beautiful, funny, sad & true

1. caught a cold

2. went to see my friend Keith (he and I were in Dirty Martini together last year) with his jazz group called the Blue Cranes at a tiny but great place called Valentine’s. They tore it up. Awesome show.

3. stayed home from work on Tuesday. Coughed my lungs out and just generally felt crappy.

4. went to work on Wednesday, but went home sick at lunch time. Met Joan for lunch. First time I’d seen her in a week. Went home, napped for a while, then went to Todd’s play reading.

5. went to work and stayed all day today. Going to BoringFish’s house for dinner. We’re making it ourselves, yo.

So that’s the latest. I didn’t forget to write, just haven’t had much to tell about lately. Except the fact that this anime series I’ve been watching–called Haibane Renmei–just keeps getting more and more beautiful. If I can find it for sale, I intend to buy it.

Bad news about my Christmas holiday. I’m going to Seattle for the weekend, and I was planning to stay from Friday night to Tuesday night. I just found out today that my workplace is open on Christmas Eve, so that means I’m not going to be able to be in Seattle on the actual Christmas Day, like I was planning to. Grrrrr. Have I mentioned recently how much it sucks to have a day job? Cause it does. It’s really starting to get in the way of my life.

I suppose that’s good, because it means that I have a life. It would be infinitely worse to have nothing going on, but it sure does make for tricky scheduling and frustrating disappointments sometimes.

This is a dedication for someone. I found it and shared it with her, and I liked it so much that I thought it would be nice to post here too.

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

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’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!