Today's Random MTV Musings

Didn’t see the whole Video Music Awards, but I am in awe of Shakira’s belly control skills. Maybe I should take up belly dancing? That seems to be the in thing now. Also, I think My Chemical Romance should have gotten at least one award. I had never heard of the band before I saw the “Helena” video a few months ago, and my eyes are always glued to the screen when it comes on. Yes, it’s over-the-top emotional, but it is well done. And I even kind of like the song . . . at least it is not the usual jiggling tarts that are showcased in every rap video . . .

I am now hooked on Laguna Beach. Isn’t that really sad? By the way, did you know that Orange County is, like, 40% Latino and 30% Asian . . . and yet you see none of either ethnic group on the show – what’s up with that? Also, these people don’t seem to go to any classes and have very little parental supervision. They are not poor. One girl last night said that for Valentine’s Day she bought $100 worth of candles and stuff. I remember when I was her age, it was a hassle just to pry $10 from my father . . .

I refuse to watch anymore My Super Sweet 16, because the people are just too . . . too. My parents would have killed me, or knocked me into next week, if I ever spoke to them the way these kids do. And the entitlement these kids feel! Oy!

Am I becoming a cranky old lady? I’m only 34 and I’m ranting about “kids these days” . . .

Rockin' Top Songs Meme

First: Comment to Virginia Gal – Nope, can’t afford a Burberry scarf . . . my dad had a scarf with a similar pattern for years, which I co-opted several years ago. The plaid colors are the same though. . .

Second . . .

The rules: go over to Music Outfitters (http://www.musicoutfitters.com/resources.htm)
to find the list of the top 100 songs from the year you graduated from high school. Bold the ones you like(d), strikeout the ones you don't. The ones you've never heard of or can't remember anything about, leave alone. If you don’t have a blog, just throw the stuff in my comments – I trust you.

Now, I didn’t follow the rules . . . I bolded all of the songs that I associate with happy memories – whether it was dancing around in my room, or happy social moments and fun associations. It doesn’t mean that the song was any good, but it means that just thinking about the circumstances around the song brings a happy glow to my heart.

Bonus points if I can still sing some of the words . . . which I can do with most of them. Yes, I was totally into the Top 40 pop & R&B in those days . . . so sue me!

So without further ado, the top 100 songs of . . . 1987!

