Well, I'm tired. It amazes me that I can go to the gym three times a week and do the elliptical cross-trainer and be fine, but the thing that totally wipes me out is cleaning up three garbage bags' worth of styrofoam peanuts from my parents' deck.

Yeah, I'm not totally clear on why they were there, but since October they've been in between the deck furniture and the winter deck-furniture-covering tarps, and over the winter the garbage bags degraded and sent peanuts everywhere. So they needed to be cleaned up. Cleaning them up consisted of bending and kneeling while trying not to sit down on the deck, because it was wet and muddy and I'd finally found a pair of clean, well-fitting jeans in my closet and I didn't want to get them filthy right away. So I think tomorrow my legs are going to be quite stiff. (Yeah, going to my parents' house is kind of like being on a game show, but I'm not sure which one--maybe "Super Sloppy Double Dare," maybe "Queen for a Day." The jury's still out.)

But other than that, it was a pleasant day. I set up my freelancing in principle and got my assignment, although I still need to get my computer set up with the tech guy. That's supposed to happen either tomorrow or the next day, though, so next week I'll be raking in the dough. (Well, comparatively.) I also set up an apartment tour on Friday with a prospective renter, since the normal tour-giver is out of town this weekend and our landlord needed someone to show her the vacant apartments. I think it'll be interesting, I'll get to see inside some of the other apartments in our complex, and we'll get a commission if she actually rents, so it's a good deal all around. I'll keep you posted.

Comments
Dr tizzed: Could going to your parents house be like the game show "finder's Keepers"? I'd probably say yes, based on your descriptions...

Today I did what, I feel fairly confident in saying, was possibly the dumbest thing I've ever done. I was making oatmeal bread, and one of the steps was to heat sugar and water and then add it to the flour and yeast. So I heated the sugar mixture until the water was pretty warm but not yet boiling, and then I went to pour it into the flour, but the sugar was stuck on the bottom of the saucepan, and because the top of the mixer was in the way, I couldn't tip the saucepan enough to let it slide out.

At this point, a thinking person would have had the following questions: If the water at the top of the saucepan is pretty warm but not yet boiling, how hot will the sugar be at the bottom of the saucepan, where the heat is? Why is the sugar sticking to the bottom of the saucepan anyhow? Isn't that a spatula sitting right next to the mixer? A non-thinking person, on the other hand, would stick her fingers into the saucepan to scrape out the sugar. Yep. It's true what they say about boiling, half-melted sugar and its heat capacity.

So, the tips of my right fingers have seen better days, but the bread turned out well after all. Other than that, today was the same old same old. I did some work for my mother, got some editing done, and did some laundry. Tomorrow I'm getting set up with the hourly freelancing, so that should be taking up a good chunk of time during April. Actually, apparently this project will last, with additional hours per week, into May, so that's really good news.

Comments
EV: I'm going to pre-empt my mother with this comment: "Princeton material".

Dr tizzed: Actually, its not that dumb. Some people say that a singed index finger on the sugar makes for a better oatmeal bread. Not me, of course, ...but some people... Probably..

Heather: Do the fingers still hurt today?

Jess: Hey, Tizzed, I think that may be among the lyrics in Sweeney Todd. It hurts, but only when I push on it. It's not constantly throbbing. I ran it under cold water for a long time yesterday, and I think that helped.

Well, today was another gorgeous day. I feel about the weather lately sort of the way you do when you have a really bad cold and then suddenly you can breathe again--for a few days, every time you take a breath it just seems amazing that your nose is functioning. I'm amazed that the sun is shining and the temperature is just exactly perfect, but it's supposed to rain tomorrow, so I think I'll snap back to a more realistic weather frame of mind. (Not that I'm complaining. I'll take rain any day.)

Because of the nice weather, I was inspired to putter around the apartment more than usual. I raised all the storm windows and dropped all the screens, and I hung out the wind chimes and put my plants outside for the afternoon to catch some fresh air. My plants really aren't looking good, I have to say. The basil plants are abysmal, but the tomatoes and green onions aren't exactly thriving either--they're very droopy and sad. I think I may be overwatering them. The hot peppers look all right, for now, but I really hope that's not all I get out of that round of planting.

Now I'm catching up on the writing work I procrastinated on during the day. It's going to be a busy week--I have work from my mother and I'm supposed to start my hourly freelance too--so I really wanted to get some editing on my book done. I find that if I slack off with editing in the beginning of the week, I have a hard time picking it back up, and that's especially true if I have paying work to do. If I make a good start, though, I'm usually motivated to keep going. And if it rains all week, I won't be tempted anymore to go skipping around the neighborhood rolling a hoop and holding a lollipop the size of my head, so everything might come together quite nicely.

Comments
EV: The image of you rolling a hoop is so awesome I can't deal. Especially since I think you'd get it about 6 feet before it got out of your control and into the street.

Today was another lovely spring day here in the 'Burgh, and we took full advantage of it. My parents couldn't use their symphony tickets because they were taking care of Ethel (she's home now), so they gave them to us and we took the bus downtown for the matinee. I used to go to Sunday symphony matinees with my mother when I was in high school, and they were OK, but my parents have pretty seriously upgraded their seats since then (and I don't blame them--it would be a shame to waste a good seat on a fourteen-year-old who's going to fall asleep anyhow), so this was an enhanced experience. Fortunately, neither of us dozed off or gave in to our urges to throw things over the balcony. The performance was greatly enhanced when the featured violinist's string broke in the middle of his solo, which has to be a nightmare experience, but we were a friendly crowd and we all laughed politely and then applauded. All in all, it was a good time.

After the symphony, we walked around for a little looking for restaurants, and ended up at a nice one across from the symphony hall. It was a little depressing to see how few restaurants were open, but I guess they cater mostly to businesspeople and wouldn't get enough business to stay open on the weekends. The one we ended up at was definitely good, though. It was schmancy without being annoyingly fashionable--the sort of place everyone's grandpa would consider a real night on the town because, via the bread, salad, and side dishes that accompany the meal, you really get your money's worth there. And the food was quite tasty.

