how the other half lives

This weekend I got to briefly experience what it must be like to be rich. Angela was in DC all week for business, and because there was a recurring issue with her room, the hotel upgraded her to a presidential suite, free of charge, for her final two nights. As she was planning to stay at my apartment on Friday night anyway, we decided to turn things around and have me stay with her in the mega-suite instead.

Good lord. Never have I seen anything like it. For one thing, she even had her own doorbell. Such a simple little thing, and yet it left my plebian self agog. The first thing I said to her when she opened the door was, “Ohmigod, you have your own doorbell!” I sure done felt fancy. Here’s the rest of the suite:

the foyer:

the living room:

another view of the living room:

the TV room:

the kitchen:

the dining room:

the bedroom:

the bathroom, with its shower stall that was bigger than my whole bathroom at home:

Angela and me in the back gardens:

As posh as the suite was, the rich aren’t given any swag in it. The snacks in the living room weren’t free—they cost a lot of money ($6 for a bottle of water!). And the movie-on-demand feature cost a whopping $9.99 per film. Breakfast would’ve cost a fortune for very little food. I shudder to think of what the minibar cost.

Anyway, on Friday evening we hopped on the Metro and went to Friendship Heights to browse through the stores and pick up a bottle of wine in World Market. Then we returned to Woodley Park and ate dinner at an Indian restaurant. After that we headed back to the hotel, showered, and hunkered down with the wine and a movie-on-demand (The Queen), since her office gave her permission to buy up to two movies.

On Saturday, after we checked out, I drove us down to Arlington so we could eat brunch at the Silver Diner and poke around the shops in Clarendon (the Mac store was our first destination). We didn’t have a lot of time before I had to drop her off at the airport.

The rest of Saturday and all of Sunday were spent working on freelancing, naturally. zzzzzzzzz



song heard most recently before posting:
Con te partiro—Paul Potts

a birthday in New York

(Note: If you’re having trouble reading this entry in Firefox, and wonky things keep inexplicably happening, like a gigantic gray box appears over part of the text, open this page in Safari or IE instead and it should be fine.)

Okay. New York. I really should have written about this sooner, but within hours of returning home I started getting sick with a cold, and even though it’s just a cold—and not even a particularly bad one at that—it knocked me on my ass. Maybe because I’m not used to being sick? My immune system is normally freakishly effective. I called in sick on Friday and it took all my energy to plow through the pile of freelancing I had to do over the weekend. Working while sick sucked, but at least I was able to lounge on the sofa while doing it. And after finishing each day’s workload, I sprawled on the sofa and watched Netflix and Lost DVDs, coughing and sniffing pitifully the whole way through, and occasionally moaning about how wiped out I felt. I wasn’t sleeping overly well, probably because of being stuffy and coughing, and I’m sure that didn’t help with my overall sense of exhaustion.

New York was great, though. (Pictures can be seen here.) We were only there for two days, but we did manage to accomplish everything we set out to do (with the exception of taking a ghost walk, since, oddly enough, none were being offered while we were there). This was actually my first time staying over in New Yawk; in the past I’d always stayed in New Joisey. Actually...now that I think about it...there was one night when I stayed in New York itself. It was my freshman year of college, when three friends and I spontaneously decided, at like 11pm, to drive to New York. We got there in the middle of the night and then we were like, “Now what do we do?” So we slept in the car. On a cold November night in the middle of a dodgy neighborhood in Manhattan. Yeah, makes no sense.

Anyway. On Sunday, June 3rd, my pal Susan and I took an 8am bus from Bethesda to New York, and it was a nice bus! Reclining seats, TV screens, a bathroom. I don’t know what I was expecting for $25, but it sure wasn’t that. Two hours into the trip we stopped at a huge rest stop in Delaware, and as soon as we hit the road again the driver started playing a DVD (The Pursuit of Happyness, which was so depressing it kind of made me want to shoot myself). We pulled into New York on schedule and arrived at Penn Station around 12:30pm.

