Sometimes, I wish I were not quite so clean.

It would, you know, help to live with other college-age people if I didn't hate to see a stove with grease on it, or dishes left out, or crumbs on the counter, or bugs in the kitchen. But I do. So I clean. And gripe. And clean. And, you know, I don't mind the cleaning so much (unless it's something really disgusting), I just don't want it to be always my responsibility.

But, in other news, the weather is cool enough to justify bringing out my down comforter at least for a little while (once it gets hot enough it's going to the dry cleaner's to get rid of mystery spot that appeared when the roommate decided to borrow it for a guest when I was out of town) and I decided that my sleepless nights were probably due to a lack of a real pillow, so my bed is once again a downy wonderland. This fact has not escaped the feline residents of apartment 2S. Photo evidence:

Wormy settles in for a nap:

Worm at the top, Sphinx at the bottom:

Again: Worm at the left, Sphinx at the right. They were there ALL DAY.

And, yes, we constantly suffer from this problem in this apartment. Kitties! The best of roommates!

So now I'm going to go knit. G'night.

Uhm...

Mingle² - Online Dating

The site says it reached this rating based on the number of times I used the words "dead" and "death". So, I did a search and lemme tell you where it appears.

A Yehuda Amichai poem.

My Scav Adventures

A quote from Vita Sancti Davidi

An explanation of my absence

A Saunders Lewis poem

In each of two sonnets by two Elizabeths

My Unattainable Crushes

Patrick's joke on Nietzche

An Honors Calc midterm

Discussion of St. Lazarus

So, um... Poetry: Parental Guidance Suggested? I'm disappointed, though, that it didn't pick up on my many overt discussions of alcohol, and jokes on, well, drugs, sex, and rock & roll...

Addenda: Patrick talks about death less than I do, but he got busted for some, um, unfortunate Latin...

Things I Did in San Francisco:

(Yes, I'm alive. No, really.)

1. Ignored almost all of my e-mails.

2. Attended a literary reading at a rather...um, obviously lesbian-oriented bookshop in Oakland. Frequent-reader Larry was the star of the show, reading selections from a short-story.

3. Had really good Indian food in Berkeley with Patrick. Wandered around the Berkeley campus and talked about God for a while.

4. Attended a dinner party, thrown simultaneously in honor of my graduation and the Birthday of Larry's...quieter, less flamboyant half.

5. Worked in the garden with my mother. Unfortunately, the cats discovered a nest of baby mice in the neighbor's back yard, and we spent much of the day trying to remove scared mice from our living room (and had one mouse funeral).

6. Was called for Jury Duty.

7. Enjoyed my graduation present of an evening at a fancy Spa, getting a back massage, a manicure/pedicure, and a facial.

8. Went out with Patrick & friends to Dim Sum. Got sunburned walking around the Presidio. The day after my fancy skin treatments. We call this literary technique, "Irony."

9. Finished my application for a Canadian Student Visa

10. Saw "Ocean's 13" with my father.

11. Bought yarn for knitting myself a hat.

How To Spend Senior Week, #3

(Note: I skipped over installment #2, which will discuss the Senior Class Trip to Six Flags and the White Sox game.)

So you've been to Second City. You've Roller Skated, you've spent somewhere between 5 and 12 hours at an amusement park, and you've paid far too much for ballpark food. If you're me, or Veronica, or Carolyn, your feet are calloused and chronically tired, you've torn your nails up stressing over finals, and you haven't had a chance to pay attention to your eyebrows since, oh, Christmas (because of the BA, you know...) SOLUTION: Girly day at a nail salon.

Of course, we were all too tired and scatter-brained to a) make an appointment, b) get out of the house early enough to get to the nail salon any time before 12:45, when they were in the midst of their lunch-hour rush. "We can fit you in at two," they said. That wasn't going to work for Carolyn, but Veronica and I put down our names and we decided to take ourselves out to lunch so that Carolyn would not have trekked up to the North side in vain. Pickings were slim, aside from an Einstein's Bagels, but a few serendipitous choices in route put us in front of a Mexican restaurant, which we decided to try for lack of better options.

The interior was far more promising than the exterior, but what was most promising was the interior of the menu. FACT: They advertised the best Margaritas in Chicago. FACT: Their house Margaritas are half-price on Tuesdays and Thursdays. FACT: Carolyn had been craving a Margarita for a while, and we were all hot and sticky and miserable. Which is how we explain the following:


And this:

And, indeed, this:


I believe that I announced, as the drinks were put before us, "Oh, this is good, Veronica. We won't be able to feel the waxing."

