work ethic

contrary to popular beliefs, i do have one. its just that i'm also a procrastinator. often times because of some irrational fear, and also the feeling that if i guarantee that i will fail, no one else will be able to judge me as a failure-or it won't matter i've already done it first. so this leads me to often do sloppy work.. esp when it comes to writing assignments. i do them at the last minute, which leaves me no time to go back over them. but when i am removed from just writing something. like taken a day and worked on other stuff, i can come back to the piece and look at with with a fresh and critical eye to really make it better. it makes me wish i did this more often and wasn't in such a hurry to just get shit off my plate and not have to worry about it any more.
also i do my best work in light, in the morning. last night i feel like i was awake enough to work on my essays, but i could not for the life of me make myself do it. so i went to bed. this morning, after my eyes adjusted to being open and used (which takes a while) i went straight to it. and i don't just think it was because the deadline is now that much closer...

arg. if only it were so easy to make myself into such a great person. and it didn't take more than just knowing the steps, or how some of my current practices are irrational. ok i really need to head into work.
cheers

the internet steals all my time

seriously, it captivates me and takes me in. i just spent a goof chunk of time reading the times online (the metro, city and arts section...nothing too depressing) and now i feel like instead of having the whole day ahead of me to do all this stuff that the day is already shot. ok its not even 10:30 and i'm not planning on showering unless i go to the gym so i guess that's not really true. arg black and white thinking.

so this weekend has turned out better than expected. i didn't really plan anything because i really need to get my grad school stuff out. but then i woke up yesterday and was faced with this whole weekend of nothingness and it was pretty paralyzing. i felt down on friday and knew that dinner with s&m would make me feel better, which it did. its nice to be around friends with lots of yummy food that i gorged myself on. i wish i wouldn't do that, it makes me feel ill. i'm totally into Israeli cous cous, i just love the little ballness of it. but i've digressed. so i woke up yesterday at a time to go to shul, but went back to sleep and had horrible dreams. a gun got pointed at me so i think its safe to call it a nightmare. i am definitely incorporating events of my life, the news, and what i fear into my dreams. oh the medicine and the fear of change. but i dragged myself to shul which felt nice. i ditched immediately after Kiddush (which was in the sanctuary for some strange reason) b/c i couldn't deal with standing around feeling uncomfortable and not knowing anyone or how to approach anyone.

so after a stop by to see if the 12th st girls were around i went home and cleaned.
it is amazing how much better i feel about being in my room and my apt when you can see the floor. i even did some dusting, which it was beyond time for. already shit has creeped back onto the floor. but i feel capable of getting stuff done, instead of being paralyzed. but interestingly i can only really clean while its light out. i think that it has something to do with my SADesque symptoms. then i stopped by matt's to say hi and do havdala. and then mollie and i had tea at this new great chocolate/dessert place on 5th ave. i'd love to be there all the time. it just opened wed, so i definitely felt like i was getting in on something new. they seem to have a ton of staff though. like everyone they know is working there. maybe its a group of friends doing it together, maybe all their friends volunteered to help out, maybe they have no idea how to schedule staff yet..

so then no gym, but a shower, some lame dinner and then my taxes. i still need another 1099 but it looks like i owe $300. i'm not totally surprised given my fiasco of several years ago. but still i have no cash right now and won't for a while. if i could get proof that i finished my bank street class last semester i could pay off some of this debt (by getting reimbursed from cornell.
so then i meet up with mickey and chill and silver's i'm going to be fired someday party. it was ok. i could have stayed longer, but then probably would have just wasted more money on drinks that i didn't need. i talked to no one new. which i guess isn't bad. mickey said that when she walked in silver totally looked to see if i was there. i felt like when i walked in he gave me this 'what the hell are you doing here' look. i'm sure he's not mad that i was there. we didn't talk at all. i thought he looked really good though. i'm definitely a sucker for the cute t-shirt and blue hoodie look. there was of course all the usual wash u suspects as well. when i first moved to nyc and had the big fallings out with norm and silver i spent a lot of time crying to mickey about how i thought i would come here and have this instant group of friends through them and how i didn’t, and how the two of them wouldn't even talk to me, and how fucked up that was especially b/c of my emotional attachment to both of them. the norm emotional attachment has defiantly been resolved, not fully the silver one and last night i was like: damn. here are all these people i vaguely know, i see around but have nothing to say to, but would have to have something to say to if i were dating silver, and they probably just think of me as that annoying, but fine girl who just keeps popping up. yet somehow i feel like i should be friends with them. yes i know this is fucked up. and my shrink would say, maybe they are the ones who don’t have anything interesting to say. but still. i feel uncomfortable. mentioned this to chill on the way out.

and yesterday i even looked at myself in the mirror while in the bathroom and thought 'hey i'm pretty' that's almost a worse feeling to have, because aren't pretty people supposed to be happy. ok ok ok stop yelling i sooo know that's not the case. but i beat myself up so much that i can't even just take a compliment. esp. one that comes from myself, b/c i have trouble validating what i say or think sometimes.

