7.28.00

i have a confession: there's a reason i've all but abandoned this web site. i have another one. a top secret one. one that i'm not going to share with you, and here's why:

my original purpose in starting this web site was to learn html. and now, magically, i know enough html to get by. i'm certainly no designer, but i know enough to figure out what's going on if i see a page of code in front of me, and that's really all i wanted to know. but while i was learning how to write html, i started to really enjoy writing here. it helped me sort out what was going on...it was therapeutic. and i started out pretty much sharing everything.

after a month or so of writing, i realized that sharing everything was probably not such a good idea, especially if people i knew were reading. the potential for hurt feelings was just too high. so i stopped writing really personal stuff, and just wrote. wrote crap about what i made for dinner, what i did on friday night, etc. it became a huge effort to write here because there was so much i wanted to write that i didn't feel like i could.

so i started another online journal -- a totally anonymous one. not a single person i know has the url. not one. that means that i can write whatever i want, with no fear of a) inadvertently hurting someone or b) sharing somebody's secret they didn't want shared. plus, most of the people reading this site are my friends, and i care about what my friends think of me. that obviously clouds my writing.

i'm not going to just stop posting here...i'll probably post about as often as i have been lately (which isn't very). and i'm sorry...especially about the people who check here often. i wish there were a way that i could give you all the new url and still feel the freedom i feel now to post anything i want.

anyway, as usual, you know where to find me.

7.18.00

latest in the saga: about a week ago, as i was stepping out of the shower, two tiles that had formerly peacefully resided on the wall scared the daylights out of me by up and jumping right off the wall and crashing into the tub! my thought? oh screw it, henry will do something about it, i'm late for work.

little did i know that swan-diving shower tiles are actually a big deal. so, as of 2pm yesterday, i have no shower. i have a gaping hole. my landlady's son decided to rip out the entire tiled shower and instead put in one of those fiberglass-walled shower deals, which is certainly cool with me, but rather inconvenient.

so, for the next few days, i get to head down to the basement of the building i live in to shower. bearable, i guess.

in other news, i am now the world's biggest proponent of grilling. henry's mom gave us one of those indoor grill deals, and we tried it out for the first time on friday, and man! is that thing cool. i'm gonna grill everything from now on, just you watch me. on sunday night, we made this hugely elaborate dinner of grilled chicken, red pepper, green pepper, onion, mushrooms, zucchini, yellow squash, and shrimp, plus a big salad. we sat in the kitchen, chopping vegetables and cubing chicken and peeling shrimp and just being generally domestic, and it was really nice. yay for cohabitation.

7.6.00

i'm not even going to apologize for taking a million and a half years to update again. i think this is just the way it's going to be now. for now. you'll live.

so what's happenin'? lotsa new, lotsa new. henry and i are now officially domesticated. he moved in on saturday, and so far, so good. we haven't killed each other yet...we haven't even really come close. we have funny little squabbles, where i get all kinds of bitchy and naggy and annoying, and he gets all kinds of sullen and silent and annoying, and then we both get over it.

meanwhile, i took a little trip upstate on monday and tuesday to visit some old college-era friends. it was so very fun...it was like being able to step into a time warp and travel back a bunch of years. like i wasn't just visiting old friends...i was visiting a former me...a me i liked a whole lot. cheesy. sorry.

so, anyway, i went upstate to my friend chris's parents' cottage on a little lake...one of the finger lakes, if you're familiar with new york state geography. every year, on the 3rd of july, they have a celebration at the lake. everyone lights fireworks off their dock and sets up flares all along their shoreline at precisely 10pm, so that there's a "ring of fire" (okay, lots of red dots) around the whole lake. it's really very beautiful and communal and stuff. and i made a promise last year, at the 3rd of july festivities, to never miss a 3rd of july at the cottage. so i went. six hours there, and six hours back, driving all by myself, and it was totally worth it.

a new development this year at the cottage: there were children there! actually, there have probably always been children there, but this year i actually noticed. and played! and bonded. my maternal instinct is kicking in full force. how frightening is that? yet oddly reassuring...don't get all alarmed, though. children are not in my near future.

so what else? very domestic few days...we bought furniture, put together furniture, fought about putting together furniture, etc, etc., unpacked, fought about unpacking, went grocery shopping, fought about grocery shopping...hey, we bought a bed! a giant queen-sized bed! it's so very luxurious and big and quilty. it's funny how getting a new bed makes you want to sleep all the time. i couldn't even make it through all of south park last night. my big giant quilty queen-sized bed was calling me, and it wouldn't take no for an answer.