trogdor!!

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i wish the days of record shops weren't ending. when i worked at independent records in colorado springs, i resolved that i would someday have a place like that. i really want to own a music shop. in fact, i'd love a combination music shop and performance space with cafe. the coffee part wouldn't be that hard to do - i know a decent amount about that already, having worked in coffee for a while. i've said many times that i didn't want to work in service or retail again unless i could be the boss. i don't know what the new paradigm will be...

oh! hi. yeah, i haven't updated in a while. i've been in noho for the past couple of days, and today aliyaskie and i are driving down to new york for another couple of days. then we'll both fly back to ohio and hang out until next weekend, when she flies home. it's super exciting and i'm having a ton of fun. we caught an erin mckeown concert at the iron horse on friday night, which was gorgeous and magical and crushworthy and also featured MISS sara lee on the bass!, and dude erin is super freaking hot. i never had a crush on her when we used to go see her at fire & water, and now it's like getting out of control. :) then we hit grampy's and had a post-concert clove because dude, we needed that.

also friday involved rain, beautiful colors (noho is just now turning, but the interstates are in full fall regalia), non-functioning noses at the yankee candle village, and a restaurant at yankee candle called chandler's (ms. chanandler bong's, we've decided) that serves dinner entirely by candlelight. saturday was hiking around campus taking way too many photos of stuff i've already got photos of. still, it was good, and smelling the moldy gamut again was nice. (the gamut is the rehearsal space for mendenhall, the theater building at smith.) in the late afternoon we drove out to lenox, in the berkshires, and walked around tanglewood, the summer space for the boston symphony orchestra. it's a special place for chicky, and i'll let her tell that story, but the short of it is that this place is GORGEOUS. the sun was just starting to set over the mountains, and the valley below us was bathed in shadows, and the trees burned gold in the light. we took a side trip afterward up to pittsfield to hit guido's fresh market, which is very whole foods-y but in a local way as opposed to a chain way. the bakery had creme brulee *and* profiteroles. i dug it muchly. then we drove to the holyoke mall at ingleside for a little clothes shopping and a little ben & jerry's; to cracker barrel for chicken 'n' dumplings for me and apple cheese chicken for the chickadee; and finally to bed in our super comfy beds.

and now we're getting ready to leave this place that was the origin of our friendship. bye, noho. next stop: new york!

i'm a little cranky right now because i'm sore still. my face is ready to declare mutiny and secede from the rest of my body, and i think i have a suture sticking out. sorry. i'll try not to be gross for the rest of this post.

i just went to my last poli sci class for this quarter. my prof was a former lieutenant governor of ohio, which made for some unique inside knowledge of the overall topic - campaigns and elections. we've been talking a lot a lot about the '08 election. i'm trying to reserve judgment on the candidates so far, although i pretty much already know the people i don't like. i'm just trying not to like anyone too much this early in the game. it's not working very well :) but the class was great. it was a 430/630, which meant we had a couple of grad students in class and the rest were undergrad but almost all majors. so that made for some good classroom discussion. the entire thing was conducted more or less like a group discussion class. and even though i didn't have to watch because i'm done with class now, i actually want to go back and watch this past sunday's meet the press. we had to watch it every week for class and now it feels kinda cool to have that habit. not that tim russert has a monopoly on truth around here, but he asks a question and lets whatever talking head or politician is on for the week actually answer the question. or inexpertly dodge it, whatever.

anyway. in about 45 minutes i have my last geology class of the quarter, followed only by our final exam on wednesday. i have to say, i wish i could take the next class in this series next quarter. unfortunately, it coincides exactly with a class i promised another professor i'd take. that one is an am lit class on writings during reconstruction, more or less, up to about the turn of the century - mark twain and henry james and shit like that. i'd taken his class on am lit 1820-1865 in the fall and he'd asked me to come back and write another paper for him. how could i say no? so i'd already planned my schedule around that one class, and that happened to be the only time geology 106 is offered in the spring. but the am lit class comes around once a year, if that, and gl 106 is offered every stinkin' quarter, so i knew my choice. too bad, though, because my geology professor keeps things interesting. he'll go off onto some tangent about chemistry or astrophysics and how they relate to, say, plate tectonics, and he'll be all erudite and interesting, and just then he'll somehow bring in the smurfs or buttcracks or something. totally my kind of class. (my prof is early 30's, barely older than i am, so just in case you were picturing some 70-year-old dude talking about buttcracks, i'm here to clear things up for you.)

i want to be able to eat real food! i liked my broccoli cheddar soup for lunch but really, how much soup can i consume? i have jello at home, though. mmmmmmm jello. and pudding. i have never felt so much like a 4-year-old. well, other than when i *was* 4. but i digress.

rosie perez was amazing last monday. she has so much to say about the condition of puerto rico and about the horrifying things that have been done to the women on that island. one in every three women in puerto rico has been surgically sterilized, and my government did this, ostensibly in an effort to reduce poverty, which of course has risen since the sterilization program was put in place. just another excuse to continue absconding with resources while blaming the citizens. ms. perez made a documentary - watch it if you haven't yet. it's called yo soy boricua, pa' que tu lo sepas! and it traces the history of puerto rico and vieques and their colonization and exploitation. (and i need an upside-down exclamation point in there somewhere, but i don't remember how to do it and i'm too tired to look it up right now. i can do ñ all day long but not that one. ññññ.) i caught it on bravo a couple of months ago and was simply transfixed.

