Tortitude

It's so gray and cold and blah outside. I'm back at work, still congested. Still too stupid to remember to try some Claritin. Jeff was struck sort of mute when I told him I keep forgetting to take it. I'm a little pathologically pill-resistant, even when I want to take something, apparently.

I feel all dried up and withered. My skin feels dry. My nose is too dry. My lips are chapped. I wish I could completely immerse myself into a lotion bath for five hours or something. No amount of moisturizing is helping more than temporarily. GO AWAY WINTER!!

And apparently no amount of sleep is enough these days, because I keep waking up in the middle of the night for no reason. Can't stop yawning. My energy level is for shit today. Jeff thinks that might be allergy-related, too.

I feel like I need a big mental tidy.

However, in less whiny news. Tonight is bookclub! I can't freaking wait! Not only is it always superfantastic to see Colleen and Kirsten, but Amy T is joining us. And maybe even Lisa (my former boss). They're all so awesome, and I'm dying to talk about the book. We read The Double Bind and I loved it. I know Amy T had massive issues with it, which I sort of love because I think it'll make for a really lively discussion tonight.

I think the book affected me on a number of levels. When I was in high school, I really wanted to be a social worker. I worked for years at a crisis hotline and it had an enormous impact on me. While I obviously ultimately didn't go into social work, I loved reading about Laurel and how she ended up working at one.

( Spoilers for The Double Bind )

And since the book uses The Great Gatsby, I've bought a copy and am finally going to read that classic. Very curious to see if or how it changes my perspective on the book!

Going to bed late is bad because then there is no wanting to wake up in the morning. I blame Night Owl Pete. Forced him and his not-having-to-wake-up-at-6Am-self out about an hour after originally intended. We're starting to watch Veronica Mars because I love it and he needs to see it. We also watched the new episode (FINALLY) of How I Met Your Mother. Good times.

So, so tired. YAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWN.

Although ability to get dressed and ready in 7 minutes flat is a bit dangerous, as motivation to get out of bed more than 10 minutes before having to leave house completely diminishes.

Oh, am reading brilliant book called The Double Bind for bookclub. Only 1/3 of way through but completely fascinated and love it. Influenced me to buy The Great Gatsby which I've somehow never read because bookclub book is all tied up with Gatsby. V. curious.

Must read book on bus and not pass out asleep because bookclub meeting is mid-next-week. Oops.

So, so sleepy!! Must hyper-caffinate!!

It's amazing when you find that what you most identify with as a 36-year old woman is found within the pages of a teen vampiric love story.

Huh.

(Almost done with New Moon. Oddly compelling. Ah, Italy.)

Hey, serenity_valley --have you read this? I love the author, and seeing the book just made me think of you!

If you've already read it --let me know what you think. Or for that matter, if any of you other erudite-types here have read it, please let me know what you think!

• One of the nice things about my trip to LA was the boxing up and shipping of my remaining books. Especially since getting the new bookshelves in, I've been champing at the bit for them.
  
• I spent tonight unpacking the 4 (out of 5) boxes that have arrived. One more box to come, hopefully tomorrow. I can't wait to have a free weekend to categorize them on the shelves properly.
  
• I love LibraryThing. And I love the joy that is ISBN.
  
• Ellen threw Judy a Tiki-themed co-ed baby shower, and did a fantastic job. TPTB were so impressed, they held back the rain until after the party was over and we were cleaning up.
  
• I can't wait for that kid to pop out. He's going to be so totally awesome.
  
• I finally saw Sarah after a terrible three-week separation. With both of us constantly in and out of town and random schedule nightmares, it's been insane. Sunday was gloriously spent LotRing.
  
• Jeff had a quick trip to Oregon and stopped at Powells and bought me this wonderful book about wandering in Paris. And also, he keeps me sane.
  
• Pete and I saw Paris Je T'aime (wonderful) and Knocked Up (cute and sweet and gross) and Ocean's 13 (franchise fluffy fun), but I'm ready for some serious Pixar awesomeness with Ratataouille.
  
• I've never used a self-cleaning oven before, and today was my maiden voyage. The fumes were terrifying, but then it was over and my oven is now absurdly clean
  
• With the nice weather and light evenings, I've started taking the bus again and it's been really wonderful. Both the mile I end up walking and the not dealing with traffic/construction.
  
• My new nephew, Zach, continues to thrive and is AMAZING. The weekly visits are just not enough. He's a smiley, happy, delightful baby and I love him
  
• Work has calmed down since last month's insanity, and it's both welcome and enjoyable. I really like the project I'm working on now.
  
• Hobbsie continues in good health and 7AM-whiny-ness

I think that covers all the bases... friends, work, kitty, family, books.

Holy crap, it's late. Must go to sleep now.

It's been a busy but really fun weekend. I did nothing I said I would do, but I can't say I much care!