NB. I have no idea if silver reads this. i think i gave him the address once. this entry also feels a bit more personal than others, but this is the only way for me to get some stuff out. and i need to do that. i haven't said anything that's going to get anyone sent to jail so its fine.

last night's dreams were no better. involving work going a little crazy about this office switching that was going on. it featured this woman that i went to elementary school with. she is black and lived in the projects. i don't think i ever spoke to her, but in the dream we were our age now and commenting on how we used to hang out when we were in 1st grade and the differences between our neighborhoods. i think some of this comes out of some thinking for my bank street essay.

damn this got long. and ate up more time. must do some work.
besos

postal service

i love them. not the us postal service. but the band. i thought that listening to them while i attempted work would help. but not so much. but now i must listen to them all the time. as far as i know they only have one album, but last week at dinner there was this music that totally sounded like postal service, but i didnt know it and i thought do they have another album? i need to get it. i asked and it turned out to be death cab for cutie. which makes sense, their lead singer is one part of the duo that is ps. so all this week i've been looking forward to listening to dcfc over jed's itunes. but i guess he's on vacation or something (his boss is in japan for a week) and his itunes isn't networked. damn him.

i was able to get out of bed this morning and woke up warm, but not in a tropical sweat. i even had a sheet over me. its amazing how less groggy i feel for hours after sleeping decently in a decent temperature. i think the heat may seriously be affecting some of my functioning. and heres to a night without any bad dreams i can remember. my special friend called them nightmares. i don't like that term, i'd like to minimize the amout of discomfort they are causing me

til then

bookstores

am i the only person who in response to the following question: "what's your favorite bookstore?" would aqnswer with: "well it depends on what neighborhood i'm in" i suspect that hoya may have similar feelings, but that she probably has an overriding favorite. in billyburg (williamsburg) i have two favorite book stores. one for small press stuff, which they unfortunately have been cutting back on, and one for art and design books. they are across the street. i think its awesome. i fear others do not. so i am looking for readings for this study group i'm apart of and looking for stuff on youth and the anti-gloabilzation movement of the last 10 years. yesterday this took me to st. marks bookshop. today to bluestockings. both places and neighbohoods i haven't been to in a while. i love manhattan before 14th st, esp east of 6th ave. seriously its just so great. why don't i spend more time there? but i could just wander around and look at books for a very long time. nick hornby has just come out with a collection of his 'what i'm reading' columns into the book the polysyllabic spree. i won't be reading the book, i know it may surprise you, but in a review on salon it was commented on how he's a reader and that readers know that there is a difference between the books you buy in any given month and the books you read that month. i so agree. esp if i buy two books at a time or a book when i am in the middle of another one. the chances of that new book getting read are pretty slim.
right now i want to be reading random familes, but i left in at an afterschool center in east harlem. thoughts crossed my mind of what people in the community would think of me reading a book about their community (sort of) that paints it in a pretty shitty light (subjectively) as a very hard life (i think objectively). and while its slow to read b/c its packed. its still a page turner. hopefully i can borrow from mickey and chill or chichi. so instead i am reading running with scissors augsten burrow's first memior. i read his second one a couple months ago. i thought it was better. 1 the story was new to me 2. i love reading about drugs and addictions to them by writers 3. it read more interestingly, like he was more emotionally connected to it. maybe it was just more believable so it didn't read as much like fiction as this one does. my coworker liz, who grew up by where this takes place, is obssessed with him. she's also obsessed with most things western but not quite berkshires mass.
dinner time.

how does she expect me to go to the fucking gym

if i go straight home it will be practically 8 when i get there, need to eat, chill a little change go to the gym and somehow have time to work on my grad school stuff, which i desperately need to be doing. and yes the gym in some ways would make me feel better but not when i have fucking hour commutes. and i need to find a reading for jfrej for sunday and so want to stop at st marks bookstore. so really no way i'm getting home before 8:30 and arg. i do want to go to they gym and be healthy but if i go at the very end of the night it keeps me up. and i need to get my grad school shit together. fuck me all around. no its not that bad, just gotta do some of it. so sorry gym maybe another night. (ps she is my shrink, who also told me today that i plan too much for myself to do and have unreasonable expectations about getting it all done) why won't the work phone stop ringing. ok i'm outie 5000 into the night.

bloggable

for those of you who know the story of my high school prom or those of you who enjoy feeling old, you will enjoy this. so i'm walking back into work after going to a school. i look over across the path and this guy who looks like a pharmacutical rep looks really familiar. "lauren sher?!" yep its him. he who ran out of our hotel room screaming after smoking pot causing the police to be called. i wouldn't blame him at all now, really that was 9 years ago, but he brought it up, in the context of hanging out with jesse mendleson and hearing that marti talked shit on him. i felt doubtful that she is still saying anything, but i let it be. but is lauren who was a year behind me working for a pharm. company? no here was here for interviews. for med school? no for fucking residency programs becasue he's that fucking old!!!!!!! and i'm older than him. rhat makes me old. i know i know not so old. i freaked i totally felt like he should still be in college, such a yougin. but what the hell is someone i went to high school with qualified to be a child psychiatrist, damn. but best of luck to him. he said howie has a kid and is now on the job market-elliot caleb, what an awesome name.

