Miina somethingsomething mumbletypeg

I'm unclear about why there is no #1 but support that philosophy, Miina-ke.

2. How do you like your steak? Viewed from a photograph.


3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? The latest Harry Potter. (Which irked me.)

5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? Boulder, CO

9. Favorite place to eat? In front of my open refrigerator.

10. Favorite dressing? Uhm - window... ?

11.What kind of vehicle do you drive? Multiple bus routes. Sometimes a bike.

12. What are your favorite clothes? The clean ones. (I cut out all the labels, but they're secretly from Banana.)

13. Where would you visit if you had the chance? Adult-hood.

15. Where would you want to retire? Oh, I couldn't.


16. Favorite time of day? Crepusculo.

18. What is your favorite sport to watch? Tennis.

22. What would surprise people about you? That I believe in soulmates.

25. What did you want to be when you were little? A mermaid. (And I still do.)

26. How many times have you been in love? Four.

28. Are you a cat or dog person? Dog. Cats freak me out.

30. Do you always wear your seat belt? Yes unequivocally.

31. Been in a car accident? Numerous.

32. Any pet peeves? Hypocrisy.

34. Favorite Flower? Hydrangeas.

35. Favorite ice cream? Nope.

37. How many times did you fail your driver's test? 0. I've never failed a test.

39. At which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Credit cards - so quaint. (I don't have one, but I could see myself losing total control at Williams-Sonoma, Sur le Table, Patagonia, or See Jane Run.)

42. Broccoli? Schmockoli.

.43. What was your favorite vacation? With the Go-Gos.

44. Last person you went out to dinner with? Lisa.

45. What are you listening to right now? Badly Drawn Boy.

46. What is your favorite color? Green.

50. Coffee drinker? Yes. Well - more of a Coffee Admirer, really. I love it, but I don't indulge often. (I have a similar relationship with tequila and artisanal cheese.)

You might be dating an engineer if ...

A work in progress at this point; each day inspires numerous epiphanic insights into Geek Perspective.

1) ...he's whispering in your ear throughout the new Harry Potter film. To explain the physics behind Quidditch.


2) ...he stares mesmerized at your iPhoto mosaic screensaver for ages, trying to figure out the complexities of its programming.

3) ...you catch him mumbling in his sleep about van der Waals forces.

4) ...he attempts to clarify your hazy understanding of the origins of the universe, blissfully unaware that your interest in the Big Bang Theory is limited to its next season on CBS.

5) ...he assures you of the impossibility of your conviction that your MacBook now refuses to pick up the neighbors' wireless signal because it has suddenly sprouted a conscience.

6) ...his idea of an enviable babe magnet is Richard Feynman.

7) ...he's uncomfortable with allowing you to believe that the internal combustion engine is one of the 5 simple machines.

8) ...you realize that the romantic mood music you've been hearing in the background is actually the soundtrack from Star Wars.

The amazing Brett Dennen.

The worth of things ...

... can't be measured by what they cost but by what they cost you to get them. If anything costs you your faith or your family, then the price is too high, and there are some things that will never wear out.

Drinking is a way of ending the day. - Ernest Hemingway

Evidently, it's a relatively universally-prized way of ending the year, as well.

My best friend and I realized this year that spending New Year's Eve together has become an a posteriori tradition of ours. It's been years since either of us watched the ball drop at all, much less with someone with whom we were involved. We make an event of getting ready, slither into our slinkiest dresses and our faux-Manolos (which this year occasioned a feisty ass-size comparison, adjudicated by Morgan's long-suffering roommate) and indulge outrageously in the opportunity to be fabulous. For me, this past New Year's Eve was my first grownup night out with old friends in my hometown in half a year, during which I learned a new language, lived with four different families on a different continent, almost visited Africa, got into the Peace Corps, witnessed my mother's incipient nervous breakdown, swore off sex completely and then fell off the wagon (several times), moved on, and thought about myself far too much.

It was so, so good to come home. And have a drink.

We had dinner at one of my favorite Memphis restaurants, a place downtown called Lolo's Table, that was served in courses, delicious without doubt, but (for me) unsatisfyingly French. (An utterly personal issue resolved by the utterly excellent bread pudding at the end, which doesn't exist in France, and the free champagne, which also helped to numb the shock of how much the whole business cost. I won't note it here, because there's a chance my parents might read this, and I refuse to precipitate their heart palpitations any more than I do already.) I discovered that I had completely forgotten the solicitous dispatch of American waiters; it was almost unnerving to have our pleasant server take any notice of us after the food had arrived. And of course I ordered and tasted the wine with the adroit smugness that is, I firmly maintain, the right of the hapless etudiante returning from France.