We grabbed a cab to our hotel, the Larchmont, in Greenwich Village. It’s a budget hotel—very hostel-y and European (the toilet cubicles even have “WC” written on their doors)—but pretty decent. It was a great neighborhood, and because we required three separate keys to get from the front door into our room, we felt safe. The room was small, the bed wasn’t overly comfortable, there was a dead fly in our room, and I saw one or two bugs in the shower; however, we had air-conditioning (very important, because although it wasn’t overly hot when we were there, it was humid), they gave us robes and slippers, we had a TV and sink, and a cleaning lady replaced our towels and made our bed for us, so I have no complaints. It was affordable, after all!

After we got settled into our room, we walked off in search of Blossom, an organic gourmet vegan restaurant. It was much smaller than I expected, but still great (even though we were sitting next to two rich chicks who were casually blathering on about their exotic travels. (Yes, I was jealous.) After lunch we walked around Chelsea, the West Village, and Greenwich Village, popping into shops (including secondhand shops and a pet store run by a bunch of gay guys, where I bought cool souvenirs for the cats). We stopped for ice cream and did some people-watching while we ate it. By this point, Tropical Storm Barry had appeared and it was raining off and on.

We went back to our room, relaxed, and watched TV. Well, first we had trouble even getting to our room. We couldn’t figure out how to open the door to our hallway! We tried all three keys and nothing worked. Finally someone came along and we asked her for help. After watching her, Susan figured out that when turning the key in the lock, you need to pull the door toward you in order for it to open. It reminded me of my front door in Lebanon, where you’d have to push yourself into the door in order to lock and unlock it.

It seemed too pathetic to call it a night already, since we were in freaking New York (even if it was a sedate Sunday night), so we flipped through the guidebook someone left in our room and looked for something to do. We chose Bowlmor Lanes, a rock n’ bowl place in the vicinity of our hotel. I think I’ve only been bowling once in my life—as a kid when we visited family in Massachusetts.

It was a miserable walk to the lanes, since it was pouring, and once we got there, we were kind of confused by the whole set-up process. Eventually we figured things out and settled down to share a divine order of spinach-artichoke dip. The place wasn’t really hopping, thankfully, and the swank nightclub upstairs was closed, which was a relief, because I looked like a frizzy-haloed piece of hell and wasn’t exactly in the mood to mingle with hip, beautiful New Yorkers. The bowling itself was fun. Well, no surprises here—I sucked at it. I’m sure it didn’t help that I’m cross-dominant (although closing my left eye didn’t improve my game at all, so maybe cross-dominance really can’t be blamed for my lack of bowling skillz). The best part of the evening, aside from the yummy dip, was seeing all the bowling pins signed by celebrities who had bowled at Bowlmor in the past.

A bowling pin signed by Michael Stipe!

When we woke up on my birthday, it was still pouring. We first headed to the basement for breakfast. Obviously their definition of “breakfast” was different from mine (they only offered danishes, juice, and coffee). It was as bare-bones as you could get—even more bare-bones than the sparse layout offered to me by the Salvation Army hostel in Reykjavik. After “eating” (and yes, I use that term very loosely), we headed to MoMA via the subway.

We thought we’d have to hang out in a nearby café or store since we were so early, but to our surprise, the lobby of the museum was open and there was already a huge line of people waiting to buy tickets. In fact, the line was so long, it stretched out the door and just kept going. Since it was pouring, we opted to hang out in the gift shop instead of standing in the rain. Once the ticket counter opened, we joined the mind-bogglingly huge line out in the downpour. The line was so long, it was like waiting to ride a roller coaster in the middle of summer! It did move fairly quickly, though, I must admit.

The museum was fabulous. As I’m coming from an environment where most museums are free, I hated having to pay such a high entry fee, but what can you do? I was delighted to learn that photos were allowed in the museum (except in one special exhibit); however, flash wasn’t allowed, so my pictures aren’t as clear as they could be.

The only Chagall work on display: “I and the Village.”

I was having some...umm...how shall I say this delicately? Let’s just say that I was having some gastrointestinal “issues” and was forced to spend some time in a bathroom. When I finally stumbled out of there Susan said, “You’re never going to guess who I just saw. Locke’s dad!” “WHAAAAAT!” I screeched. Turns out she saw the guy who plays Locke’s dad on Lost while I was stuck in the bathroom. I was so pissed. You can’t imagine how pissed I was that I missed an opportunity to meet—or at least furtively photograph—Locke’s dad because I was stuck on the fucking toilet!!!! I wish I could’ve said to him, “Will you pose for a picture with me? Please? I’ll let you steal my kidney if you do. I’ll let you push me out of an eighth-story window if you just pose for a photo with me and tell me how the hell the Others got you onto that island!”

