Mike is far too good to me. We were cleaning frantically yesterday morning, so that my apartment could be at least somewhat respectable for a dancer friend from Austin who is staying with me this weekend, and he did far more than his share. I realized today that I'm not sure I really let him know how much I appreciated it; I'll have to remember to do that later. I don't want to take it forgranted.

Blah.

All my roses are dead or dying.

Why do I find cleaning so painful?

Jeremy responded to some of my earlier comments in his blog recently. At least I think he was responding to me -- hard to tell, seeing as he spelled my name wrong. ;-) I guess it makes up for all the times I pronounced his name Germ-ee just to spite him.

I'm only laughing on the outside
My smile is just skin deep
If you could see inside I'm really crying
You might join me for a weep.

(Yes, I really watched Tim Burton's Batman for the first time ever just yesterday.)

A Tip

Those
who can write
have a
lot to
learn from those
bright
enough
not to.

Piet Hein

Jeremy, I dreamed about blogger last night. I dreamed that they'd implemented an easy way to allow comments on each entry. (I'm addressing this to you since you're the one that whined about not being able to comment on my entries.) ;-)

Alas, it was just a dream. Or maybe a sign that I should get my butt in gear and figure out something like that for my page on my own.

I was reading Jeremy's blog this morning. He's doing a "100 things about me" list. Interesting idea.

I think it might be just as interesting, if not more so, to see a "100 things about So-and-So" list done be someone other than the subject, preferably someone who has been fairly close to them at some point in their life. I'm sure I'd list at least a number of different things about Jeremy than he would about himself, or vice-versa.

Perhaps I'll do a list like that sometime. Or perhaps I'll have a guest blogger do a list about me. Or both. 'twould be interesting to see how the two lists differed.

Wearing wet pants is remarkably unpleasant.

My washing machine broke while doing laundry the other day. The motor pooped out and it would no longer spin or drain. I hand wrung all the clothes and tossed them in the dryer, and then poof, partway through the cycle the dryer broke too. I was in a hurry and all my pants were in the load I was doing, so I wore a pair of slightly damp overalls and hung everything else up to dry.

The pants dried on their own fairly quickly (I was in the car and sped the process up by venting lots of air at myself), but the bit of time while they were wet was still pretty icky feeling.

Yay for dry clothes, and yay for working dryers. Mine is fixed now. I think. I hope. So says the note from the maintenance guy, anyhow.

I finished reading "Kitchen" by Banana Yoshimoto today. A bit of a light read, but really good. I thought of Jeremy while reading it; I think he'd really like it. Even the reviews at the beginning of the book lend that impression: "Ms. Yoshimoto's writing is . . . as emotionally observant as Jane Smiley's, as fluently readable as Anne Tyler's." -- The New York Times, Jane Smiley being one of Jeremy's all-time favorite authors. So Jeremy, if you're out there, you should check this book out. Good stuff.

I thought of Jeremy last weekend, too. I was working a dance workshop, and they fed us lunch from World Wraps. Yum. I think it's the first time I've had that since Jeremy moved back to Atlanta.

I just took a half-assed Myers-Briggs type test. It still listed me as INFP (I=22%, N=56%, F=78%, P=67%), same as I got on the more complete test back in my high school days. I'll have to dig around and see if I can find a more complete test on the net to see if it says the same thing.

According to the informational blurbs following, only 1% of the general population shares my type. A. A. Milne was an INFP. So is Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes, if fictional characters count for anything. Yay me. Yay Calvin. Yay Pooh.

Wired News, Making It Harder for Prying Eyes - "A bill in the California state legislature would protect the anonymity of Internet users by requiring Internet service providers to send customers copies of subpoenas seeking to learn their identities."

Cool stuff. I wish all states would do that.