I do have a dining enigma for all of you, though. Before we ordered, we were served a basket of bread with butter--so far, so good--and, at the same time, a dish of un- or scarcely-cooked vegetables, cut into fairly large pieces, that included tomatoes (yeah, yeah, don't start), onions, peppers, and celery. Possibly they had been tossed in a trace amount of olive oil. It wasn't clear to either of us what they were for, but they remained on the table throughout the meal. I had some on bread, and Robbie thought this was possibly incorrect, but it tasted good, and I went back to my basic Pittsburgh-dining philosophy, which is "Whatever, it's not like anyone else here knows better than I do." But, just in case I'm ever dining in a city that does intimidate me, I'd like to know the correct procedure. Thoughts?

Comments
JR: Hmm... I like to think I'm restaurant saavy, but I can't imagine why large hunks of veggie came to your table. Sounds vaguely central Asian. Who knows. If correct procedure was a concern of the house, they wouldn't be supplying patrons with random onion. Next time maybe arrange it all in the shape of a question mark and send it back.

matt lippert: It sounds like the Pittsburgh version of a crudite platter. Usually these things have cherry tomatoes and/or green onions, not the full sized versions. At least they didn't serve you a jello mold.

As of about four o'clock this afternoon, I was all set to write a long, angry blog entry about our total failure to change our hubcaps effectively and how half the car now has old hubcaps and the other half has new ones, and how I'm going to have to go to a tire place this week and beg them to take the old hubcaps off because Honda is apparently the only car manufacturer that puts the hubcap behind the bolts and we can't get the bolts off ourselves, and Robbie and I screamed at each other for half an hour about this because we both felt like complete incompetents, and then we stopped screaming and he very nicely offered to make me a margarita and I spilled it on the sofa and my pants and my sweater so that all of those things smelled like sticky tequila, and I about was ready to cry, but I had such a lovely evening that I don't think I will after all.

Instead, I'll tell you about my evening. Tonight we went out with Tizzed and his girlfriend, also known as my friend from high school, to dinner at Primanti's and then to a hockey game. Dinner was, as usual, superlative--I had the double egg and cheese sandwich with the fries and coleslaw built in, and it was very good. Then we had some time to kill, so we drove up to Mount Washington in the brand-new Tizzedmobile and looked at the view. It was a nice, clear, warm evening and we all pointed lots of stuff out to Tizzed, and so that was fun (and, for anyone who was wondering, the McArdle Roadway has been reopened).

Then we hit the hockey game. I'd never been to a professional hockey game before, and I had a great time. The highlight for me was probably when the Pens scored a goal during a power play and everyone in the arena won a free gallon of windshield wiper fluid--there's no roar like the roar of a crowd that's anticipating cost-free windshield cleaning, let me tell you. I'm also quite enamored of the Pens' mascot, Iceburgh, whose body I believe was designed using the exact same template as they used for the Pirates Parrot. Unfortunately, the game ended in a tie. I realized that by restricting my sports viewing almost exclusively to playoffs, I'd never actually seen a game end in a tie before. That was a letdown, but the overall experience was still outstanding.

Then we came home and I had a spirited discussion with Tizzed, who wanted me to gauge his hotness compared to practically everyone. I won't bore you with the details, but I can give you the gist in the following exchange:

T: You and Heather and Julie didn't sit around writing in notebooks about who was hot in the physics department, did you?
J: Well, sure, but I can't tell you what we said. That would violate the rules of the "Who's Hot in the Physics Department" club.
T: (laughs nervously) You didn't really, did you?

Now I'm going to bed. My throat is hoarse from yelling: at the hockey game, about the hubcaps, and while defending Matt Doty's cuteness against an onslaught of male outrage. I need a rest.

Comments
EV: Pro hockey games are F-U-N fun. Also, when you drove up Mt. Washington for the view, did you "park"?

Heather: Um, Ted and Robbie don't think Matt Doty is hot?

Jess: Ted didn't exactly say he didn't think Matt was hot, but he got a little het up when he was asking for his ranking and I said I thought Matt might be cuter than him (I did point out that Matt has feminine hips, and also that his fashion sense is at times appalling--but other than those two things, I think he's darn cute).

Jess: Ah, and there was no parking. There was a little white-knuckle driving, going up a steep windy mountainous road with Ted saying "I just can't figure out what gear I'm supposed to be in," but we got there in one piece. And his new car is pretty sweet.

Dr tizzed: I must defend myself against such an onslaught.... But I'm late for a meeting. It was not Matt doty I got so upset about, tho...

Megan of Switzerland: Just for the record, Seth of Lumbi said (unprompted) that he thought Matt Doty was a very good looking guy. He never said nuthin bout you, Tizzed. Sorry.

Sometimes, if you're lucky, a friend comes into your life who destroys your dining room chair with a fork, and force-feeds you disgusting hot-flavored chocolates in the middle of your very important phone conversation about your great-aunt's medical condition, and breaks a hole clean through the bathroom wall of your rental apartment with a shower rod, and smashes electronic equipment when you make her angry, and pitches a fit when you tell her she can't drink red wine while she's helping you try on your wedding dress, and (most likely) steals your hubcap. But only if you're very, very lucky. I have Heather, who turns 28 today, and you all can get your own.

And Heather, by the way, apparently witnessed Pittsburgh's spring in its entirety. On Monday it was 30 degrees and flurrying, and today it was 75, sunny, and humid. It was incredibly nice out, even though the weather report threatened rain, and I got to take a five-mile walk around the park with my friend. Now it's almost 10:30, I'm sitting on the sofa in shorts and a T-shirt, the window is open, and I'm still pretty warm. Expect me to start whining about the heat any day now.

And that's pretty much it. I did some paying work this morning, which is always good--and I'm very happy that that's going to be the order of the day for the next several weeks at least. Oh, and I need to give mad props to Hilatron of Blogatron fame, who emailed me some brilliant ideas this morning after giving serious consideration to my public plea for non-foofy cross-stitch patterns. I think cross-stitch will become the new knitting any day now. I also think Pittsburgh will be the new Seattle, though, so it's up to you how seriously you take that.

Comments
EV: Hilatron is good for many, many things, and providing artistic inspiration (or really, the entire artistic content of what you want to say you made) is definitely one of them.

EV: Oh, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY HEATHER! Abadee, abadee.

Heather: Thanks, EV! I'll own up to the disgusting chocolate and shower curtain incidents, but the others are fabricated. Oh, and Robbie had almost as much to do with the disgusting chocolate as I did. He was 100% blameless with the shower curtain thing, of course.

