P.S., speaking of elections, here's how to find your polling place in Sacramento. (Via Amelie.)

Happy birthday to Cory!

And Michelle!

And Winona Ryder.

And, also, a post-birthday shout-out to Serena ...

So yes, it's Friday and I've got a mile-long to-do list at work and Gerald Collier on the iPod (always a good thing). Oh and I'm hungry and sick of all the Halloween sugar. Me. Sick of the sugar. You know we've crossed over into sweet hell overdrive if I've had enough. Right now I'm craving something healthy, hearty and warm. Soup, veggie chili, polenta, whole-grain bread. Roasted vegetables. Mmmmm.

Speaking of food, I finally checked out the new Safeway on 19th street in midtown. Everyone here at work has been so hyped up and giddy about it - to the point where I wanted to scream, people, it's just a freaking grocery store!. And it is. Just. A. Grocery. Store.

But, I will admit, it's a pretty good one as far as corporate grocers go. It won't replace my weekly trips to the Co-op or Trader Joe's, but it'll do in a pinch. The store is small, at least compared to most other Safeways I've seen, but it's fairly well-organized and has a good organic/health/vegetarian food section. That the prices for said foods are pretty damn high is the main reason why Safeway will not become my grocer of choice anytime soon. Still, for those instances when I need to visit a "regular" store, it's certainly more appealing than Albertsons and more convenient (in regards to location) than Raley's.

But really people, 99 cents for organic (and gelatin-free) yogurt? When the same yogurt only costs 59 cents at the Co-op -- a place that is notorious for its high prices? (To be fair, the Co-op's prices have been much better lately). Yeah, it doesn't seem right to me either and it's just another reason to, at at least in principle, fuck corporate groceries.

I am excited, however, about the Peet's that's opening near the Safeway. It'll be nice to a have decent coffee place within a quick two-block walk from work.
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nine weeks until my birthday
six weeks left of school
exactly one month until my thesis is due
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and, of course...
four days until the election
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It's starting to feel like Christmas around here...

For those of you wondering (like I was) what the hell Jimmy Fallon was doing last night on the baseball field after the Red Sox reversed the curse, here's the scoop. (Via The Outpost).

John Peel, R.I.P.

At least the BBC played "Teenage Kicks" for him this morning.

remember to breathe

Stresssssseeeed. Must remember to breathe. Unclench jaw.
What happened to the weekend? Gone. Just like that. OK. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat.

Just sitting here listening to the Concretes and you know what doesn't suck today? What doesn't suck is that yesterday I met with my thesis advisor and he liked the 20 new pages I sent him last week. Like them a lot actually and suddenly, just like that, my thesis seems to have shaped up into something do-able. To the point where I now need to decide what not to include.

All this and there's still five weeks before it's due. Not that I feel like I'm home safe yet - not by any means. I'm very superstitious about such things --anything could happen between now and then, including the possibility of me reverting back into the crappiest writer ever. Thus, I will continue to keep my fingers crossed (and work hard...it's hard work) until then. In fact this morning when I awoke about 4 a.m. to get a drink of water and the thought of oh my god, my thesis, it's getting there! popped into my head, I actually paused in my sleepy stumble to knock on wood (bedside table) because you just can't afford to jinx these kinds of things at this stage of the game, you know what I'm saying?

Still sick, but not horribly so at this point...just kind of floating in and out of a feverish, sneezy state and hoping to coast through the worst of it.

Some good things about the coming weekend

• Jon Stewart on 60 Minutes this Sunday


• pizza tonight with Grandma Alice


• time tomorrow night with Cory, even if it is work-related


• sleep, blessed sleep

fashion, victimized, redux

In August, I begged you all to resist the poncho. Now Slate is weighing in on the matter:

Fashion crimes, like many other crimes, begin innocently enough. A few influential designers send a quirky and impractical article of clothing down the runway; high-fashion magazines enthusiastically push it; a celebrity is photographed wearing it; lower-end lines begin mass-producing it; suddenly, women are buying it in shrieking colors and synthetic fabrics, and what started as a harmless act of whimsy has become a widespread aesthetic offense.So it has gone with the poncho—that rectangular piece of material resembling a small blanket, with a hole in the center for your head ... Ponchos have become this season's Ugg boots: unsightly and overexposed.

