this is the toucan we helped today

it makes me feel better, or at least different, to think about it. do you think if i called the zoo tomorrow, they would tell me how it was doing? i hope so because i don't think that i will be able to sleep tonight for worrying, about both the toucan and my future.

as usual my predictions for a crappy day were totally wrong, more evidence that i get bent out of shape for no reason

it was a GREAT day at the zoo.

first, we saw the sea lions. i am from california, and so i have seen seals, sea lions, and elephant seals probably more times than anyone from other states. but this was the first time that their size and unexpected underwater grace really took hold of me. out of water, it was obvious that they are intelligent, boisterous, and probably pretty fun to care for, but they are awkward and ungainly. underwater they were beautiful. i think that word is used too often, but it really was true in this case. it was like they had coreographed it beforehand; they swam in sync, and were obviously showing off. it was very impressive.

then came the otter, who was also a showoff. we got to see him get fed, retrieve a stick, rub his belly, and do a bunch of flips. it sounds mundane, but it was way, way cute.

then we saw the polar bears. jake has this habit of sort of rushing through things like the zoo, especially if there are children around. he was done with the star wars exhibit probably 45 minutes before i was, and he was the one saying "let's move on" after we saw every animal. but he was just entranced by the polar bears. when one went into another part of the habitat, he wanted to go to a different window to follow it, and the dozens of children screaming at the bears to play with the ball or play with each other or roar didn't bother him at all. when the biggest one dove into the water to tackle the smaller one, he cheered along with everyone else, and we even went back to see them again later. i found out after that that after his grandparents retired, they drove around all over the country, including alaska, and took pictures of bears. i was really glad for his enthusiasm because then i didn't end up feeling like i had dragged him there for an afternoon of me oohing and awing over everything while he stood around and waited until i took him home. the grizzly bear was asleep, though - we went back three times to see if maybe he had woken up, but no luck. that was pretty much the only disappointment.

the hairiest part of our trip to the zoo was the "flooded rainforest" section. when we got there, a couple dads were talking about the caiman that was staring at a toucan that had fallen in the water. i thought maybe they had seen this earlier, because i could see a toucan hopping around on some branches above the caiman. then, just as we were walking past them, i saw the caiman go for something behind a tree; i just couldn't see the toucan from where i was standing, but he was stuck in the water and the caiman had gotten some of his tailfeathers and was right behind him, hissing. i flipped out, and ran toward what i thought was an information booth but turned out to be an abandoned cafeteria. i grabbed what looked like a maintenance guy and tried to explain what was happening, half-crying and pretty hysterical. he couldn't understand me and apparently didn't work there anyway, but he ran behind a door and came back out with a guy wearing an apron. since i was hyperventilating and pretty much incapacitated, jake explained the situation calmly to the teenager in the apron while i made frantic hand gestures. the guy sort of laughed at me and said he would "call". when we went back to check on the toucan, someone was using a rake to shoo the caiman away, and then he took both toucans out of the habitat. i don't know whether he took both out because they like to be together - the mobile toucan was pretty obviously concerned when the other one was stuck in the water - or because this incident made someone realize that it's not safe for the toucans to be in there with the caiman, but either way i don't think it's a good idea for all those animals to be in there together. i mean, some of them are endangered, and they're at the zoo to be protected! when jake first pointed this out, i was sure that zoologists, or whoever works at the zoo, would never put animals that have a predator/prey relationship in a habitat together. but even if the caiman doesn't usually prey on toucans, most carnivores are opportunists and if something goes wrong for someone else, like falling in the water and not being able to get out, something bad is going to happen. on the other hand, maybe this just happens sometimes and the toucan is going to be fine - i do tend to really freak out about stuff like this. the frustration i feel about the global political situation is nothing next to my desire for a toucan not to get eaten by a caiman, at least not somewhere where i know it is happening. sometimes i care so much about animals it makes me feel crazy.


this is what a caiman looks like. creepy, right?