Disappointment: I was looking forward to seeing Chagall’s painting “The Birthday,” partially because I really like it and partially because I thought it’d be cool to pose next to “The Birthday” on my birthday. Sadly, though, it was nowhere to be found. While the museum was careful to post a notice in several places alerting visitors to the fact that Dali’s most famous piece was currently on loan to the Tate Modern (rather ironic, considering I was just there in October, before the painting arrived), there was no word of what happened to “The Birthday” or Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss.”

After exploring every floor, we browsed through the gift shop again and also hit the MoMA design store across the street, as well as the gift shop for the American Folk Art Museum (the museum itself was closed), before heading back to our hotel.

We freshened up and changed, then walked over to Tea & Sympathy. The restaurant was much smaller than I expected, but still utterly divine. The pasty I got was even better than the pasties I ate in London last year! I also got sides of beans and mash and drank a fizzy Ribena.

Food of the gods.

Susan had them bring out a candle in an amazing slice of warm ginger cake, and that gave me a chance to make a birthday wish. I was so completely stuffed from dinner, though, that eating even half the cake slice made me feel faintly ill!

Me, stuffed to the brim after my birthday dinner.

It was a nice night, the rain had finally stopped, and the humidity was subsiding, so we decided to walk to the KGB Bar—the last stop on my birthday tour. The bar was pretty empty, minus some folks who seemed to be friends of the bartender’s. Some hipsters showed up later, too. There was no poetry reading after all—they’d been suspended for the summer. The bar was rather quiet and almost had a gothy feel, and I really liked it. I saw some great Soviet memorabilia on the walls and loved spotting a Lenin bust next to a bunch of liquor bottles on the bar.

Lenin and liquor.

I got a Russian beer but was only able to drink less than half of it because I was so freaking stuffed from dinner.

So: that was how I turned 33.

On Tuesday morning, after “breakfast,” we turned in our keys, paid our bill, and headed to the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim via the subway. It was a bit tiresome, since we had all our bags with us, but once we bought our museum tickets (which had a reduced price because the building is being renovated), we were able to dump our bags in the coat check room. Pictures were only allowed in the lobby, unfortunately. It’s a grand lobby and I took many photos, but I wish I could’ve taken photos of the artwork as well—especially since the museum had several Chagall pieces!

In the lobby, looking up.

In the lobby, looking down.

Me behind a prism curtain in the Guggenheim lobby.

Because chunks of the museum were closed, it only took us about two hours to see everything. We stopped for a leisurely lunch in the museum café, hit the gift shop, snapped more photos in the lobby, and decided to go for a walk outside before retrieving our bags. We walked down Fifth Avenue, plopped on a park bench in the shade, and didn’t move again. It was so lovely and comfortable in the shade, and we were so tired. Well, after a few minutes curiosity got the best of me and I decided to find an entrance to Central Park, which was literally to our backs (behind a wall). Then I poked around a small portion of the park, snapped some pictures around the lake, and returned to the bench to laze away some more time.

By the time we arrived at Penn Station, we were really hot and tired and just wanted to collapse on a bench in the air-conditioned station. Except there were no benches—none that were free, anyway. So we each purchased something to drink at a little café place and sat in there forever, nursing our drinks and trying to cool off. We had gotten there very early and it was nice to have the luxury of crashing in the a/c before stumbling off to the bus.

The ride home was good. The DVD shown was…some Robin Williams movie. I can’t even remember the name. Man of the Year, maybe? We got back to Bethesda around 9pm, and, through a stroke of luck (or misunderstanding) got away with only paying $8 for parking instead $24. We were like, “Hell yeah, we’ll take it!”

