The only person who could ever make me hate Friday

It's truly, truly unbelievable.

Every day of the week, when I exit my metro stop, there is always a different musician at the top of the escalator--playing some familiar song and holding out the hat, as it were. They have varying degrees of talent--there's an awesome guy called Banjo Dan (The Banjo Man) and a man who plays the Spanish Guitar (and wears his hat tipped down over his eyes). There's a man who plays the guitar and lays all of his crazy sort of half-decent splatter paintings on the ground in front of him (we saw him again tonight outside of the baseball park--the Nats beat the Dodgers).

Among the not-so-winning musicians is a t-shirt wearing dude who I think might have found his sax in a dumpster. He stands across the street and plays what I imagine Homer Simpson might play if you handed him a saxophone. It's fairly terrible. I'm almost certain all of his earnings are pity donations. But he's at least funny.

In general, these people range from "this is a treat" to "well that was interesting" but there is one, mother-effing-son-of-a... I hate this guy. I call him the Light-Jazz-Syntho-Dredlock-Asshole. Imagine if you a will, a musician with the ability to use joy to single-handedly ruin every single Friday morning of your life. He's like an ambush, because I always forget that he's going to be there until I've already swiped my metro card and I have no way to get out of the metro without going past him.

He stands at the top of the escalator and plays his god-forsaken synthetic keyboard renditions of casino hits like "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" and "What the World Needs Now (is Love)" and lots of other cheesy, Bacharachy gems that get stuck in your head just at the completely utterly wrong time of your life.

It's Friday, for God's sake. Don't bore me into a coma just when I was feeling good about things, Man. And he'll stop in the middle of the song to utter in this breathy voice "I hope you all are having a blessed, blessed day" and "sometimes when the world has got you down..." He wears sunglasses for no reason. Why does he have dredlocks if he's singing the kind of lite pop music that grocery stores pump in at low volumes to psych people out of shoplifting? Are they even real?

And the "music" is so insanely, unreasonably, institutionally loud. It starts all the way on the train platform as an atonal murmur and by the time you're up the escalator it's drown out whatever legitimate music you've been listening to (or thought you might have been having) and replaced it with canned happiness of the smarmiest most unavoidable kind. It follows you up the block.

The irony of how irate this makes me does not escape me.

And I have no idea what it is, but for the first time in my life, I actually get the physical urge every single Friday morning to go over and kick his keyboard off its stand, smash his amp with his mic stand, throw the keyboard in front of a passing bus, shake my finger in his face and tell him that he actually owes me fifty dollars for ruining every single Friday morning for the past year of my life.

I would feel guilty about these terrible thoughts except that I'm certain that everyone else must feel the same way, but they're all wearing business casual so they can't flip shit. I'm not heartless. I love Banjo Man and awesome Chinese plucky music guy--even teenage flute kid doesn't bother me for the 35 seconds I hear these people one day a week.

But something makes me want to offer Banjo Dan a crisp c note to start a turf war. And if Light-Jazz-Syntho-Dredlock-Asshole doesn't redeem himself or disappear himself soon I might do it.

UPDATE: God does create miracles for the weary; for the first time in months, not was Light-Jazz-Syntho-Dredlock-Asshole not there this Friday, Crazy-Angry-Jesus-Bullhorn-Yeller and Gypsy-Rambling-Frank-Synatra-Loving-Lady weren't there either. Just a bunch of casuall dressed people on a rainy Friday morning before a long weekend. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh...

From here to there.

I can not believe that Tim and I have been here for an entire year already. It's sort of like some kind of strange hallucination. It's a surreal feeling partly because I've just been sloooooowly acclimating to entirely new lifestyle (sometimes I actually miss those 4:00 am nights in the newspaper office, if only because I knew I could sleep in the next day and not risk looking "unprofessional."). It's also surreal because I NEVER would have predicted being where I am now. I can more easily imagine myself pushing a popcicle cart in Florida than I can sitting at a desk all day in Washington DC.