we also saw the elephants doing their stretches and the giraffes eating. we went through "lorikeet landing," where you feed these lorikeets a bunch of nectar and they land all over you. they must have them specially trained or something because i have never seen a single person get shit on.

one really encouraging thing about going to the zoo was seeing all the animals hugging. the polar bears hugged, the sun bears hugged, pretty much all the monkeys were hugging each other, the hippos can't really hug due to lack of any sort of functional appendage but they were snuggling, the elephants kept touching trunks, and there was a pretty obvious relationship between both the musk oxen and the toucans. maybe it was just a chilly day, but it was an awfully nice thing to do for valentine's day.

it is difficult to have a positive attitude under circumstances like these

it's raining and the first of the rejection letters just came in. jake seems to only actually want to go to the zoo because i told him i would buy coffee beforehand. it is shaping up to be a pretty CRAPPY day at the zoo. i don't even think that having cookies for breakfast is going to fix this one.

nell really likes otters, and also i know we will see some when we go to the zoo tomorrow. tomorrow! i can't believe it's almost here!

this is a sea otter. there are also river otters, which are darker. that is pretty much the extent of what i know about otters.

i saw nell today

i know, i know. nell is a terrific name for a friend to have. anyway, this is how it started.

last year, before i moved back to san francisco, i lived with nell. my good friend emily had moved back to san francisco early in the fall, my awesome friend carl had gone to japan and subletted the room next to mine to a girl i liked but not as much as him, and nell was sort of my saving grace because it seemed like everyone was just getting less and less happy. not just at the house - everywhere. myself included. then nell told me that she had decided to move, that she wanted to live by herself for a while. i completely understood her reasons for doing it, but having moved into the house specifically to live with her, i felt a little abandoned. i had thought i was still (immaturely and ashamedly) pretty butthurt about the whole thing until I JUST SAW HER AND EVERYTHING WAS FINE.

here is another way to approach the story.

this year, i have really been dressing like crap. at work i open cardboard boxes and take out the garbage. am i going to wear my limited edition search for spok promotional tshirt to work? no. nor am i going to wear a sweater, a sweatervest, a nice sweatshirt, or pretty much anything but one of the numerous crappy tshirts i own and a pair of pants that i won't get all butthurt about if they get a weird stain from packing materials (has happened) or i accidentally cut them with a boxcutter (has happened) or they get dripped on by the unrecognizable, possibly toxic material that drips from the ceiling in the back hallway (has almost happened). when i tutor, sometimes i'll put on a sweater or a nicer sweatshirt to cover up the crappy tshirt, but it's immediately back to the tshirt when i get home. i won't even go into the kitchen if i'm wearing anything i actually care about. the days that i don't have work are probably the worst though. i sleep in, and then feel guilty and rushed to try and do something with the day so i leave the house without even washing my face, usually in the tshirt i just slept in. then, inevitably, i see someone i know at the library, or trader joe's, or the post office (the three places i go on my days off). no matter who it is, i pretty much do not want to see them because i feel terrible and am pretty sure i look terrible, which is a shame because i know a lot of nice people that under other circumstances i would be very pleased to run into. but today was different. yesterday i went on a raging domestic kick, and cleaned my entire room (vacuumed, even) and started the 2-3 loads of laundry i have been putting off for a week. today, i got up early because i wasn't scared to face my surroundings (usually i just lie in bed and read comic books or stare into space, anything to put off getting up and looking at the shithole i live in. you would think this horribly depressing routine would have encouraged me to clean my room sooner. the only thing i can say is, i am just really lazy). i got dressed, washed my face and EVEN BRUSHED MY HAIR. that is when you know it is going to be a red letter day, where everything gets written in the day planner and then crossed off, the plants all get watered, i have a grocery list to take to the store, and i am on time for everything. i dressed in a nice tshirt i got months ago and hadn't even worn yet. i'd thought about wearing it before, even taken it out of the closet, and then thought, "why? i am only going to get dirt on it, so why put on a nice tshirt just to sit in front of the space heater and not look around?" i put everything i needed in my bag, gassed up, and was off to probably the most efficient and fulfilling round of errands i will enjoy all year. i had mailed everything i needed to mail and was parking in front of the post office, and who should i see walking by my car but old nell. AND FOR ONCE I DID NOT LOOK OR FEEL LIKE CRAP.