Jess: No way. The dining room chair incident is unproven, yes, and the hubcap-stealing is merely a theory based on circumstantial evidence, but the rest of it is 100% factual. If you're willing to accept that a remote control is electronic equipment, I mean. But I think it is.

Well, Heather left today. We had a great time, as always, and I was really sorry to see her go (even though I'm fairly certain she stole our hubcap). I have to say, though, that if any day would come close to consoling me, today was probably it.

First of all, the weather was gorgeous--it was warm, it was sunny in the afternoon, and I actually saw a rabbit, rabbiting around. And as if that wasn't enough, this afternoon I went to King's (a local Denny's-type restaurant) with my mom, and I ate a strange and wonderful new food product: fried macaroni and cheese triangles, with ranch dressing. It was one of the few food experiences I've had that I would describe as exhilarating--new, alluring, a little frightening, and, at least in the long term, certainly heart-stopping. To top it all off, I took a spin on their Big Wheel of Dessert and won a free after-dinner sundae, which I'm saving for another day. All told, it was one of the greatest food experiences that I've ever had.

Oh, I got some really good news two days ago--I got two freelance assignments, both through my old company. One is to write several entries for a new website (the same website that I wrote an entry for about a month ago), and the other is doing some freelance tasks for a different website for about ten hours a week. I also have some work in April through my mom, so it's shaping up to be a busy month after all. I'm very excited--a little worried about getting any work done on my book in the next month, but I think I'll be able to fit something in.

The news about Ethel has all been good, although not conclusively good, if that makes any sense. They're not finding anything actually bad, but they still don't really know what's going on. Apparently the tests they're running will take another couple of days to complete, and I'll let you all know what they find.

Comments
Dr. Tizzed: I've first seen Fried Mac/cheese on "Good Eats". It looked awesome. Never eaten it though.. And as I've been saying forever, Ranch dressing is the new ketchup. Works better on anything than ketchup.

robbie: I like Ceasar dressing on anything myself. There is also the 1000 island dressing of in-and-out burger fame. BTW Tizzed, I would watch your back in Pittsburgh after making inflamitory statements about ketchup like that......

JR: The pizza place at Dartmouth serves breadsticks with ranch dressing. It is indeed delicious.

Lizzie: outback serves cheese fries with ranch dressing . . . super sinful but YUM. Thanks for telling me about uberloaf jess.

Dr tizzed: Why stop at fries? Try it on a hamburger... mmmm...... Try it on uberloaf ...mmmmm..... Falafel? You betcha! mmmmmmm...

matt lippert: A&W serves 1000 island as 'fry sauce' which is good, but not as good as ketchup. It really belongs on the burger.

This is a very, very quick update to say that:

1) We are having a fabulous time;
2) Ethel got some promising test results, so while she is by no means in the clear, it's less worrisome than it was; and
3) I'll be back tomorrow.

Well, this will just be a quick entry to let you all know that Heather got here, and we're having a good time, and I'll try to update sooner, but at the very least I'll be updating on Thursday when she leaves.

Also, Ethel got unfortunate results from her CT scan today--evidently she has an abcess in her abdomen, which explains some of the pain she's been having. It's the kind of thing where they need to check it to see what's causing it, and the possible cause runs the gamut from something perfectly benign to something very bad. (It's times like this when I thank my lucky stars that one of my friends is a nurse, because she was very informative about this when I talked to her tonight.) So, please keep your fingers crossed. She's going into the hospital tomorrow, and if any news emerges I'll let you all know.

Tomorrow we're going to the Carnegie, then to a post-Italy reception, then getting some dinner. Should be fun...

Comments
Chi: http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-china12mar21,1,983381.story?coll=la-home-magazine an article on the Yangtze river you might find interesting. I wish they had those nice cruise ships when I went in 1994...

Hmmm.... I knew I was forgetting something when I went to bed last night...

Anyhow, yesterday was Ethel's birthday party. We had it in the library of the nursing home where Dottie's staying, and it was absolutely as festive as a birthday party in the library of a nursing home could be. There was a cake, and Robbie got Ethel a big spangly hat that said "Birthday Queen," and she got lots of presents. The highlight for me was when Robbie got halfway into the story about his great-great-uncle whose body was sent off for medical dissection after he died working on the French Panama Canal. He'd just gotten to the part where the guy died, and then both he and I suddenly remembered that Dottie has the mistaken but firmly held belief that people are chasing her trying to dissect her brain, and she might only hear half the story and think that her brain is being sent to Panama for medical research. So he switched in midsentence to talking about Samuel Gompers.

After the party Robbie and I went down to this Mexican place in my parents' neighborhood, Mad Mex, for lunch. I hadn't been there since we moved back, and actually I hadn't been there for a long while before we moved back because my mother thinks it's too noisy, so that was a treat. It's not especially authentic, but it's the closest thing I've had for a while, and plus I had a margarita. Something about busting out of my great-aunt's birthday party in the middle of the day and having a margarita right in my parents' neighborhood made me feel pleasantly dangerous.

Then, through some miracle, I actually accomplished everything I wanted to do yesterday, including editing, with very little stress, and so Robbie went out in the driving rain and rented X-Men 2. Let me tell you, there's nothing like a 19-inch TV screen to convey the majesty of this film. But it was fun anyhow, and I made another photo album while I was watching. Now it's snowing, and I see it's supposed to flurry tomorrow as well. Spring, my foot.

Comments
JR: I love a good Samuel Gompers story. But then who doesn't?

The thing about very productive days like the one I had today is that they actually don't produce much fodder for blogging. I can report, though, that I got a lot of editing done, and I'm trying to stay upbeat about the fact that I'm still only on the third chapter out of fourteen. I also made a bread pudding and read some more William Saroyan.

Oh, one exciting thing did happen today--we got invited to what is being called the SOCIAL EVENT OF THE CENTURY (sorry, I normally avoid the all-caps thing, but those in the know apparently always use all caps, like e.e. cummings in reverse), our friend Debbie's wedding. Although we are both quite fond of Debbie, and once Robbie set her toaster oven on fire, our fondness for her is disproportionate to the amount of time we've actually spent together, so we weren't sure if we'd be invited. But here we are, and I'm very excited, although we're still trying to figure out if we can actually make it. It's in Boston in May, and if we're going we'll need to get tickets soon, but I figure it's a justified expense because not only do we want to go to the wedding, but we could also visit some other fine Bostonians that weekend. So we'll see.