There's no more coming back this way
the path is overgrown and strewn with thorns
They've torn the lifeblood from your naked eyes
cast aside to be forlorn

In the terms of endearment
In the terms of the life that you love
In the terms of the years that pass you by
In the terms of the reasons why

Funny how it seems that all I've tried to do
seemed to make no difference to you at all

---

I may take a holiday in Spain
leave my wings behind me
drink my worries down the drain
and fly away to somewhere new

Hop on my choo choo
I'll be your engine driver in a bunny suit
If you dress me up in pink and white
we may be just a little fuzzy 'bout it later tonight

Well, she's my angel -
she's a little better than the one that used to be with me
'cause she liked to scream at me
Man, it's a miracle that she's not living up in a tree

I may take a holiday in Spain
leave my wings behind me
drive this little girl insane
and fly away to someone new

boo on me. :(

I talked a lot with Mike tonight for the first time in a while. It was good. Also talked with Jeremy, although only for a very short while; it was nice hearing his voice. And then I spent a while catching up with Mary on IM. All in all, it's been a pleasant evening. I'm feeling a bit more grounded now that I've done a bit of reconnecting.

Life is good.

My car has a tic.

Sometimes, for whatever reason, it willl give a swipe with its windshield wipers. Usually just one swipe. Often when I am turning left. For the most part, this is just a cute idiosyncrasy -- I love my car all the more because it is unique in this way.

Recently, however, the car has suffered some damage as a result of this tic. Windshield wipers, when wiping on a dry windshield, fight against much more friction than they do when wiping on a wet windshield. My car wipes indiscriminantly, often when the glass is dry, to the detriment of the passenger side wiper which has begun to fall apart. It has torn the rubber all up, and I'm going to need to replace it soon before it starts wiping metal against glass and does some real damage.

My poor neurotic car -- we're just two peas in a pod.

By the way, yes, my phone has been reconnected. Not that I'm ever home. Feel free to call again and leave messages, at least until the answering machine fills up and accepts no more.

So I went and hung out today with the folk that were involved in the Microsoft Theatre Troup's spring production of Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure" with me last year. We watched a DVD of the last show we put on.

It felt like a mistake. Most of these aren't people I was ever particularly close to. I dated one of them at one point, and ended up deciding I didn't really like him at all as a person. He was there, as was another girl from the cast that he started dating way back when and is apparently still with, in some capacity. Almost none of the people from the cast that I really liked showed up. I shared some good conversation with two people there, but for the most part I felt like an outsider. It wasn't even the sort of outside where you wish you were "in", but more the sort where you're happy enough not to be in the inner circle and would be just as happy off spending your time in some other manner with other company.

I'm not good at letting go of things and moving on, but I guess some things are better left behind. Bleh.

One guy there who I did connect with is really immersed in work these days. He's not really happy, and doesn't have time or energy to cultivate any sort of life outside of work. It reminded me of how I felt, about a year ago, and made me feel lucky that I got out of that environment. I'm a much happier person these days, I think. He's a cool guy; I hope he manages to get out of the rut he's in. His wife is apparently pretty unhappy, too; I wish the best to both of them.

Yes, I am aware (now) that my phone has been disconnected. I'm such a dumbass.

I'm working on fixing that. Fixing the phone disconnection, anyway.

Mike is apparently dying of whooping cough. Poor Mikey. I feel for him.

I parked my car in a dark, scary alleyway last night. As I was walking out of the alleyway after parking, I passed a bum sleeping in a doorway.

This morning, I walked back down the same alleyway to pick up my car. It was a completely different world; the sun was out, people were walking their dogs, and the bum from the night before was awake, curled up in his doorway reading a novel.

Reading a novel!

I guess somewhere, deep down, I had some sort of deep seated belief that all bums were illiterate, because this floored me. Kathryn the small-minded.

Heck, if I were a bum, I'd be happy to spend my days sitting in the sunshine reading novels. Homelessness can happen to anyone, or so I've heard -- why should I file homeless people away into some sub-human pocket in my mind, even subconsciously? Why should I assume that homeless people couldn't or wouldn't want to spend their free time reading boooks?

Feh.