so there you go. i saw nell, it was great, we are hanging out on friday, and just like that i have a friend again.

i have allergies, and it's hard to concentrate and/or keep my balance, so here are just a couple things

this whole anna nicole smith thing is just a cover for the fact that the government has been DOCTORING INTELLIGENCE. yes, that was announced two days ago. terrifying. that said, i am also terrified by the fact that a.n.s. left her baby in the bahamas when she left for hollywood. less terrified, much less, but still terrified.

having a fever is not sexy. even if you have a fever because you are near someone you have a crush on and you are just an awkward person, it is pretty much the farthest thing from sexy. it's sweaty, and kind of headachy, and even if a shower provides temporary relief, you still have a fever when you get out and then you have a fever and are squeaky clean with your pores sealed shut and you feel like the finger of a really big latex glove.

i have a strange relationship with valentine's day. ever since i stopped going to an all-girls' school, i wanted a valentine, but the timing was always off, so valentine's day has always been a pretty big disappointment romantically. one year, a couple weeks before valentine's day, i was hanging out with a friend in his dorm room. i went to the bathroom on his hall and found his hallmate and a girl he was dating shaving each other. they said it was a date they had thought of. this led to a nightmare where i got an envelope in the mail and it was full of their greasy hair. then, on valentine's day, i opened my mailbox and saw a big envelope. i was so excited! my first real valentine, not from my mom or grandparents, ever! i opened it and it was full of max's hair. i cried. the first year jake and i were together, we got together right after valentine's day. the next year, it happened during the week or so we were broken up (jake sent me a card anyway. it was big and heavy, with a dark red heart with lace around it. i have no idea where he got it - i can't for the world imagine him actually buying it - but i do still have it). then, last year, i was home and jake was here in portland (although he sent my flowers and candy anyway - a dozen roses, and a big box of chocolates. i ate all the chocolates immediately). this will be the first year i will have a real valentine's day. i guess i'm excited. that said, my mom has always done a little something for valentine's day. sometimes i would wake up and there would be a new mug and some ghiradelli's hot chocolate on the kitchen table, sometimes special valentine's day socks. that always meant a lot to me, and it might sound retarded but my mom is the best valentine i could ever have. i think my mom is totally rad.

confessions II

i forgot, this is lizzy's blog, in case you want to be as obsessed with her as i am. one other thing i forgot, i also started watching deadwood because she likes it so much. lizzy, this is a confession for you: i like it, but i like carnivale way more. i see how you could be crazy for calamity jane and all the swearing, although my personal favorite is the widow garrett (the more conniving she is, the better i like her), but i am just hooked on that crazy supernatural shit and i love clea duvalle (leftover from how every time i see "but i'm a cheerleader" i think maybe i could be a lesbian [i can't, i've never even really tried and i still know that]).

anyway, admitting that i am really into pretending to be lizzy when she's not around felt pretty good. admitting things to the internet is not that hard, and even though i'm pretty sure there's not a whole lot of things that are secretly true about me that aren't secretly true about millions of other people, i've decided to get a few more off my chest.

sometimes i have fantastical, mildly violent fantasies about people i severely dislike. my roommate for junior and senior years sort of decided that she'd outgrown me, and started knowing absolutely everything and getting whiplash from how hard she looked down at me. of course, i reacted defensively, which made the situation much fiercer than it would have been had i sat her down and talked about how ANGRY she made me. i think i sort of understood this, because my recurring fantasy in this situation was shooting her through the neck with a crossbow - not to puncture an artery or anything, just to nail her to the wall through her vocal cords so i could give her a serious talking-to without any crappy backtalk. when jake and i broke up for about a week and i suspected one of his fellow philosophy majors of trying to get with him, i imagined pushing her down, putting on some enormous boots, and stepping on her womb, which would crack just like an eggshell. when jake made out with another girl while i was away, i imagined scalping her - not in a bloody way, but in a way where her hair would peel off like the back of a sticker and i would have a trophy and she would have humiliation. wow, maybe i am crazy! i think a lot of other crazy things too, but maybe that should be all for today.