my sweetie and i went to noho over presidents day weekend. once again, we ate our way through town. this time i got him to spoleto, which was amazing, of course, because it is spoleto. we had to get a poppyseed bagel with scallion spread from hayfield (which to me will always be the vermont deli), and we had to get scallion pancakes from taipei and tokyo, and we had to get anything at all from the haymarket, and we had to get bath beads from the cedar chest. and we spent much of the rest of our time addicted to hgtv. i don't know what it is about watching shows about flipping houses, but we could not turn it off. so not interesting when we're at home but it just grabbed us this time. we both came away convinced that we are *not* ready to own a house.

past that, we spent just a few hours at a time in town because it was so cold. this was right after aaaaaall that snow came through. paradise pond was frozen over and everyone was out skating on it. i'd never seen that before. it was what people imagine new england to be in the winter. it was like a norman rockwell painting. we finally did something i'd never done, which was to go sledding on hospital hill. the whole thing was one big block of ice, so each bump that i hit knocked the wind out of me a little bit. i ended up chickening out on the top of the hill and went down about halfway downslope. my sweetie went from the top of the hill and slide probably a quarter mile. i should mention we did this at night, which made the whole endeavor that much scarier. and then i got upset with myself for chickening out and burst into tears. but i dried my eyes and we drove around holyoke for a while and eventually found our way back to chicopee falls, where we were staying, and got hot chocolate at dunkin donuts and watched hgtv until we fell asleep.

oh, my hair has bled out to green. just in time for st. patrick's day, as everyone has reminded me. part of me wants to research the history of my irish and scots-irish and welsh ancestors on that day, sort of as a primer on the persecution they endured at the hands of the british, and make it about more than green beer and kiss-me shirts. and the rest of me right now just wishes i could have some green beer but for my mouth and its missing teeth.

happy birthday to softserv!

i haven't posted in for-freaking-ever, i know. i really should talk about my insane trip to see aliyaskie and go to aeiou's wedding, so remind me to do that. i also should talk about this weekend's trip to northampton, so remind me to do that too. i just haven't really had the time or inclination to write much on the ol' eljay lately. too much going on in the meatworld.

but let me assure you all, i've been reading and thinking of each one of you. so even if i don't comment, it's not because i've forgotten you.

in particular, i want to say that i was thinking of aliyaskie, caeliste, mere, softserv, ptbarnum, thisredrock, and twostepsfwd this weekend at smith. i'm sorry i didn't get to see any of you, for those of you who were actually in the area. it was one of those weekends where i didn't want to plan anything, and that ended up being a good thing. i didn't attend the parade - i slept in - but all day, i saw smithies in white wandering around noho. each turned corner had its own story. it was a good thing for me to do. i was able to reclaim smith for myself a little bit...even if i'm not a graduate, i'll always be an alumna.

i'm having a randomly lonely night, after what was a good day overall. i'm suddenly realizing that it's the end of the month already and there are a ton of things i needed to have done by 1 march that are going to get rushed into completion. this whole february thing fucked me up yo.

i'm missing noho. well, not noho exactly. i went back and dug up some old correspondence from the last few months i lived there and perused a chunk of my life. i was pretty well 19 all right. i mean, i look at it now and go good lord i was immature, but really i was just 19. but i checked out some emails from that time that were between me and a former - i don't know, girlfriend, maybe, it was a complicated time - and i was surprised by the depth and tenderness and joy in those notes. i've always thought fondly of that time. whenever someone points to the succession of people in my life who returned my love with hurt, she's the one i inevitably come back with. yes, some of my relationships ended painfully, but that one ended because of physical distance, nothing else, really. and it's easy to think of that as idyllic because it was so short. had we stayed together, been in one location for an extended period, i imagine we would have broken up. but i somehow can't see it being out of betrayal. she just wasn't like that. she was earnest about her emotions but playful and fun at the same time. she managed a sort of wicked innocence. i'm glad i'm no longer 19 - i was in a ton of pain then and was feeling generally lost - but i can look back on my time with her with no regret.

but life now is good. i love my sweetie, and i enjoy being 26, and i get to be in the workaday grownup world and the kiddie punkass rebellious earnest college world at the same time. what i enjoy about the working world is that i'm in on that whole inside joke, the secret that gets concealed from kids, that it's all ridiculous and it doesn't get any better as you get older, it just gets funnier if you have the guts to laugh at it. what i enjoy about the college world is the studied seriousness but also the potential for spontaneity. i walked into the student union and joined a throng of people watching a latin dance class in the middle of the room. i poked around a few hallways, got invited to join a group of guys playing video games (i turned them down but seriously considered staying and playing), found the queer group and introduced myself. i'm not sure whether i'll go to their meetings or not. another complication of my emotional history. i found myself feeling the need to tell them that i'm married and realizing that it could wait. i'm going to have to come out to this crew as well, it seems. hm. but i'm in love with the student union and consequently with my school (again). the air force refers to that as being "re-blued" (air force color being blue). since my school's colors are green and gold, i guess i'm constantly being re-greened, which is a nice thought anyway since it sounds like spring or forests or christmas or something.

my writing sucks lately. it's long and rambly and has relatively little punctuation but is really fond of the dash. i should fix this. probably by writing more.

oh yes, i got into school! i start in january. yay me.

also, job is pretty good. interviewing for another job at barnes & noble tonight. i figure, i'll pick up a few extra hours to put some more money toward school, and when the new year rolls around, i'll see which job will have me and how much i'm interested in working.

damn i have an hour and a half until i have to leave the house again. i friggin' got up at 5:30. i'm tiiiiiiiiiired. but i also have a four-day weekend, so yay me again.