It's important to remember our respective mama's advice people...if a million people jumped off a cliff, would you do that too?

Well, I missed the Jon Stewart vs. Crossfire segment on Friday but thanks to the wonders of the Internet was finally able to check it out here. Funny thing is that after reading about for the past few days it doesn't seem nearly so vitriolic upon viewing. That's media hype for you, I suppose.

last night i dreamed a movie saved my life

Oh no, I feel a cold coming on. Slightly congested chest. A burning sensation behind the eyes, fatigue settling into the joints, an ache in the temple. Fun, fun! The first real cold of the season, surely this is a reason to celebrate.

Oh, and someone hit my car a few weeks ago -- a hit and run while it was parked somewhere. I'm not sure just where it happened, I didn't notice it right away. The damage is fairly minor but major enough to warrant a trip to the body shop. So I dropped off the car this morning and got a rental. Although I wanted another mid-size all they had was an SUV that the rental car clerk assured me was small and "feels as if you're driving a regular car." Ha. It is a Ford Escape and I could easily use it to cart around my entire immediate family, a week's worth of groceries, several small animals and a marching band. OK, maybe only the woodwind section, but still.

Also, Saturday night I dreamed that Morrissey died (not sure of the cause) and that he had really long Jesus hair at the time.

Oh, and last night I dreamed that I won an essay contest by writing on the topic "Be a Pirate!" It had something to do with eschewing the commercialization of everything in favor of, um, well...being a pirate. Right, I know, it doesn't make sense to me either.

Also, I loved, loved, loved I Heart Huckabees. Just really a wonderful absurdist exisistentialist comedy/buddy film that yes, made me laugh and made me cry. But even better awakened a little voice in my head that kept screaming yes! yes! yes! that's it! I wouldn't call it life-affirming really -- if anything I think it may it be guilty of deepening a funk that I've been slipping into as of late...but it's provocative (and hilarious) and eventually, I know, the funk will lead to some sort of clarity. In any case, I really need to see the film again, pronto. And the Jon Brion score? Perfect.

Also, despite help from someone much smarter than me when it comes to computers, I have still had no luck setting up our wireless network for the new iMac and laptop. This means I must call Apple and whine like a baby. But other than this annoyance, the new iMac G5 is pretty nifty and definitely put good use to this year's tax refund.

Also, I didn't do a lick of homework this weekend and will surely pay for it between now and Wednesday. So here's hoping that I can cut this blossoming cold off at the pass. Hot tea, Zicam and Vitamin C coming up ...

I finally made it out of the house yesterday ...and I think I'm paying for it this morning as I have the most godawful headache. But I'm working on that with coffee and Advil and I just a nice hot bowl of oatmeal and it's rainy and gray outside and these things make me happy. My to-do list is still way too long but I'll break it into chunks and figure out what has to be done today in order to preserve what's left of my sanity. I have a sneaking suspicion that homework will not rate highly on this list.

Yesterday I went to SF for a tutoring workshop and then met up with Laura for lunch and shopping. We went to Otsu where I finally bought this bag that I've been eying over at Queen Bee for the last year or so.
".but it's in that neighborhood) but nonetheless it was the first time I've been out to a local show in months and so that was a really good thing --even with the crazy drunk guy who not leave us alone.

15 days (not including today) until the election ... but who's counting, right? Which reminds me, I just ordered the Daily Show book and I've got a million pages left to read in that Maureen Dowd tome that I've been using as a coffee table paperweight...time to get cracking.

Too. Much. To. Do.