i have this friend

her name is lizzy acker. here is a picture of her i found on the internet:

i wish i was just like her. she is crazy in a hilarious way that charms people and makes them laugh and leaves them with the impression that she is intelligent (true), while i am crazy in an awkward, sweaty hiding-in-my-sweatshirt way that leaves people with the impression that i am just weird (true). she goes to graduate school. now i want to go. she got a tattoo of oregon. now i want one. she got a blog, so i did. i want to be just like her, and i know she reads this blog, so really this is a confession.

my mom has this special way of making me feel really, really guilty when she needs technical support and i am 300 miles away.

law and order is doing hillary clinton being politically faulted for bill's indiscretions tonight. they could be doing a better job.

jake and i are going to go to the zoo for valentine's day

i can't wait. i wish this was us, except i do not wish that jake had a ponytail.

keeping mum

jake is very superstitious and never tells anyone about job interviews or articles he's reasearching, and if he does tell them, he doesn't tell them what they're for or about. i am just very afraid of failure and judgement, so if i don't tell someone about something i'm trying to do, it's because i'm afraid it won't happen and then they'll keep asking about it and then i'll have to admit my failure, ashamed. what makes it worse is, i talk a lot, and sometimes it's hard to keep things inside, and they just fall out of my mouth and before you know it family members with a possibly inflated sense of my potential are calling to ask if i've been accepted to berkeley yet (never. going. to. happen.). so lately i've been trying to keep more things on the d.l., like where exactly i am applying, what my aspirations are, and what i did while jake was at work this morning (a lot of places, i'm not really sure and that in itself is embarassing, read comic books and ate toast in bed which is not allowed). it's kind of fun to try and keep bizarre stuff secret by being vague. "hey, i like your pants. where did you get them?" "oh, thanks. just somewhere," (old navy). "hey, are you going out? where are you going?' "oh, nowhere," (the gym). see, the answers are boring, but when you don't admit them, they don't sound boring at all.

it has been way too long.

what?

a great thing happened this week

an old friend of mine came to town to interview at a hospital as a candidate for their med school program. but we actually didn't talk very much about that. we went to the bookstore, where all we looked at were cards, we got indian food which was not too spicy (anyone who orders the medium is a fool, and is going to end up on the street corner with frostbite in their extremities and the seventh circle of hell in their mouth), we went home to feed the cat where my friend was very generous to insist that his room is just as messy as our house (no way), we went to the nickelcade (the japanese game with video instructions, the biking game from which my entire body still hurts because the bikes are made for children, the dance dance revolution for your hands, a little gambling, a 3 nickel shooting game, more gambling, more nickels, tekken, more gambling. the amount of nickel-gambling was almost terrifying. we couldn't stop, and then when we were out of nickels, we waited around the machine on the off chance that some might just fall. thank goodness all we had were nickels. then we went to cash in our tickets. i told jake i would get him a prize, and i was just going to get a parachute man that we could throw off the bridge or something and then spend the rest on candy, but GUESS WHAT. the parachute men were NOT regular parachute men. they were star wars figurines, with parachutes! weird, because i don't think anyone ever had a parachute in star wars because they were all in space, but still cool, and even though i didn't have enough tickets the guy let me get one of each because i told him that for my birthday this year i went to the star wars exhibit at omsi. the COOLEST.), then we went to the bagdad for a delicious beer. all in all, a terrific time. nothing bad happened, everything good happened, and we both walked away feeling awesome about being friends.

dave hill dave hill dave hill

i also found this. it's amazing. i think the pet psychic and the comicon ones are the funniest.