Friday
I took the the day off, met Jeff for lunch/market, lounged with kitty and book (rough life). I'm finally re-reading Harry Potter 6 and enjoying it much more than the first time. The only reason is that I was so anxious to find out who fucking died (even as much as I thought I knew), that I burned through it in record time. I wish she would stop saying ANYTHING about the book. I don't fucking need a hint. Take as much time with the books as you need, because they're worth waiting for, but please stop forcing anticipation for events. It spoils the experience. Though I can imagine the pressure on her is immense to give clues, I don't understand why. I don't want to know until I read the damn book!

Saturday
Pete and I went to see The Illusionist, which we both loved. I loved everything about it really, even the ending, even if I made some correct guesses about what I thought was going on, even if the ending spelled things out in ways people found obvious. Such an enjoyable, well-told, well-filmed story. Then, went to play with Odin and nearly died from teh cute. God, kittens. Is there anything else quite so glorious on this earth?

Sunday
Had brunch/pedi with Judy, then Jeff picked me up and we ran errands (groceries and a Simply Dessert's Mexican Chocolate cake). Then we drove to his place and spent the rest of the day making masses of absurdly good food. It was a damn lot of fun because we work really well together in the kitchen (and well, everywhere). I juiced approximately 9 million lemons for his fabulous lemon curd. It was very sweet because Jeff kept thanking me, but the reality is I love parties and all the assorted chaos that goes with them. Plus, it's really nice to feel both needed and wanted. Then we went and played with Odin and again, died from teh cute some more. Jeff picked up Odin and rubbed him against his beard and the purrs would not stop. I said that that was an unfair advantage and threatened to rub Odin against future leg stubble. Chris fed us pizza and we watched Project Runway together. (Die Evil Jeffrey. DIE DIE DIE. He shouldn't be allowed to share a name with Jeff.) Jeff dropped me off at home around 9 or 10 and I started to prep the potato salad I was bringing and nearly died laughing when my first step was to juice more lemons.

I was so hyper from the day, I could not fall asleep. And when I finally did--I still woke up super early and ready to bounce out of bed.

Monday
Chris's bday! Drove to Chris and Jeff's place around 1 and helped set up for the party (in-between cooing at Brutus and Buffy). And then just had a lovely time with their extended group of friends who are really all awesome. There's something about a big group of bears that makes me feel completely comfortable. Jeff and Chris had laid out an amazing spread, the food was glorious and the party was a rousing success.

On a dark note, my fucking plumbing problem seems back. The water stain I hadn't cleaned up yet is wet again, and I'm supremely frustrated. This will more than likely mean that the drywall will have to be cut and I'm going to go ballistic if the association doesn't cover this round, since it's the exact same problem in the exact same spot, etc. It also means re-painting that wall once the drywall is repaired and I could just cry. But then I realize that it could be 10000000000x worse, and I chill out.

Tomorrow is my first day acting as condo treasurer and I need to do all kinds of crap at 8AM that I'm not thrilled about. But, I'm hoping it'll just go quickly.

Back in college, my then-boyfriend started to read to me a little book called Eye of the World.

It was part of this fantasy series called The Wheel of Time. And it was only because I loved him so much that I let him do this, because it wasn't really my genre. He was obsessed with the series and just needed to share it.

So he started. And at first I have to admit, I would tune out a little. I'm not one for books-on-tape either, and I just couldn't follow along so much. Eventually I bought a copy to read so that I would have a clue, and I found myself surprised at how intrigued I was.

And I started to rip through the books, racing ahead (which I finally confessed to him, to his minor annoyance, because he loved to read out-loud and wanted to be there when some major plot-lines were revealed).

I got into the series, and in a way, moved beyond his obsession into my own, because I started following a newsgroup (rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan) which opened my eyes to an entire area of the 'net I hadn't known about, and an entire education on netiquette and How Not To Make A Total Ass of Yourself When Amongst Other Humans which I genuinely found valuable.

I also joined a less prolific e-mail list about the books. It was there that I first met Sarah, who was the most precocious and most excellent fifteen-year old in the history of the world. I thought she was both hilarious and adorable and well worth chatting with on IRC.

I also made other good friends through rasfwrj and continued to read the books, though my interest in the newsgroup became largely unrelated to the books themselves (the discussions on current events, politics, movies, books--all fascinating, and some of the brightest and most interesting people I would ever encounter on the net).

After reading the books once, I was sort of done with them. As the series continued, I liked it less and less and didn't have the years of re-reading (while waiting for new books) that the members of the group did, and thus, had far less invested, and far less attention to nuances and details. I didn't think less of people for it, but I just didn't share in the passion.

Eventually, I think the books turned to utter crap and I stopped reading them much earlier than the true fans and figured I would never read them again.

But lately, Sarah has started reading them again. And she keeps talking about them, goddammit! About little bits of storyline that I genuinely loved and characters I cared about. And now, I think, I may actually have to read it again. So she's bringing me Eye of the World tonight, and I just want on record that this is all her fault!! *stamps feet and tugs on imaginary braid* (Book ref, please feel free to disregard.)

The series is so funny to me, because in my mind it will always be tied to my first, and only love and also to my friendship with Sarah, which has been one of the best things in my life.