Between work, an aching neck and a near-major freakout this morning (over conflicting info, re: when my thesis is due), I am just exhausted and yet the to-do list isn't getting any smaller, it's getting longer.

And damn you TiVo for making it all too enticing to just space out and be the slacker I always knew I could be.

I'm trying to resist the slacker-dom. I've been writing non-stop (well at least it feels that way) over the last few days and have basically become a hermit of sorts. Yes, even more hermit-like than usual.

Dear World:
Between now and Nov. 29th I am going to be an awful friend. Not as there for you as I'd like. I'll try hard not to just fade away but please understand if I don't have time to be more social.
Sincerely,
Me

And I'm not just being an awful friend to my friends, I'm being an awful friend to everything. It bums me out, I had the chance to see The Concretes and Bob Dylan next week...but in reality I just can't justify missing two study nights at this point.

Tonight, however, I am throwing it all to the wind and going to see I Heart Huckabees. That should be good for something, I hope. I'm set to write all day tomorrow and possibly Friday, so honestly I think I deserve a little recreation. We're TiVo-ing the debates and will watch that post-movie because frankly checking it out a few hours late will make no difference to the staleness of the messages.

I just ate a fabulous piece of pumpkin cake but now I feel a case of the sugar jitters coming on. Love the sugar, hate the high.

So, I was going to be really bummed about the arrival of a new, bigger and better iPod just weeks after I bought mine...but the truth is I've barely even used 20 percent of my storage space and don't really have a burning desire to store photos on one....so for the time being I'm OK with the way technology races on at a breathless pace.

Damn, a fond farewell to my childhood crush, Christopher Reeve.

I saw Superman II in the theater 10 times.

Yes, 10 times.

A new day

I am sooo freaking excited....tomorrow I am talking with Mary Margaret O'Hara in San Francisco. At a Starbucks no less. It's going to be very weird and hopefully very cool. It'll only be for a half-hour but I'll probably need to seriously take an Ativan beforehand or risk being a shaky mess. God, I suck at being a stalker. Anyway, more on that later.

Tonight it's pizza and the debates and catching up on other shows from the week and playing around with the new DirecTv/TiVo set-up.

(Dear Tivo, I love you. Hearts and kisses, me.)

And I know we said we were going to set up the new computer tomorrow night but now it looks like we might go and check out some Second Saturday art exhibits including one featuring Dia de los Muertos alters. The computer can definitely wait another day or two.


Also, it looks like next week we'll get to check out an early screening of I Heart Huckabees. Very happy about this. It looks so completely whacked and I'm in need of a good whacked film. Especially one with a gorgeous Jon Brion soundtrack.


Oh, and it truly felt like fall this morning in McKinley Park. Falling leaves, beautiful sky, crisp air and the anticipation of so possibilities for the start of my favorite time of year. Only the yellow fuzzy ducklings seemed a bit out of place. Still, even if they were rather out-of-season, they were nonetheless heartstoppingly cute. We had to break stride for a few minutes and watch them peck around the dirt with their oversized, gawky bills because I'm a sucker like that for baby birds.

Good post over at Cup of Chica the other day -- sort of a round-up of various writers' thoughts on what makes a short story as well as Chica's own thoughts on the task of talking about short stories (i.e., What we talk about when we talk about short stories).

In particular, Chica takes Lorrie Moore to task for copping out on the subject in her introduction to Best American Short Stories 2004.

Sadly, the introduction’s opening showcases a Moore who could be capable of enlivening the wan ‘short story discourse’ ... Unfortunately, she then backs down, and provides readers a first-hand look at what goes wrong when writers write on writing:

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I'm not going to even attempt to try and explain the difference between a short story and a novel. For me a short story is a very brief spark of a glimpse into someone's life, a turning point distilled, a moment. But I've seen very amazing short stories that manage to cover a character's entire lifetime or an otherwise significant time period.

