an occasional feature

December

• saw In & Out for a dollar and enjoyed it
• met a carpenter whose uncle lives in West Topsham
• won 95 cents in a casino, lost $1 in another casino [but got a free Pepsi!]
• hot tubbing every night in the back yard
• amazing vanilla scones at the Cup n Saucer
• place down the street serves bottomless bowls of Lucky Charms
• eating grilled cheese while watching the sun set over the ocean
• dozens of talkative sea lions in Newport
• 200 CD changer with music I like
• the lovely and talented Ms. Lisa Marie DeGrace & her lovely housemate Jason
• rediscovered how great home made nachos are
• meeting a pseudo-fruitarian

12/26/97

Except for the fact that I had waffles for dinner instead of Chinese food [which I had for lunch], this Christmas was the closest to my ideal Xmas as I could imagine. In fact, the waffles pushed it even closer to the Xmas of my Wildest Dreams. It went like this: I got up & spoke to my parents on the phone. I get along great with my family as long as 1) we're not all together 2) most of the year I live over 3,000 miles away from them. They all seemed fine. I then got picked up to go to The Sweet Hereafter by Atom Egoyan which was playing at the Harvard Exit. We got a parking space right on Broadway!

From there, we all went to eat in the International District to have green onion pancakes, rice and potstickers. Then it was back to Ballard for movies, marshmallow santas and more food. The lineup was: The Draughtsman's Contract, A Close Shave, The Family Dodge and Year Without a Santa Claus [yup, from TV with Heatmiser and everything!]. We were all too sleepy to watch the Tin Drum, which is on the slate for today, along with more food and more R&R.

12/24/97

I've decided I can't go anywhere in web design with the same old fonts. I found a great font page through cruel.com and lifted these [free!] fonts. Now if only I can get WordArt working through M$ Word, I'll be free forever from frumpy futura!

Cat update: when I woke up this morning to open the hall at 9 am, P/Zesto was staring at me from the living room floor. By the time I got back, she was back in the kitty bomb shelter. Was it a dream? Was it a cat I saw?

12/23/97

Rollerblading on Solstice was a fantastic event. Anne and I went in more or less our pajamas and had a great time with no injuries.

I now have a cat. Her name is P/Zesto and she won't come out from behind my couch. She doesn't seem to be scared; I can pet her and talk to her and she's not freaked out, but she just seems to prefer to be there. Any suggestions? In other new news, I am learning to play the guitar. Odd Stock got me all hopped up to be able to do something musical and this may be just the thing. Also, my house in VT has a large piano which I don't want to learn to play, so learning guitar should alleviate the Guilt of Looming Piano.

I think I have booked a Zimbabwean band to play at my April party.

12/19/97

I got a haircut! Nothing really drastic, but I got about 8-12 inches of hair & assorted hair finery cut off. I decided I had already gotten to the point where I was likely to have the longest dreadlocks in any room and, frankly, they were getting to be a drag. I decided I wanted fun hair. That is, hair that I don't get strangled by in the night, hair that doesn't get caught in my shirts [and pants] when I dress, and hair that doesn't drag my whole head slowly and unwaveringly backwards. My new haircut looks pretty much the same only shorter and I am very happy with it. Jack did the actual cutting and now I have a bag filled with hair in handy, dread-sized morsels. Xmas presents anyone?

12/16/97

I did my laundry for the first time in way too long last night. I rounded up two of my friends who haven't done their laundry in forever either and went to the Sit n' Spin. For those of you not from here, the Sit N' Spin is a combination club/laundromat where you can do laundry, have a beer and play one of the zillions of board games they have available. We played Scrabble. Jonathan won He says this means I have to marry him. It's a long story.

Today was also a big mail day and I got a lot of magazines. I subscribe to Z Magazine [which has a sucky web site so the link is to the Chomsky Archives], Yoga Journal [another sucky web site, donde esta El Content?] and Internet World. I also try to read The Stranger [web site=sucky] and the Seattle Weekly which is not too tough considering how often I ride the bus. I am one of those people who has a difficult time sitting down to eat without having something to read [there must be a name for that], and I won't eat by my computer so these magazines fill an important lifestyle niche.

