Do prostitutes ever do pro bone-o work?

A lesser athlete would have thrown in the towel if faced with such adversity.

I, however, did my usual run in the 90-somethings° heat even though...I couldn't find my stopwatch anywhere.

Ran, 41 (¿?), olives.

It's so evocative, it's almost unreadable...

This work of devastating, saturated fragility and anger is so beautifully heartbreaking I can only read a few pages at a time.

It was a question only your best friend or your physician should ask.

She interrupted my discourse on Why I Suck.

"Where are you in your cycle?" "I don't know." "Don't you write it down?" "Yeah." "But...you don't know?" "I know where I write it down." She rolled her eyes and continued, "It just seems like you hate yourself even more than usual during certain times of the month...you know." "Yeah. Well. Whatever. So what if I am all cranky and fat and bloated? It just means that there's more of me to loathe."

Commonalities between the Top Gear in Botswana episode and the presidential candidates' debate:

1. The men on each program all had on special bracelets!
2. People who know me might be incredulous that I watched both of those.
3. There's lots of bickering!
4. They're showing off what they know about other countries.
5. I can't tell if they don't like each other but make a show of respect if they actually do respect each other and make a show of bickering.
6. I viewed neither at its original airing time.

Indeed, I'm watching the debate now (22:07) and it's reallyreally cool because at the bottom of the screen I can see the screen names and comments of people sending messages in some sort of live feed. But the comments aren't just sitting there until the next one comes in. When the next one comes in, the words of the comment it replaces form an ascending and dissolving word cloud! Unfortunately, the observations of my compatriots are not nearly as interesting or novel as the tilty word cloud. Insightful would be much too much to hope for. The comments are called "tweets" - no wonder the rest of the world no longer really takes US seriously.

So, to "writer's" block, I add its less-glamorous counterpart...

...lesson planner's block.

And just what does it say about me that I had to resort to singing, along with Fergie, in order to spell G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S properly?

If you must know...

Why is "Favorite Music" still a category on social network sites when we're all so very eclectic nowdays.

My recent purchases included Gene Pitney's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962) immediately followed by "Marta, Sebas, Guille y los demás" (2005) de Amaral after having heard it for the first time on Cable TV channel 5015.

So, not only am I eclectic, I manage to be simultaneously retro-kitschy-cool and pathetically behind the times.

My dad always said I had a mind like a steel sieve.

Little does he know that upon further analysis, it's not quite the zinger we all originally thought it was. (Or is it?)

Indeed, I wish I had a mind like a sieve. A steel trap would retain everything. Everything I want or need to remember and everything I'd rather forget. Or should forget. A sieve, on the other hand, would let all the light and superfluous drop through the bottom and keep the weighty and necessary on top.

Or wait...should those second nominal adjectives be the other way around? Or would they be adjectival nouns? Does a sieve even separate things like grain from chaff, like a combine or pasta from water, like a colander? Or does it just sift, thereby changing the consistency of a substance?

I don't remember.

Please get the "that's what she said" out of your system by the time you've read the photo caption.

Mine's only this dark if I use sauce from the jar.

I wasn't being submissive when I asked, "Is there anything you're craving or any ingredient you'd like?" I really just wanted a springboard for menu ideas. Sometimes all it takes is a mention of a certain food or ingredient or flavor, "I'm craving...pasta/black pepper." and I can then plan a whole meal. And I was expecting an answer along the lines of "Something with...chicken/basil/lemons from your tree/a balsamic reduction/homestyle brown gravy." or "No Mexican food, I just had that last night." Or "Nothing...too spicy/with onions/that won't go well with beer/with meat." Nor was I fishing for my favorite answer: "I just want Val cooking."

Thinking about this blog, I realize that I haven't written about cooking. But it is something I do. Or did. Maybe starting to do again. Maybe I'm still good at it. I eat in restaurants a lot and I usually want the food I cook to be restaurant quality. Sometimes I invent, but I usually at least start out with a recipe. Usually I end up altering it. I read it and sort of imagine how it will taste. More often than not, an ingredient not mentioned in the original recipe will suggest itself and I'll add it. Or an ingredient mentioned in the original recipe seems out of place or just plain contradictory of the other flavors.