i also felt the need to talk up my job and credentials. and use jargon to describe my job, and it wasn't b.c he would understand it, it was to make me look smarter and like i was doing cool things, that somehow i needed to impress him. which i don't. narg.

oh and i left my very engrossing and distrubing, book random families at the school i was at. i'm no where near done, and its not mine. fuck.

mazel tov s&m (sarah and marc)

So i saw ms. krieger (soon damlin sp?) for the first time since she and marc officially decided to get hitched. the story is great. simple but nice and the ring (i know i love to say that the ring isn't important and that i don't want a diamond-but really deep down i can't get over the wanting a really nice elegant ring) and sarah's is magnificant. i want niwaka to make ALL of my jewlery. i can't find her exact ring on the site, but its close to the one that comes up first. now we all know that sarah and i, while leading somewhat parallel lives, have a tendancy to look at things a little differently and maybe aren't the greatest at sharing living spaces, but i am so excited for her and marc. they match so well and fit so well and are really happy and just make sense. in some ways they engergize the other and in some ways calm them down. this gets a thumbs up for me. and i'm sure all the festivities will be mighty fun. i want to start dress shopping now!

not pleased with the repurcusions of the A train being fucked. more crowded trains, less easy access to the upper west side (already thinking about what this may mean for full time attendance at bank street. oh right got to send that in, err finish it)

went to the gym on sunday. no joke it was a $400 visit. hopefully i get there again. maybe pilates tonight, but got to food shop as well. and want to do tubshavt. oh the balancing....

what is that noise?

just got back from my first, first date since may 20th 2002. more on that in a minute. there is this noise that pretty much sounds like a giant hair dryer outside, are they warming pipes? it also sounds like a whole lot of forced air heaters. kinda annoying and a little irksome, like something might blow up.

the date came from nerve. someone i contacted (no one has intiated contact with me). i thought his picture looked familar and that we would probably know someone in common-small jewish world. turns out he's a good friend of someone i know from avodah and spent halloween with him. i wasn't impressed at halloween, i fancied his friend more, but i guess i should give him another chance. $1400 for a studio, even if it is practically doorman and in the west village. he did not balk at coming to brooklyn though. he left the ball in my court but i'm going to try to bounce it back to his. we'll see. oh what a small jewish world it is....he eats cheeseburgers...at least he didn't go out for a smoke. he has the businessman version of the eskimo coat, which i think his his attempt to look 35, or at least makes him look like a 26 year old trying to look 35. who knows, one date, goodnight kiss on the cheek. i tried to imagine us snuggling, of kissing, or being stupid on the beach. it was hard but it also got cold in the bar.

have i mentioned that the nosebleeds are back. had one in chill's bed last night. sucks. thanks chill for letting me crash. i love your duvet so much. and you know how warm i think your apt feels....

did i mention a fight broke out while we were at the bar? same bar where silver told me he wanted to date me. crazy shit happens when you go there with jews named micheal.
ok got to try to get some heat into my room-i know what a shocking change.
besos

why does january suck so much/GO DR KIM!

january is a crappy time for love. a few years ago mickey had a famously horrible january when dealing with some conflicting love feelings. hoya is having a pretty shitty time, but at least seems to be better than december which was a powerhouse of shitty love feelings. last night as i was crying over how my life is not like the movies and the hero wouldn't be flying in to rescue me and us live life on some tropical island full of tons of birds the phone rang turning out to be a crying tilda dealing with her whole another not fun situtation of her love going away and churning feelings. my friends rock. seriously the people i hold close to me i think are a pretty special group of people. why do we have to have all this inner conflict, some internally created some externally created. i love you guys.

there is a message on my phone at work. i so don't want to deal i am putting off answering it. refreshed from vacation in terms of my job my ass. give me chocolate!

went to philly yesterday for kim's defense. she rocked it all around. give her a big hand and those letters PHD. while it was stressful for her, it really looked so easy to me. smartness and all. as we took the cab to campus we passed hill house, steve's old dorm. this was the first time i had been on campus since he died. that wasn't so weird. last time i had been in philly, which had been at the peak of some emotional badness for me, i had no interest in seeing campus, and while i had these notions of wouldn;t it be movielike to go to the DP offices and read old copies of steve columns, or at least his obit-which i'd never been able to find-really i didn't want to to that. so i didn't and had lunch at cosi instead. all the weird feelings came in the differences between penn's campus and wash u's and how much larger and grander penn's felt. also how odd it felt to be on a campus again and surrounded by kids and classes and activites and the like. i guess all you grad school kids have already been through this. made me feel a little small and a little young but not in a bad way. esp when i heard the french tutorial going on next to me in the library. damn does that girl need help with her french.

