealth of beautiful Russian treasures that were wildly overpriced.

Afterwards we went to dinner at the Indonesian place in Wheaton that has a ginormous vegetarian menu. I ate curried vegetarian shrimp and banana fritters until I nearly barfed. Now that’s what I call a Saturday night.



song heard most recently before posting:
Overture, Suite No. 2 in B minor—JS Bach

my TV boyfriends

The other day David, Angela, and I were debating whether Sylar on Heroes is actually good-looking or just creepy. This was my take on the matter:

I didn’t think Sylar was cute until he donned the clockmaker fix-it glasses and tried to fix his mom’s clock. I heart nerdiness like that!

My TV boyfriends:

• John Krasinski (The Office). My #1 boyfriend. He’ll get chained to my bed, whereas the other boyfriends will get chained in stalls. (Comfortable stalls, mind you.)

• Henry Ian Cusack (Lost). My dreamy Scottish TV boyfriend. But only when he’s cleaned up in his pre-island flashbacks.

• Jake Epstein (Degrassi). My jailbait TV boyfriend. He’s legal now, but he sho’ wasn’t when I first set my Mrs. Robinsonian sights on him.
  

• Hugh Laurie (House). My misanthropic English TV boyfriend. Crotchety, drug-addicted misanthropy never looked so sexy.
  

• Skeet Ulrich (Jericho). My post-apocalyptic TV boyfriend. I never thought I’d call him sexy, but seeing him kick ass in Jericho really changed my opinion.

• TR Knight (Grey’s Anatomy). My gay TV boyfriend.

• Christopher Gorham (Ugly Betty). My hot nerdy accountant TV boyfriend. But keep the glasses, Henry—you’re not half as hot without them.

• Jake Webber (Medium). My average joe TV boyfriend who is actually British in real life. (Yay!)

• Phil Keoghan (The Amazing Race). My sexy Kiwi globe-trotting TV boyfriend. No one else can make raising a single eyebrow look so sizzling.
  

• James Scott (Days of Our Lives). My dastardly English villain boyfriend. Sami’s always whining about how he planted his demon DiMera seed in her. Shit, EJ, you can plant your demon DiMera seed in me any time you want.

• Piers Morgan (America’s Got Talent). My everybody-wonders-if-I’ve-lost-my-mind-because-I-think-he’s-cute boyfriend. He’s the former editor of News of the World and The Mirror, and for some inexplicable reason, I think he’s foxy.

• John Simm (Life on Mars). My trapped-in-1973 comatose boyfriend. Polyester never looked so sizzling.
  

• Michael Ian Black, Hal Sparks, and Joel McHale. My trifecta of snarky, pop culture-commentating geekalicious boyfriends.
  

And then I’ve got my three movie boyfriends: adorable Paul Rudd, hot Scot James McAvoy, and the lovely Colin Firth. Over in Music Land, my heart belongs solely to Damien Rice. And, uh, Josh Groban. Dude, it’s the hair. It’s totally the hair.

Anyway, I hope y’all have a splendid holiday weekend. And I hope I don’t spend Memorial Day barfing and battling diarrhea for hours on end, like I did last year when a stomach bug of some sort felled me halfway through the holiday. Huzzah!


song heard most recently before posting:
Wreck of the Day—Anna Nalick

Will she rise again?

I was so dismayed to hear about the Cutty Sark being gutted by fire, especially since arsonists may’ve been the culprits. Who would torch the Cutty Sark?? Yobs, I guess. How hateful and wasteful. She was a piece of naval history. She was a piece of my history. As a centerpiece of Greenwich, she appeared in the landscape of my year abroad. I walked past her every evening during my gee-my-lazy-ass-really-should-get-some-exercise nightly stroll around Greenwich. Annida and I used to buy spring rolls and chips from our favorite chippie, Pier Restaurant, and eat them along the river next to the Cutty Sark. She was always there in the background of my delirious year abroad. Now she’s…gone. Temporarily, maybe, but who knows. I’m so thankful I was able to see her again last autumn. I got spring rolls and chips from Pier Restaurant and settled down in Cutty Sark Gardens to savor the food and everything else about that holy place. Who knew it might be my last time to see that magnificent ship?