Thus ends my only vacation of this year. *sniffs* It wasn’t much of a vacation, really; I mean, it was just two days away. But it felt good to get the break, and now all my money and vacation time can be be directed toward buying a house/condo and fixing it up. After that I can focus on saving for my next big vacation, which will probably involve some configuration of Prague, Budapest, Kiev, and Krakow.


song heard most recently before posting:
Please Can I Go Now—GMT and Hinda Hicks

reason number 213 why I hate my apartment

I’ve been in a bit of a foul mood lately, just because it’s freaking hot outside, my freelancing workload has been ungodly, I’ve been dealing with a particularly rough set of author changes in said workload, and my upstairs neighbors have been torturing me by babysitting their grandchild since last Saturday. Normally they only have him on Monday night and all day Tuesday, and that’s bad enough, because this kid exists solely to race laps around their house (on, I may add, hardwood floors) and screech. Also, he has developed a propensity for furiously stomping. On hardwood floors. With me beneath them. So, you can imagine what it’s been like to have him around 24 hours a day for almost a week. Being totally passive-aggressive and nonconfrontational, I’ve taken to angrily whacking at my ceiling with a sneaker every time the noise gets too extreme.

So anyway, last night I was working and dealing with a particularly meddlesome, frustrating set of author changes that made me want to go above and beyond the level of pulling out my hair out and instead pull out my teeth. All of a sudden I heard a loud, rat-tat-tat dripping noise. “What the hell?” I asked Plath, who was snoozing on a pile of manuscripts at my feet. I thought perhaps my kitchen faucet had inexplicably begun dripping. I put down my lap desk and pen and headed to the kitchen.

Aaaaaaaaand I found water pouring out of the top of my kitchen doorway. What. The. Fuck. Actually, I shouldn’t be surprised by this at all, because two years ago water spontaneously began pouring out of the ceiling light fixture in my kitchen. So there you go. This is the kind of apartment I’m dealing with.

I stood there slack-jawed for a while, then ripped myself out of my stupor and grabbed a bucket to catch the water. After a while I figured out that the water wasn’t coming from my doorway after all, but from one of the air ducts in the laundry room, which borders my kitchen. The water was leaking out of the duct, running along its length, and then heading toward my doorway. I discovered that it wasn’t even water I was seeing, but some kind of brownish fluid that left a sticky residue wherever it landed. Huh? My floor was sticky, the bucket was sticky, the duct leaking the fluid was sticky. It was pretty disgusting, actually, and I had to spray everything with bleach in order to get rid of all the stickiness. After the dripping stopped I wrapped up the troublesome area with duct tape. (Just call me Bob Vila! But it is duct tape, after all, and this was a leaky duct, so...) I vowed to call my landlord today if the problem returns. Calling him is a last resort, because he’s pretty useless and doesn’t fix half the things he’s supposed to fix, which only succeeds in leaving me seething with fury—not something I really need right now.

In less teeth-gritting news, I got this one from Shawn a while back, and I thought I’d fill it out while groaning and digesting the enormous meal I just ate at a vegetarian Indian buffet with some coworkers:

The Summer Survey

Summer — General

Favorite cookout food? — My options are kind of limited, what with me being a vegetarian and all. So I’ll say veggie burgers and corn on the cob.

Favorite summer drink? — Nothing that’s any different from any other time of the year.

What do you look forward to when summer comes? — Thunderstorms (but not losing my power because of them!). Strappy sandals.

Do you join any sports? — Ha!!!!!!!! Unless you count bitching about the heat as a sport.

Do you wear a one-piece or two-piece bathing suit? — Dude, I want one of those head-to-toe swimsuits that were recently invented for Muslim women, just because nobody needs to see my ass/stomach/thighs on display. Until then, I settle for swim trunks with a regular swimsuit top. But if I were swimming in a place where no one else was around, I’d be naked all the way.

Would you rather it be winter? — Kind of, yeah, because I HATE THE HEAT.

How many times do you hit the beach? — Rarely, just because I’m so busy. I love the beach, though, so last summer I made a point of taking off work for a day and going to the beach to spend hours swimming in the ocean until I was dizzy and gagging. Literally.

How many BBQs do you have? — None.

What time do you go to bed in the summer? — Same time as always: 11pm on weekdays, whenever I feel like it on weekends.

Do you go camping? — I love nature, but camping honestly doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve never even done it…aside from that time some friends and I camped out at Knoebel’s Grove overnight during college.

Summer — This or That

Flip-flops or shoes? — Sandals as much as possible.

Beach or pool? — Either one, as long as I don’t have to be near a lot of people—especially screaming kids. I love being in the water.

