Sunday, November 26, 2006

i don't know where all the time goes

suddenly it's sunday night, and damn if i don't have to go back to work tomorrow morning. luckily it's the last full week of the quarter, and though it looks like it will be hectic, it's going to go fast and furious. it's funny, because i always remember folks older than myself shaking their heads, tsk-tsking, saying almost wistfully, "where does all the time go?" but here i am, marveling that it's the last sunday in november, and that it's almost my thirtieth birthday. it's two-oh-oh-six, for crying out loud, and for just a few more weeks at that! yesterday i went to see the queen, and there went my head from side to side, as i sighed, "where did all the time go?" wasn't it just the other day that i was sitting on the beige stained carpeting of my studio apartment in hollywood in the middle of the night watching the live broadcast coverage of princess diana's funeral? and yet that other day was almost a decade ago... and, just for kicks, lately i like to knee myself in the gut extra hard by reading diary entries from around this time in 1995; fine, so instead of skipping freshman classes i teach them, but my diary entries of the present day say pretty much the same things about my same feelings about the same person as they did eleven years ago. go figure. and yet... i know somehow these stretches of time can be accounted for. i lived them. i'm sure of it. just as i'm sure i lived all of the past week up until this moment, this waning sunday night moment of me realizing i forgot to do some laundry this weekend, heavy-eyed from having wasted my day curled up on my bed watching old movies and bad sitcoms and japanese cooking game shows, but not entirely sure where all that time went. i realized this thanksgiving that i'm not entirely sure where this past year went, but that despite this overriding sense that i was still pretty much unchanged, very little of what was foremost in my mind then bears any relevance to my life now. i sat on my parents' couch, digesting our delicious dinner, thinking how nice it was to not be in crisis mode this year. last year at thanksgiving i know for sure i had to contend with writing a paper for one of my last grad school courses, with all the trimmings of being an a-student over-achiever, with unreliable transportation, with always unreliable sources of income, and with the soon-to-be-answered omnipresent wondering of "will he ever...? could he? will we?" hanging on the back burner of my whirring mind. and then...in a snap and a blur, the year's gone by. and still, i don't know where the time goes. it disappears in minutes. hours. weeks. months. years. and here i am. and there it goes again...

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Thursday, November 16, 2006

"as quonset a brindle"*

i'm pleased lately with the quality and quantity of good conversations i've had in recent days. i feel as though to mark some occasions, or for no reason whatsoever at times, it seems my friends and i rally 'round each other and gab to get to the good in life. i'm also pleased that my new phone has that bluetooth thing going for it, and that pairs up nicely with the bluetooth thingy in my prius, which means that asshole you see driving around talking incessantly without a phone in their hand or one of those "i think i'm important but really i dropped out of college, work a crap job, and am desperate for validation and the latest word on where this weekend's totally fucking hot rager will be" headsets is actually me.

i think i'm naturally inclined to converse (or as hip-hop and rap artists erroneously claim, conversate). there's something inherently theraputic about a good long talk--or just talking in general--even if it's not with my therapist, who, incidentally, is so good with the conversation that i actually hand her a check when we're done talking. fancy that, huh?

i've had walk down memory lane talks; "how over-hyped was the kiss between detective stabler and that annoying blonde lady detective in the army jacket and the hoodie?" talks; when the hell will the english department let us plebian faculty know if and for what we're hired for the winter quarter talks; i share my office with a chronically hacking, rag-bag dressed, says weird things to her students, power-to-the-people poster hanging, curses at the computer screen while reading her email while i'm trying to grade papers, freaky fellow teacher talks; how great is shopping at h&m talks; ways to define oneself in list form without mentioning one's occupation or boyfriend talks; what does one wear to and expect to eat at a baby shower for someone who is of philipino heritage talks; how funny and smart were me and my classmates last year in english 504 talks; ways in which my life parallels angela chase's on my so-called life talks; "my therapist said..." talks; this new phone is pretty cool but sucks for the following reasons talks; cuts of meat in relation to tenderness and taste talks; the benefits of having used the word "swearsies" in an email talks; and holy motherfucking crap it's way beyond acceptably hot for november and i want to wear long sleeves and a scarf talks. uh, just to name a few...

despite all the talking, i'm still doing an awful lot of thinking. probably too much, but that's what (former) straight-a students do, at least according to the gospel of billy joel, right? i get a little crazy headed, a little "bad mayo" of the brain, a little spin cycle dizzy. and that's where the talking comes in. and saves me. from myself. so i think i'll keep talking.

*title of a spam email sent to my gmail account that endorsed some sort of stock, and closed with three hackneyed sayings about seizing opportunity. i just thought that in recent times,"as quonset a brindle" could describe my thoughts. whatever it means. wherein rests my meaning.

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Wednesday, November 08, 2006

inspector gadgetry

i have a new cellphone.

it is pink.

i regret not dropping $10 down to have them transfer over my contacts from my old phone.

ergo, my fingers hurt from doing so manually, therby forcing me to only pay peripheral attention to tonight's episode of america's next top model.

i love my new pink phone.

