Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup -- Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup
Why should our cable modem be so so so slow? At first I thought it was P.'s antiquated Mac, but now I've hooked it up to my shiny new laptop, and it's still subzero treacle. What can I do to make it faster?
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(4)
12:46:36 PM,Wednesday 22 December 2004
{At the Laundromat, watching A Little Princess dubbed in Spanish}
Guh. It's one thing when grownups do little girl voices in anime, but seeing it live-action is just... freaky.
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(3)
09:29:39 PM,Tuesday 21 December 2004
Eleven days on, one day off, thirteen days on, dum-de-doo...
Social life? We don't need no steenkin' social life.
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08:46:10 AM,Tuesday 21 December 2004
I think if I ever get pregnant I shall take up dressing like a Turkish pasha.
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(5)
08:45:22 AM,Tuesday 21 December 2004
Sardines. Nutella. Pizza. Science Fiction. Bath.
If this doesn't work, nothing will.
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01:07:28 PM,Monday 20 December 2004
Shockheaded Peter Off-Broadway! Yee! I don't have to hate myself for missing it in D.C. anymore!
Ok. Fine. Sleep. Bah. Bluk.
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(1)
11:46:09 AM,Monday 20 December 2004
Q. How much do I suck?
A. A whole lot.
Argh. How can I lie in utter torpor on a cold kitchen floor, using all my will to keep my eyes open and my ears alert even after a double capuccino with coffee ice cream, and then, once I'm home and all warm under my great soft dyne, am I unable to sleep even though I have to get up afterwards and return library books and wrap presents and burn CDs and send off packages and duplicate mail keys and check post office boxes and scribble out stanzas of stupid poetry and eat and bathe and pick up paychecks and buy wireless routers and books and tickets and quiz people on Greek verbs and aaaargh I can't sleep I can't sleep and I've wasted half the day already just putzing around and trying to sleep and it isn't working and aaaaargh??!!?
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(2)
11:16:53 AM,Monday 20 December 2004
Awesome! The Jehovah's Witnesses went away without me having to be rude to them because I don't know Spanish! Um, also possibly something to do with the bathrobe. But hey. Awright, so you know I hardly ever do these things. But this one is a summing-up of a year that wants summing-up, and I like using my blog for a chronicle, sometimes. Kiped from Orien.
1. What did you do in 2004 that you'd never done before?
Well, this is the first year I won't have a Proper Norwegian Christmas [tm]
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
You know, I have a vague memory of making some, but I can't for the life of me think of what they were. I did pretty much keep my more-books-than-hours-of-television-a-week thing going all summer, though, which I suppose is worth something.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Pasang! And my coworker at Easy Street didn't give birth, obviously, but he had his second kid last spring.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No. I was going to say Jim, but I remembered that was actually 2003. Man. Time goes whoosh.
5. What countries did you visit?
Just this one. My passport has expired. Gotta fix that. Morocco, by a near miss?
6. What would you like to have in 2005 that you lacked in 2004?
Diligence.
7. What date from 2004 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Leaving my parents and going off to seek my fortune in a big scary city, I suppose.
9. What was your biggest failure?
I've played so little music this year. General lazy bastarditude.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nope.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
A putative (and later, an actual) pair of opera tickets.
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
My mom got a publishing deal on her new book. We'll all let our breaths out when it's actually signed and sealed, but I think at this point it's a given.
13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Kicking my phantom self to the curb and stepping up into its place.
16. What song will always remind you of 2004?
"It Might as Well Be Spring".
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
I. happier or sadder?
Happier in so damn many ways and degrees that the word seems insufficient. I mean, hell, I was pretty happy before, but now it's something... else.
II. thinner or fatter?
I think I'm about the same. I slimmed down and buffed up a little in spring, but I reflabbed some time around September.
III. richer or poorer?
Richer. Last year, 51% of my income went to expenses. This year (for as long as this schedule keeps up), it's more like 27%. And I'm actually paying for everything myself now (at least, as soon as I pay my mom back for the loan she gave me when I was getting started, which I'll be able to do by the end of the month, I think). It feels pretty good.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Talked with friends, both in the flesh and online. My hermitudinous tendencies always seem to serve me well in the moment, but when I look back, I droop at the thought of good times ducked out of.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Goldbricking.