a couple people have questioned who all these expats in mexico were (woo hoo i have readers, which since they are all people i know goes back to the how much referencing of people's experiences can i do. another day) rebecca is a good friend of mollie's from work at the ujc. a year and a half ago she quit, and moved to tulum to work with this environmental center down there giving tours and doing ed stuff. she lives a party life of going out and drinking and serious smoking every night. all her friends (who are the ex pats i refer to) also live in tulum and consider themselves locals (as opposed to the tourists) but are all not mexican, mostly american but some french and candadien in there as well. they work in the dive shops, or hotels, or own the hotels etc... hope that helps.

i'm sure i'll post more later. but that's all for now.

children of academics from pgh

i know all i do is blog.....and since i only have 3 friends that read this who are also the ones i talk to most i'm going to end up not having phone conversations anymore...

in any case so i know sit in on these video conferences at work and today we introduced ourselves and one guy is finishing up as a grad student of the father of someone i once got in a huge fight with over how he cheated on his phsycs lab this was in the middle of class. one summer i worked for another classmates father, i went to school with one of my bosses mentor's daughters.
seriously 1) academics fucks you up. 2) pittsburgh is the nexus

early morning ramble

npr. sweet.
-it is going to take a while to get all the sand out of my hair, but at least it doesnt look like dreds anymore
-i think it would be less hot and more humid in the sahara, than in my room. i thought i took care of this before i left
-i don't share well. i share from others but not of myself. so it pisses me off that i found my computer on when i left it off, and everyone in the apt has a working computer, also it wasn't full closed.
-did gonzales get confirmed? i unfortunately assume so
-read the review of the new richard foreman show. i once went to a richard foreman show-thinking it was a richard maxwell show (another avnat garde nyc playwright) thinking that maxwell had written a show that was actually by elevator repair service. in any case i thought it sucked. i did not understand anything, i couldn't follow it, couldn't get it thought it sucked. apparently this show follows his same type of formula, that apparently includes lots of humour. what? apparently this is his last show and we should be sad, b/c his formula wont go to film. i don't think his formula will leave the ontological theater at st marks in the bowery.
-arg. mental health coverage going down for nys health care covered people. why does mental health always get fucked!!!!!! pataki is not my friend. stop fucking over the working poor. dont fuck over more people to balance your budget and legalizing gambling is not a healthy way to raise revenue.
ok work. oh to be eating eggs then heading for the beach.

i'm back

so much to say, but its midnight, my apartment is really warm, but not in a good way, my back is burned at bitten and i need to sleep soon. i will probably be processing the trip in a few more posts but here are some things i want to comment on
-its got to be really weird to run a bar/place that your friends hang out at or to be paying your tab to your friend's savings account (i know not quite how it works) but after a few more days at el crucero my opinion of the brothers changed, at least for one of them and i think he actually a pretty nice guy, just trying to be a real person in this fucked up land of ex pat meets mexico meets paradise beaches meets owning a buisness land.
-referencing an earlier post abvout alternative lifestyles, even thoufgh hemie is totally living the ex pat life, maybe he also doing a different path, he didn't graduate from high school and has designed an eco friendly almost resort. and while the nights may have started getting old, mainly b/c they weren't my friends and i wasn't going to be around long, damn the beach is hard to give up
-my injuries: over 40 bites just on my back, a sun burn i was quite stupid to get, the most important of all-when i was caught by a fisherman as i sped by in a motor boat. the swelling has gone down, my thumb will live. unlcear if the mark on my face is from the hook or not. that damn stupid rusty red bike, glad my tetnus is up to date. chacos cutting up my toes. but no stomach problems!!!!!!!!
-sailing on the carribean in a catamaran. you know i loved it! got to save up to learn to sail!
-all the birds i saw, roseta spoonbills, almost as cool as flamingos, its all about being pink
-naked sunbathing in the hammock at the reserve
-the only time i get free tequila is with mollie, and a mexi-combo ain't bad at all
-love being around friends i'm totally comfortable with, rock on jenn and mollie
-mid 90s mix in the cab to cancun. rock on tulum taxi man
-how different the ruins of tulum were, and how much looks like an old fort, and how when i would look at a building the 2nd or 3rd time i'd see so much more decoration
-tossing a disc in the fading light of the caribean afternoon on the beach, at el paraiso no less.
-not just vivid, but bad dreams
-silver ring (not the commisioned one) and cheap sunglasses, and my book sacraficed to the vacation gods.
-mole. eggs. going to miss having brunch like breakfasts everyday.
oh and debby found out that someone stole my site name. phooey. but it seems to have wedding pics, so it cant be all that bad to waste time and look at.
bed time. got to face reality tomorrow. probably with a stop at cafe regular for some jugo naranja first though.
besos