Tomorrow is Ethel's birthday. Who wants to guess how old she'll be? To spice things up, let's play by Price Is Right rules.

Comments
AJ: hmmmmm I'll say she is 1 that way I'll win if no one else guesses or if everyone goes over.

Dr. Tizzed: Um.. .... 49.99 Bob! Oh, wait. 87 is more reasonable

EV: Yay, Jess is coming to Boston! Which weekend is it? If it's the first, the 22nd, or the 29th, we'll be out of town for weddings. And I heard Megan refer to Debbie's wedding as THE SOCIAL EVENT OF THE CENTURY as well. Which makes me sad that I haven't been bosom buddies with all of Jeremy's girlfriends the way I am with the current one.

Lizzie: Not only will you get to visit with fine Bostonians, but also with Liz of the pantyhose fame (I'm still not sure why though), Megan the Swiss one, and of course the undeniably awesome Heather (and matt). =-) So I would say that it is SO worth the ticket.

Jess: It's the,er, 8th? 9th? Evie, I'll try to email you at some point this weekend to discuss logistics. We still need to talk about tickets, but I think it's likely if not certain. Ted wins it, right on the nose.

Debbie: Umm, I'm pretty sure the wedding was being called the SOCIAL EVENT OF THE YEAR, which seemed like kind of a lot of pressure, but now it seems to have been upgraded to event of the CENTURY, which is definately too much pressure, even with it being a relatively new century and all. But it would be maahvelous to see you guys if you did make it up!

Debbie: Oh, and maybe I should say "Hi Jess!", since I hadn't previously written anything. Your blog is connected to Megan's, which I just discovered last week. It's all smashing good fun.

EV: Oh, nice one, Evie-- Debbie, now that I know you read Jess's blog, I'm realizing that my comment above is like totally uncool. So sorry!

Dr. Tizzed: Does that make 2 non-prizes for me in a week? And do I get to fish the 100 dollar bill out of your pocket as well for getting it exactly right?

Jess: 1. Julie won the other no-prize.
2. No.

Debbie: Goodness, Evie, no worries.

I've reached a watershed moment--today, for the first time, I had to fight the urge to call a younger woman "hon." I hate women who call strangers "hon," and I never thought this would happen to me.

The scenario: I'd just squeezed my car into a tiny spot in front of our house, and I was feeling awfully proud of my parking skills, when a few girls (maybe seventeen or eighteen years old) got into the car in front of me. The driver sat there for a moment, stymied, and then wiggled the car a bit, and then reversed smack into my bumper, hard. I got out and took a look, and everything looked fine so I gave her the thumbs-up. Apparently, though, this can be interpreted as a menacing gesture, just like the universal gesture for "you have a cell phone resting on your rear windshield wiper" can be misinterpreted as "we will take your children from your backseat and dash them on the rocks and call our friends to brag," because the poor girl rolled down the window and said, piteously, "I'm just trying to leave." She looked like she was going to burst into tears, so I waved her back and forth, and then I said "I think you're fine to go now," and that's where I wanted to add "hon," but thankfully I stopped myself. It's a matter of time, though.

Today my mother and I picked a place for Dottie to go, at least temporarily. We talked to a couple of places on the phone and then visited this one, and it seems very nice. There were plenty of activities and lots of noise and people, which everyone else in my family would hate but I think Dottie will like. They also have a cat at the reception desk, which I thought was nice. When we told Dottie where she was going she reacted with extreme ambivalence, but I'm hoping it works out.

Ah, and I learned something interesting this evening. If your husband wants to make stir-fry but you neglect to buy Calrose rice, you can maintain domestic harmony by substituting arborio rice--they're both short-grain. It's a little different, but much better than regular American rice would be.

Comments
EV: I'm still trying to force the brown rice on the stir-fry. He's so mainstream.

Chi: can you send me a picture of your hair too? also, if you could include a video of the "you have a cell phone resting on your rear windshield wiper" gesture that would be great -- I was a little bit confused about that.

Jess: I'll send you a picture, but I think the video would be too big. There are three key motions--jerking a finger over your shoulder to indicate the rear of the car, moving your forearm from parallel to the ground to perpendicular to the ground to indicate the windshield wiper (like you're fanning your nose but bigger), and then holding a pretend phone to your ear. If you try these out, I think you'll see what I mean.

Matthew Lippert: Although I approve of the substitution of arborio for calrose (or the other way around), I should point out that Calrose is about as American as it gets. It's all from Sacramento.

You all know that I'm not even remotely arrogant when it comes to my appearance, right? I mean, I like to think that I'm no bag of teeth, but some excellent impartial judges have rated me no more than a six on a ten-point scale, and I think this is about right.

I say all this so that there will be no rolling of the eyes and obscene-gesturing of the hands when I tell you that my newly cut and blondenated hair looks fantastic. I've been tossing it to and fro, like a Breck girl, and smiling in the mirror all evening. If I send you all a picture of my hair, will you promise to immediately erase all other hair memories you have of me? Thanks. You're all pals.

Today was a fulfilling day in terms of exposure to the arts as well. I listened to a CD that I've had for a while, of the music to Alvin Ailey's "Revelations." It's been a while, and I'd forgotten how good it was. I also started reading a book of the short stories of William Saroyan. I'd never heard of him until I read that some author or another liked him, and so I got this book a while ago, and I'm just now getting to it. It's really good--this afternoon at the hair place I read one of the best short stories I've ever read.

But it snowed. And although I know that you're all tired of hearing about the snow, I'm going to keep on telling you, because it's the only way that you'll come to loathe the snow as much as I do. If it's not melted by the time Heather gets here, heads are going to roll. Not mine, though, because it would mess up the hair.

Comments
EV: Since your hair has not changed in the 10 years that I've known you, except for the blondenation, I would like a picture please. Also, you don't have to tell me from snow.

Jess: I'll send you a picture, but I think it was blonde last summer when you saw me. It's getting blonder, though. Soon I'll look exactly like Carol Channing.

EV: No I know, I've seen you with the blonde, but you implied that you got a new cut. Was that misleading?

Jess: The cut is not super-different than other cuts I've had, it just turned out really well this time. It's at a good place relative to my chin.