Bug-bite or sun burn? — What, do I prefer one or the other? Uh…neither? Who likes being bitten by bugs or sunburned??

Better swimsuit piercing: nipples or belly? — Neither one appeals to me, but I guess belly is a little better, even though it’s so clichéd.

In a relationship or single? — Single, baby!

Hang with friends or family? — Either one suits me just fine.

Hit the clubs or BBQs? — BBQs, I guess, because clubbing bores me.

Layout or fake bake? — I like being pale, actually! But if I wanted color, I’d get a fake tan. Real tans cause premature aging, yo!

Last Summer — 2006

Did you go to Disney World or Cedar Point? — I’ve never been to either one!

What vacations did you go on? — A long weekend in Athens, GA, visiting Annida. Then, in the autumn (yeah, I know, that doesn’t count as summer), I went to London for a few days.

Who did you hang with everyday? — My cats.

What was the worst memory of last summer? — I guess just dealing with the stress of working 900 hours a week and living with very noisy people above me.

How did you celebrate the Fourth of July? — Uhhh… *scratches head*…I don’t know…just hung out at home, I guess? I honestly don’t remember.

What was one thing you did every week last summer? — Worked!

Favorite summer 2006 clothing item? — There’s this floral wrap dress that I loved wearing, because it’s so comfortable and cute and doesn’t wrinkle.

Favorite song of last summer? — Probably “Your Ex-Lover is Dead,” by Stars, because I was kind of obsessed with it for a while.

This Summer — 2007

Where will you be going on vacation? — Nowhere, aside from going to NYC for two days over my birthday, and trying to visit Angela in NC and/or David in Chicago. My big summer event (knock on wood!) will be buying a home. And I’ll start saving for my next Euro trip, too.

How will you celebrate the Fourth of July? — Doing nothing. That’s a rare luxury in my current life.

The best place to be this summer? — In an air-conditioned building.


song heard most recently before posting:
Secret Spell—Tori Amos

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

the space shuttle’s in the sky so you know not to do bad things

I unearthed some old fourth and fifth grade writings and decided to share them with the world. The spelling is wretched (who knew I’d grow up to become a professional editor?), but they’re worth a read, even if only to see how often blood and knives made an appearance. If you have trouble reading any of them, click on each image to see a larger size.


For shame, Mrs. Detweiler. You don’t “understand” this? Well, duh, obviously it means that the astronaut should’ve listened to the dude who told him not to go up in the sky. But he didn’t listen, and because of that, he ran out of fuel and got stuck on a cloud. It’s a fable, see? See?

I love how playful hooting and disappearing abruptly segues into cutting off people’s heads with a sharp knife, putting their blood in a stew, and forcing people to eat it.

Glad this merited five extra credit points instead of a call to Social Services.

It’s nice I was confident that I’d be safe in my bedroom and that no muggers would jump out with a knife and kill me. As they so often do in little girls’ bedrooms.

Suppose you were a teacher and one of your students wrote, “The room was covered with blood. I won’t go there again! Never!!!” Wouldn’t you wonder if maybe that kid was being, like, ritually abused or something? Apparently not.

This one...ahhh...*scratches head*...I don’t know. Maybe the assignment was to list things that one might see on Halloween? Because Halloween at my house, you see, meant knives and blood.

What a coincidence! 23 years later, I still don’t like to see work! (Note: one of the “things” I liked to see, Chris Loftus, was my fourth grade crush. As you can see, he was pretty high up on the list—I apparently liked to see him even more than I liked to see money.)

A nuclear war would make me “nervous”? Gee, ya think? Note how, in the list of all the things that would make me sad, I made no mention of my family or friends dying.

Fire away, people. Tell me how much you like me. And my shirt.

Aw, I wish I would’ve cut poor Fluffy some slack. If she were barking a lot, surely she had a good reason for doing so. But cutting my sister slack? Not so much. She was mean to me back then! She dangled my Cabbage Patch Kid out a second story window by her feet while I wept and begged for mercy! No wonder I said that she made me feel annoyed!

Pandas are still my favorite animal and obviously I still like computers and love animals. And, admittedly, there are some *ahem* Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie songs on my iPod. “Almost Paradise” is on there, too. My, how far I’ve come!


song heard most recently before posting:
Lament—Lisa Gerrard