shabbat shalom

couple strings of thoughts.
1) what did i do today. iwent snokeling on a coral reef. first time snokeling and i did fine, how could you not, its easy, but its also a totally different way of breathing and looking around. we went in twice, it got cold the second time and water kept getting in my mask, but i talked to myself and got through it, never mention that i felt like i was in an aquarium. wish our guide spoke more englihs, he told us we would see tropical fish when we asked what kinds. no nemo, but two kinds of baracaudas-up near the surface, baby squid, held a sea star, i liked the bugger fish best, and of course the most colorful one, but there went tons f those. saw no schools.
the beach we went to today, is like what you think of a caribean beach. gorgeous, with cabanas and white expanse and calm crystal blue waters. i liked it. and got some color to go home with.
got some more mosquitos bites when walking home. at the end of the day the beach clearned of gringos and some mexican families were there all going in in their clothes. what they must think of the likes of topless me. or that they only get to go at the end of the day. tulum is the gringo trail.
2) so now its shabbat and i didn´t bring candles, though i do have asiddur, but no wine, never mind kosher. how do mollie and i make this friday nighty? won´t be the best, i wont be going out for sure though. but also would rebeccas friens think me crazy well who cares if they do.
3)thinking that i´ve been bit harsh on this whole expat lifestyle thing. maybe its not o different from mine, or certainly mine in college, i just don´t drink as much. a couple people have been recently talking about differnt lifestyles or ways to lead their lives that don´t fit the mainstream mold. but i couldnt see either of them doing this, well maybe silver could handle al the drinking, but not the social pressure of here. it just doesnt seem to go anywhere, but maybe that´s their point that we dont have to be living a life that goes somewhere. i just kinda dont get it. like when janet told me that she had no religion, and i just couldnt fathom what that could mean.
ok i´m off to try to get some off this sand off, dont even talk about the state of my hair.

beach

lousy title i know.
but today i rode a bike for the firt time in maybe 10 years. i´ve never been a good bike rider. the first bike i had sucked. the seat had major problems. my crotch still hurts. but it ended up being worth it as i got to sit and chill in a hammock and then on the beach of the caribean and it was warm and there were ´magnificant fenigretet (sp?) flying overhead and the some cool pelicans. and then i got what readers of this site (if they exist) know that i love almost more than anything...to be topless on a beach in the late afternoon sun. i totally love how the warm sun feels on my bare chest, so warm, and engulfing in its warmness. and of course the water was mesmerizing. sad to see how much erosion there has been and how much more development is going on, as well as how much junk had washed up on sure. but otherwise gorgeous. also sad that is wasn´t actualy tide pools like it looked like there were. wow that sentance is full of mad bad grammer.
rode the bikes back after dark along a road with no lights, and very dark, but able to hear the birds and crickets and waves and i think bats fly over my head. so since i came back unscathed, it was awesome. prissy, pussycat little me would have wished i had had a helmet though.
i know 2 posts one day, but i had to say that i couldn´t find breakfast that wasn´t eggs. but the granola was good.
now i feel like i´m getting sick, not getting better.
apparently the party tonight is at the place i´m satying, so sweet i can ditch out early.
what´s going on in the world?
ok to rejoin the ex-pat life and maybe drinks some cuba libres (although i´m mad conflicted b´c i don´t buy coke products anymore, and that´s what they are made with. but they are the cheap good drink around here.)
besos

mosquitoes and not breathing

thursday morning after a night out tulum ex pat style.
my first what i would consider mexican meal, yummy but i have no idea what it was called. basically a handmade tortilla with stuff and potatoes piled on. styrofoam plates though-yucky.
also a fuck load of mosquitoes have gotten me and the sun is not so much out. teh plan for today, if rebecca ever wakes up is to go to the beach. which is fine, but also..but there´s not much else to do when the weather sucks. did i mention the humidity?
ex pat life here involves drinking and lots of it and going to the two bars in town everynight and just hanging out til your ridiculously drunk and starting again the next day. having meaningless sex with tourists and debating the mertits of having it ith the 30 people you know. not the life for me. in fact mollie and i were checked, sober into a cab at midnight. not being able to breathe (which is not otherwise interferring with the trip) makes drinking much less fun. it also involves chain smoking. bleh. mollie must have smoked at least half a pack last night. why? i know she smokes when she drinks but she wasnt really drinking and doesnt she feel it now? a good thing to not breathing or smelling is that the smoke bothers me less.
apparently there is a lot more to twon then when mollie was here last year, they have built access roads on the side of the main road and it looks like a cruising scene out of american graffitti, movie from the 60s o 70s coming of age in anytown usa. seriously i expect them to drag race any minute now.
i feel like i should bash the brothers from nyc who have the stupidest matching soul patches i have ever seen. i think one´s and ass and the other is full of himself and they both think they are the greatest gift to women ever. not quite. of course i haven´t even had a conversation with them, its just how they hold themselves.
ok i made it one day without any eggs yessterday, lets see what i can do about that this morning.
l8r