I was at the JCC tonight and there was a sign on the door of the women's locker room that said "Water-Walking Class has been cancelled." The best quip derived from this will win, as Michael Chabon once said to me (and you have no idea how long I've wanted to drop that phrase), a no-prize. Preference will be given to the non- or only-gently offensive. After all, this is, as Brett pointed out, a PG-13 blog.

We got two inches of snow today, and more is predicted. This seems cruel in the extreme. The snow was thick and wet, and it must have knocked down a power line somewhere because I woke up when the alarm first went off at eight, decided I'd sleep until the next snooze went off, and then woke up again at ten, very confused, and all the appliances were off. It came back on pretty quickly, though.

A great-aunt update: Ethel is not in the hospital, but my mom thinks she will be by this weekend. She's having a CT scan on Thursday. Dottie is still in the hospital--she was set to come home today, but then she had kind of a spell and her blood pressure dropped, so they're keeping her another night. I'm going with my mother tomorrow to have my hair cut and re-blondenated (a nice thing about having brothers-in-law, rather than sisters-in-law, is that I was at least 50% sure this weekend that they weren't mouthing "What's with Stripey?" every time I turned my head), so I should get a full update then.

Comments
Dr. Tizzed: "water-walking class has been cancelled" We've given up trying to find the messiah here in Pittsburgh...

JR: ...Instructor is feeling cross? Terrible. If the winner gets a no-prize, then surely I'm entitled to a prize.

Jess: These are two good contenders, but I think the no-prize goes to JR.

Naturally, any Monday that follows one of the rockingest weekends ever will be kind of slow and unpleasant, but given that, this Monday was not bad at all. I got some work done on a grant proposal for my mother (that is, it's a grant proposal my mom's been working on, I'm not accepting proposals for a new mother) and I cleaned the apartment a bit, and I did some reading. I've been reading a really interesting nonfiction book about the Yangtze River called The River At The Center Of The World. The author sails up the Yangtze from Shanghai, with the idea that going upstream in the river is also going back through Chinese history. It's a neat book, and I really recommend it (unless the last two hundred pages take a sharp turn for the worse, in which case I'll let you know).

I also came up with one of the few real genius ideas I think I've ever had. It's for a photo essay called "At My Ex's Wedding" and, predictably, would be a collection of photos of people at the weddings of their ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends. Some might be drunk, some might be weeping, some might look completely fabulous. Who's with me?

On the down side, Dottie is back in the hospital and Ethel, I suspect, will be going there herself shortly. Dottie is really OK, at least physically, and I think she'll just be there overnight. I'll keep you all posted.

Comments
EV: I can send you a really good picture for your photo essay.

Jess: Do! If it's the wedding and the ex I'm thinking of, it's actually who I was thinking of when I said "looking completely fabulous"... or maybe it's someone else's. Either way.

Matthew Lippert: So, to which ancient Chinese dynasty does the Three Gorges Dam belong then?

Hilatron: Good luck to the aunties! I don't have any pictures for your essay, unfortunately, though I'm sort of sad I don't have a picture of me, circa age 16, attending the wedding of the 8th-grade English teacher I had a huuuuuge crush on. That was an ensemble to be remembered, for sure.

Jess: Yeah, I thought about expanding it... although a key part of the ex- thing is that everyone knows who you are, so they're kind of watching you. Which I guess would also be true if you had a really public crush. Matt, I just read the chapter on Three Gorges Dam. It was interesting. The author is against it, but he did a good job presenting the pro side, which for me made the con side even more compelling.

Matthew Lippert: Well, the best thing I can say about the Three Gorges Dam is that it didn't displace as many people as the Narmada dam and didn't flood a national park like Hetch Hetchy or Glen Canyon. Sigh...

How rocking was my weekend, you ask? When we got back to Adam's apartment from last night's festivities, the birds were up and chirping. That's just how rocking it was. Among the highlights: we had all-you-can-eat sushi, we rode around and around Arlington National Cemetery in a Cadillac with a customized ceiling, I won a game of darts last night for us (though we did lose another game), and we went on another extremely tall escalator in Rosslyn, which previously I only knew as the place where President Bartlett got shot, but now I know as the place with a bar with a clock that's eight minutes fast. I discovered, also, that Brett has a strong dislike of extremely tall escalators. It's not a fear, exactly, I don't think, but the concept seems to horrify him. He decided that it's because he's tall and I'm short, and so I don't see them from his lofty, precarious perspective. I don't know.

And now I'm premiering a new blog feature. I don't know if this will alternate with or just supplement Something That's Destroying The Fabric Of American Society And Something That Isn't, but we'll see. It's called I Thought It Was Really Funny, But You Probably Had To Be There.

This week's I Thought It Was Really Funny, But You Probably Had To Be There came on Friday night, when Robbie and his brothers and I were hanging out at their aunt and uncle's house before dinner. Adam and I were talking about Heather's upcoming DC visit, and Adam asked me what her sister Meagan does. I said she worked at the patent office, and he said he wondered if the systems for interoffice memos there were all Rube Goldbergesque, with pneumatic tubes and so forth. I said probably you'd roll a memo down a little ramp, and then Adam said it would get flung a few feet in a slingshot, and then I said something about a xylophone, and then Adam made a kind of plunkety-plunkety sound to evoke an interoffice memo rolling through a Rube Goldbergesque invention, and we laughed and laughed. It was really funny.

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Heather: Well, I'm a geek, but I think it's pretty funny...

Megan of Switzerland: See, it is really lucky that I have been reading past episodes of West Wing on Television Without Pity. I was only confused for a few seconds about this escalator -located presidential assassination that I have heard nothing about. I first assumed that it was a shameful gap in my knowledge of history, not a shameful gap in my knowledge of popular culture.

Jess: I think the shooting was just in Rosslyn, not necessarily on the escalator. Although maybe it was, and that's part of Brett's horror.

I'm feeling much more energetic, and it's a good thing, because tomorrow we're heading to Washington, DC to visit Adam and Brett. (And Phil, obviously.) Last time, as you'll remember, I stayed up later than I had in years, and this time I'm thinking about not sleeping at all and just rocking on, constantly rocking, for forty-eight hours. We'll see how that goes.

In other news, Heather has her tickets to come visit the week after next. I'm not sure what sort of activities we'll have for her--she said she was eager to see my regular weekday life, but I don't know if she can handle the crazy merry-go-round of staring at blank sheets of paper and watching "Switched." It's the sort of thing you have to work up to, you know.

