An Evening Frittered Lightly Away

take:

1) a convenient, if somewhat loud and snotty, location (mad mex, on 34th and sansom -- rock music in the background about 20dB too high, plus they had the most intense ID-checking machine and weren't afraid either to use it or to chase down evaders).
2) a delectable wine (a glass of potent chardonnay).
3) good company (wim). and
4) deep, relevant, honest conversation.

mix well. consume. walk away happy, contented.

totally worth the mediocre guacamole and the one wharton gent who spent part of our evening blow-own-trumpeting to us.

Dude, Why's Your Bike Here?

i bought a bike yesterday -- so exciting!

imagine, then, my chagrin, when i took it downtown for the first time, thinking to run errands, locked it up on 17th and chestnut, and came back from the shops to find that some idiot had locked his bike next to mine with my brake cables in the u-loop of his lock!

omg! i'm a new biker, but even i know that that's terrible bike etiquette! i was so pissed! (and totally made sure to tell him so when he came back, ipod'ed, sunglassed, completely duh and apologetic enough to make sure to call me "honey" while he said sorry...)

what does one have to do for an uneventful ride in this town?

Lucky Duck

i would just like to announce -- as i take a quick breather during yet another hazy day of final-paper-writing -- that i am the luckiest girl in the world, because someone loves me enough to make me a container each of rajma and customized tabbouleh for when i'm hungry.

this stuff is delish!

Life Can't Be That Bad

the last few weeks, i've been having bad hair day after bad hair day.

a) my new shampoo + conditioner combo, while it smells great, has undetermined effects on the sheen and bounce of my hair -- i'm testing it one more time, and if i see negative after-effects i'm taking it back to CVS for a refund.
b) the stress of the 50 book exam has been making my hair fall out in large quantities. (yes, even now. what, you thought everything would go back to normal as soon as i walked out of the slaughterhouse?) as someone who has always had thick, thick hair, i'm disturbed.
c) i haven't been swimming as much, but the chlorine is doing terrible things to my hair, i just know it. i've started wetting my hair pre-pool, and have even gone back to using dabur hair oil (i smell just like i did in school -- brahmiaamlakeshtel types!) but i don't know how much of an effect that's having yet.

but today, as i was standing on the steps outside the gym waiting for the shuttle so that i could get home, a random, mildly cute indian guy changed his trajectory down the stairs just so that he could stop by me, look me right in the eye, and say, "you have lovely hair."

... and voilà, life is good again!

Ignominy

gautam tambay, you are a shady bugger.

that is all :P

Vestiges

five years ago, on this day -- a cold february evening in boston -- a boy called to break up with me. (yes, on the phone.) i cried about him, the first time in a long time i'd done such a thing. i was heartbroken, because i was really in love. (yes, even at 19.)

i stayed in touch with him, and attracted to him, for a few years thereafter. it was hard to get over him, and it finally took a triangular disaster to make me realize i needed him gone. but it took me more years than that to be able to get rid of the valentine's day gift i'd bought him in anticipation of valentine's day 2003: the cutest little stuffed bunny i've ever seen.

this year, february 7 is sunny and warm-ish, and i'm in a different city -- although boston continues to lure me back every so often -- at a different phase in my life. and i am happy now, and safe, and no longer in love with him... but i think about that friday evening more often than would seem necessary.

perhaps that day was meant to show me how things cannot always be planned. or perhaps its purpose was to teach me how well i heal, despite despair. but the fact is that no matter what the lesson, and no matter how far life carries us from our starting points, these things stay with us. i'm glad this one did with me. so much came after... but it all began with a phone call, all those years ago.

today will be a reflective day, i can just tell.

At This Rate

so far this finals period i have written:

7 pages for heather
17 pages for peter and zack
25 pages for david

i'm currently at 32 pages for ania, aiming for about 40ish.

plus umpteen emails and facebook wall posts, some even with creative bent (one specific person has taken responsibility for precisely 97.3% of my prolific email production -- but the facebook monster is a separate and formidable sinkhole for words words words).

all in less than 3 weeks.

at this rate, i could be done with a dissertation in 6 months. it'd be mad painful (think of the red bull cans i'd accumulate... and the jitters that would keep me bouncing at 4 am... and the amount of wheat thins i'd have to consume...), and it might not even be that good, and i'd keel over and die right after...

but hot damn, i'd be a doctor of awesome!

From Indiana

whoever you are, thanks for this:

The movies lie in many ways, but in this one oh so cruelly. The girl doesn’t wait forever. Love alone is not enough. The ending is not always happy.

sounds like ideology critique to me -- the cynicism as concerns the simultaneous ubiquity and transparency of the dominant discourse, the accusation of the perpetuation of a system of similar cultural artifacts, the angry pessimism of horkheimer at work, that whole spiel -- and oh, of course it could be from my own head (if i had the time to think)...

except it's really a maudlin guest rumination from sex and the ivy: <http://sexandtheivy.com/2007/10/24/an-evolution-of-waiting-guest-post-by-indiana>.

if you haven't read elle yet, start now. she's quite a celebrity in the blogosphere, and in many ways she speaks my life.

Help, I Have No Future!

i know that one of the best things about email (as opposed to, say, the public nature of your facebook wall) is that it's supposed to be private, so that no-one [well, except google's ad servers, or anyone who can find out your password, or anyone who sits down at a machine from which you haven't logged off properly] knows who you're corresponding with, or what unsuitable things you're saying in the shroud of perceived privacy, or what sorts of risible mailing lists you're on.

but sometimes the contents of your mailbox need to be openly advertised to the world. this is one such occasion, because it made me super-sad. my tarot.com weekly romance horoscope says:

Love Horoscope for the Week of:
Monday, August 20, 2007

Sim,




that's it. funny, because i spent all last week juggling the dastardly thought of potential arranged liaisons and the enjoyable security of past connections and the exciting actuality of being in bombay. [code for: there were boys in my life last week, so wtf?!]

now, it's quite possible tarot.com just did the HTML badly on this email, and my romantic future is actually all set, and profitably so at that. but whatever the cause of this glitch, here's an APB to all my boys, real or imagined -- you need to fix this problem, stat.

... Who's Roger?!

"welcome back to the game."

also, and more importantly: the cave, who's on first, integrals, arcade fire/bjork/crowded house, tiny bubbles, c&o, the ugliest sofa in the world, popped collars, hello mr. presumptuous, martin luther, photo booth...

someone owes me some quiche, too.

(if this reads like gibberish, it's because the whole damn thing doesn't make any sense. and yet... so good!)

Acronym Of The Summer

posslq -- persons [of] opposite sex sharing living quarters

my posslq (pronounced poss-el-queue) is cute, sweet, intelligent, funny, a good listener, a total nerd/geek, and a snazzy dresser... and an ice cream fan just like me.

remind me again: why am i leaving virginia in a week?