12/13/97

This holiday season, my only major plans are to rollerblade around Green Lake during sunrise on the Solstice in my pajamas.

My friend Anne and I vowed when we split with our husbands that we would not be shanghaied into spending the holidays at home with our parents. We were planning to go somewhere exotic like Mexico, but decided to take an in-city vacation and do all those things we never do as residents of this fair city.

I have cognitive dissonance about the holidays. We celebrated Xmas big time when I was younger, then once my parents split, we celebrated it twice, but less somehow. Lately, my [ostensibly Jewish] mother has taken to adopting an orphan tree by the side of the road somewhere and bedecking it in holiday finery, tinsel & balls and so forth. I don't know if this causes wildlife to choke or not, but it seems more in the spirit of things than shopping til dropping 24/7.

12/10/97

In one of those moments of astounding revelation, I discovered that in my house of many drawers, I have not one sock drawer for single socks, but two. You can imagine what the implications of this are... [hint: pairs of socks]. I think I can spend a whole 'nother week without doing laundry!

Also, I got my first Christmas present yesterday, a sweater made of yak wool from my uncle. My uncle was the original black sheep of my family and always got me Solstice gifts instead of Christmas gifts. I think I got a lot of my nutty counterculture ideas from him, especially the time he visited my family when I was about 8 and he was living with his "old lady" in a truck with a little house built on the back and a wood stove. He had eight earrings and a lot of tattoos. I think he made my Dad nervous which was a plus at the time. Anyhow, now he's a bit more settled and doesn't wear all the earrings and I'm the one who sends out Solstice presents. The sweater made me look like a midget wrestler and said "Merry Xmas" on the box, but was a real nice thought.

I would also like to point out that the Solstice links on this entry were found in Yahoo under Society and Culture: Holidays: Christmas

12/6/97

Last night I had a party for about 90 people, tonight I can't get a date to save my life. If Charity weren't my middle name, Irony would be. Here's some reviews and comments from Oddstock:

"You have a wonderful circle of talented friends, a great attitude and a great web site to boot. It makes me very happy to have pulled roots from the cultural wasteland that was Arizona, where events like the Oddstock would have drawn the attention of neighborhood watch groups and their rusty knives..."

"It was fun and thanks for having me and all of us. You be the hostest with the mostest. I think more animal acts should have played. Got home around 3am...I'm destroyed."

"Loved the Oddstock tonight. I was the one who read the absurdist new stories (saliva ice cubes, etc.) and played guitar for The Violent Maoists."

"No, no, no, YOU rule!"

" It was good. It didn't have all the damned erotic poetry that the last Oddstock had."

12/4/97

Yesterday I went miniature golfing. Today I got a root canal. I would just like to say for those of you who are putting off important dental procedures due to out-and-out fear [and all those folks who say "ooooooh, a root canal, ouch"] that it was no big deal and I am the biggest dental patient freakout that I know of [except maybe for my friend Jenny]. The biggest hassle to this appointment was that it was long. Extra long. And they had to use some kind of mini-files in my tooth which made a persistent and pesky grinding noise. That was it. No major pain. And my dentist doesn't even use nitrous!

12/3/97

I switched long distance companies to Working Assets today. I'd always been a bit conflicted about giving my money to AT&T, but I assumed that the more responsible phone companies plain old cost more and I'm a woman on a budget. I know this sounds like an infomercial, but their rates were cheaper than what I'm paying at AT&T. Plus free ice cream. Plus all their great philanthropy. Maybe it's a marketing scam that worked, but so far I'm happy with it and I'm paying less.

In other news, I drove by McDonalds just in time to see the travelling ball washer that comes to clean up the balls in those weird playland kid ball jump things [what are they called?]. It had SOS written on the back which stood for Scrub Our Spheres.

12/1/97

Today has been a very inconsequential day, but I always feel a small degree of pressure to change my journal over when we're in a new month. I wasn't woken up by any disturbing phone calls, my interactions with my fellow humans have been civil and humane and I have no big plans [except my party]. Enjoy the pug.