So, I'll be back on Sunday, full of stories that I'm not allowed to tell you. Apparently by Sunday there's supposed to be nice, warm weather here, and so I'm thinking DC will be practically tropical. It's supposed to snow overnight here tonight, though, which is more or less draining my will to live. Only the hope of all-you-can-eat sushi is sustaining me right now.

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Heather: I think I can handle it. Well, maybe I'll be ready for it by Wednesday.

So tired. So very very tired. I'll say that nothing happened today, except that I worked most of the day and earned some money, and that will have to suffice. Seriously, that's it, anyhow.

I'm stunned that none of you entered my contest. Was it apathy because the answer was so obvious? Robbie thought someone would snap it up within five minutes. Other than the two of us, the only person who I know reads this blog who's also in the photo is Matt Doty. Matt?

I borrowed my father's They Might Be Giants greatest hits CD today, and as I was listening to it on the way home from my parents' house, I was trying to decide what my favorite song of theirs is. I finally narrowed it down to either "Mammal" or "I Palindrome I" if I'm in the mood to dork out, and either "Ana Ng" or "Don't Let's Start" in terms of actual goodness. For a long time my favorite was "She's An Angel," but I listened to it too much my freshman year of college, I think, and now I'm tired of it. And then there's the classic "Minimum Wage," although that's too short to count as a real song, I think.

Other than that, it was an uneventful day. (Which is to say, it was an uneventful day.) I went to my parents' and did real work on a grant proposal, for which I will be paid real money that I will use to buy real things. And the gravy train just keeps on rolling--I'm going there again tomorrow. I don't like to jinx myself, but I think 2004 will be a four-figure year for sure. Oh, and I heard that my old boss had her second baby, and named her Marina Kate. I really, really like that name, and since we don't plan to move back to SB, I think we can steal it for our own future baby. Of course, by the time Robbie and I actually have a baby, we'll probably be driving in rocket cars and assigning children numbers instead of names, but just in case. Or we can name the basil plant or something.

Comments
EV: "She's an Angel" is still my favorite. While we did listen to it to death freshman year, that's now 10 years ago and I haven't listened to it much since (Tape of No Band has been sitting under the car seat for a bit too long). Plus, when I saw TMBG in concert, they sang that which I totally didn't expect because it's sooo old, so that rejuvenated it for me. Anyway.

JR: Don't Let's Start is definitely up there in the goodness category. I think I was sick of Birdhouse by age 15, but it really is quality. (How many other songs can you Smurfdance to? Hello!) I feel like there's some good stuff on John Henry, I just haven't listened it to it in a long time. Is there anything from it on the hits disc?

It snowed today. I'm outraged. There must be someone, possibly Pittsburgh Post-Gazette consumer advocate Yvonne Zanos, that I can go to about this, right? Pittsburgh Post-Gazette consumer advocate Yvonne Zanos has been around a long time, and I have faith that she'll be able to handle this. If not, does anyone know if Call For Action is still around?

On the bright side, on Saturday I tracked down and emailed the woman who had our phone number before we did, because we were getting an alarming number of calls for her and her husband (about one an hour) from Chase Manhattan, and Chase Manhattan kept calling even though we said they weren't here anymore, and she wrote back today and was very nice and gave me her new number to give out if we keep getting calls for them. I'm especially pleased because I could tell Robbie thought emailing her was a total crackpot idea and that I was one step away from conspiracy butter theories, so it's nice that it worked out perfectly well. As it turns out, Chase Manhattan didn't call today, but we're well prepared if they do.

Tonight I worked on my first Santa Barbara photo album, which, logically, covers the first year that we lived in Santa Barbara. It's great fun--my especial favorite is the series of photos that Craig made us take of a box of his that was damaged in shipping, so that he could sue the pants off UPS. Since we still have the photos, I suspect nothing came of that, but he certainly did make us take a lot of them. Runner-up is a photo of me, Niki, Adam, and Ben at Reunions 1999 that the Princeton Borough police should blow up and put in the tap room of every eating club to give added strength to their anti-drinking initiative. Everyone looks bad (except Ben, who looks kinda perky), but I have a visible, uncovered beer gut and appear to be in the middle of some curse word, and generally look much more like John Belushi than I usually strive for in daily life.

Oh, and there's a great photo of Matt taking video up Craig's shorts. And there's another great photo of Craig walking around topless, with Buebbles ogling him. What is it about Craig and the unstoppable sex appeal? Is it the trombone? Anyhow, apropos of all these photos, I have a contest for you all (although I admit that those of you who I don't know from Santa Barbara are at a pretty serious disadvantage): I have a photo from the fall of 1998 taken in someone's apartment. In the upper left corner of the photo, peeking out tastefully from the bottom of a poster, are the words "Out Uterus." Whose apartment was this taken in? For bonus points, name everyone in the photo.

Comments
matt lippert: I have no idea where that picture was taken, but it was a beautiful sunny 80 degrees here today, so I'm not too worried about it.

Jess: Today's forecast in Lexington, KY: 39 degrees, with snow showers.

Adam: "a box of his that"? I don't know what you mean, but "his that" sounds like something you do NOT want damaged in shipping.

Jess: I suspect Craig's that was misdirected by UPS years ago... Although the beefcake photos we have of him might indicate the contrary. I suppose I could have said "...a box of his, which was..." but since he had several boxes and only one was damaged in shipping, that didn't seem quite right grammatically.

JR: Craig! What ever happened to Craig?

Jess: Soon he will be wed, if the INS comes through. Actually, I think by now it's in the hands of the Italian INS equivalent.

Something That's Destroying The Fabric Of America And Something That Isn't is on hiatus this week. To be honest, I've been pretty apathetic this week, and nothing seems especially destructive or constructive. This week, I'll try to get more involved in things.

It's about forty-five degrees in our apartment. Well, the living room is toasty because of the space heater, but the other rooms are pretty cold. It's actually colder than it was at points this winter when the outside air temperature was much more frigid, and I suspect I know why--our downstairs neighbor, who I think controls the heat for the whole building, is often out of town on the weekends. On Friday, you'll recall, it was seventy-five degrees out, and any sensible person would have shut off the heat entirely and gone on her merry weekending way. Unfortunately, the outside air temperature has plummeted by about thirty-five degrees since then, and it's pretty amazingly cold in here. She should be back soon, though, so I think conditions will improve.