I'm ashamed to say that I had never before had a margarita. I'm also ashamed to say that I was the only one who finished her drink. And, thirdly, I'm embarrassed to say that it was a strawberry margarita, which may very well violate my rule against girly drinks.

Then Veronica and I went to the salon and were pampered and exfoliated and pedicured and manicured and had our eyebrows done...although by the time we got there any analgesic effects of the tequila had worn off. I, having only had extra-cheap sketchy manicures in hole-in-the-wall salons in Chicago, was pleasantly surprised by how nice it could be, and Veronica and I had a nice long chat about beaux.

What say you, Vanessa-- When you come to Chicago, nails and margaritas?
(Oh, okay, Larry. If you come out to Chicago, I'll also take you to get nails and margaritas.)

Some Things Which Have Recently Made My Day:

Well, it's Senior Week. Also known as "High Heels and Free Wine" Week. It's been kinda up-and-down with grief over leaving, stress over leaving, and hormones, but there have been some pretty awesome things as well. In fact, I made a list.

1) Coffee/Brunch at the Med with Steph on Sunday.
YAY for Huevos Rancheros.

2) The Seminary Co-Op Booksale
I bought Moreland and Fleisher's Latin, favored by the University of Toronto, as well as a reader of Medieval Latin and two books of poetry.

Corollary to #2) Yehuda Amichai
I opened the book to see what I thought of his poetry, and I couldn't stop. I just stood there on the library ladder in the co-op, reading.

From The Language of Love and Tea with Roasted Almonds:

1.
Layla, night, the most feminine of all things, is masculine
in Hebrew, but it is also the name of a woman.
Sun is masculine and sunset feminine,
the memory of the masculine in the feminine, and the yearning
of a woman in a man. That is to say: the two of us, that is to say: we.
And why is Elohim, God, in the plural? Because All of Him
are sitting in the shade under a canopy of vines in Akko,
playing cards. And we sat at a table nearby and I held your hand
and you held mine instead of cards, and we too
were masculine and feminine, plural and singular,
and we drank Arab tea with roasted almonds, two tastes
that didn't know each other and became one in our mouth.
And over the cafe door, next to the sky, it said:
"Not Responsible for Items Forgotten or Lost."

10.
Every woman in love has the face of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus,
in the pietas. She remembers what happened to another woman
in another time, she remembers even what has not
happened yet, the future already belongs
to her memory. Pain and joy yoked together.
She knows about the death of the dead man as he lies in her arms,
and she knows about the resurrection of the dead in her arms.
She too is the precision of pain and the blurriness of joy.

3) Pistachio petit-fours at the President's Reception.
I mean, once you get over the fact that eating petit-fours makes you feel like an American Girl "Samantha" doll, they really can be one of the best dessert pastries out there.

4) Senior Week trip to see The Second City
My favorite sketch was definitely one about two IRA members trying desperately to get themselves on the No-Fly list in an airport, and failing miserably. The sketch culminated with the song, "No One's Scared of an Irish Terrorist Anymore." The Haberdasher'd One and I were seated beside Mr. James Beatty. I had forgotten how much fun it is to watch James watch something that he thinks is brilliantly funny. He just freezes, with his mouth open, as they build up to the punch-line. It's fun to watch anyone enjoying themselves that much.
Regret of the evening: not staying in the area with the Haberdasher'd One to drink coffee and read. It looked like a charming if yuppified neighborhood, and that could have been much fun. Unfortunately, I was both feeling ill and lacked a book.

5) Roller-skating with Carolyn
I am a terrible roller-skater. I hadn't been skating of any sort since Sophomore year of High School, and stopped going to Roller Skating Birthday Parties/Field Trips when they closed the Rolladium in Daily City. Despite my anxieties about people running into me, I did enjoy myself and am now treating my sore muscles with advil. It also brought back many a memory of: the Rolladium, my childhood roller-skates (the first pair had unicorns on the side, the later pair were Barbie roller-skates), and attending the birthday party of My First Crush in, oh, second grade. They issued us all arcade tokens as part of the Party package, but I had no interest in Streetfighter arcade games from 1989, so I took my token home and put it in a special box for safekeeping as a memory of my beloved (if, as Gioanna was quick to point out, somewhat runny-nosed) First Love.