beautiful, funny, sad & true

Here are some pictures from the geocaching trip that Todd and I took the other day.

rock from Lake Tai in Suzhou, China

Vista Street Bridge (a.k.a “Suicide Bridge”)

Todd

Does this T-shirt/long-sleeved T-shirt/hoodie/jacket combination make me look fat?

very tricky and ingenious

Todd likes blondes, no matter how small or how plastic.

Todd also likes counting bricks in elephants.
Don’t ask me why; it’s his way.

wild goose chase, but at least it was
a pretty wild goose chase

“It’s not that you are foolish, it’s just that your comments may be perceived as criticism.”

Wow. Instead of “Libra,” it should be called “Todd’s Horoscope.”

Tonight two cool music-related things happened.

The first was that I went to the cast-and-crew screening of the independent film Blue Angel, which Crystin Byrd and I contributed a song to. Crystin and her husband Aram were there too, of course, and it was a great time.

Afterwards, C&A and I walked across the street to FamousIceCreamPlaceNamedAfterTwoGuys to have some ice cream and talk in a place where we could actually hear each other. (The party was in a loud basement bar, and we couldn’t hear a thing anyone said unless they were shouting directly at us.) So we’re sitting and talking, and all of a sudden I hear a familiar-sounding guitar part come over the speakers in the place. It’s my guitar part from “Lost In July” by the Young Immortals! I asked the girl who worked there–who, incidentally, looked like Natalie Portman–if the music was something they brought in. “No, it’s the radio,” she said. “KINK.”

It was an amazing surprise, and a great night for the ol’ musical self-esteem.

I walked into a parking garage to pick up my old forty-shades-of-magenta BMW 2002. I got in, rolled both windows all the way down and was driving around downtown, when I saw some friends of mine. (No one I know in real life, by the way.)

I waved at them out the window, parked my car, then we all walked together to a vacant lot, which was surrounded on the other three sides by very tall buildings. A street ‘circus’ was happening, with lots of performers, musicians, dancers, et cetera. There was a girl in a shiny green body suit costume and Carnaval-type hat with huge, multi-colored feathers sticking out of the top. Occasionally, she would walk on stilts.

My friends and I hung out for a while, talking and watching the performances, and then we all split up. I turned and started walking back to my little car, and as I passed the girl, she motioned for me to wait, jumped down off her stilts, and came over to say hello. I was pleasantly surprised to find that she was a little over five feet tall. She took her big hat off, and her shoulder-length brown hair came tumbling down. We walked back to my car and got in. I started it, then reached up to roll back the sunroof. I turned and asked her, “Where would you like to go?” She adjusted her hat on her lap to get the feathers out of her face, and then she smiled a little and turned to look at me.

And that’s when I woke up.

Argh! :)

I’m almost embarrassed to share this dream. It sounds so cheesy! Cars and girls; who knew I was such a troglodyte? (It wasn’t really that cheesy, I promise you. The car was the same old piece of crap that it was in real life, and jeez, the girl and I had only just met!) I was asleep for all of nine minutes, in between taps of the ‘snooze’ button on my alarm clock. No, that’s not an excuse, I’m just saying.

I actually had three more little dreams like that this morning. I don’t remember any of them, unfortunately, because I kept hitting the button and going right back to sleep.

I’ve been freezing all day.

I walked to work–not an uncommon occurrence in itself–to find that the heating system at work is still on the proverbial fritz, so the corner of the building that I work in has been unheated for a full week now. It’s like 55 degrees in that corner. Three of us started bringing space heaters, but since I walked today, I forgot to bring mine. Oops. I borrowed a worthless little one from someone, and it at least kept my feet warm, but I had to keep my hoodie’s hood pulled up all day to keep from shivering. Still kinda did, though.

I walked downstairs to go home, and it was pouring rain outside. It still is, as a matter of fact. I stuffed my little bag inside my coat and headed home, shivering and coughing, with my pant legs and hood soaking wet.

I got home to a toasty warm apartment, and found the best postcard in the history of postcards waiting for me. My friend Andrea spent the last month in Switzerland with her Man (‘boy friend’ sounds so junior high), and kept an amazing blog of her trip. I thought I’d seen all the pictures, but boy was I wrong:

She flew in and out of the airport in Paris, so they took the opportunity to do some more sightseeing there. Le Pure Cafe, incidentally, is the little cafe that was featured so prominently in the movie Before Sunset. You probably recognized it too. What a great postcard. Thank you, Andrea! I love it. It put a huge smile on my face, and it brought plenty of warmth to me on an otherwise cold night.

Welcome back!