My favorite recipes are complicated, with many steps. I like getting everything out and doing mise-en-place. Cooking is one area of my life in which I prefer to work from a plan and to stay organized through the whole process. But, as I've said, my favorites are complicated and I like it when there's a little rush and stress and something that has to happen at a certain time for the whole thing to come together. Or a step that needs utter concentration - toasting sesame seeds in a pan, for example. I like using gadgets and every dish in the house and I like cleaning as I go. Keeping that area clean is a priority.

The front door opens into the kitchen in my house and when people come to eat here, I always want them to smell, first thing, that something is cooking for them and know from the aromas, and not from a pile of dirty dishes and vegetable peels, that I put some care into the preparation. Like a writer who keeps her/his readers in mind when he/she writes, trying to keep them reading to the end, when I cook, I imagine my eaters. And if they suggest a flavor or ingredient or "that thing you made for the St. Patrick's Day party" or even an official dish with a name, like mole poblano I always hope they like the flavors I've made enough to keep eating until it's gone.

If someone told me to go there, I just might.

If I ever go to Lassen again, that is.

Blog de Anywhere-Arcata

Arcata, Humboldt County, CA. It's tempting to stay here in the foggy cold, among people who seem so...well, down-to-earth. Really. The earth is important here. Was also tempted to see if I could find a place to get a haircut, but looking around at the residents I saw at the Oriental Buffet, I realized something. And it only makes this place more attractive. No one really cares what they or you look like! And they are beautiful, like their surroundings.

I know we're in Humboldt County, but it's not what you think.

No phones? No T.V.?

What about wireless? Hiking and fishing needs? I thought things were supposed to simple in the wilderness...And why go to the mountains when we've got two perfectly good urban settings about an hour in each direction?

Actually, it looks charming.

I've not yet begun to pack for this trip.

Might be just the thing.

Might be qué horror.

"So, what do you want to eat?" (oops)

With today's hosts I knew that I couldn't answer, "Sushi."

And it took all I had not to order the item on the menu at Elephant Bar that most resembled it. But I did want it again. I didn't even try to play the, "I-don't-care-whatever-you-want" game with yesterday's host. I recall him going to lunch 3 times the entire year I worked for him and I was so honored that he was leaving the building with me yesterday that I didn't want to shatter and dissolve the magic by being falsely polite and indecisive. Besides, he seemed to be in an indulgent mood and I wanted to, um, indulge that...not only, but especially, because it involved my newest gluttonous affinity.

I didn't eat sushi when I worked there and sort of regret it now. For some reason I was surprised that it costs much less to go for sushi in Berkeley than in Davis. I thought the food at Tako Sushi on Telegraph is just as good as Sushi Unlimited - and it SPANKS Nobu! I know I'm the rawest novice when it comes to sushi, so any reader who might be looking for a recommendation should take my micro-review with a grain of...Cooking is one of maybe three things I'll admit to doing well, but my actual tastes are pretty pedestrian. Ask any of my wine and beer sophisticate snob friends. As with the cell phone and Facebook, I was a late adopter. With sushi, I've not made quite as quick advancements. I've only recently progressed to tuna and I still stick pretty much to rolls. I am amused when I hear someone order omakase and I wouldn't order it myself. But I am uncharacteristically passive when a dining companion orders it for me.

I liked that neither of us felt like a sushi expert, though I suspected that he was holding back. I liked not talking about sushi, but about things that seemed necessary (work) and then things that were normal and relaxed (cars, family). And the lunch hour extended itself 30 minutes and I pressed his generosity when he asked, "Who do you want to see?" and then escorted me into offices using his CardKey and hanging back as I interrupted, as briefly as I could, the former co-workers I wanted to see. It was the last day of the one I most wanted to see, other than my host. They'd had a party and she'd left at noon to start her new life as Retired. I treasure her disclosures and heart-shaped Dollar Store vase she gave me just because it reminded her of me.

I was surprised at my reluctance to leave the office. I could've easily stayed and asked questions and reminisced and more than once was tempted to just take a few files and try to help out. The atmosphere, once so charged with stress and clouded by my own feelings of insecurity and professional inadequacy, was softer. Also, there was relief that I wasn't at work and I was a bit smug for having gotten him to take a well-deserved break.