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
With my girl and her mom.
21. Did you fall in love in 2004?
{nod}
22. How many one-night stands?
None.
23. fnord
Skidoo!
24. What was your favourite TV program(s)?
Whose Line is it Anyway. Especially the British version (duh.)
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Various political figures who busted me out of my warm, snuggly apathy. Jerkoffs.
26. What was the best book you read?
Moby Dick, on audiobook.
27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Exposure to "Voi Che Sapete" at a range of less than 1 meter induces trembling, giddiness, and palpitations in 100% of subjects surveyed.
28. What did you want and get?
See above.
29. What did you want but didn't get?
See number six.
30. What was your favourite film of this year?
Hm. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow? It feels like there's one I'm forgetting.
31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
The T.I.A.I.L.W. service has been discontinued. (`;
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Lies and the wholesale swallowing thereof.
37. Who did you miss?
My parents, for half of it. My girl, for the other half. My friends, virtually all through.
38. Who was the best new person you met?
Ahem.
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2004:
I always knew I was a lucky damn sumbish, but it's been hammered in up to my eyeballs lately.
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
"But you, my brother in arms..."
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(11)
04:51:11 PM,Wednesday 15 December 2004
Living with a soprano is very... bracing. No, in a good way. {rubs eyelids sleepily}
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09:30:33 PM,Tuesday 14 December 2004
K. got a 111 on her penultimate Greek test. I didn't know Greek tests went to 111. :`D
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(3)
02:47:16 PM,Tuesday 14 December 2004
I just bought beer without getting carded! Ain't I all big in the britches. Incidentally, why don't liquor stores sell beer? Not classy enough for 'em? Then why (god why) do they sell Apple Pucker?
I'm not worried about developing a beer habit -- even a buying-beer-for-other-people (in this case, some kid who fancies himself a GRE tutor. We'll see how he does against my fearsome dearth of math brains.) habit, pleasant as it is, what with the not being carded and the reassuring heft of the bottles as they jingle their way down the street and the way you screw up your lips to say "Lowenbrau" and all. No, I got bigger problems: I'm scarily well on my way toward becoming hooked on toiletries. I mean, yeah, it started small. "I just collect toothpaste," I'd say. "I want an array of flavors to choose from in the morning." But then I started buying toothbrushes to match. I'm up to two already, this week alone. And not your dimestore six-pack of assorted soft-bristles, either -- no. I'm talking $4 designer green-and-black checkerboard numbers, with the rounded handles, and the bristles set in just so... oh, god, it's so beautiful. But it wouldn't be so bad, if only it stopped there. Just yesterday, by a heroic force of will, I stopped myself buying a $45 bottle of face goop, goaded into delirium by the smug young fag on the box. All I'd have to do, I thought feverishly, is smear it on my puddingy post-adolescent punim twice a day, and I could be supercilious and studly just like him. All shirtless and sneering and whistling along to Lulu, whipping up simultaneous servings of quiche and houseboy and never once breaking a sweat. Sigh. But at long last, I came to my senses, broke away, and trundled out with only the toothbrush and a tube of chocolate toothpaste and a tiny little dispenser of nauseating antiperspirant (The label says "Adrenaline", but to my nose it's more like "Rotting Mince Pie". Oh well.). Drugstores are Old Scratch's sampler box, I swear to you. I can't stay away.
Speaking of the siren song of homoerotic marketing, though -- it's odd. There are four of us at my job. Three of us are avowedly queer, and the fourth, well, only his hairdresser knows for sure, but lemme just say that it'd be rawther a shock to his Public were it to turn out to be otherwise. Why is this? I can't imagine my employer did it consciously, but could it be mere coincidence? Do we figure in the Home Health Care industry in disproportionate numbers? Is there something sexless and reassuring about our handling of aged straight chicks' altogethers? Does it all come down to ~style~, darling? I do wish I knew.
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(20)
11:59:11 AM,Tuesday 14 December 2004
Um, ok, slight change of plan. I wrote to the professor of this course:
"ENGLISH 494.52 THE IDEA OF THE BOOK: THE BOOK AS POEM AND NOVEL
Permission of the instructor required.