update: that link doesn't seem to be working, so here is the address: www.davehillonline.com

mint chip milkshake

the other night i was kind of in a crappy mood, for some different reasons. first was that it was friday night and instead of going to an awesome party, i wanted to stay home and watch law and order. so i did, and that was pretty good. but then everyone came home all drunk and loud and made me feel bad for not going out on a friday night. they didn't actually say anything to make me feel bad, i just inferred that i was a loser. so, i got dressed up and took myself out. to carl's jr. for a milkshake. but it really wasn't as lame as it sounds. first, carl's jr is pretty far out there - it's kind of a drive. i actually didn't even know exactly where it was, or if i would be able to find it at all. so i got in the car and put on dookie and cruised around for a while feeling a lot like a teenager, you know that feeling when you are upset for no reason that you can really figure out so you try and pin it on a bunch of different things but it's not really sticking so you just listen to green day. then, right at the drum solo in emenius sleepus that i thought was awesome when i was like twelve, i found carl's jr. fortuitous! so i got one of those mint chip milkshakes that they have been advertising in that commercial where "milkshake" comes on and those two guys are rubbing cows. every time i see that commercial, first i laugh and then i have a desperate urge for a mint chip milkshake. so then i drove home and put on st. etienne's good humor, which i also listened to as a teenager but which goes a lot better with a milkshake. it does a really good job of making you feel like you're going to pull a thelma and louise, even when you're on your way home to not be mad anymore.

since that nothing has really happened. i went to work once, went to a show once, and finished the second season of carnivale, damnit. that show is so good and they cancelled it. people are retarded! oh, that's what happened. a guy i work with said that his mother has been teaching special ed for a lot of years, and he once heard her call someone a "fucking retard" on the phone, so it's okay for me to say it. oh, also another thing that happened is i finished the first two books of neil gaiman's "lucifer," which is AWESOME. i've been to the library twice since then to see if maybe they'd gotten it in and forgotten to email me, but they hadn't. and the library's not exactly close, either. i also finished the first volume of brian k/ vaughan's "runaways," which was really good. "y the last man" is pretty much one of my favorite series. i think vaughan is becoming my favorite writer - i feel like the true test is when someone who has done well on their own is asked to write for an ongoing series, or at least to write a plotline for an existing character, and it works. i read a volume of vaughan's mystique, and it was really good. i've also read some of grant morrison's x-men, which was terrible. i don't blame them for kicking him off the project early. you just don't mess with stan lee's work like that.

nerd out!

even though i was a marvel child, i never really got into ghost rider. i'm not really sure why; it's kind of right up my alley. i actually never got into spawn, either, at least not until i raided jake's comic collection, although it also rests on themes that are pretty appealing to me; vengeance, chains, a battle between the higher powers. anyway, i think that the new movie coming out is going to be pretty cool, so i decided to check out the backstory. as it turns out, both ghost rider and spawn are, like the green lantern, roles that are filled by various people through the years. unlike green lantern, however, both spawn and ghost rider end up in these predicaments (they are considered predicaments rather than an honor, like the ring) by promising their souls to the same demon, mephisto. mephisto is based on the demon mephistopheles (which comes from a latin phrase meaning "friend of faustus), a demon who has become part of christian mythology but who is not mentioned in the bible. the character of mephistopheles is believed to have evolved during the rennaissance, from the popularity of the story of doctor johann georg faust, the basis of goethe's "faust."

i love mythology. i'm going to spend my next three days off in front of the space heater reading a book on greek mythology i ordered from the library.

nothing to report

this is the first time i've had three days off with nothing big to do in quite a while. i know there's some stuff i should do: laundry, returning library books, getting ahead on grad school applications due in february, calling relatives, making any kind of decision. but i didn't do any of that! i read a stephen king novel in front of the space heater, watched numerous episodes of carnivale, and made a bunch of playlists for the car. it was great, like a mini vacation without travelling anywhere. but now i have all these playlists, and no long drives on the radar. i realize that the solution to this would be to clean my room while listening to one of them, but come on. the more time i spend in front of the space heater, the more time i want to spend in front of the space heater. actually, i wanted to go to the park today because it was nice, but jake didn't want to go, and i wasn't about to go by myself, so instead i sat in front of the space heater. tomorrow i'm going to buy a new rpg to play in front of the space heater. space heater space heater space heater space heater

