October 2004 Archives
it's almost halloween. here are two scary dreams that emerged from our bed in the past two nights:
the red sox won the world series. the moon was eclipsed by the earth. and, in what is surely the third sign of the coming apolcalypse:
The Economist has endorsed John Kerry for president?
i just voted.
seeing as how i work across the street from city hall, i figured why not get it over with? stand in line over lunch, get an absentee ballot, fill it out, turn it in.
easy. (they did not even ask for I.D.? creepy!)
i feel a little woogy about it now.
yeah.
that's right.
the Red Sox won the world series.
i'm pretty goddamned happy about it. watching all these games it really became clear to me how much my childhood was affected by the sox. watching them lose in '86. watching them lose. watching them lose.
well they won. they won they won they won! and i'm a little worn out from screaming at the tv last night.
since most of you don't care, i'll just finish up this baseball related series of blog posts with a joke my brother told me.
Q: what do you call twenty-five guys watching the world series?
A: the yankees.
sleep well, bambino.
today, we will talk about stuff. and things.
but first, this is on my mind. kevin is coming to town. jason is throwing a little potluck for him at his house. i'm invited. madhavi is out of town that night.
i've decided not to go.
it's strange, because i was just blogging about this sort of thing last entry and now it applies to me. if you've been paying attention at all, you know jason and i have had some tension. actually, we severely disliked each other for some time.
now that's over. but is it really best for me to pretend like it never happened? to show up at his house for a small party without the mitigating presence of madhavi? he invited me and i'm sure he meant to. but we invited him to our housewarming and he was welcome but i was still happier that he didn't come.
is that rude?
we been looking at wedding sites.
but first i'll tell you about our housewarming/engagement party. despite the fact that i had to anxiously run to the computer every ten minutes to see how the sox were doing, i truly did enjoy myself. it was a smaller party, but the people who showed up made me happy.
madhavi says she got repeatedly asked five questions:
1) are you going to take his name?
2) are you going to convert?
3) how did he propose?
4) when are you getting married?
5) are you pregnant?
are you pregnant? uh. thanks for the vote of confidence folks.
we also scored at least four bottles of champagne and a deco juicer! thanks scott! mimosa anyone?
no. really. can i borrow your ears?
we're having a halloween party here at the symphony with a costume contest. the prize is a paid day off. the categories are funniest, most creative, and scariest. i figure scariest will have the least compitition.
so i'm going to be "Four More Ears."
that's pretty fucking scary, right? i'll just spirit gum four more ears to my head and hand out dried apricots while calling everyone else a flip-flopper.
"It was actually happening. The nerd was kissing the homecoming queen. Paper was beating scissors; scissors were beating rock. Charlie Brown was kicking the football. The Red Sox were beating the Yankees for the American League pennant."
and oh yeah, did they! who's your daddy now, jeter? let's see you smirk through that!
i think the only way last night's sox victory over the yanks could have been sweeter is if A-Rod had run crying from yankee stadium flailing his arms like a little girl (and later claiming, "no! that's just how i run!")
hah hah hah! nanny-nanny-boo-boo! the red sox beat the yankees!
but last night was even better than that. two curses were lifted.
i was right.
meeting with the rabbi was intense. we've been talking wedding for a while now. last night, we talked about marriage.
let me just say this: actually walking through the ceremony with the rabbi, picturing yourself up under the chuppah stomping on a glass, picturing seeing your bride walk down the aisle to meet you -- this is more intense than deciding what color ink you'll use on the invitations.
i'm in a serious blog backlog. i don't even know where to begin!
i guess i will just start with this: America. Fuck Yeah!
as you may have surmised from yesterday's post, i've been in a snit. i've been snitty. just sort of general wedding-overload tension. why? because they do not tell you this:
as soon as you get engaged, you must absolutely, completely, immediately start picking out flatware and writing your vows.
this is a slight exaggeration.
if you haven't watched Jon Stewart on CNN's crossfire, do it now.
i also highly recommend this article by Frank Rich in the NYT. full text after the break.
read it:
i'd like to write a lot of stuff about shopping for rings and planning a proposal and feeling engaged. i'd like to write about the type of advice people give you when you first get engaged. i'd like to write about feeling my family double in size and trying to keep all my new aunts and uncles and cousins straight.
but it's been a busy day here at the symphony. and i i'm not feeling particularly creative or pithy or anything but rushed.
i would like to say how interesting it is how people find out you're engaged and how differently people react.
some people scream and jump and want to give you a hug even though they don't really know you. other people you feel close to say, "oh. cool." as if you'd told them you decided to eat less salt or something.
personally, i prefer some sort of real reaction. playing it cool is underrated.
i'm really looking forward to the weekend. to slumming around and relaxing and putting off looking for possible wedding sites for a few more days.
for a long time, i've thought there was a decent chance i'd get married some day. i never pictured my wedding, per se, but i had this amorphous vision of myself -- as an adult -- getting engaged and then married. sort of a self that i split off from the real me to inhabit dreams. the me that gets married.
now that i'm actually engaged, my selves have telescoped together in a dizzying way. i'm not who i thought i'd be. it's disassociative. sometimes it makes me feel like i'm not engaged because i don't recognize myself as the me i pictured.
my pants are not quite on fire and yet, i have not been honest with you for some time. so i apologize.
i've known since Mexico that i was going to marry Madhavi. we decided to wait until there was a ring before i "really really" proposed. most of what's been going on for me in the past two months has revolved around ring shopping -- but i couldn't tell you about that as it was big hairy secret.
surprise!
played some scrabble last night with madhavi.
she played a seven letter word, but i got tricky so we both won.
all in all, it was a fairly dazzling game.
i just got to smell some baby head. fresh, too! only two and a half weeks old!
edie, whom i work with, had little maia this month and brought her around so we could take turns holding her.
i've decided i should go into business making those car deoderizer things that you hang from your rear view mirror, but mine will smell like baby head and look like a baby head. perhaps for extra, you could send in a picture of your baby (or grandkid, whatever) and get a customized baby head stinky thing.
actually, that's a pretty good idea. i bet those would sell!
everybody loves baby head!
there is a generally accepted truth that just isn't correct.
more is not better.
having more money, more stuff, more control, more power, more more more will not make you any happier.
the wealthiest people i know aren't happy. the most powerful people i know aren't happy.
do you know who the happiest person i know is?
susie. susie is in her late thirties, spends a few months a year living with her mom, working six days a week as a postwoman, then grabs her boyfriend and leaves the country on some softly planned adventure around the world for a year or so. then she does it again. i think the most expensive thing she owns is a guitar.
less is the new more. you cannot collect happiness.
okay. so i'm just warning you now. this is the creepiest story i've ever heard. if you're easily boogified, turn back now.
just heard from patrick. they're in vancouver and will meet me tomorrow morning AND mt. saint helens is kinda blowing up! looks like all my dreams will come true!
waiting. waiting.
i've got a ticket to vancouver tomorrow. i've never been to vancouver. i haven't been to canada in a decade at least. i'm supposed to meet patrick and susie -- friends i met in india and whom i haven't seen in about five years. they've been singing their way across alaska for half a year and will be on their way home to the UK and N. Ireland respectively.
the plan is they'll be in vancouver to sell their car and we'll head out to vancouver island for the weekend. i sent them my flight info and they're supposed to tell me where we'll meet depending on whether they've sold the car yet or not.
but i haven't heard yet....