Robbie and I went to see Starsky & Hutch today. I wasn't sure what to expect--I knew it was a comedy, and about cops, but I don't think I ever saw the original series on TV. It was pretty funny. Definitely not, you know, something you'll devote a lot of thought to, but perfect entertainment for a weekend afternoon. And I was quite fond of the soundtrack.

I want to draw your collective attention to Heather's new blog, Weathering. She's more into the brief bon mot (or Mot Heather, as my father would say) than the lengthy essay, but I suspect great things will come from it, even if its style differs from mine. After all, I agree with everything she's ever said or thought in her life. I also expect Robbie to start a blog any day now, because he said he would if Heather ever did, but now he's hemming and hawing and saying he really will if Chi does.

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Heather: I just haven't gotten started on all the E! True Hollywood Stories reviews yet. Just you wait.

EV: Careful with those space heaters, they've been known to kill.

Jess: Ours is extremely (some might even say paranoically) safe. It's a big permanent model that vents through the wall, not the portable kind. Also, it's got a thermocouple to cut the gas off if the flame goes out, and the thermocouple is, if anything, oversensitive. The little ones do freak me out, though I used one in my office at UCSB because it was just too cold not to sometimes.

Chi: I think Robbie should show some spine and start writing his blog like he said he would.

Robbie: I don't see your blog anywhere.... Or is "Dooce" your pseudonym?

Chi: well, I never claimed that I would start writing one after Heather started writing one either. Or are you calling your wife a liar?!?!

Robbie: She has been know to exagerate. I believe, but cannot prove, that she exploits my poor memory of conversations to get me stuck in situations like this.....

Jess: I think that's why Nixon started taping everything, kid. Rather than get in a spat about this, why don't you both just start blogs?

Chi: or, Robbie could start a blog and I could not. I don't have anything interesting to say, anyway.

Today I slept until 11, which I haven't done, I think, since we went to visit Adam in October. It was outstanding. Then I talked to Heather, and then we went to my parents' house. Dottie and Ethel are finally back from the rehab place, so we had pizza and then Robbie and I played blackjack with them and held a spelling bee while my parents ran some errands. Dottie won the spelling bee (since she can't hear, I gave her full credit if she spelled any word at all), and the blackjack had mixed results.

So, it was pretty uneventful. We have absolutely no plans for tomorrow, other than to get our plane tickets for Buebbesfest, and we've had those plans for the past two weeks with no action. I'm hoping that we sleep until 11 again, though. A girl can dream.

Comments
EV: Man, I sleep till 11 every single weekend day, and I would do it every day if I could. But that's because my circadian rhythm is set to a different solar system.

Jess: You may already know this, but human circadian rhythms are, on average, 25 hours long. That's why people have a natural desire to sleep in. Apparently all animals have circadian rhythms between 23-25 hours, so they can all be shoehorned into a 24-hour day, but any species with a circadian rhythm longer than 24 hours will sleep in when deprived of natural cues.

AWG: Well, I don't know if this is the geological equivalent of an urban legend, but I thought the reason our rhythms are 25 hours is that the day was approximately 25 hours' long at some point in our evolutionary past.

It's a sad day when you realize that although you may have the face, hair, and aversion to makeup of an eleven-year-old girl, you are now in fact too old to wake up in the morning and walk directly to the squash court without doing something to your back that will make you, for the rest of the day, have to plant your feet thirty inches apart in order to be able to bend down, sloooooowly, and pick something up. I don't even know what I did, although I suspect that one of the times I slammed into the wall at full speed dislodged something important. Still, though. I used to be able to do that.

Other than that, though, I had a charming day (in the interest of full disclosure, some of the charm may have had to do with the Aleve I took). It was seventy-five degrees out and when I went to the store to get some eggs, everyone I passed on the street was happy, even the crazy people. The high school kids were back on the corner, and people were smiling, and it was great. As I said to Heather, it was kind of like being in France at the Liberation, although I suppose I didn't see anyone climbing a statue with a bottle of wine, and I wasn't grabbed and kissed by any sailors.

Here's a question for you all to ponder: I just saw a Visa commercial for the Billy Joel musical "Movin' Out." All the men in the musical are wearing chinos, but they're moving their legs in ways that I think are impossible in traditional, non-dance chinos. What properties do you suppose Billy Joel musical chinos have in common with regular chinos, and in what ways do you suspect that they're different?

Comments
Dr. Tizzed: Sad to hear about your back. Perhaps you pulled your 'erector spinae' muscle? And what is the difference between a chino and a khaki?

EV: Careful with that-- one of our P-ton friends crashed into the door of a squash court a month ago and busted through it. BUSTED THROUGH THE GLASS.

Robbie: I believe that, technically, chino is a type of pants and khaki is a color. The vernacular is that "a khaki" is a khaki colored chino.

Chi: excuse me, I'd prefer it if you guys would discontinue the use of the word "chino", I find it racially offensive. "Khakis" are fine.

Robbie: You just say that cus you are not Khakinese....

A personal high: discovering that I am the only hit when "sexual harrassment Sue Hawk Richard Hatch" is Googled, and it's been Googled about forty times this evening, making this my official fifteen minutes of fame.

A personal low: learning that this is because it's actually spelled "harassment."

This is the only English word I've ever come across, ever, that looks better to me when it's misspelled. It was bound to happen eventually, I suppose.

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Dr. Tizzed: Funny that I didn't come up, seeing as how I spelled it the same way...

Jess: You never said "Hatch," though.

JR: I used to think the word background was backround. A spellchecker at CTY proved me wrong, and if I'm not mistaken, it was you Jess who came to the the spellchecker's defense when I was ranting and raving that there was no g in background.

I'm incredibly tired. I couldn't sleep last night, even though I went to bed at 1 and therefore should have had no problem falling asleep, because I was inexplicably antsy. Then at 5, Robbie started making weird rhythmic stomach-growling noises, a thing I believe he's never done before, and that didn't help.

Fortunately, today was pretty low-key. I had a three-hour lunch, and then I did some errands with my mom. Now I have a whole boatload of stuff to do before I fall asleep, but it's all writing- or reading-related and so I'm hoping to do it all without moving.