Martinis at Swig (damn, they can make them dry), champagne at Tsunami (also the location of the obligatory accidental encounter with the Preppy Posse, who insist on travelling in packs and which includes an ex whom I still can't decide if it was good to see), and hours later I woke up on the first morning of the New Year on Morgan's futon, mercifully in pajamas but still wearing makeup, with her cat purring on my chest and my fingers curled around what proved to be my earrings from the night before. Fumbling over the coffee table for my watch, I noticed the cracker-crumbs strewn in joyous confetti-profusion on the floor; I dragged my eyes up to the squashy remnants of cheese and the overturned box of rosemary-and-olive-oil Triscuits bedecking the table, and a vague memory of feasting sometime after five am surfaced, blearily.

After we cleared away the celebratory detritus of two single twentysomething girls (okay, I cleared, he mewed until I located the Friskies) and efforts both to figure out the coffeemaker and to rouse Morgan proved equally ineffectual, Smokey and I repaired to the porch and curled up together on the glider. I remember when she bought it, a hundred years ago, in Mississippi, and I've sat on it through many states of mind. I tucked my feet underneath me, lit a cigarette, and stared through the screens down towards the New Year's Monday morning traffic on Poplar.

Ever since I got back from France, it's seemed to me that everyone drives at breakneck speed. Granted, I was terrified continually in France - one quite literally takes one's life in one's hands both as cyclist and pedestrian, because they've no intention of stopping for you. Perhaps it's because I'm driving myself again - I'm still not used to it, and I'm as childishly excited every time I go out to my car as a sixteen-year-old with new-minted keys and a license still warm from the laminator.

I wondered if there's ever a time in your life when you find yourself about where you thought you'd be, a year ago. And I wondered how I'd feel about it, if I found myself at such a moment. And, if I thought of myself as a purposeful individual, what it meant that my life was such a continual surprise.

By ten am on the first day of 2007, I had already shamelessly disowned my resolution to think less about myself.


we don't know, so we wait for tomorrow
we don't know, so we wait for tomorrow

we don't know, so we only go forward

- tegan and sara

Choices scattered in front of me like cracker-crumbs. Cleaning up messes I could only hazily remember making. Wondering if this year will be an auspicious one, and swallowing the awareness that I've no idea where I'll be, next time.

Too much, on an empty stomach.

The only way to digest it all, if your hometown is the birthplace of the blues, is to drag your closest friend out of bed and let her take you out for breakfast at one in the afternoon. The achingly enormous existential thorniness of your twenties, you find, is smoothed down quite satisfactorily by biscuits and gravy, diner coffee in the heavy white mug, and cheese grits.


Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough. - Mark Twain

I wheeled around because I / didn't hear what you had said / and saw you dancin' with Elihu / up on Leemor's bed ...

... and I was foggy, rather groggy / You helped me to my car / the binding belt enclosing me / A sample in a jar ...



So, it came out several months ago, but I was away ... I couldn't believe it when I got my Christmas present from my favorite four boys today.

On top of all the other lovely things about coming home, I discovered that Phish has released a recording of their first real, out-of-the-Northeast tour, which happened in 1988, in, of all places, Colorado. Here's what Rolling Stone had to say about it:

Long before Phish replaced the Grateful Dead as America's greatest jam band, the foursome was one goofy-ass bar act. This three-CD set documents Phish's first trip outside their Northeast stomping ground: a 1988 seven-date tour in the Rocky Mountain state. Opting for concise compositions instead of expansive, noodly jams, Colorado '88 is a surprisingly crisp compilation that shows off the band's chops with early, by-the-numbers versions of classics like "You Enjoy Myself" and "Fluffhead." There's also a mountain of rarities, including "Harpua," the fantastical story of a guy named Jimmy, his dog and a doomed cat called Poster Nutbag that has attained mythical status among the Phish phaithful.


So here's the list:

Disc One
1. The Curtain With
2. The Sloth
3. Icculus
4. Colonel Forbin's Ascent
5. Fly Famous Mockingbird
6. I Didn't Know
7. Maiden Voyage
8. Timber
9. Harpua

Disc Two
1. Fluffhead
2. Run Like An Antelope
3. Sneaking Sally Thru The Alley
4. Light Up Or Leave Me Alone
6. I Know A Little
7. The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday
8. Avenu Malkenu
9. The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday
10. Flat Fee
11. McGrupp And The Watchful Hosemasters
12. Alumni Blues
13. A Letter To Jimmy Page
14. Alumni Blues

Disc Three
1. Camel Walk
2. Wilson
3. No Dogs Allowed
4. Mike's Song
5. I Am Hydrogen
6. Weekapaug Groove
7. You Enjoy Myself
8. Cities
9. Dave's Energy Guide
10. Cities
11. AC/DC Bag
12. Corinna
13. Thank You