Right now I'm just trying to figure out which form I find, for the time being anyway, more comfortable. I'm working on both short stories and a novel right now and I like working on the short stories because, at least with the ones I'm currently writing, there seems to be a discernible beginning, middle and end -- a structure that I can control. Conversely, the novel I'm working on is just going all over the goddamned place. I don't know how it starts or ends and I'm not really even sure what it's about so please don't ask me OK?* It's just that I've got this character -- a whole cast of characters really-- who keep doing things and the best way I can describe the process is that what started out as a pin prick is now a huge bloody mess and every day the stain seeps further outward. It's both exhilarating and frightening because it could go anywhere, do anything and I have no freaking idea how it will turn out before I go insane, abandon it or finally feel satisfied with what it's become.


On that note, I have class today and I'm turning in something that resembles a poem for my novel workshop "creative response" assignment. It's a "response" (please note this intentional use of quotation marks) to Bessie Head's A Question of Power and somehow, for me at least, writing something in this form just seemed to work.

This weekend: Tomorrow night is a debate date night with Cory and then, on Saturday, a date night to set up the new iMac - because we've been so busy lately that we've had the new computer for a week and it's still in its box.

Of course, I suppose we could have skipped watching America's Next Top Model last night ...ha....as if.

*OK, of course I know what it's about...kind of.

So, so busy lately. I feel as if I'm playing a Survivor immunity challenge, moving from one from one part of the compeition station to another, struggling to keep up and not just flame out while Jeff Probst laughs at every move I make. Damn you Probst and your camp counselor shirts.

The last few days have just been really really long and I'm finding that it's time to really and truly get serious about the thesis because my advisor wants 20 more pages yesterday (OK, in two weeks) and it took me three hours tonight to hammer out five and a half and at that rate we're in deep shit folks.

Not that everything's been bad. Yesterday Cory & I traipsed down to the city for some shopping and last Friday we attended another performanceo of The Black Rider. And although we didn't get to meet Marianne Faithfull backstage this time around, we did have front row seats and that pretty much ruled. Indeed, I think I've become a "Black Rider" junkie and if I had the money and if all the seats at all the shows weren't sold out I'd check out a few more shows.

It's really just that cool.

Obviously the Black Rider spotlight is really on Marianne Faithfull as the devil --and she is fabulous. Still, I think that even those who aren't familiar with her work find Mary Margaret O'Hara to be outstanding. She got giant cheers and whistles after both shows we attended. It wasn't of course, but it almost seems as if the part was written for her peculiar stage presence and her kooky songbird voice. In addition to occasionally letting out some of those crazy trills and screams, she also sings in a really lovely jazzy style for many of the numbers including one solo song, a rendition of "I'll Shoot the Moon" --for which I would die to get a copy of her performing.It's just so perfectly matched for her voice --melancholy and a little crazy. As for her acting, she embodies a marionette/mechanical ballerina figurine sort of persona that's at once sad and creepy.

Overall "The Black Rider" is odd, fascinating and very engaging and I would have enjoyed it even without Mary Margaret O'Hara or Marianne Faithfull. Although some of the theater's subscriber members were clearly put off, bored or confused by its experimental nature (a woman two seats down from us slept through most of the first act), I found it to be this oddly charming, somewhat unsettling blend of Kabuki theater, a German opera, a Warner Bros. cartoon, ballet and a circus sideshow. Seeing it twice was definitely a plus because I was able to pick up on a lot of the nuances that sailed over my head the first time through. Oh, and the show's male lead, Matt McGrath is absolutely astounding. He's been on Broadway and in numerous films and I now want to check out everything he's done.


Oh, and we caught a glimpse of Francis Ford Coppola in the audience last Friday and Phil Lesh from the Grateful Dead nearly bowled Cory over in the bathroom. We'll take our version of Gawker stalker where we can get it I suppose.

P.S. A belated happy birthday shout-out to Bobby J. Hope the day treated you well and that the year has many good things waiting.