In happier death news, Jerry Falwell died last week. I’m not, like, dancing a jig on his grave or anything; I mean, he wasn’t a monster in the vein of dictators and serial killers, and therefore it’s probably not proper to celebrate when he dies. But, as John McCain once said (and god, I can’t believe I’m actually quoting John McCain), Falwell was truly an agent of intolerance. And how can I not smile at the thought of one less intolerant bigot roaming the earth? Aside from preaching intolerance, he also made huge strides in breaking down the barrier between church and state, and that’s damn near unforgivable in my eyes (although not as unforgivable as being an intolerant, hate-spreading bigot). So good riddance, really!


song heard most recently before posting:
Break So Easy—Johnathan Rice

New York State of Mind

It’s time to don an ill-fitting sailor suit. It’s time to kick-ball-chain and jazz-hands my way down 42nd Street. Why? Because—while visions of my 12th grade musical “On the Town” swirled in my head—I made the decision to go to New York for two days over my birthday in June.

I’m not exactly flush with cash these days (thanks, IRS!), but I’m burned out and exhausted from working all the time, so I thought, “Oh, what the hell, I’ve earned a break. I’ll find the money somehow.” My pal Susan and I are staying in a budget hotel in Greenwich Village and we’ll be traveling to NYC by bus. I know! But it’s much cheaper than driving or taking the train. And I’m sure it will bring back so many faaaabulous memories of my sweltering 9+ bus ride from Estonia to Russia two years ago.

On the agenda: MoMA, the Guggenheim, a birthday dinner at Tea & Sympathy, birthday drinks at the KGB Bar, a ghost walk (if any are scheduled while we’re there), and maybe a vegetarian feast at Blossom. There’s a burlesque club I’ve got my eye on, too, but I think I’ll save that for the next time I’m in New York with Missy.

This schedule contains a lot for two days, I know, and I wish I could stay longer, but like I said, I’m hardly rolling in disposable income these days, and besides, if I stay away for longer than two days, I’ll have to snag a petsitter. So, we’ll just try to optimize the limited time we’ve got. We’ll be heading up there on a Sunday morning and coming back sometime on Tuesday—hopefully in the evening.

Here are Heather and me (she’s on the left in both shots) rocking the 1940s New Yorker vibe in “On the Town” a million and three years ago:

song heard most recently before posting:
Prelude in G-sharp minor, Op. 32, No. 12—Sergei Rachmaninov

questions, answers, dying

According to the Death Clock, my personal day of death is Monday, June 4, 2035.

Aw, hell, I’m going to die on my 61st birthday?? That sucks. I have better ways to spend my birthday than dying. And 61 is too young to die. My mom is 61 now! Although…who am I kidding? It’s not like the world is still going to be around in 28 years!

Meanwhile, Shawn passed on this questionnaire to me:

1. When you’re home alone, do you still close the door when you go potty?
Now why would I do that?

2. If you have to go grocery shopping, would you rather go alone or with someone?
Alone. Shopping with friends is always fun, but grocery shopping is a practical errand for me—something I just want to get over and done with quickly. Being with someone else just slows me down.

3. It’s your best friend’s birthday; do you buy them a gift even though they didn’t buy you one for yours?
Ehhh…it’s iffy. It depends on my money situation. If I’ve got money to burn, then I’ll feel more generous and I’ll be more likely to buy that person a present. If money’s even slightly tight, I’ll probably skip the present and say to myself, “Screw it. S/he hasn’t bought me a present for years; why should I go to the trouble of doing what s/he can’t be bothered to do?”

4. You win the lottery. Lump sum or small payments over a period of time?
Small payments. They promote moderation. I think a lump sum, unless invested very wisely, is just asking for trouble.

