Is anyone going to the rollergirl Black Out? I don't really know anyone other the kkbb and Priss, but it sounds like a blast.


Tonight:
5:30 Stations of the Cross at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church(Michael's Church)
7:00 Tenebrae at All Saints
9:00 Rollergirl Blackout at Jackalope

Tomorrow:
10:00 A.M. Citizenship Class at El Buen Samaritano (teaching, not taking)
12:00 A.M. some stupid Strawberry Jamboree that Cassie wants to attend, and no, unfortunately we won't be dressing up "To Wong Foo" style. Bah.
7:00 Easter Vigil
9:00 Round Food Shopping. Cassie and I celebrate Easter primarily by eating only egg shaped food. Do we eat olives? Yes. Do we eat krispy kreme doughnuts despite the fact they make me ill? Yes. Do we eat Eggs of the Deviled, Jellybean and Cadbury Variety? Yes. Do we get very very ill shortly thereafter? You bet we do. Do we do it anyway? Hell yes.

Also, I have to shop for Easter dinner with Michael. Why? Because I'm an ass. I offered to cook a "Traditional Italian" Easter meal without realizing that in culinary terms the phrase "Traditional Italian" essentially means "working in a coal mine, going down down down"


Besides, I'm Swedish, what do I know about Italian tradition? See...an ass.

(whoops, I did this yesterday but didn't post it, durr)
The first day of my road trip I got pulled over by a cop, in a tiny Texas town for going 77 in a 70.

A short cop.

Like "sleeps in an envelope" short.

with a moustache.

A big Freddie Mercury moustache.

I giggled.


I got the ticket.
*****************
HA!!!! I just got a call from Shirley at the police department, they're going to dismiss the ticket (I didn't even ask them to) because "it's an unwritten policy, we just don't give tickets for seven miles over." Excellent! Take THAT you teacup copper!

Well, after a week away from the Big Important Newspaper I feel fantastic. My first vacation in two and a half years found me taking a solo road trip out west to the Grand Canyon and other parts I'd only seen in movies where men spit and rob trains. It was brilliant. At the Flagstaff Hostel I picked up an elderly Aussie lady, who was a bit of a kook and spent three days with her at the hot springs in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Finally saw the grand canyon which isn't just a clever name. Did some red rock hiking, saw it storm in the desert and drove about 100 miles of open range land on a Hopi reservation. I'll write more about it as I decompress, but since no one actually reads this journal, I don't especially feel any pressure.


Also, I have a tan, which is odd for the girl who is known as Snow White.

does anyone use livejournal? If so, what are your ID's?

Time Now: 9:58a.m.
Last Night's Events: First Night Of Film Festival. I of course, slept through the entire opening night, skipping out on at least 2 docs I really wanted to see and the US Premiere of a new Tim Robbins movie.
Do I regret it? No.
Time I Got To Sleep: 5:30pm.

Hours of Sleep: 14 HA!!!! HAHAHAHAAAAA!

General Feeling: Well rested, a little antsy, curious to see how the day goes. I am running my lounge today. Most of my volunteers today are kids I like, except two. Elevator duty anyone?

Todays Plans: Run the lounge, schmooze. See movies tonight...really.

Resolution of The Day: Keep my contacts in all day. Not look stupid in front of co-crew chief. SEE SOME FILMS...
Wishful Thinking Bedtime: Midnight

Tomorrows resolution have guinness for breakfast

Time Now: 7:36a.m.
Last Night's Events: Bagstuffing. A process wherein all the bags of promotional material to be handed out to Gold and Platinum Registrants as well as those with a Music Badge are stuffed full of swag by means of volunteer and staff walking zombie-like through endlessly long stuffing lines. There are approximately 1260 volunteers and 2000 bags. Not as bad as it sounds, but not always a blast either. Had a Walkthrough Orientation for the people in my crew where my beloved yet manic co-crew chief commandeered the show, as per usual. Personal Grooming of course since I will be on my feet for the next 9 days, I had a much-needed pedicure but also it was time for major brush clearing. I had waxed my armpits (horrible, terrible, squicky-ouch pain) a few days ago so I focused on my legs and other, south of the border environs. I invariably think I'm going to meet some fantastic musician/filmmaker/digital animation guru to take home to have meaningless South by South Sex. Invariably, it never happens because I'm too tired and am not-that-sort-of-girl. Still, I had to, in the words of my dear MEghan, I needed to clean that mess up.

Time I Got To Sleep: 1:30 a.m.

Hours of Sleep: 5

General Feeling: Super-great. Little tired.

Todays Plans: Work, go to my lounge afterwards, check out the haps. See some films. TRY to go home early.

Resolution of The Day: Eat well. NO breakfast tacos. At least one bowl of Total or some other tweed-tasting cereal.

Wishful Thinking Bedtime: Midnight

Kool Aid is marketed to mostly low and middle income African American families. That's just the way it is.