But the biggest thing is that all of my familiar landmarks are all different themselves, and it's a little hard to get my bearings. I don't think hardly ANY of my friends live in the same houses they lived in last year. It seems like nearly everyone--friends, family, coworkers--has gotten married, engaged, had a baby, Moved (with a capital "M"), graduated, started school, changed jobs, had surgery, or otherwise gone off the map in the last 12 months.

It's a weird "untethered" feeling to have, even at the moment when I have a steady job, an apartment, a sane boyfriend... How interesting to be so effected by all of these people even when so many of them are so far away...

Our one-year-in-DC anniversary (Aug. 15) was fairly uneventful, even if this week wasn't. Last Saturday my boss called to tell me that he was officially announcing my promotion to Marketing Coordinator. It's not as high of a title as had been originally proposed, but honestly, for not having any sort of training in Marketing or anything more than one year in the industry under my belt, this makes me feel slightly relieved. I can pay more attention to craft and leave the other stuff to the newly-hired Marketing Manager, who seems like a nice guy so far.

Tuesday I went to see a Neurologist about my migraines. There's not really anything to report other than that I'm trying some new medicine which will either make me a basket case or it won't. I'm not putting my money on one or the other but I'm hoping for the "won't". The jury is still out as to whether it's better to be a reasonable, sharp-minded person with migraines or a basket case without them. Time will tell. Or maybe Tim will tell, since he's the one who has to deal with/take care of me everyday migraine or no.

Last night we went to a house-warming party for my friend Jana and her two roommates. This summer has been decidedly lacking in those sorts of events and that was precisely the perfect way to spend the evening. I've noticed that as far as beverages are concerned Jana and I usually like whatever the other person hates, but she loves dip, and I love dip, and that makes us party food compatible. She also invited Brittany, who worked at Clutch when I first started and who is utterly precious. I DO NOT use that word to describe just anyone. I haven't seen her in ages--she's planning a wedding and I've been traveling all over the country like I have a travel show (which I totally should).

Any party where Tim falls asleep on the metro ride home is a good party.

And today we walked to Chinatown and saw "Tropic Thunder." I'm convinced that Robert Downey Jr. is a genius but I still think that Ben Stiller is a fool, but not in a good way. Afterwards we ate ice cream on the steps of the Portrait Gallery and then walked to the Old Post Office to ride the elevator to the top of the bell tower and see if we could see our building (we couldn't). Very different from how we spent August last year, buried under a giant pile of boxes, trying to figure out where to buy food and how to get it back to our apartment, playing Wii until our thumbs hurt... (OK, maybe that part is not so different, but we aren't spending as MUCH time playing Wii.)

I'm sure I'll look at this post next August and laugh my ass off trying to figure out how I got from here to there.

Good Evening, Wrangler II

Fayetteville, AR: November 4-November 17.
Boulder, Colorado: November 17-December 5.
Dallas/Shreveport/New Orleans: December 5-December 16.
Crawford, Colorado: December 16-January 3.

These are the tour dates for the official "Roxie's Leave of Absence Tour '08." Get your all-access pass TODAY!

How is this possible? you ask. How is this possible for someone with a full time job and no money?

Well, it's possible largely because my boss is a benevolent and understanding soul who appreciates that as long as I am under his employ, I am too busy to plan for my future, but that planning for my future is key to me not going a little Courtney Love everywhere and throwing my computer monitor through my office window. It's true that I'm broke, but in reality, this trip is an investment in a number of ways:

First, the combined tickets were actually CHEAPER than buying individual tickets for Turkey Day, the Longnutzer Nuptials, and Christmas seperately--and in order to attend all or even just one of those things, I would have had to take unpaid vacation anyway.

Second, if I don't apply for Graduate school this year, I will honestly hate myself and I will become a raving, spitting beast in stuffy office clothes.

Third, when I return, I'm taking a new position with the company which I am very excited about. No word on my official title yet, but suffice to say that it's a higher position and a more creative one, which is NEVER a bad thing.

As I told many people back a few months ago, I had intended to quit work as soon as my lease was up, put my things in storage, sleep on various people's couches cleaning out their fridges and shoveling their sidewalks for pocket money until I figured out what I want to do with myself (i.e. not being and Administrative Assistant and sitting on $40K worth of degrees). No sooner had I informed (most of) the world of this decision, than my boss offered me a new position. He looked sort of disbelieving but mostly skeptical when I told him my intended plans but--and this is the incredible part--he negotiated with me to make both of our desires possible.