HAHAHAHA

hey sarah, hope you feel better

so i went to a show tonight at dante's. it was pretty fashionable.
going out:
- fauxhawks
- their bastard brother, the rattail
- gwen stefani up-in-front do
- hooray!
coming up:
- pigtails (long and curly, short and nubby)
- mini bangs
next show:
- bring scissors
- cut off all pigtails in sight
- glue them to foreheads of people with mini bangs

i saw the hunches open for the black lips. thankfully, we missed the set of the opening-opening band, local retards reptilian civilian. they are pretty terrible. actually, the bassist is pretty good, but the whole band is dominated by this terrible frontman who thinks his shitty band is so awesome that they should be locally famous. they're obviously never going to get there on any kind of musical merit, so every show he takes his clothes off and tries to pull some stunt. but then the hunches played.

let me tell you what i know about the hunches. well, actually, i don't know that much about the hunches. but my roommates have some pretty terrific impressions of their frontman, hart. at the mention of his name, stephen cocks his head at a slightly retarded angle and says, over and over again, "i'm so fucked up, guys. guys, i'm so fucked up." andy says that hart claims it's his birthday every time andy sees him, and jake tells a story about hart shouting "what do you want? what's wrong with you?!" to repel unwanted advances. i was pretty excited to see him onstage, and he didn't disappoint. onstage, he was like a retarded three-year-old. i realize i've used the word "retarded" a lot so far today. first, it's really the only way to describe hart in person. second, i want to use it all the time and i'm tired of holding it in to be politically correct. anyway, i spent a lot of their set debating whether he was actually extremely fucked up, and that was why he was practically a dead ringer for an inebriated keith richards, or whether it was just his stage presence. i decided it was probably an act because there's no way he could be that fucked up and make it through a 45-minute set. also, there's this unspoken hierarchy in portland; who can be coolest by acting like they don't care at all about being cool. by acting retarded, hart had bested us all. the set included a mournful application to voltron, an impromptu standup but about "portland bee-ands, everybody loves ;em" and an extended metaphor about how portland bands are like restaurants and want to serve their audiences, which ended with hart's announcement that he didn't want any food, and then about thirty seconds of him shouting "bunny" into the microphone. but it wasn't a weird performance thing or anything - the band was great, but also hilarious.

the black lips were great, too. i mean, i really love them, and was excited to see them again, but their show did seem a little routine. but terrific. one of the guitarists had a grill. it was awesome and everyone had a great time. but it didn't end there. here is what happened while jake and i were in line for the merch table:

heart falls over, pushes his friend into me. his friend says, "sorry, don't mind him." and i said, "its okay, i don't." then heart says to this friend: "sorry. do you want a hug? DO YOU WANT ONE?!" and the guy is like "uhhh . . . no thank you," so he offers one to the guy on the other side of his friend by yelling "DO YOU WANT ONE?! DO YOU?! IT"S A TRAIN" and the guy was like "uhhh . . . no" and got out of there. then heart turns to me, and i thought he was going to ask me if i wanted a hug, which i probably would have agreed to, but instead he just yelled "DO YOU SEE ME?!" and i said "ummm . . . " and then he said, in a regular voice, "noooo, you like the black LIPS." i said back, using my voice i usually use on small, unreasonable children, "yeah, i do like the black lips, but i saw you too." "noooo," he said. "you like the black LIPS." "i do," i repeated, "but i saw you too. you were great." "TERRIBLE!" he shouted. "no!" i said. "i thought you were great! everyone did!" "TERRIBLE!" he shouted again. then he went on to say something to the effect of "you should get into the black lips before they get big. they're going to be the next best thing." "it's too late," i said. "i already like them." "NEVER!" he screamed. he actually reminded me a little of jack sparrow. "THEY'LL NEVER GET BIG! And then you can tell everyone that you liked the black lips before they NEVER GOT BIG!" "okay," i said. "i . . . i'll do that." "But NEVER tell anyone you knew the hunches. never admit it!" at this point, he straightened up and became dead sober. in a normal business voice, he said, "my name's heart, by the way. pleased to meet you" and shook my hand. i told him my name, and he repeated it, and then he spun around and walked away. as i stared after him, he turned back around, squinted, and pointed prophetically at me with one shaky hand, mouthing the word "NEVER." it was amazing. then on my way out he pretended to collapse on someone else and poured a drink all over me. at first i was like "aw crap, i'm going to smell like booze and be all sticky" but as it turns out, it was only water. i want to be just like him. AMAZING.