Rare is the Kool Aid ad showing a familial flock of ivy-educated Mayflower descendants sitting around in their libraries sipping Kool Aid out of their family crystal. Which is fine. My grandmother had never even heard of Kool Aid, which isn't suprising because you can't mix it with gin.

That being said, I spent the day visiting my grandparents, paying out my weekly pound of flesh for my "wasted" $160k education. While my grandparental approved esteem-loss plan is often the most torturous part of my week it also allows me three luxuries not available at my tiny downtown abode. Cooking, sleeping in a bed and watching broadcast television. The first two are pretty self-explaintory. Kitchen is too small, no bed because no bedroom and the TV?

Well yes, I do have a TV. I have a very new, very flat, very expensive plasma TV. At 27 inches and just over 15 pounds, it's designed to hang on my wall. It does not.

Instead of hanging like some market-tested post modern art installation (complete with bespectacled hipsters standing around like casting-call beatniks worshipping around my boobtube) it's wedged gathering dust between my wall and an overstuffed club chair. Every so often, when I'm dusting or searching around for a book I though I had left on one of the plush red arms of the chair, I see the television, and wonder why I don't watch it.

Then I saw the Kool Aid commercial, and vividly remembered why said piece of technology does naught but attact cat hair all day. To the Kool Aid defense, it is rather difficult to come up with a new and exciting way to use their product (insert tasteless Jim Jones reference here). It's understandable that The Kool Aid marketing folks might have gotten a bit slack in the new creative ideas department. But, considering their main consumer demographic is, as previously mentioned, low to middle income Black families, maybe they ought have worked up a better name for their ice cubes made with their drink mix than "Kool-aid Kool Kubes"

I am also shocked and dissapointed to find out that, contrary to what my copy of Roadside America II says, there is no longer a Route 666 in New Mexico, thereby fucking a considerable portion of my roadtrip (not to mention one hell of a photo op) straight to hell.

It was rechristened route 491 last August. Bastards.

Okay, when do people realize that "Hey, How are You Doing"when asked by someone who clearly doesn't like you does NOT mean "I really want to know how you're doing" as much as it means "okay, I hate you and would like to smash you with a hammer until there was nothing left but the pink velour sweatpants you're too old to be wearing, but since I look really awful in Federal Penitentary Orange so I'm going to say something inoffensive that requires a one word answer to make it sound like I care"

It does not mean tell me in Dorothy-lands-in-Oz technicolor, the intimate details of last night's post nasal drip, that culminated in vomitus at 3:00am this morning, with a warning that you'll be tired for your strenous job of which the requirements seem to be "talk loudly on the phone in bad Spanish and even worse English with all of you 19 Siblings plus a half dozen of assorted cousins, aunts and married Puerto Rican boyfriend."

Wuss.

I've been at least up and usually out until at least 2 a.m. practically every night since the New Year including last night, and I manage to wake up, get to work by 7:30, kick ass in every direction and look pretty while doing it...and yesterday I brought in homemade brownies for everyone.

Okay, here I am making a thoroughly unexemplary post. Tonight I am going to Gardenridge, presumably to avail myself of some miracle solvent that will put asunder the marriage of vast quantities of yankee-candle wax and cheap apartment carpeting lovingly committed in matrimony thanks to an overzealous cat.

No food for HIM this week!

Also, I will be attending my second screening of School of Rock. Not that it's an especially good movie, although it has its moments (namely when Jack Black has been fired from his job and rolls out of his bed crusty-eyed to see that the prep-school kids have hijacked a school bus to pick him up to go to The Big Show he exclaims "That is SO punk rock")

I am getting a tidy sum back on my taxes, which took me about 15 minutes to complete after I got my W2 and am searching for vacation packages. My vacation will be in the end of March, beginning of April.

I could either take an 11 day transatlantic cruise to Europe and back OR save to buy a sturdy, dependable used car...hmmm

Herein lies my problem. I write. I write about three brilliant paragraphs and then decide it's crap and delete the entire thing. I try to update my journal everyday and this is all you get. Not much for a "professional" writer. oui?

Today is the day that everyone at work hides from me because a big report is due. Same thing every month. Today I went on a recon mission, hunting for a young lovely named Ryan, who is high on my list of potential sperm donors, should I ever feel the need to spawn. I figured I'd save him a trip. That's the sort of gal I am.

I trot up to marketing which is way up in the hinterlands of this building only to find him missing. Hurrumph.
Slightly discouraged, I trot on back to the elevators, fixin' to hie myself back to my little worknook. Of course, I meet Ryan at the elevator where he has just returned from the first floor where he deposited the sought-after report on my chair. After some slight chit chat and a nice giggle all around we parted ways. As he was heading towards the executive office he shouted back "well thanks for coming up!"

at which point I really should probably not have yelled "Thanks For Going Down!"

You're the kind of girl guys have tattooed on their arm.

and the best part is because it came from a boyfriend of one of my galpals (said galpal was standing right there) I can't help but think it was sincere and not a cheesy pick up line.