fish as roadkill

i am supposed to be apoplying to grad school right now, but fucking gmail isnñt working, and in a few hours i will have had more drinks, which i´m sure will not help my cold. kinda fuck. more fuck is that its raining. i hope it stops b/c i can only handle so much gringoness, and the i thought was cool french guy we are letting crash in our room looks to be a dork. (he totally didn´t get that mollie and i would share a bed and he could have the other one, i also think he´s young.) i should have known. i´m just a sucker.
but since i last wrote i´ve come up with a tonb of things to write about and am still stuffy. maybe jenn will read this and bring me claritin.
1)flamingos. they are pink. the older they get the more pink they get due to their diet. i saw hundreds if not thousands of them this morning. and they are damn cool. also saw some greta blue herons, ergrets, and white pelicans. and i´ll saw 4 pecies of vultures but i couldn´t tell them apart. but i think that the ones inland were turkey vultures.
2)the architecture or not so much the architecture as the flatness of the conrete stucco and the signs painted directly on it.
3) how much more touristuy oriented and gringo oriented this side of the peninusla is. bring me back to the deserted town (ok that´s also b/c i don´t want to go out drinking til 4 am.
4) so my fucked up dreams and my cold had me awake at 615 am, and i thought i couldn´t go back to sleep b/c i heard the couple next door having sex and moving the bed. turns out they were locked out on their balcony and trying to get the door open. a safety pin finally got them in, and got up to see some flocking flamingos.
5) i like passing through the towns and in some ways wish i had a car so could stop in the small town and check out the town square.
6) don´t be fooled by milkshakes, it is shaken milk, no ice ceam here. and also in case you were wondering coffee and tequila don´t really mix
7) i might not have to eat eggs today. which rocks b.c i am sick of them and wont eat fish or meat. yeah don´t go to a non gringo coastal town and try to get something without fish
i wrote better thoughts on the bus today that i meant to transfer but didn´t.
i can´t wait for jenn to get hear, b/c i am intimdated by teh amount of drinking and smoking and partying that will go on with this crowd. i admit it. and mollie with go with the flow. i´m a party pooper i admit it, but i also can´t breath through both nostrils.
more thoughts...probably not that you want to read, or that i can think of now.
oh and rebecca screwed us over with rooms. its not that bad, just more expensive that i can afford.
last thoughts, univrsailty of cruising youth, damn cool birds, love of sun, hatred of humidity, american sweethearts is a horrible movie!
lisa

the moon is very luminous

ok couple tips
1) break in the only shoes you have before you leave
2) bring a working camera
3) dont have a cold, it prevents you from drinking
questions
a) how does one have sex in a hammock?
b) were those birds of ptrey circling all over, well in spots, turkey vultres, just vultutres, or hawks. they had white bands on the wings and some were doing the wobble thing
c) when you live in a village serviced by bicycle taxis and you want to go into town how do you call a taxi?
d) were those bats skimming the water of the pool last night?
cool animals i have seen
e) why dont they make thatched roof structures anymore if they hold up so long
1. iguanas. nuff said. mollie says i{ll see more
2. blue heron
3. white pelicans, but they don{t look white to me

yesterday we went to uxmal, and saw some cool ruins that look nothing like tikal. they are much mroe reminicent of greek ruins. then we satyed at a club med place. yep club med. it rocks. and so many butterflies and birds at the ruins.
went back to merida to take a bus out to ,fuck where am i, ic an}t remember. got here just in time to see the sun set. which happens much faster here. the drive out was beautiful, half through village after village and half through greenery, which is beautiful in a way that other beautiful places i{ve been have not been. oh yeh. i}m in celestun. the town is desereted and creeps me out. im often creeped out by derested places.
ok i think thats all i wanted to cover.
oh yeah traveling rocks. no excuse needed for all the nutella consumption. and go me for bringing snacks. maybe should have brought more.
besas

holla from merida

quick notes to myself mainly b-c i don´t have a journal.

1) ALWAYS MAKE SURE MOLIE HAS HER PASSPORT BEFORE YOU GET TO THE AIRPORT
2) spirt runs fucked up schedules and being in ft lauderdale when cruises are going home sucks
3) starsky and hutch not a bad movie on super deluxe buses that have free coffee and tea when it is dark and you can´t see any of the countryside
4)about a month after my brother died i went to dc with a couple friends and one´s parents for the march for women´s lives. we drove down at night and i rem,ember stari8ng out the window and thinking it would be cool if my brother were in the stars <8i know he wasn´t and i never held so fastly to the idea, but i needed to try and resolve the ?s somehow) so i decided that he would be in orion. mainly bc it was the one constellation i could see. last night i think i could see the milky way but there was too much glare form lights in the bus. and i couldn´t see orion. which made me sad. but when we finally got to the hostel and in the courtyard i could see orion i felt better.
5) guatemala is my only spanish speaking frame of reference and there are tons of similarities but also differences. the yucatan is much mroe develpoed, and more spansish speaking populated and not as poor. merida is a colonial town like antigua, but its also a modern city and has more traffic, and more real stuff going on. but also lots of charm. not that we´ve actually seen much.
6) i don´t think i´ve been in ayouth hostel since ireland. not bad. but still got to suppliment the breakfasts. yucatan honey is good.
ok hopefully we will go get to see some flamingos without getting ripped off on the boat prices and my budding cold will fade away as ai drink lots of agua pura.
7) did i mention how warm and sunny it is in january!!!!!!!!!!
besas

how do you know?