5. Do you like your music loud or at a reasonable level?
A reasonable level most of the time.

6. Are you a beach person or a snowy mountain person?
A little of both, I guess. I love frolicking in the ocean but I also love wandering through the woods. Not necessarily in the snow, though!

7. When do you brush your teeth?
Morning (after breakfast) and night (after I’ve had my nighttime snack).

8. Can you watch scary movies alone?
Absolutely.

9. Soft bed or firm?
Somewhere in between.

10. Would you rather stay home all day, or be out and about with some friends?
Stay home, because I’m a hermit and a sloth. Ideally I’d stay home with friends.

11. What’s one of your worst memories?
Finding Shoah strangled to death on a fence. It’s not one of the worst—it’s the worst.

12. Do you like to keep the peace or be confrontational?
Keep the peace—even Amish people are more confrontational than my wussy ass.

13. Are you more likely to be with a large group of people or a few close friends?
A few close friends.

15. If money were not a problem, where would you like to live?
London, London, London. Also, I would buy my old house in Lebanon and purchase houses in…mmmm…let’s say Seattle and a remote beach in Scotland. And I’d keep a local residence, too—probably in Georgetown, Old Town Alexandria, Capitol Hill, Takoma Park, or Bethesda.

16. What is your ideal profession?
Working as an editor for The Sun, heat magazine, or News of the World, or writing “news” articles for the World Weekly News. Editing/writing trash, basically. Isn’t that terrible? I should say that my ideal profession is saving the world or making a difference in people’s lives, but whatever.

17. Are you close to your Mom and Dad?
Fairly, yeah.

18. What is one fear that you can’t seem to overcome?
Letting myself completely lose control.

19. Are you good at math?
I swear I’ve got dyscalculia. No one can be this bad at math without having a learning disability.

20. Do you kiss on a first date?
I never really get the chance. *cough*man repellant*cough*

21. Is there anyone that you regret ever meeting?
Surprisingly, no. Not even the douchebags.

22. Rate your life on a scale from 1 to 10:
8. I’m lucky in so many ways, but it’s not like I wouldn’t change some things if given the chance.

23. Do you like any of your friends a little more than just as friends?
Nope. (And right now they’re sighing with relief and wiping the sweat from their brows.)

24. Do you like to drive?
Well, I did until I moved to the DC area. Now it’s just the bane of my gridlocked existence.

25. If you found out that you were going to be a parent, what would you do?
Cry and vomit. And not out of happiness.

26. Do you give money to homeless people when they ask?
Rarely, because I rarely carry cash or change with me. In Edinburgh, though, I had a ton of money left over the day before I was set to leave, so I made an effort to give money to homeless people I saw with dogs.

27. A weekend in Las Vegas or Miami?
Vega$, baby! It’s the nutcase capital of the world and I want to see how many nutcases I can attract in 48 hours. Given my track record, I’m guessing it will be in the three-digit range.

28. When you go to the store, do you have a list or just buy random things?
I almost always have a list, and I almost always end up buying 300 things that aren’t on that list.

29. What do you wear to sleep in?
A big t-shirt or nightshirt.

30. You have 3 months left to live. What do you do?
Somehow find the money to travel until I literally drop. I’d also get my estate (heh!) in order, make sure my mom understands the terms of my will, give away my possessions, and finally tell certain people exactly how I feel (or felt) about them.

31. You’re having a bad day. What thing(s) can make your day better?
Seeing something startling and beautiful. Receiving a funny email from a friend. Having the chance to veg unconditionally on the sofa (with no work looming before me). Having one of my cats plop on my lap and/or knead my dough. Seeing my cats cuddle with one another.

32. Tanning bed?
What, have I ever tried one? No. And I never will. I don’t want to look old before my time. I also happen to think that pale skin can be beautiful.