To: Soren From: Sophia
I had the most bizarre experience a few days ago. Saturday night I had a dream where a major theme was the number 108. I found a garden of 108 blackred roses (some made out of garnet) and then 108 jeweled dragonflies and grasshoppers attacked me. I was puzzled because the number 108 had no meaning in my life, but I remembered it vividly in my dream, like it was a mark on a paper that was not only highlighted, but circled as well. On Sunday I dreamt 108 again. It was 108 degrees outside and I was driving in a desert (with Madonna, how strange!) we got into a car wreck, Madonna disappeared and eventually I managed to find an oasis where there were 108 trees and lotus lily pads (I'm not sure if lotuses grow on lily pads, since I've never seen a lotus, but they did in my dream).

Recurring dream themes aren't that unusual for me; I don't think they're unusual for anyone; Jungian archetypes and whatnot, but recurring numbers, at least for me, definitely are odd. I've read that it's rare enough to dream about numbers at all, since like small print and light levels, they are hard for a sleeping brain to process.

On Monday I had the day off and the 108 mystery was still in my head, so I decided to spend the day attempting to decipher its meaning. I went through my old journals, drove around town looking for a literal or figurative sign. After doing a bit of shopping and having a nice chat with a friend at New Bohemia, it finally slipped my mind. I got home, the proud owner of a old silver horseshoe pin and a snazzy white hat. After it got too dark to watch the ducks on town lake I wanted to read.

Since I had my fill of Ms Paglia, I rummaged through the plastic bag containing a half dozen used paperbacks I had grabbed from Half Price Books. I picked up a small copy of the Upanishads which I had bought on a whim, knowing nothing about them other than they were sacred Indian texts and they were referenced slightly in one of my favorite movies ("Great is the man who simply declares 'it is, it is, it is' "). I hadn't even read the back cover copy. I settled down, meditated a few minutes (trying to read Big Important Works without meditating first is, in my experience, next to impossible since without it I'd be fixated on some banal distraction like a thread that's come loose on my shirt, or trying to see what the cat is knocking about). I sat cross-legged and calm on my big red chair and started to read the introduction.

Did you know there are exactly 108 Upanishads?

Response:

From: Soren To: Sophia
Very interesting dreams!

108 is 3 to the third power times 2 to the second power times 1 to the first power. Things like that just come to me.

I think the number of Upanishads is uncertain. 108 is stated in one of the Upanishads, but scholars believe that is stated because 108 is a sacred number.

In Hindu cosmology, each Brahma exists for 108 Brahma-years. One Brahma-year is a very long time. It is as long temporally as a light-year is long spatially. It is almost as long as the intro to Codeine Monkey Blues. To give you some idea...Indra is the supreme ruler of the gods, somewhat analogous to Zeus, the Lord of the world, and when 28 Indras in succession have expired, that is just one Day and Night of Brahma.

Hindu and Buddhist malas (akin to rosaries) usually have 108 beads. Sometimes, one is supposed to recite a mantra 108 times. Some long mantras have 108 lines.

Two decks, with jokers, have 108 cards.

-end

How strange

Went to evensong at Soren's church last night.

The second Sunday evening of every month finds me there, ready to get some Jesus, watch Soren do his thurifer duties and have some wine, cheese and nibbly things at the post-service reception. A thurifer, for those of you not versed the complex lexicon of the Frozen Chosen is the guy or gal who swings the censer back and forth doing such great tricks as "around the world" and "walk the dog." Well, anyway there was no reception afterwards! No cheese, wine and nibbly things?

What the hell's the point of gettin' some Jesus if you don't get Cheese, too?!

Either the manufacturers of Astroglide and the manufacturers of my silicone hair serum need to differentiate their packaging just a little bit more, or I really need to put in my contacts before rummaging around in my cabinet of apres shower toiletries.

Being tender is harder than I thought.

It's a lot easier to freak out, worry, indulge in all manner of self-destructive evasive behavior (jealousy, worry, betrayal, anger, giddiness) than to just accept something and allow your heart to feel it without the story line.

Telling a writer to give up the story line is, as one might assume, difficult. Naturally, by "difficult" I actually mean: "hey! ow! quit it! please no! don't! ow! ow! it burns!" but I swear I cause myself more heartache when I feed into those oh-so-comforting, tried and true methods of soul-fuckery.

It's so much harder to sit down, open my heart and say "okay, I'm just thinking. None of this is really real, it's just...thinking" but once I actually do it. Well it's amazing. It's not that I feel better, or I'm still not jealous or angry or bitter or any one of the many emotions that fly like electrocuted squirrels out of my mind when I'm riled; it's just that they don't matter. Not really.

and that's a good place to be.

Ah, that first paycheck of the New Year. What a grand thing it is.

Between "gift" subscriptions to the newspaper, United Way donations and who knows what else, I am now bringing home three dollars and seventeen cents more a week. I rule.

Friend, how long has it been since you've had a big, steaming bowl of wolf brand chili?

isn't it all just a dream, anyway?