i think that's the essential question. or at least what's been weighing on my mind of late. it can be a truly mundane question, as in the case how do i know that i am taking too many shirts to mexico? or much more intellectual, as when the edge foundation asked 50 or so public intellectuals of the science world what they know but can't prove. see silver's blog for more details. but the bigger question really is how do i know that i am making the right life choices, and when they start to feel wrong is that just some butterflies, or some loneliness creeping in, or the dreaded 'D' which fucks with all my decision making capabilities. and why is that something seems so much more attractive when its being taken away from you. i know this is all very abstract talk. but its thinking in the realm of important romantic relationships and the possibilities or lack thereof in front of me. its also coming off the heals of a friday night.

friday nights are hard. shabbat is so nice and relaxing, but then i come home and i'm alone with no one to share it with (and for a good chunk of my adult life i did have someone to share that time with), or almost worse when i have shabbat dinner at my place and it feels so warm and the apt is full of life and then everyone leaves. usually a straggler sticks around to help with dishes, but then she leaves too. and i notice the difference. last night lorie didn't have matt, but she did have anda to say good night with and keep that warmth of friendship and companionship with. don't get me wrong i'd rather have the little bit of sadness than not have any of the feelings of warmth and community.

random fact that you may have already known: fish farms are out in the ocean. not in huge tanks in warehouses on land (as i had clearly thought until last night)

ok, time to hit terrace bagels for the nourishment to get through grad school aps. wish me and aram luck.

stress inducing, stress reducution

so i have a sony 15" flatscreen monitor at work. its at least 5 years old. for the past 6 months or so its been going crazy. crazy means that it starts looking like an acid trip (or at least what tv represented as an acid trip in the late 80s early 90s) with vertical lines and colors and not refreshing or showing inputs from the mouse (although they ouse and keyboard still work if you had any idea where to move it to). the fix for this problem, which happens almost every time after waking up the screen and sponataneously other times is to hit it. clearly something is loose and i could track that down. instead i pick up the screen and drop it on the desk. a gentle manipulation doesn't do it. this thing needs force. its a little ridiculous that the rougher i am with it the better it works. but if i ever need to punch something, my monitor is a happy recipient.


in other words, i'm not sure so i'm happy w/ the content of this site. b/c i'm not using it as a writing excerise as mickey tends to do. i'm not making it a full-on journal b'c i'm scared that people i kinda know will read it and then know all about me. in part the question of who is this for has yet to be answered? for me? for the random internet surfers? for my friends to keep trackof my life? but i had a conversation about blogs with debby today and how some people will just post ' i had cereal today for breakfast. then i got dressed. i went to work. it was the same. i like cereal. maybe i'll have it tomorrow' on one hand those blogs are boring and i dont want mine to be like that. of course guate jenn said she liked my quips.

on health news. having this back pain that is annoying. esp b/c i am going BACKPACKING!!!!!!!!!! on sunday. arg. here's for taking 1st class buses.

accidental nostolgia

i've grown increasing skeptical of multi-media perfomances that rely heavily on digital video. my mind was changed last night when i saw accidental nostolgia at st ann's warehouse. this one woman, plus great band, plus two back up dancers come agile video producers come stage hands was awesome. go see it there until the 22nd. i ushered the show and ended up front row theater left right in front of the guys. much of video could have been recorded earlier and i suppose that if the show were to move to broadway that it would be, but all non-narrative video (which was the majority and was on going for most of the show) was live and being produced right then and there or more likely about 30 seconds before it was needed. the coordination that these guys had between the two of them, and even with-in themselves was awesome. there was no time to be even a second off in terms of timing or you were showing the wrong thing. i don't know much about this stuff, but it seems that it was a combination of special effects tricks of the trade and fairly sophisticated dv technology. to illustrate a) at one point the heroine travel back to where she grew up. a miniture railroad style diarama which i can see from my seat, is projected up on the screen as if we are driving around the town. b) at one point she is being questioned and a finger-held camera probes into her face which would otherwise be obscured by the heroine's position.
i can't wait for the review of the show. although its unclear if my manben will be reviewing it again because its technically a revival of a production from last spring. but i hope so. and go see the show. and i can't wait to hopefully checkout gloria deluxe (the band) at pete's candy store, if they aren't too big now.

worst movie ever

so my roommates have a tendancy to rent either artsy foreign flicks or the stupidest 'chick' flicks out there. i tend to join in for screenings of the chick flick ones. i love them i'll admit it. usually the worse they are, the more i can't steal myself away. occasionally some are too bad to watch. former inhabitants of 36 hausman street may remember the horribleness that was 'bounce' so last night's film was far far far worse. latter days from the writer of sweet home alabama which i will admit that i wanted to see beforehand, and enjoyed. this was set in the 80s (i guess?) in LA and is about the romance between a new to town morman missionary and a one-night stand junkie aspiring actor and waiter. this movie was the definition of low budget. (and i'm not saying that low budget=bad, just this was really obvious) at the restuarant none of them worked except to fold napkins and never had customers. the flaming gay guy's outfits? bright orange hotmants and blue muscle manshirts and the whitest tennis shoes i have ever seen. seriously ou of control. all the scenes and dialogue were so contrived. i am not doing the horribleness of it justice. i ditched after half an hour to read some before i went to bed. i think that reading for a few minutes before bed is a good thing for me. calms me more than surfing the net. and well i'm addicted to my believer magazine right now.