So Tim and I are signing the lease. We're staying here at least until next August.

At which point I will hopefully have a choice between keeping my marketing job or going to Harvard and getting my PhD in English. Ok--maybe not Harvard, but hopefully somewhere will want me.

If anyone has any tips about taking the GRE or applying for Grad School (or what schools I should apply to somewhere in the Colorado/Louisiana/Washington State neighborhood) feel free to call me and let me know. You know where you'll be able to reach me in November and December.

A fragile bubble

Know thyself, pathologically, what a fragile bubble you are, and exposed to a thousand calamities. If you understand these things, you are man, and a genus very distinct from all the others.
-Linnaeus

While trying to maintain a little sanity in my bubble, I have actually read enough books in the past month(s) that I can pick just the good ones to tell you about. But first things first, three one-sentence reviews:

1. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë: I mean, it's JANE EYRE for pete's sake, but I've read better classics.
2. Dune, Frank Herbert: Meh. Don't watch the movie either; if you're the kind of person who gets off on this stuff, you've probably already read/seen it.
3. Snuff, Chuck Palahniuk: I read this in one sitting on a plane and spent the entire trip trying to hide it's filthy, filthy pages from the guy next to me--but I liked it anyway. Well, that was... brief. On to more important things:

Personal Days
By Ed Park

If you work in an office, and you only read the first section of this book, that will be enough for me. The whole book is excellent. But the first section is so goddamned hilarious and so, {SHUDDER} frighteningly DEAD ON that I read parts of it multiple times. Here, I'll let it speak for itself, this is the first page:

<1> Who died? On the surface, it's relaxed. There was a time when we all dressed crisply, but something's changed this summer. Now while the weather lasts we wear loose pants, canvas sneakers, clogs. Pru slips on flip-flops under her desk. It's so hot out and thus every day is potentially casual Friday. We have carte blanche to wear T-shirts featuring the comical logos of exterminating companies, advertising slogans of the early '80s. Where's the beef? We dress like we don't make much money, which is true for at least half of us. The trick is figuring out which half. We go out for drinks together one or two nights a week, sometimes three, to take the edge off. Three is too much. We make careful note of who buys a round, who sits back and magically lets the booze appear. It's possible we can't stand each other but at this point we're helpless in the company of outsiders. Sometimes one of the guys will come to work in a coat and tie, just to freak the others out. On these days the guard in the lobby will joke, who died? And we will laugh or pretend to laugh.

People to whom I would recommend this book: Kristin, Jared, and Vijay, who doesn't read my blog but would appreciate this this book is compared to P. G. Wodehouse. Seriously, if the opening credits on The Office freak you out because you might as well live in them, read this freaking book.

Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body
By Armand Marie Leroi

I'll admit it, I picked this book up because of the promise that it might have pictures and I was rewarded for my curiosity. I bought the book out of a simple morbid desire to read about people with deformities--which sounds terrible. And maybe it is terrible--but I'm surely not alone. Why else would the word "Mutants" be featured so prominently on the cover, with the sub-title nestled in the bones of a deformed skeleton?

I don't care who you are, everyone judges a book by its cover. Leroi must know this, because right away he sets out to assuage our rubber-necking guilt and let us know that not only are we all deformed in some way (the average person has 300 genetic mutations), but that this fascination with the unusual has led to some of the most important genetic discoveries. Though it is occasionally dry, this book is difficult to put down because it accomplishes the great feat of being informative, sensitive, accessible, and wildly fascinating all at the same time.

Whether he is explaining how the right-side twin in many sets of conjoined twins can be born "situs inversus," with their organs positioned in a mirror image of most human beings, with the hearts on the right and their livers on the left.... Or how one out of every ten people has an extra set of ribs (and not all of them are male--like Adam)... or how children and animals can be born cycloptic, with one eye in the center of the face... what matters to Leroi is not that these things occur, but how they occur and what they mean to all things constructed of DNA.