Oh, I emailed one of the places I found the other day that was advertising freelance copyeditor positions to see if their copyeditors worked off-site, and they do, which is good news because otherwise I'd have to move to Cary, North Carolina, and I don't even know where that is. It's obviously several steps still from getting freelance from them, but it's a good start.

The other good thing that's happened since I blogged yesterday is that Heather and I talked about her maybe coming to visit in a couple of weeks, from DC or directly. It's not set in stone, but I'm still pretty excited, not least of all because I believe she and Matt got the erroneous impression last time that Pittsburgh is always under two feet of snow. (Not that this will fix Matt's erroneous impression, but I can only touch one life at a time.) My mother is also excited, because I volunteered Heather to rewire her phone line.

Comments
Tizzed: My two friends from college who got me into blogging, andyhat and wonderclown, live in Cary, NC. Its near Durham..which is near Chapel Hill. Which is kinda near Raleigh.. which is in North Carolina

It's 2004 and I have no rocket car, but tonight I ordered a pizza online. This is the culminating event of my life, and will remain so until the day I order sushi online--actually, until the day I order sushi online and it's delivered to me through a pneumatic tube. The best part was when our doorbell rang and I went downstairs and found our pizza and soda sitting on the stoop, unattended. I was especially impressed that it had figured out how to ring the bell, but I figured, you know, 21st century and all. It turned out the delivery girl was just getting my receipt from her car, which was too bad, but the overall experience was still outstanding.

There's not a whole lot else I can say about the day. Oh, I went to the gym this afternoon. Robbie and I have been going to the gym in the mornings, which is nice because we can do it together, but they seem to be having some sort of intensive physical therapy group that meets there the mornings we go, and although there is a certain glee in striding along on the treadmill eight times faster than the guy next to you, it's not the sort of pleasure that really increases one's self-respect. It's interesting, actually--you'd think going to a gym where I'm, relatively speaking, extremely young and pert would make me feel good, but I actually liked it better at UCSB. Especially walking around in the locker room--there was a certain strange power in being, hands down, the most unattractive person there (not that I'm especially decrepit, but the other girls at UCSB were all eighteen and extremely, er, crepit).

Now I'm working on the revisions. Tonight I've been greatly aided by Robbie, whose main editorial talent is advising that every noun be changed to "hambone." Thus, the sentence "I stayed home while my parents went to the funeral" becomes "I stayed home while my hambone went to the hambone." Or " 'We slept together, but we didn't have sex' " becomes " 'We slept together, but we didn't have a hambone.' " See? Simple, yet effective. And also appetizing.

Remember yesterday? Today was a lot like that, only with the added spice of laundry. The rewrite is going well, by which I mean that it's completely unpleasant but very productive and I can already tell the book is getting a lot better, and I sewed four more quilt squares.

Oh, I did have a good idea today. I found a directory of reference publishers online, because that's where the bulk of my editing expertise lies, and went through all their web pages to see who needs freelance copyeditors. I found a handful, so I'll send them my resume and we'll see how that goes. I was surprised to see how many of the publishers had gone under, or at least how many of their webpages were defunct. And I was really, really surprised to find the reference-publishing site that had turned into an explicit porn site. I don't understand how that works as a marketing ploy, but I suppose they know best.

For a brief second tonight when I saw a preview for "Scrubs," I thought the new surgeon was Julia Stiles, and I was pretty excited, but alas, it's someone else. I guess Julia Stiles would be sort of Doogie Howser-esque as a surgeon, but a girl can dream. Now I'm going to go edit three more pages. You have no idea how long it takes to write out three pages. If nothing else, this is making me appreciate the invention of the typewriter much more than I ever did before.

Comments
Heather: May I also recommend that every scene take place on Zinc Drive? They don't all have to be the same Zinc Drive, of course. (For some background, when Robbie, Jess, Matt and I were looking for houses to rent in Santa Barbara, Robbie decided that he liked the sound of Zinc Drive so much that for a while he refused to consider houses on streets not named Zinc Drive. )

Jess: "The Hambone on Zinc Drive" would make a great title for a Nancy Drew mystery.

Robbie: I really wanted to live on Murdoch Road when we moved to Pittsburgh. I mean, what is next? Lex Luthor Drive?

JR: Oh man I just read the best street sign story in Time Out New York. There's a 35th avenue sign in Queens where the T has a little subscript 1 and the H has a subscript 4. They did that because the inventor of scrabble lived on that street. Neat, eh?

Today I started on the rewrite of my book that I mentioned a few days ago. I decided that I would take the last draft I had on my computer, print it out, and then use that to write a new version in longhand. I think this was definitely the right idea, because it takes so much longer for me to write by hand than to type and so I'm thinking things over more carefully, but it's more laborious than I thought it would be. For one thing, my hand is cramping. I haven't written several pages in a row in longhand since I was in college, probably. We'll see how it goes.

I also started sewing our quilt. I made a few big mistakes at the beginning, but it was nothing the seam-ripper and some choice words couldn't take care of. I figured out a system to sew the squares after a while, and I think it'll end up looking really good, although it's going to take a while to get it all done. I actually think it might go faster than the quilt I made for Heather and Matt's wedding present, though, which surprises me since this design is more complicated.

Today was another gorgeous warm day. It rained tonight, but it was warm enough that the rain was pleasant and not bone-chillingly horrid. It's supposed to go back down into the forties by the end of the week, though, which seemed like a tropical-utopian temperature just a couple of weeks ago, but now I'm spoiled and expect a higher level of performance from nature. I got to bring out both my lightweight khakis and the mom shoes today, though, and that's something.

Comments
EV: Longhand? I mean I sometimes like writing in longhand too, for like an essay or a column or something less than a page in length. But your book is, like, book-sized. It makes my hand hurt just thinking about it. Well, if you'll do that, then you'll certainly take the time to scan in every page and send me the longhand PDF.

Jess: Well, I _was_ just going to write out a copy for each of my friends, in their favorite color of ink, but your way sounds simpler.

Chi: oooh, I want blue. actually, I'll settle for any version of any draft in any form really, but I've learned to live with disappintment.

Jess: Oh, poor Chi. Yes, I know I keep promising you a copy and then not delivering. Maybe after this draft?

Megan of Switzerland: I wrote my PhD thesis out longhand, sitting on a quilt under a tree in Berkeley, with a small radio tuned to my favorite station. It was lovely. So I salute you. And try the quilt thing when it's warmer.