i've hit 1,000, most of which were me refreshing a couple times because i only like nice, round numbers, or at least multiples of five

i think the other themes have gone as far as they can go, so now it's on to animals just doing anything remotely human.

thank you for reading this, arya. in the future i will try harder to be in public places and report on those around me.

for now, i can report on jake or the cat. i try really hard not to be one of those people who talks about his or her cats on the internet, so i will stick to jake. it's freezing in our house, so we are watching jim lehrer and looking at the internet in front of the space heater. i think he's actually reading my blog as we speak. he didn't seem to be interested in any of the videos, nor did he seem to read very closely. that's fine, i like to tease him about not reading my blog, but i don't really care whether he does or not. my gums hurt from all of the cookies we just ate; i assume he feels the same way. wow, now he's using html to do something new to his blog. that's pretty impressive, and i have no idea where he learned how to do that. i feel like i've been taught that stuff about eight times and it just never sunk in.

today it snowed. i drove in snow for the first time, and it was pretty hairy. i have all-wheel-drive, so i was fine, but of course there were a bunch of yahoos on the road driving around like it was a regular morning, a bunch of buses with their ass ends swinging around when they tried to get up small inclines, and dozens of accidents on the radio. but i got to work just fine. in fact, i gave a ride to some individuals whose bus couldn't get up onto the bridge. they didn't look dressed for the winter; they looked cold and downtrodden at the prospect of a snowy walk across the river, no matter how MAGICAL everything looked (that is, totally magical). my new year's resolution was to try to do more nice things for strangers, like giving someone who is lost directions about what bus to take, what stop to get off at, and where to go from there (i did this on new year's day and it made me feel like a great person, so i resolved to do it). also, i have a pretty good idea of how much it sucks to walk in the snow in sneakers, having fallen on my ass on the way to the car. i also resolved, sort of seperately but kind of attached, not to lie to strangers so much. i lie to strangers a lot - sometimes because i feel uncomfortable sharing personal details, which is completely understandable and okay, sometimes because i want that person to think i'm a good person, which is understandable but it would be better if i was just honest, and sometimes just because, which is unacceptable. i did not tell any lies today.

at work i got really nervous that it would snow really hard, or warm up enough to rain but stay cold enough that the roads would freeze, and i wouldn't be able to drive home. so on my lunch, i went and got some boots so i could walk home if i had to. the boots i got are awesome, and were $5. i can't find a picture of them, but they are bright red and RAD. well, they're a little big so i scuffle around in them like a shy five-year-old with a runny nose, but when i'm standing still they're rad. as it turned out, i did not have to walk home, and then when i got home we went and played in the snow (which did NOT end with me pushed into the snowbank, crying, as jake predicted) and got some italian sodas. at the coffee shop, i read this book called "sole survivor", which is about the phenomenon of children murdering their parents for apparently no real reason and showing no real remorse but also not appearing insane. it made me want to have kids even less than i do now, which is not that much. i mean, i'm not going to lie, my body always wants me to stop and look in the window of baby gap at all the tiny little t-shirts, but my mind knows that a lot of cool stuff could still happen to me and doesn't want my body to ruin it. and now, i'm at home in front of the space heater watching bush bomb his interview with lehrer and the cat is snoring.