In general, this is the kind of book I wish I was smart enough to write.

People to whom I would recommend this book: Jess Long and my Aunt Tanya, because both of them are interested in how biological things work, but also seem to be more interested in real life than in dessicated, lifeless lab specimens. Also, people who enjoyed Stiff, by Mary Roach.

The World According to Garp
By John Irving If someone was going to take certain parts of my mother's character, multiply them by 1000, and write a chapter about her, it would be the first chapter of Garp. I hope this doesn't peak my mother's interest in the book and then leave her brutally disappointed, but it's true. All of my favorite traits of Jenny Fields, Garp's mother, are traits that make my own mother so uniquely wonderful. "My mother," Garp wrote, "was a lone wolf."

She even works as a nurse at an all-boys school, which is sort of a fictionalized version of what my mother does for a living. Jenny's other traits--like her starched white uniform--are distinctly unlike my own mother. I'm not sure if I'm much interested in being like Garp--except that I'm profoundly interested in what the world is like, according to me.

I can't honestly rave about this book. It was good. It's a good, solid, entertaining read, which a few really wonderful characters and one or two parts that left me in complete shock. Irving is a master at creating a world which is wholly believable, and convincing you to fall in love with his characters like you fall in love with the weird, flawed people in your day-to-day life.

This probably doesn't sound like a winning recommendation to anyone but maybe my mom, but it is. This book was good.

People to whom I would recommend this book: Anyone who isn't afraid of a best seller.

Contact
By Carl Sagan

Oh Carl, you lovely, lovely person you. Unlike the movie, which glosses over the effects of something so profoundly earth-changing as a MESSAGE FROM INTELLIGENT LIFE BEYOND EARTH (which is a pretty big deal and probably belongs in all-caps), instead focusing on what Matthew McConaughey looks like shirt-less and how nerds like Jody Foster are generally lonely people--this book has incredible social, religious, philosophical, AND astrophysical importance.

This is sort of like the astrophysical answer to The World Without Us, which I reviewed a while ago. Only this time, it's The World With Us, When We Know There's Also a THEM.

There are only a few points in the book when Mr. Sagan gets his predictions about what life was like at the turn of the millennium wrong (how could he predict the collapse of the Soviet Union?). Otherwise, his observations about religion and society 20 years later (the book was published in 1985) are sort of disappointingly dead-on. It's disappointing only because we, as humans, are so predictable.

In general though, this is an excellent, sort of mind-blowing discussion about the nature of science and religion, set in a very inviting, very engrossing fictional world. Mr. Sagan is also wise enough to know what makes this kind of philosophy palatable to plebes like me.

People to whom I would recommend this book: My dad, and maybe Kacie--but for different reasons, which I won't go into. Both of them like science fiction (within reason) and are both sort of personally invested in the whole "What the hell is religion?" question.

So that's that. More actual news to come at a later date. :)

The Iceberg: Tip Of.

UUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHH.

I'm in one of those fazes where everything feels like it's pending, so I don't want to speak too soon. Is my job awesome? Maybe, maybe not. Am I moving home? Maybe, maybe not. What are Tim and I going to tell our building manager when the lease is up in August? Who knows?

It's frustrating.

What's more frustrating is all of these awesome trips I'm taking and how they make me just want to take trips all the time and not have any responsibilities. I have like, 1000 pictures to post from my trip to Colorado, but that means I have to admit it's over (which I still haven't, even after two weeks back in DC).

But Tim and I are going to Jason and Kristin's in Fayetteville tomorrow, so that keeps me from freaking out about my job for at least four more days.

If I can't have my own dogs, at least I can borrow someone else's for a weekend.

Let's get good. And dirty.

WARNING: if you don't find acid-tripping fraternity boys on The Price is Right, porn films that set out not only to break... but to shatter world records, or the question, "Wait, is there a chance I might have given my dog AIDS?" even remotely funny, don't read any further.

If you believe that any of those things can be both hilarious and heart-warming, read on.

I never promised that this blog would be interesting and I never promised that it would be socially appropriate so I make no apologies for what follows.