You know that I dislike as much as anyone the idea of being one of those aging jam-band phans who yearn for the old days of going on Summer Tour, reminisce about 40-minute YEMs, nine-hour shows, fire spinners on the lot, Magic Hat and veggie burritos at 2 am. We all know that, happy as we were on New Year's Eve 2002, nothing was the same after the hiatus, and I can't say that songs like Army of One stir anything all that primal in me. But I must confess that I do have my moments. I remember the first time I saw a glowstick war, or Fishman play the vacuum. The feeling when they play the opening chords to Divided Sky. Shaggy-haired Trey. Waste. Singing to my dog, whose name is Wilson, that I'd punch him in the eye. When they walked onto the stage the last time I saw them at Deer Creek, the first night, and opened with Loving Cup. Yeah, when they played Prince Caspian, I cried. I grew up listening to all the best music from the sixties; my dad took me to shows from before I can remember, and I saw the Dead play the Pyramid three months before Jerry died. But I *grew up* to Phish - say what you will, Phish was ours, we barefoot children, drinking bathtub gin and wading in the velvet sea, who know who's in the freezer and what the banker said, and didn't believe the florist. And just now I'd give a great deal to go back to 1996 and hear Character Zero for the first time.



Hey, boys. Thanks for all the Phish.

In my mind, I'm goin' to Carolina ...

Can't you see the sunshine
Can't you just feel the moonshine
Maybe just like a friend of mine
It hit me from behind
Yes I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind



Lemme tell you some things I love about America.

I love huge, wide sidewalks. Swipes of concrete where you can walk without stumbling over someone's garbage bins, or their car straddling the kerb, or the ubiquitous pile of little French dog caca, or that never-graceful dance of confusion with passersby, where you try to figure out who has the right of way.

I love 24-hour supermarkets and gas stations and convenience stores and boites de nuit and always something to do, someone to talk to, someone to call. The ability to banter at the bank, the market, the shop on the corner.


I love houses that aren't beige, roofs that aren't the same red tile.

I love many faces, many voices, many languages on the same street. The French all look the same. The same bodies, the same trends, the same pointy-toed eagle talon boots and faux-fur trimmed vests. The same silver-and-black striped shirts, and so many buckles on everything that they could be Pilgrims.

Here I walk down Mission Street past Mexican men with slicked-back hair, black puffy jackets, and Adidas polished too-white peeking from the cuffs of their extravagantly baggy jeans.


Internet that works nearly all the time, and very, very fast.

Cheap cell phone minutes.

California wine.

Avocados, 4 for $1. Limes, 10 for $1.

American greenbacks.

Strong black coffee in those heavy white diner mugs, on a chipped formica or peeling woodgrain table, in a vinyl-covered booth at half-past midnight.

Pizza with tomato sauce and without creme fraiche. Or lardons.

American microwbrews. Fuck, American brews, whatever they are.

Large pillows, large towels, thick mattresses, hot showers, dryers (for clothes and for hair), comfortable socks, Christmas lights, fog around Sutro Tower.

The American Postal Service, bless them.

Grey's Anatomy.

The Sunday Times.

Gingerbread houses.

Knowing the correct usage of punctuation.

Knowing how much my cash is actually worth.

American coffee. American coffee. American coffee. American coffee. American coffee.

The Food Network.

Graduate school.

Secondhand bookstores.

Refills.


Dark and silent last night
I think I might have heard the highway calling
Geese in flight and dogs that bite
Signs that might be omens say I'm going, going
I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind


People who have travelled and come back and gone away again.

The ability to leave, and have a place to come home to.

My own apartment.

My friends, who, much to my surprise and pleasure, missed me.


With a holy host of others standing round me
Still I'm on the dark side of the moon
And it seems like it goes on like this forever
You must forgive me
If I'm up and gone to Carolina in my mind


Hey guys - I finally had that cup of coffee, in the paper cup with the little sleeve and the plastic lid with that frustrating little hole through which to scald your tongue. I drank it walking down the street, while talking on my cell phone.

I'm going to the movies, where the previews are too long but not as long as the half-hour French ones, and where the popcorn comes with extra butter and isn't sweet. Then I'm going to eat Chinese food in the middle of the night, out of the paper cartons and with those wooden chopsticks that you break apart and then rub the ends together to smooth out the splinters.

I'm going to a brewery, to hear bluegrass and drink real beer. I'm ordering a hamburger. A big one. With melted yellow cheddar cheese. And fries, not frites, that will come beside my sandwich instead of in the middle of it. And ketchup that doesn't taste like that tomato sauce that comes in the toothpaste-tube things at the Casino.

I'm still waiting for my first diet Mountain Dew.

Tomorrow, I get to see my father, who's brining a turkey because my family kept Christmas on hold til I could be there. I'm going to eat my grandmother's sweet potato casserole, and the cornbread dressing she makes completely from scratch, and her grapefruit and avocado salad, and that quintessentially Southern truc with the apples and bananas and walnuts and celery and mayonnaise. And three kinds of pie. And iced tea, even in December. And I'll pour gravy over all of it, and leave my squashy buttered dinner roll on the plate the whole time.

It's a beautiful thing.


Say nice things about me 'cause I'm gone,
Southbound
You'll have to carry on without me
'cause I'm gone, I'm gone
I'm gone to Carolina in my mind