Balance and Tipping

Sunny and beautiful but that's deceptive. There's still a bit of a chill. Really perfect though. The crocuses are blooming like mad, deep purple all over the place, but I was pretty sure I'd planted white ones as well. What gives?

Fletcher has brought me his second offering of the spring, a mole. As long as he keeps these on the front porch I'm fine with it. Keep them out of my tulips.

Have yet to hit the Powerball, so so much for the poet retirement plan. Ah well.

Taxes, done. Birthday cards, done and mailed. Overall a good day.

Ach Du Lieber

Just got back into West-by-god a bit ago. It's 60 degrees and the cat hates me. My sinuses hate me--damned head cold. Off to shower and shave and unpack my bags and bags of books (laundry can wait.)

I'll be back later with snippets from AWP, a rant about the train trip from NYC to Baltimore and the new Inner Drag Queen of the Month.

Done and Done

This has been a frightfully productive week. It's unnerving.

I got my aquarium broken down, re-substrated, replanted and functioning pretty well. At least none of the fish are dead. Got my car serviced (well...they're still waiting on a part for the radiator.) Got some poems done and am just about ready to send out more packets. I'm spent.

~*~

I'm working a graveyard shift. 11pm to 7 am. I sleep while it's still light out. Better than at night. It's bizarre. Most nights I wake up 3 or 4 times. Twice if I'm very lucky. Lately I only wake up once (unless I forget to turn off the phone which happened today "Hello?" (background noise static static) "HELLO." "Hi, this is LaShawn from Verizon, could I speak to Rob." "There's no Rob here." Click. I hate when people ask for Rob, or Bob, thinking that those are the default settings for the name Robert. All you're doing is pissing my happy ass off, insuring that I won't listen to your spiel or even consider buying what you're selling. Seriously--who tells these poor people that sort of plastic familiarity is charming? I feel the same way about overly-attentive, perky, chatty wait staff. I don't want you crouched down at my level. I don't care what you think about an entree unless I ask. It's not going to help your tip. Actually, I'll be more likely to tip better if you come and go as unobtrusively as possible. Check on our drinks, see if we want coffee or dessert then get the hell outta there. I know I'm not like most people--but seriously, this aggressively friendly, overly familiar stuff has got to go.

~*~

Project Runway Season 4 started tonight. All I can say is "Meh." I've got no real dog in this fight...which is strange, because I usually latch onto people the first episode. Way way way too much metallic fabrics. Very 80s cuts and proportions on a lot of the outfits. If this is where fashion is heading, then I'll just check out til next season. I lived through the 80s once. I don't want to go back. It's fun to have this back though. Brian and I always post mortem the episodes on the phone before he goes to bed. We don't agree on things...and we rarely like the same people, but it's fun. Just being able to be snarky and funny together is a great gift. Best line of the night: Heidi Klum saying "She looked like she was pooing fabric down the runway."

~*~

My arrangements are all set for AWP. I got all my confirmations via email today. Huzzah! I'm frightfully excited. It's my first one. And I'm trying to remember the last time I was in NYC. It had to be at least 10 years, 12 hair colors and 3 dress sizes ago.