You know it's going to be an entertaining night when you walk into a theater to hear an author read his work and someone hands you a) an autographed copy of the author's newest book, and b) a string of blue pearlescent ass-beads.

Wait, did I say "ass-beads"? I meant "bookmark."

No, I meant ass-beads.

If you don't know what that means, kindly DO NOT Google it at work. Again, I make no apologies.

The aforementioned item is a promotion for FoxSearchlight's (yes, that Fox, as in Rupert Murdoch: hyper-conservative and... ass-bead enthusiast?) new "dirty-minded love story" Choke, based on Chuck Palahniuk's novel of the same name. The warning on the "bookmark" reads: "For your book not for your bum. And not for small children." Which is appropriate on so many levels.

We have our books, we have our beads, we take our seats and prepare for what lies ahead. Chuck Palahniuk is giving a reading in the only remaining non-chain movie theater in DC, sponsored by Olsson's books.

If you've ever read any of Chuck's books--you might vaguely anticipate what's coming despite all outward appearances. And when he walks out amidst cheers and hoots, he looks like one of the characters from his books. He's just a guy. In a shirt and pants. Normal height. Normal haircut. He taps the mic, which doesn't work, and some Olsson's employee runs over and turns it on--just like the beginning of 85% of all events where someone has come to speak to a group of people about something normal. It's an awful lot of normal for someone with so much gleeful filth going on upstairs.

Everyone in this giant room knows all the rules of Fight Club. That might not seem that impressive, since most people know at least the first rule of Fight Club. But thanks to Chuck, these people also know what it's like to eat a lobster with it's heart still beating. They know that the best place to meet an easy date is at a sex addiction recovery meeting. They all feel slightly superior and slightly guilty that they know these things.

Except Tim. Who has never read anything by Chuck Palahniuk and is just here to have a good time.

The reading starts like many others; the author tells a little story from his life. It's a heartwarming story that starts with a pact between a couple he knows. They've agreed to put their fat, diabetic, incontinent, 17 year-old cat to sleep as soon as his bag of outlandishly priced cat food runs out. When the punchline comes we all have a a hearty chuckle about the power of love playing out over such an unlikely hero. I won't tell it to you, in case you're lucky enough to hear it in person some day.

Then Chuck tells us we're going to play a game and the blowup dolls come out.

And that's just thing. It's amazing how a situation that just sounds so wrong can really be highbrow and funny and innocent and never remotely uncomfortable. Typically, if you're in a theater with that many people frantically blowing up that many sex dolls you are in the wrong place.

But this was just a little good, clean fun. Floppy pink plastic legs sticking up everywhere in this theater with red velvet seats and cherubs on the ceiling. The sounds of furious huffing and puffing. Chuck Palahniuk, world-famous author, yelling at everyone "You've got to squeeze the little valve thing or you're never going to get anywhere!" To the first fully-inflated male and female doll blowers went a book of short stories. The games are over. It's time for a reading.

Chuck reads an unpublished short story of his called "Loser" because he wants us all to have something fresh. Because we came all this way to see him and it's the least he can do. It's about a fraternity boy during pledge week who drops a "hello kitty" tab of acid and is the next contestant on that game show where the giant, god-like voice asks you to "come on down!!!" It's a hilarious story. It hurts your face to hear it.

It hurts my face now to think about it.

So then some local author comes up and sits with Chuck in their little chairs and they have an interview. And of course the guy's first question is "I know you hate this question but...." (then why are you asking it?) "...how do you feel about the way Fight Club has been received?" And it's wonderful. Chuck gives this wonderful, unintelligible answer that only happens when authors try to speak but they realize that what they're trying to say is so full of nuance and significance that it should be written down, but it's too late! He's already started speaking!

It's something about the Titanic. And culture digesting things. And cud. And it makes almost no sense but you know he's thought about it until his brain bled. And he just wants us to know how it feeeeeeeels, DAMNIT!

And there are more questions from the audience. Those typical audience questions that start with "So, first of all I think you're awesome and now I'm going to tell you about me, because someone handed me a microphone. I'm um, a (insert current level of education/addiction here) and I have a lot of friends/problems/questions/diseases. My entirely unrelated question is (insert some intellectual-sounding gibberish about characters/method/plot/inspiration)." Bless their little hearts.