33. Is there anything you would change about your body if you could?
Lots.

34. You wake up in an unfamiliar place, what is your first reaction?
There might be, like, a split second of confusion, but other than that, I come to my senses pretty quickly and realize where I’m at.

35. Is there anything that you should be doing right now?
I should totally be working.

36. If there was a way to know when and how you're going to die, would you want that information?
Oh god, that’s a hard one. Part of me would want to know so I could prepare myself, but the other part of me wouldn’t want that sword hanging over my head.

37. What is your favorite breakfast food?
Probably eggs Benedict (sans bacon, of course) or pancakes with baked apples. I rarely get to eat that stuff, though, because I rarely go out for breakfast! In lieu of them, regular cold cereal is my favorite.

38. Your phone rings at 4am, who do you expect it to be?
A harbinger of bad news. And I probably wouldn’t answer the phone for that reason.


song heard most recently before posting:
Leningrad—Billy Joel

last dance

It has come to my attention that my senior prom was 15 years ago today. Pardon me while I adjust my support hose and use my cane to chase those kids off my lawn.

Prom, if I recall (through the cobwebby annals of memory), was a bit of a wretched evening. In theory it should’ve been good, mostly because all my friends were there and we always—okay, usually—had a great time together. Also? My dress? It fucking ruled.


No, seriously, guys, I know it looks like we’re on our way to a funeral here, but that’s not the point. The point is that my dress was awesome. I sketched the design I wanted (rather poorly, I may add; an artist I ain’t) and had a local seamstress create the dress from scratch for me. It was black velvet, a fact which made my mom repeatedly blanch and moan, “You’ll get worms!” (Hey, at least it gave her a break from telling me that I looked like a refugee.) And I’m happy to report that I didn’t get worms. And not a single person made fun of me (at least to my face) for wearing black velvet in mid-May. The only complaints lodged against me had to do with my wearing a jean jacket upon arrival and departure. People equated this with heresy, I guess. I even overheard my yearbook advisor making fun of me in class the next week. Whatever!

The dress was great, the long black velvet gloves were…well, a bit over-the-top (especially considering I wore a pearl bracelet over the left glove), but not heinous. My purse was fabulous: a little black velvet clutch I bought at my favorite vintage shop. In fact, I’m wondering where this purse went over the years; hopefully my mom has it tucked away in her house somewhere. My necklace (a sedate set of faux pearls) was fine. The shoes (black velvet flats) were fine, although heels would’ve been much better. I wasn’t wearing heels yet at that point, though—I didn’t start wearing them until I was out of college. So all in all, in spite of my mediocre makeup and that weird bit of hair I had hanging down from my French twist (presumably to hide my forehead dent), I can honestly look back on my prom pictures 15 years later and not shiver in revulsion. That’s quite an achievement for a prom that took place in the early ’90s.

Anyway, back to why prom was wretched. Well, first of all, I was pissed that I had to drive there. My date Terry had only turned 16 the month before and didn’t yet have a driver’s license, and I was either too cheap or too poor to pay for a limo, so I was stuck driving us, as well as a pair of our friends, in my mom’s car. Very unglamorous. It was pouring and the windows kept fogging up, so when we left the prom I couldn’t see where I was going and I drove up onto a curb, getting stuck. The three folks in my car had to get out in the pouring rain and push my car off the curb while other departing prom-goers honked and laughed at us. Hotttt. During the prom itself there wasn’t much to do but pick at my food, snap some photos of friends, and woefully lament my lack of a boyfriend. The dance floor was small and dancers were very conspicuous, so my awkward, geeky friends and I avoided it at all costs.

I actually don’t remember very much about the prom or post-prom, and I can’t consult my journal, because it’s currently in storage in my sister’s basement. I did, however, rummage through the big Tupperware container full of high school and college ephemera stuffed in the back of my bedroom closet and found my Josten’s senior book. On the prom pages I attached the photo above and answered two of the questions:

About the evening: It positively sucked. It was boring and it was an ultra-fake masquerade of preppies and jocks and bitches who spent way too much money on outfits for 3 measly hours.