1. Walk Like An Egyptian, Bangles
2. Alone, Heart
3. Shake You Down, Gregory Abbott
4. I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me), Whitney Houston (Was never really a fan)
5. Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now, Starship
6. C'est La Vie, Robbie Nevil
7. Here I Go Again, Whitesnake (Gotta love the video - a hairband classic!)
8. The Way It Is, Bruce Hornsby and the Range (Was a resident of the town where I want to college and I actually saw him a few times . . . not met, but saw)
9. Shakedown, Bob Seger
10. Livin' On A Prayer, Bon Jovi (Can't diss Bon Jovi!)
11. La Bamba, Los Lobos
12. Everybody Have Fun Tonight, Wang Chung
13. Don't Dream It's Over, Crowded House
14. Always, Atlantic Starr
15. With Or Without You, U2
16. Looking For A New Love, Jody Watley
17. Head To Toe, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam
18. I Think We're Alone Now, Tiffany
19. Mony Mony, Billy Idol
20. At This Moment, Billy Vera and The Beaters (Remember the connection to Family Ties?)
21. Lady In Red, Chris De Burgh
22. Didn't We Almost Have It All, Whitney Houston
23. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, U2
24. I Want Your Sex, George Michael
25. Notorious, Duran Duran
26. Only In My Dreams, Debbie Gibson
27. (I've Had) The Time Of My Life, Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes (Dirty Dancing! Movie of all time!)
28. The Next Time I Fall, Peter Cetera and Amy Grant (I admit it . . . I loved Peter Cetera. Yes, that's sad . . .)
29. Lean On Me, Club Nouveau
30. Open Your Heart, Madonna
31. Lost In Emotion, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam
32. (I Just) Died In Your Arms, Cutting Crew
33. Heart And Soul, T'pau
34. You Keep Me Hangin' On, Kim Wilde
35. Keep Your Hands To Yourself, Georgia Satellites (This was/is the most simple rockin' song to me . . .)
36. I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me), Aretha Franklin and George Michael
37. Control, Janet Jackson
38. Somewhere Out There, Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram (I got so sick of this song)
39. U Got The Look, Prince
40. Land Of Confusion, Genesis
41. Jacob's Ladder, Huey Lewis and The News
42. Who's That Girl, Madonna
43. You Got It All, Jets
44. Touch Me (I Want Your Body), Samantha Fox (Cheesy as heck, but fun!)
45. I Just Can't Stop Loving You, Michael Jackson and Siedah Garrett
46. Causing A Commotion, Madonna
47. In Too Deep, Genesis
48. Let's Wait Awhile, Janet Jackson
49. Hip To Be Square, Huey Lewis and the News
50. Will You Still Love Me?, Chicago
51. Little Lies, Fleetwood Mac
52. Luka, Suzanne Vega
53. I Heard A Rumour, Bananarama
54. Don't Mean Nothing, Richard Marx (One of the girls in my college dorm l*o*v*e*d this guy . . . posters everywhere, fan club membership, the works!)
55. Songbird, Kenny G
56. Carrie, Europe
57. Don't Disturb This Groove, System
58. La Isla Bonita, Madonna
59. Bad, Michael Jackson (Although, I enjoyed the Weird Al version, Fat, much better)
60. Sign 'O' The Times, Prince (Not his best work . . .)
61. Change Of Heart, Cyndi Lauper
62. Come Go With Me, Expose (Remember, I think they guested on an episode of Facts of Life . . . I can't remember if young George Clooney was in that episode or not . . .)
63. Can't We Try, Dan Hill (A local radio station would play this song until make people call up and answer a trivia question correctly to make it stop . . . it was amusing, you had to be there.)
64. To Be A Lover, Billy Idol
65. Mandolin Rain, Bruce Hornsby and the Range
66. Breakout, Swing Out Sister (They were actually a pretty good band, I got a couple of their albums)
67. Stand By Me, Ben E. King
68. Tonight, Tonight, Tonight, Genesis
69. Someday, Glass Tiger
70. When Smokey Sings, ABC
71. Casanova, Levert
72. Rhythm Is Gonna Get You, Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine
73. Rock Steady, Whispers
74. Wanted Dead Or Alive, Bon Jovi
75. Big Time, Peter Gabriel
76. The Finer Things, Steve Winwood
77. Let Me Be The One, Expose
78. Is This Love, Survivor
79. Diamonds, Herb Alpert
80. Point Of No Return, Expose
81. Big Love, Fleetwood Mac
82. Midnight Blue, Lou Gramm
83. Something So Strong, Crowded House
84. Heat Of The Night, Bryan Adams
85. Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You, Glenn Medeiros
86. Brilliant Disguise, Bruce Springsteen
87. Just To See Her, Smokey Robinson
88. Who Will You Run Too, Heart
89. Respect Yourself, Bruce Willis
90. Cross My Broken Heart, Jets
91. Victory, Kool and The Gang
92. Don't Get Me Wrong, Pretenders (My first exposure to them, became a fan.)
93. Doing It All For My Baby, Huey Lewis and The News
94. Right On Track, Breakfast Club
95. Ballerina Girl, Lionel Richie
96. Meet Me Half Way, Kenny Loggins (Top Gun-related!)
97. I've Been In Love Before, Cutting Crew
98. (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right To Party, Beastie Boys (Song all the rage the last few months of Senior year in high school . . .)
99. Funkytown, Pseudo Echo
100. Love You Down, Ready For The World

I hearby tag . . . whoever wants to do this. :-)

Thoughts about the Big Easy

I just posted on Justrose’s blog some of my thoughts about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina.

Now, New Orleans is nice place that I found to be excellent for taking photographs because there is just so much going on in the French Quarter, that just begged to be captured. It is a very poor city, though. You can see it and feel it when you are there. My thoughts are totally with the people down there right now . . . I can’t even fully wrap my head around the losses and the damage.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/30/AR2005083000148.html

I do hope to be able to show you my pictures . . . I still have to scan them in sometime soon.

This is Your Humble Blogger . . .

Yup, this is pretty much what I look like . . . down to the hat and scarf. (As in, I have a scarf exactly like that and I would kill for the hat . . . I love hats!)

See, new things are afoot on the blog . . . hopefully, I'll have time to make a few more changes.

Random Vacation Thoughts: Part 2 - It Gets Better

The Portland Area: We spent a week at Mr. Random’s Grandma’s house, the mother of Mom Random.

We have not seen Grandma Random in almost 7 years, since our wedding. However, we do send many cards and letters and gifts back and forth over the course of all of the years, so it’s not like we don’t keep in touch. I adore Grandma Random, and she adores me. And the fact that she adores me, well, really touches me, because before I met her I was really scared to meet her. I was scared to meet her because her family told me that she was really conservative, being brought up in rural areas and stuff, and really religious and the kind of lady who believes all of that black helicopters & militia kind of stuff. Being an African American female walking into this little white haired lady’s den freaked me out. But the first thing she did when she saw me 8 years ago? Gave me the biggest hug. Accepted me with open arms. And I learned to never try to ever judge a book by its cover again.