Two really good things did come out of the Q & A. One guy asked Chuck to tell "the Pug Dog Story", which is a true story someone sent to him in a (long) letter. I won't relay the whole story but I will say that it's not the kind of story one should ever tell in a crowded Barnes & Noble. And don't worry. Nothing at all bad happens to the Pug Dog. Dogs really can't get AIDS--at least, they can't get HIV.

The second good thing is that they revealed that Choke has been made into a movie starring Sam Rockwell. And since we were already in the theater, the dimmed the lights and showed us all the preview, which made everyone a little bit giddy. No one was expecting a multi-media experience.

At this point in the evening, it seemed like things really couldn't possibly get any better, so we played another round of the blow-up doll game and Chuck handed out a few books to people who correctly answered various trivia questions. He also informed us that instead of sending thank you letters in reply to his fanmail, he sends gift packages full of things that make him happy.

That's when I realized, as he stood there telling this amazingly serious story about how all of his characters are essentially lonely people who are searching for ways to be intimate and to be loved without actually having to build honest, intimate relationships, and how he's constantly amazed at the level to which strangers will share their darkest and most traumatic stories with him because he's so clearly someone who has no shred of dignity left.... he's standing there, pouring it out... sincerely sharing his discoveries about the beauty and tragedy of the human condition... and in his arms he's holding about fifteen limp, wadded up, deflated blow-up dolls.

That's when I realized that Chuck Palahniuk is not only someone whose writing I enjoy and admire... Chuck Palahniuk is someone I like. He's someone I'd like to be friends with.

For the first time, I'm looking at an author I might actually like more than I like his books! How can this be? Authors are usually like giant wet blankets woven from unbreakable fibers of pomposity and ennui. Either that or they're just flat out boring--they live in their heads.

But Chuck seems to be, as he stand there in front of us all, primarily interested in making everyone feel good. In making us laugh the way porn makes you laugh. It's so desperate and dirty and terrible but it's also just too ridiculous not to laugh at it. In the end, it's just there because people want to feel needed, important, and loved.

And so the last thing that gets thrown into the audience is fitting. Here, he drags out a giant cardboard box full of Autograph Hounds and says "I spent my winter signing these." Apparently, among the important objects in the new book, Snuff, is an autograph hound. It's just a stuffed dog that you have everyone sign. It's like a memento to prove that people like you.

Chuck and his assistants from the Olsson's throw probably 100 of them into the audience for people to catch. And I think it's his way of saying that he likes us wants to be our friend too.

It's a great two hours. Everyone get up on their feet and applauds. Chuck ducks out the back door. A crowd of people carrying half-inflated blow-up dolls, stuffed dogs, books and ass-beads rumbles towards the metro.

Everyone feels good about all the bad things we've just seen and heard and done together. But the point is that everyone feels good.

Mystic Pizza

Standing in my underwear in my kitchen, eating three day old cold pizza out of the box, a singular thought occurs to me. A year ago today I was in India.

And I live in a time warp.

How can it be that an entire year has passed? And more oddly, how can it be that almost an entire month has passed since Tim and I went to Shreveport for Carly's graduation?

Graduation weekend was one of the best weekends I've had all year. It was so great to be back in Shreveport, in fact, that in the car on the way in from Plano, I cried tears of joy. I'm not kidding. I thought about being in a car, on the way to see my friends, having a whole weekend of Shreveport ahead of me and I started crying because I was so happy.

And the weekend was no let down. It was more than amazing to see everyone. Kacie was in rare form (I think she was the outward expression of the giddiness I felt), everyone was in a supreme mood, the food tasted better, the weather was more tolerable, even the nap I took in the hotel was far superior to any other nap I've taken this year. Just walking into the stupid Target in Shreveport felt like walking into the Louvre or some glorious temple of commerce and capitalism. Let's not even mention the drive-thru daiquiris.

So why didn't I write about it in my blog?

And why haven't I written about Memorial Day Weekend? It's not like there's nothing to report. In fact, Tim and I took a pretty impressive vacation.