What we did afterwards: Post-prom, the cemetery, ate at Hardees, drove around mindlessly, went home and crashed because I was borderline comatose from exhaustion, it was pouring too hard to really drive any distances, and my windows were so fogged I couldn’t see a damn thing. Also, before post-prom a bunch of us hung at my house, changed, and Jason was smoking pot in my bathroom. Bloody wonderful.

That’s right—we went to a cemetery after the post-prom. Enough said.


song heard most recently before posting:
People Get Ready—Eva Cassidy

fun with color

Sometimes I enjoy futzing around with the color accent feature on my camera. I like how my camera will sometimes pick up colors that I don’t otherwise see—the faint, subtle hues discreetly hidden in an object.

Here are some shots I snapped and posted on Flickr back in January:

I set the camera to pick up a generic shade of green, so it naturally
detected the green in Plath’s eyes, but it also showed a subtle green glow everywhere else, because the photo was snapped in my living room, which has green walls.

I specifically set the camera to pick up the exact
shade of red in this painting.

Here the camera was set to pick up reddish-orange colors,
which is why the construction cone has color. You can also see streaks of
morning light in the background, because the light had an orangish hue.

Two days ago I set the camera to match the exact shade of green of the leaves outside my apartment. These are some of the pictures (added to Flickr yesterday) that I snagged:

My simian line!

Yesterday I snapped a few more pictures. I set my camera to pick up the lavender color of the bath towel on my wet hair. Yeah, I know my lips look reptilian. What can I say? It’s been a hard winter, and these photos were snapped before I could slather Vaseline on my lips!

It detected a pinkish-lavenderish shade in my natural
lip color and around my eyes. I’m not sure if this is because
of the blood vessels in my eyes or if it’s because of the light
reflecting off the towel.

Then I set the camera to pick up my eye color as I stood at a window (being in natural light makes my eyes particularly blue).

Arrgh—this one really shows just how uneven my eyes are!
Thanks to my craniosynostosis and skull surgeries, my right eye
is considerably larger than my left. But...ah well, what’cha gonna do?

song heard most recently before posting:
Cheers Darlin’—Damien Rice

Happy 10th Birthday, Plath Boyer!

Today my little baby boy Plath (and his twin brother Shoah, in spirit) turns 10 years old. I can’t believe my little Plathy is a decade old!

To celebrate, I gave him and Freyja a can of organic California roll for cats and two new organic catnip toys. Tonight I’ll give them a can of tuna—a treat they no longer receive regularly since they’re on a diet.

Some shots of Plath enjoying his new toys:


Here are some photos of him and Shoah when they were babies:

Plath is on the right.

Plath is on the right.

Plath is on the left.

Plath is on the top.

Plath is on the left.

In other news, I had an up-and-down weekend. On Friday night I worked, natch. I took Saturday off, even though I really couldn’t afford to. I spent a few hours at Skevy’s house, then headed to Olivia’s baptism. She looked beautiful, and I’m proud to say she wore one of the lovely dresses I bought for, like, $2 at a secondhand store. On the way to the church, her godmother asked her if she planned to go to college someday. Olivia said yes. Mary asked what she planned to study. Olivia paused and then said, “Colors,” which I thought it was an adorable answer. She was very well-behaved during mass and the baptism ceremony and made all of us proud. That’s pretty much the only good thing I can say about sitting through mass for the first time in 12+ years.

On Sunday I hit a tiny exhibit at the Smithsonian and then rushed home to work, even though the day was beautiful and it would’ve been a perfect opportunity to bop around DC. As if the rest of my day weren’t already ruined by work, my upstairs neighbors had to up the ante by throwing a huge BBQ for visiting relatives. The noise they generated was out of control. Earplugs, headphones, and a blasting sound machine helped, but didn’t completely drown it out. Fuckers.



song heard most recently before posting:
Pashernate Love—Morrissey