is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Doing lots with lots of To-Do.
Here's a photo from the BBQ Marco and Evany had right when I got back into town.
Marco has strung up a whole mess of lights that he found laying on the street, so the cute backyard area is now always ready to look extra festive as night falls. In the photo Stephen and Marco are very concerned about how the hamburgers are grilling.
If you click on the Stephen link, I suggest you listen to the song "Jet Set Stars."
After listening to some grill talk and discussing knitted bikini tops with Jessica, I went upstairs to watch nature shows (including 'So you think you can dance?') with Evany.
That was last week. This week has been crazy week! On Tuesday I had lunch with Dave... who was about to leave to go to Sudan to help build a school. (I hadn't known this about his schedule, so I said: "That's so great of you to make time for me during such a busy week!" Him: "Please. Don't mention it!" Me: "DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!" Ha.) He gave me some advice on hair-styling. We talked about writing, and me living in New York, and he had questions about Gus, and I had questions about various things. And he gave me three cute new Tshirts that he and Toph designed. Then I ran off and had dinner with Gayle at the Front Porch. The food was tasty and the company smart and foxy. We both got jobs this year! So we drank to our good fortune and did some talking and laughing.
On Wednesday I had lunch with Leah, whom I hadn't seen for So Very Long, due to how complicated it is to see her given that she lives between Eugene, OR and the Bay Area, and is writing a book and dealing with a commuting relationship, and all that (stuff which also seems to be true of me?... who lives on the East Coast but still seems to think she lives on the West Coast). So Leah and I took a little walk and ate a little food and talked about the academic world and the world outside of that. Then I went back to my house-sit-house and worked for a few hours, jumped on BART and went into the city, where I met Heidi and Viveca at the W. We had meant to go to XYZ, the bar there, but it was closed, so we had a drink in the lobby bar. And there was a semi-conductor conference in town. And all the people there were men. And they were circling us like sharks getting ready to bob for apples. I really mean exactly that, even though sharks are already in water so it is complicated to figure out how the bobbing would happen. But we were surrounded on all sides and it varied between amusing and uncomfortable and downright threatening, so we took off for Nihon, where there weren't very many people at all, the drinks were fantastic, and the bartender even made a drink for Viveca based on a diagram she drunkenly drew on a napkin.
I was bummed that I had to get on BART by midnight, but since I didn't have a hangover the next day whereas Viveca did, in retrospect it all seems to have worked out for the best.
On Thursday I workworkworked, then I had dinner with my Mom at Trader Vic's. We had yummy macadamia-nut-encrusted mahi mahi with wasabi mashed potatoes and spinach, and a dark rich thing they called a macadamia nut tart, but which was actually a gateau. Then I ran off to San Francisco to see Adam and Julia at Foreign Cinema. They had a friend with them who is a filmmaker and a magician. I'm not kidding. He made some coins disappear and did some card tricks, and we all talked about lots of films.
Strangely, Pan's Labyrinth was playing as we talked/ate/drank. I tried hard not to talk about it and Adam and Julia tried hard not to watch it, since they haven't seen it yet and want to be surprised by it. We had a very spirited and lengthy conversation about which movies are the best and what movies are perfect, and it was a perfect night for sitting in an outdoor restaurant with some wine and food samplings, arguing over movies.
Today I had lunch with Jonathan. It's always fun to catch up with him and hear what's up with our friends in common. He just finished spending months working on a local day-long Noh performance that sounded amazing... but you'll never see it because everyone involved did all that work for ONLY ONE PERFORMANCE. It's some zen thing about working on something until it is perfected, and then letting it go.
Then I fed my sister's cat. Her cat is a white persian boycat named Iphigenia, who currently is sporting a rather fashionable lion-cut, so he's all slim and shorthaired on his trunk but his legs and head and the tip of his tail are all persian-fluffy. It is exceedingly cute.
He also has a pullover hoodie that he sometimes wears that is black and says "SECURITY" in yellow letters. And that makes me laugh every time I think about it.
Then I came home and tried to get some work done, but ended up spending way too much time figuring out which Giants game I should get tickets for next week for Gus and I, how much I should spend, and so on and so on. Then I talked to Gus on the phone, which, it turns out, is SO MUCH MORE FUN than trying to write a paper on Nietzsche and Levinas.
Tomorrow is a work day. I have a brunch at 11 am with Leah, Liz, and Evany, and I am superstoked to watch the finale of Hex on BBC America at 9pm, but otherwise I intend to BUCKLE DOWN and ACT such that I might cross some items off my disturbingly long workish to-do list.
Oh, and last night there was a really scary earthquake! Everyone keeps saying it was only 4.2 on the richter scale, etc., but I guess I was right near the epicenter because a bunch of art got shaken off the walls and I jumped out of bed still wrapped in blankets and went running for the doorway in the hopes that its structure would protect me because it really seemed like the ceiling could fall in. Then I couldn't sleep because I was all hopped up. So I consulted the world wide web.
Here's a video of Chris and Adam singing "Calendar Girl" with Neil Sedaka.
On my last day in Philly, as Gus and I drove though a tunnel of suburban furniture stores, I realized I had forgotten to bring my sunglasses with me from Brooklyn, and that I wouldn't be returning to Brooklyn until mid-August! So Gus helped me pick out sunglasses at Target. He chose the ones I wouldn't have chosen. But now I really like them, and so does everyone else. So I may have inadvertently updated my sunglass-style.
I had a really long and vivid Nietzsche daydream the other day when I took a staring-off-into-space break while working on my Nietzsche paper outside in the garden of my house-sit-house. Then I wrote a diary entry. But it's handwritten on a piece of paper, and may not ever make it into computerland. But it may.
10:37 p.m. - July 20, 2007
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