Anyhow. Had to share. And also, I may be burbling about this now and then. Or not. I don't know. It's a mystery. Also, I need a good book icon!

(Of course I want to leave work NOW and go read this and not be bothering about with this whole work thing.)

Dude. Today was all about spending money. The bad side of getting paid once a month is that I want to run out into the streets hurling fistfuls of cash. Gah.

After I dropped my mom off at the airport, I went straight to Target and plunked down an awful lot of money for what essentially is something my cat is going to shit on. But the crystal litter is cheaper at Target than at Safeway, so it's a worthy investment. I bought batteries for my camera for Paris. Plus, I bought Sausalito cookies, which are my favoritest. Also, I bought a bunch of random movies, including Pillow Talk, Jurassic Park, Dirty Dancing (shutup!) and Bruce Almighty.

Then I marched downstairs to Best Buy and bought Deadwood: Season One. Praise the lord, Season Two has finally fucking been announced and will be released on May 23rd (two days after I get back from Paris--woo!).

After this, I drove to Annie's Affordable Art in Ballard and had them frame the two Steinlen prints and bought another print from a local artist. Just greenery and pretty. I also sucked it up and got that framed. It was going to take them about an hour, so I wandered next door to the Secret Garden bookstore and picked up Wendy McClure's memoir, I'm Not the New Me, and wandered off to Matador for lunch.

Wendy McClure's book is about the hell of weight-loss and she's of the Television Without Pity and Poundy fame. So far: funny and painful.

After stalling as long as I could bear, I walked back to Annie's. They weren't quite done because they'd gotten very busy. But they promised to finish up quickly, and they did. They did a beautiful job on all the prints, and I would definitely recommend them. I'm not sure why framing is so absurdly expensive, but they don't seem to be more expensive than other places I've seen, and did a great job.

And now, I'm home. Hobbsie loves me and considers me to be both his best friend and his raison d'etre. This has nothing to do, I'm sure, with the fact that he'd like an early Sunday supper.

My only remaining tasks for the rest of the day are:

- two one loads of laundry
- make new bed with freshly washed new sheets
- put away clean dishes from dishwasher
- hang shiny new art

I'm going to do all of this between episodes of Deadwood. Got that, cocksuckah??

Quick update.

My mom is here and loves my place! Yay!
OMG homemade mommy-food is a good, good thing. She's already made two of my favorite dishes.
It was very exciting to come home for lunch. Mmmm.
My French teacher said, out of the blue, that I am very pretty and have a pleasing air that must draw people to me. *flutter*
Payday, I think, will always be a small celebration around here. Because a month of waiting = my bank account LOW.
While this payday displayed the first cuts from 401K and my contribution to my healthcare plan, it wasn't as much as I feared, so whew!

My brother and SIL are coming over for a bbq on Saturday, so that should be fun.
Having obtained said paycheck, I'm going to go and get those two remaining Steinlen prints framed and hang them, by gum.
I really want new bedding, but am struggling with colors and patterns in a red/cream room. I love striped socks, but not apparently striped bedding.

Just caught up on some tv. Boo to all the recap bullshit going on (Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy). Loved Veronica Mars. This week's Survivor was also rather good.

As the spring continues and summer draws closer, I have some exciting travel plans.

May: Paris! Oui! Oui!
June: LA, for my cousin's graduation
July: Second Annual Sequim Soujourn with Sarah
August (or Sept): San Diego, to visit Jeanne in her new digs

As much as I hate the airlines, they're certainly getting a lot of my money this year.

I really want to write about The Time Traveler's Wife, but I don't think I have anything intelligent to offer. Just a lot of explosive praise and some weeping. And how is that different, really, from most of my posts? (Hee.) So once I finish the final twenty pages, I will blather on about it. I tried to make it through the last twenty last night, but kept giving myself a near concussion with the book slamming into my face. I feel as though I will be bereft once it is over, and don't want to read the last page. Though, in some ways, I wish I'd already stopped. Oh, fuck it. ( I'm going to blather about it now. )

Because I do not want to be at work, still. So distractable. I'm starting to look at WebTrends, but it is a brain-suck.

So I will write about my weekend, briefly.

Friday: cleaning frenzy and book-reading
Saturday: Buffy: Season 1 and knitting with Jeanne
Sunday: Lunch and V is for Vendetta and Dinner with Sarah

Book: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. I loved it. For some reason this book really returned me to my love of reading. I felt, and I know this sounds cheesy, like I could bask in it. It felt nourishing. I ripped through it in a few nights, and spent a very happy Saturday afternoon on the couch, just reading. I haven't done that in ages, and it felt so damn good. I'm also finally out of the jungle in Locas, so that's exciting. I'm looking forward to more Maggie and Hopey.

Movie: I was surprised by how much I enjoyed V. Natalie Portman did a great job, and Hugo Weaving is wonderful in all that I see him in (I did not watch the second, third Matrix movies, and I have no idea how he was in them).

( Not really spoilers, but just in case: )