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Saturday, November 04, 2006

the nicest of vices

oh dear me, this is bad; today marks the second time in two weeks that i've donned a borrowed terrycloth robe and black rubber sandals and spa'd my cares away. today's trip to the plush and hushed catacombs of better living through indulgent pampering was courtesy of the phenomenal foxy, who needed a partner for such an outing, and decided to make my birthday come early. we joined the crowd of be-robed, be-scrunchied, and de-makeuped ladies in the waiting area in anticipation of our massages. i couldn't help but crack a joke about us looking like the poor women of gilead in atwood's handmaid's tale--you can take the girls out of an english degree program, but you can't...well, you know the rest. of course, instead of us being herded about before being assigned to a couple so that our fertile wombs might nest the husband's seed, we were just gals waiting for a 50 minute rub down which would feature the accompanying sound of panpipes and the squidge-squidge of the lotion bottle pump. because i find it impossible to turn my whirling mind to a blank i spent a portion of my massage trying to figure out which historical epochs and regions would have been down with the rubbing down (ancient greeks, romans, and most asian cultures i figured would have been doing it big time, but the brits in the middle ages and renaissance a bit too tight-assed and holy for that sort of physical contact) and also a fair share of time thinking that the perfect follow up to a massage would be to teleport myself to my bed and to have the darling boy magically appear and take over the hands on and etcetera bit. of course, all good things must come to an end, and so i got up off the table, swaddled myself in loaned terrycloth, and flip-flopped back down to the hub of all things steamy and bubbly. we jacuzzied with cucumber slices and minty cold cloths on our eyes and we sipped citrus infused water until we couldn't postpone the inevitable anymore. back to the real world--but first a pitstop in the new h&m store that recently opened up nearby--and back to the everyday. and i'm thinking, to my chagrin, that these spa trips might be getting to be a bad habit. a vice much nicer than nailbiting or smoking or swearing like a sailor, but a rather extravagant one at that. oh, but it's so lovely. and oh, but i feel so delicious!

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Wednesday, November 01, 2006

know-it-some

since i've been fairly guarded over the past few months on this here web space of mine, i've been thinking of all the different little teeny-tiny nonsense things i could share instead. you know, like things i like or do...my quirks. so while you'll never know it all about me, you can't say you don't know-it-some.

  • my favorite game show is the $100,000 pyramid. i tivo a rerun of it every day. seriously.
  • it's true: i'm a food snob.
  • i currently have 5,685 items (music + tv shows) on my itunes. that's 16 days' worth of entertainment, people. scary.
  • one of my mildly o.c.d. habits is to count and then recount the essays in the stack as i grade them. count stack. grade an essay. count stack. grade an essay. it's a fish sticks on friday kind of thing, and it drives me nuts, but i can't seem to quit it.
  • at the start of each month i write out my whole schedule on my wall calendar, day by day. it's color coded by category of event (teaching schedule, office hours, cooking class, plans with friends). i also, for your too much information, mark down the days in my girly cycle. i also circle some dates in green because on those days i've--nevermind! at the end of the day i "x" out the box with a pink highlighter. what can i say? i like calendars.
  • yesterday i joined the faculty union at my university. power to the people!
  • every time i fill up my gas tank in lola, the prius, i use the receipt to log the mpg and total miles driven for the previous tank of gas, and then store the receipt in my glove box. incidentally, i'm averaging just over 45 mpg on each tank. i love my prius so damn much.
  • i have moments when i'm driving around, singing and dancing in my seat along with the tunes coming from my ipod, when i realize--and remark out loud--that when it comes to music, i'm so often such a total gay man. "hey mister d.j., put a record on, i wanna dance with my baby--uh-uh-uh!"
  • i lost count of how many times i squealed aloud in glee when i realized mariska harigitay was back from maternity leave and has returned to where she belongs on my beloved law & order: special victims unit. we're talking shouts of joy here.
  • last weekend i learned how to cut up a whole chicken. somehow this skill has superhero power proportions to me. chicken cutting woman to the rescue!
  • sometimes i really, really, really miss improvising, and all my once-upon-a-time improv pals.
  • i'm slowly working my way through the massive tome that is the latest hardback bio of katharine hepburn. i'm fighting it, though, because while the childhood stuff really aligns with the story i tell in my thesis, i'm having trouble swallowing the author's take on her sexuality. and i don't have a lot of energy for reading.
  • when it came to switching clocks for daylight savings the other day i did all the digital clocks but left a wall clock in my room the hour ahead. this was not because i didn't want to, or couldn't hop up on a chair and do it myself, but only because for no real reason i wanted to have the darling boy do it. he did. happiness reigned all about the land.
  • since we got satellite cable with the tivo thing i haven't watched a single netflix disc. not a one. i'd gone up to the 5 at a time plan, and i've been absolutely wasting it for weeks. it just seems chaotic to me to go through the process of reducing my plan and returning discs...so i do nothing. except watch loads of tv.
  • whenever people find out i do food writing and restaurant reviews they ask me: "what's a good restaurant." i can't express enough how much i hate that question.
  • if i'd had the opportunity, i would have liked to have told megan mullally to wait at least a year before launching her talk show. because i love her dearly, but her show stinks hardcore. stinky stink stinks. el stinko. major stink. love her. love love love her. but her show stinks.
  • best site for awesome free and legal indie mp3s: 3hive.com
  • i have no idea how to dress like an adult. so i wear jeans and flip flops to teach in. oh well.
  • lately i'm having really good hair days.
  • the darling boy and i have been together almost a year. not counting the months of scattered dalliances we endured in the last decade. it's still at times surreal, and sometimes really tough. but i adore him in that incredible way that so often renders me incapable of finding words to describe it. in a good way. see, i'm all gooey and moronic just thinking about it!
  • even though my birthday isn't for another couple of months (12/28, jsyk) i've already started telling people i'm thirty. yup, thirty. i'm not sure how thirty is supposed to feel, or look, or act. most of the time i'm not entirely certain i'm not fifteen.
  • speaking of feeling fifteen, i've been watching my so called life thanks to the noggin network, and it's amazing how much i still, like, relate to angela chase. like, as much as i like did when the show first came on, and i was like actually like her age.
  • i was craving chocolate cake today. so i baked one.

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