still with the dreams

last night i couldn't fall asleep. i think i was cold. but i didn't feel cold. but i felt better when i put an extra blanket on top of me. maybe i just like having that feeling of weight on top of me. yet another reason to find someone to sleep in my bed. so in last night's vivid dream. marriage was on the line. not mine. but [hmmm i'm about to mention names here, i still haven't decided if i should give code names or not. but some of these people don't have nick names. i'll ponder some more] one of the boston girls and mickey's weddings. i started out being picked up in a herse for the b'girl's wedding and the people in the limo/herse wanted bagels for breakfast but we were mad late for the ceremny. we get there, her little sis gets me in line for the procession which apparently included anyone who wanted to be in it and some random frat boys from college. i walked down the isle close to first, but the isle was this huge set of steps in this ampetheater/auditorium and apparently i was going too slow. when i finally got down it turned out to be mickey's wedding. she was wearing a sundress, her partner was wearing this cowboy leather vest she had gotten him. i could see him wearing this in real life only for halloween. the dream ended before the best part-the open bars. neither couple is getting married anytime soon in real life. but i wish both of them the best of luck when they do get hitched.

i feel like i'm starting to slip again but 1) this is my biggest fear. ok not really loneliness is my biggest fear=but i really don't want to be depressed again and 2) i don't want this to be soley about bad stuff or feeling down. when i was younger-basically til i went to ireland-i would only journal when i was feeling blue. but since i'm not going to produce another prozac nation who wants to read about me feeling down. maybe i'll try to figure out how to change the stuff on the side to put in something about my mood or what i'm reading or some type of barometer that i could track. as much for me as for anyone else. or maybe my shrink/analyst/therapist/special friend/talking friend choose your favorite term.

put some money in my ira for last year. need to get someone to swap my shift at the coop when i'm gone. had another errand i had to do today as well. but i forget.

the male anatomy

so we have single user bathrooms at work. there is one directly across from my office. there are 6 or so regular users of it, that is to say its the closest bathroom for us. there are plenty of other occasional users as well. frequently i go in to find the seat up [i have no problem with this, in fact in guy's apts i try to leave the seat up when i'm done] but i also frequently find urine on the bowl. i know that urine is sterile (well mostly, totally sterile while in the body can pick up some germs on its way out) but still i find this gross. after having endless conversations about the in's and out's of the male anatomy with my ex-boyfriend and other willing males i know that the stream is not always even or on target. that's fine. i'm just saying clean up your mess so i don't have to. if i can easily see it, so can you.

in other news i was recently shocked to hear that this pre-op f2m tranny that i know still gets z's period [he prefers masculine pronouns, but in this case gender neutral seems most appropriate] this came up when z mentioned how much z loved hir keeper. now everyone knows that i love my keeper, so clearly that was not the shocking part. i just assumed that because he is on hormones z'd stopped menstruating. i know it makes me uncouth to be facinated by this, but i am none-the-less.

so many things to blog about, so few readers

The other night, new year’s eve, I came home at 4:30 in the morning, not that drunk or even tipsy mind you, and felt it imperative that I email someone asking them to elaborate on a point he had made in conversation earlier that evening. The short email contained the following line: Am I: smart or intelligent? When recounting this email at brunch the next morning my companions busted out laughing, I did as well. Smart, intelligent same thing. I know. I had been looking for the differences between book smarts and life smarts. The distinction doesn’t come out well in my original word choice though.

Earlier in the same evening I met someone, lets call him Jersey, who is a post-doc in the same field that I currently work in. When saying where I work I named dropped that I work in the former lab of the father of cognitive psychology esp attention, to make myself look good. This is true, its also true that grandpa doesn’t even know my name and really I work for a former grad student of his, I also passed along that info. This post-doc was amazed at my resume and shocked that I couldn’t possibly want to continue in the field. He was convinced that I could get into any grad school I want. I should pass that along to my coworkers applying for grad school in the field. It was also a nice ego boost. Thanks Jersey.

I think that I need to get those light lamps like they have in Scandinavia. I kinda crave light and I think that I would be less depressed in the winter with them. I mean I don’t ever close my blinds (I like to think that no one can see in, if they can, good for them) because I need as much light as I can get to get out of bed in the morning.

I go to mexico in a week. I need to have my Columbia application and would like Bank Street in by then.

Everyone I’ve ever played with knows it, but I love celebrity!!!!! So fucking much!!!!! And I love it more when my team wins. Go team IRELAND. What a great way to spend a new year’s day Saturday night.