When he'd paid the check at the restaurant ("No. I'm paying. You're a student again."), I thanked him and said that next month would be my treat. If it really does work out, I will consider it a pleasurable coup. And I will again answer, "Sushi."

"So, what do you want to eat?"

I guess it's the heroin of the culinary world for me.

It felt good to go back to the other Sproul Hall today, like I was a very special visitor. Each time I do go back to visit, I feel pangs, like I'd left too abruptly. Or put too much stock in symbolic occurences. But my hand slipped performing a routine task and I put that pole through the window pane at the end of a very stressful day. And backing up in surprise, I knocked over my purse and my old school ID came spilling out and landed face up on the shards, which I wasn't allowed to clean up...It was so hard to leave.

And it took seven years, but now I'm in the other Sproul. Another symbolic thing among many...

I miss blogging.

I miss having ideas. I miss writing more than three sentences. I miss being inspired. I miss String of Lights. I miss being in school (it starts again soon). I miss Paloma (but am so happy with Kayla). I miss running. I miss my favorite jeans. I miss CSI - when it used to be good, that is. I miss traveling. I miss cooler temperatures. I miss making a full-time salary. I miss the Plains. I miss my red glasses. I miss my old office. I miss my old pick-up truck. I miss the beach.

What do you miss?

Abunda en este mundo el pinchecabronismo...

...y no se limita a los hombres, tampoco.

Uttered in a parking lot: "She's such a bitch, she killed her own thyroid!"

Bueno, puede ser...pero, maybe the thyroid was being pinche.

"How can you even look at yourself in the mirror?"

"I don't really have a problem with my age," I told her.

For instance, I'm OK with not being called "miss" very often. I just don't know that I'm ready for the ma'ammogram!

I don't think she appreciated the irony of her daughter's doomed name.

The last thing we heard before getting up from the sticky red picnic table and leaving Dairy Queen was the (thankfully) empty threat, "Liberty, sit down or I'm gonna smack you and you're not getting any ice cream!" We read the mind of the family dog, a little grey pitbull who sat the first time he was told, "I'm sitting. Can I have her ice cream?"

Earlier at DQ, another family had settled in at the table behind ours, the father complaining vociferously about the "dirty-ass table" before they all joined hands to bless the food. They'd brought take-out from another V-Town dining establishment and kept sending the youngest up to the counter to get, not ice cream, but napkins and utensils.

I don't which is the more "Vallejo" of the two family activities mentioned above...or maybe it was neither, but rather the fact that I knew, just by smell, that the take-out meal of the latter was Chicken Express.

After 11 years, I'm a part of this town and it's a part of me. You can't spell Vallejo without...

Though the lights were dim and we were all alone, I was not alarmed.

His repeated requests and gestures that I keep directing my gaze downward, toward his crotch, were not exhibitionist expressions of perversion. They merely reflected a 4th year Optometry student's zeal to either rule out or discover any signs of retinal damage in my myopic eyes.



Yes, I had an extensive eye exam today at UC Berkeley's Meredith Morgan Eye Center. My intern, and later on, his supervising physician, asked me to move my eyes to the farthest extremes in all directions. I felt like one of those Kit-Kat clocks, performing the requested eye motions for so long that I decided to count the appointment as my jog.

I cut this post short, feeling a bit dazed. My left eye is back to normal, but the right one remains quite dilated. I'll blame this concussive state for slowing my movement speed to 50% of Normal.

Why, yes, that last was a reference to WOW... I'll just let you wonder about that for now...

P.S. Feel free to copy and paste image as a subversion of the black rectangle used in old newspapers and magazines to black out the eyes of a photo's subject, thereby concealing his/her identity.

The shopping was relentless

Thrift store whoring net:

1 vest - white denim
1 jacket - red corduroy
3 pairs - all (inexplicably) similarly hued green high heels
7 shirt- (again, inexplicably) 2 of which spell out in red sequins, "What Happens in Vegas", 2 button down silk in red and turquoise, 1 plain black, 1 plain black with red velvet flaming heart , 1 black with writing/floral print
3 skirts - 1 nubby tweed green/blue, 2 black (I don't think I need to explain that, do I?)
2 earrings that do match each other
1 poncho, greens and yellows, so hideous it's cool!
5 pairs of jeans, none of which contain "stretch"!
Grand total: $110.00, or about $5.00 per item