We rented a car and drove to Cape Henlopen in Delaware, where we camped for one night and then spent the following day getting patchy and ridiculous sunburns on the beach. (It was too cold to swim--the kind of internal-organ-clenching cold where you'd actually rather haul yourself all the way to the bathhouse to pee than get in the ocean and do it.)

When we were breaking down camp, a tiny spider swung down out of the rain flap almost dropping onto Tim (who was sitting in the tent, with his feet outside on the ground) and I said "Hey silly spider, don't go on Tim" which is when Tim and I both saw the OTHER spider that was ALREADY on Tim and we lost our minds a little bit. She was not only the size of a nickel, she was carrying a couple hundred baby spiders, which exploded EVERYWHERE when poor Tim slapped her off his leg and I dropped the rain flap on his head and we both started screaming.

Ah, the stuff that comedy and nightmares are made of.

After the tragic spider event and the procuring of quality sunburns, we came home for a night and then took our rented car to Gettysburg. I like the idea of Gettysburg. Not that it's the site of the bloodiest battle in the Civil War--that's terrible. But that the entire town and all of the woods surrounding it are inside of a giant national park. Everything is clean and green and pristine and covered with hiking trails and historical markers. My kind of place.

The only really disappointing part was the gift shop with its Battle of Gettysburg mugs and shotglasses and the weird pink baseball hat with hearts all over it. What sort of statement is THAT supposed to make? "I like, totally loooooove the place where almost 50,000 Americans slaughtered each other in three days Ya'll!"

Puzzling to say the least.

And here I am, weeks later and I haven't posted pictures or talked about it at all. At this pace, all my "news" gets stale and all my funny and exciting stories start to sound like that boring 20-minute story your co-worker wants to tell you about this one guy they knew in high school and the time they... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Still, for the past year, it's been driving me nuts how many intentions I have. I intend to finish Trina's baby present (as of one month ago). I intend to paint my toenails (as of three months ago). I intend to send out this stack of greeting cards I bought (as of two months ago). I intend to order groceries (a week), put my laundry away (two weeks), finish reading Dune (a month), upload my photos, call my friend Eben, put away my jewelry, go to the zoo... write on my blog.

None of it happens and I think I've finally figured out why. There are two reasons.

The first is that my "real" life only happens between 5:30 p.m. on Fridays and about 1:00 a.m. on Mondays. Any other time is my non-life when I have work and I have to wear terrible business casual clothes in public and decide what kind of monotonous sandwich/soup/salad I'm going to pay too much for at lunch. So when a month passes for everyone else who, I flatter myself in imagining they're waiting for me to post on my blog, only about a weeks worth of "real" days have passed for me.

In real life, it's not unreasonable to go a week without writing on one's blog. Unless one lives in a time warp.

The second reason--and I've known this since the minute I started dating him--when I'm around Tim I'm just a generally less-productive person. Most of my artistic impulses come from, and have always come from, the fact that I'm an only child and I like to entertain myself productively. Now I have someone to entertain me.

Not to mention that a great deal of art comes from wondering "WHAT DID I DO WRONG?" and "WHY DOESN'T ANYONE LOVE ME?" Which are not things that people in healthy relationships often have time to feel. (NB: I'm not saying that single people necessarily feel that way, I'm just saying that those who do are more likely to write bad poetry and create ugly art in proportion with the amount of free time they have--myself included.)

Once again, I intend to do all sorts of creative and fulfilling projects but I end up just sitting on the couch with Tim, watching Jeopardy! or playing scrabulous on Facebook even though we have a real Scrabble board not five feet away.

On weekends, it's worse, because his time warp and my time warp collide creating a sort of cosmic time-gap where it takes us 24 hours to make one 2-hour trip to the bookstore and a whole load of clean towels can disappear into a black hole where it won't re-emerge for sometimes up to four weeks.

What the solution is to any of this, I don't know. But if you don't believe that it's as dramatic as all that, take note: the only reason I'm writing on my blog now (over a month after my last meaningful post) is because Tim is at a softball game and because I had a major revelation while eating cold, hard pizza in my underpants.

These kinds of things don't happen every day.