Section 51 T, TH 5:35-6:50 Professor Wittreich
Robert Frost once remarked that whenever twenty-five poems are published together the twentieth-sixth poem is the poetic volume. We will read several collections of poems and several collections of short stories, in each instance studying the integrity of the collection as a book, its thematics and its architecture. Those books will include The Poems of Mr. John Milton (1645), Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake, Lyrical Ballads (1798) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, The Dubliners by James Joyce, Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway, and Love Alone by Paul Monette. Contact Professor Wittreich at jwittreich@gc.cuny.edu. Requirements may include a midterm paper (in-class), a final paper (8-10 pages), and a final exam."
Asking if I could take it even though I wasn't in the English Honors program or, indeed, a degree student at the college at all. And he wrote back:
"Permission granted. See you in January. Best."
So hey.
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(5)
11:38:30 AM,Monday 13 December 2004
{This morning, like every morning, noting that the spit in the bedside spit bucket is more or less colorless, while the stuff in the bathroom spit bucket is an alarming sulphurous yellow}
It's the toothpaste. It's something in the toothpaste.
On that merry subject, it pains me to own up to it, but Colgate Herbal is just about the best stuff going. Not to be confused with Colgate Herbal White, mind you, which is nawrsty. But I've tried dozens upon dozens of small organic independent toothpastes, and nothing so far can compare with this stuff. It's all myrrh and chamomile and eucalyptus and sage and it ain't the slightest bit minty but it's got that nice astringent tang that toothpaste is supposed to have (Tom's of Maine's sole insufficiency) and it's ~fluoridated~, to beat all! Gragh, I hate it when huge corporate behemoths get it right. But... just... yum.
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11:10:49 AM,Monday 13 December 2004
Also, on December 8th, 2004, 2:59 pm, Kunsang Norbu Karchungtsang was born to Pasang, Sonam, and sister Tenzin Chime, weighing 7 lbs, 2.5 ounces!
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(4)
08:12:10 PM,Saturday 11 December 2004
My employer's husband read me a passage from the Aeneid in Latin this morning. It was pretty cute.
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06:52:17 PM,Saturday 11 December 2004
Observation:
Buying croutons doesn't actually encourage me to eat more salad, but it does encourage me to eat more croutons.
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(4)
06:35:26 PM,Saturday 11 December 2004
{wakes up to noisome tinkling}
...
Ice cream truck?! Guh! It's December!
In honor of that, a list of Things They Do Different Here Compared With Ol' Montanny
1. They give you a straw with your pop. They also look at you like you're an adorable relic in shitkickers when you ask for one.
2. They never buy tupperware; they just use leftover takeout containers.
3. They are obsessed with making exact change.
4. The margarine doesn't come in normal-sized tubs -- only two-packs of itty bitty ones and big honkin' huge ones.
5. They say "stand on line" instead of "stand in line".
6. The convenience stores sell fruit. (Note: "Blue Raspberry" is not a fruit.)
7. They don't think riding the subway is a breathless thrill-packed adventure to be indulged in at every opportunity.
8. They come in, like, different colors. Whoah.
9. They navigate using numbers instead of mountains.
10. Ice cream trucks in #*$&ing December!
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(8)
06:17:01 PM,Saturday 11 December 2004
Blogswaps mailed!
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(3)
04:22:26 PM,Friday 10 December 2004
Eeeh! It sounds perfect. It's not the famous Messiah Sing-In at Lincoln Center, of course, with 3,000 people and fancy pants acoustics and world famous soloists and all, but that's kinda expensive and a touch intimidating, plus it's in the evening on a work night. But I could actually go to this one! And it's free! And it sounds delightful. Gotta rustle me up a score, hm. Bet I could bum one from the roommates.
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(1)
11:43:07 AM,Wednesday 8 December 2004
Ok, this pisses me off. Why the hell would you deface such a kickass granite phallus made of writhing naked Norwegian people? I'm all for integration, but that's just lame.
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11:05:30 AM,Wednesday 8 December 2004