She was so happy to see us that Saturday evening when the train came in. Very tired, but beaming. She will turn 90 years old in January, and she has a lot of trouble getting up and walking due to pains and injuries she’s had since she was a little girl. The whole week we were there, she pushed herself to stay awake a little longer and do stuff with us. We tried to let her know that we were happy just to sit in the living room and watch TV with her, but she wanted to be active with us. Mr. Random and I made her dinner on Tuesday night – a simple herb salad in a bag, with some gorgonzola cheese and little cherry tomatoes, along with some cheesy breadsticks and one of my fave easy recipes, tortellini soup. She loved the salad and bread and had seconds, and liked the soup, but she had filled up on the other stuff and couldn’t eat much of it. Grandma was very pleased to not have another microwave dinner and to have someone make something for her. Yay!

Grandma Random lives alone in a cute little ranch house, around the corner from Aunt and Uncle Random, so they can check in on her and run errands for her. She has an awesome garden in the back yard with all types of flowers and pots of roses. We helped her out a bit and did some staking of flowers and Mr. Random cleaned out her birdbath and put fresh water inside. She loves to identify the birds in her yard, and they hadn’t been coming around for a while, but after the birdbath was cleaned out, the birds started showing up again.

One day, we went out to one of the Random cousin’s houses – she rents a house in a rural area by a river and keeps chickens in her yard . . . so I spent an afternoon feeding the chickens! (I have to post the picture for that – little old city girl, me!, feeding chickens.) They were cool though – came right up to me and pecked them right out of my hand. Later on, her friend, who is the caretaker to an estate, took us by the estate and gave us a tour of the grounds. So beautiful! And the estate has a place where they are growing vegetables, and so there are pictures of me holding huge stalks of rhubarb. We also picked some snap peas and cucumbers to take home to Grandma Random. To end the day, we had some homemade zucchini cake, which was just heavenly.

One day, we just sat at home and looked at old family pictures. Grandma Random actually has the photo albums very well captioned and pointed out the many cousins and aunts and uncles that even Mr. Random didn’t know much about. The last night we were there, she took us to dinner at a restaurant by the river which was one of her favorites.

The day we left, she made sure she took lots of pictures of us, and we all cried as she hugged us goodbye. She said she thought it might be the last time she saw us . . . Awwww! I promised her that it wasn’t, and during our train trip back Mr. Random and I promised that we would surprise her and fly back to Portland for her 90th birthday.

So, you can tell by all of this that this leg of the trip was a much better experience than the week before.

Train Portland to Chicago: We went through Washington and Idaho and Montana and North Dakota and Minnesota and Wisconsin to Illinois. I had never been through those states before, and watching the landscape go from mountains to trees to flat prairie always fascinates me. I was most excited going through Minneapolis-St. Paul because it looked like an actual city! Which made me excited because we were getting closer to home! We were so tired on this leg of the trip, we just slept most of the time or stared out of the window. So much had gone on, we just needed time to process it and try to decompress.

Train Chicago to DC: We were so tired of trains at this point . . . I just wanted to be home! Sleep in my own bed. Pet my own cat. Sit on my own couch. Got into DC at 12:30 on Monday afternoon, took a cab home and here we are. The much anticipated trip was over, thank goodness.

So . . . the trip was a mixed bag. But I am so glad we went to Portland, so glad we made Grandma Random so happy, and so all the stress and drama and aggravation was all worth it.

I just wish it had been an ACTUAL vacation. I could really use one now.

Random Vacation Thoughts: Part 1

I was trying to write some sort of huge 5 part posting talking about our whole trip across the U.S. and back, but have come to realize that if I go about it that way, it will NEVER, EVER be either completely written or posted . . . it will just sit inside my head and reside on bits of paper in fragments.

So without further ado, here are my random thoughts about our Random vacation:

I read the departure time on our ticket out of D.C. wrong, thinking that were leaving an hour later than we were supposed to. Luckily, I looked at the ticket again the night before and realized my error (I had mixed up the time with another departure ticket for later in the trip) but it still threw a huge monkey wrench into our schedule for the next day.

I hadn’t finished my newsletter for work until the morning of the trip. I was going to stay up all night and finish it, but I didn’t start packing until kind of late Wednesday night and then I was too tired and incoherent to do anything else. So I got up early on Thursday, buckled down and send it out to be edited . . . all before 10 AM.

J, our house-sitter, came over Wednesday night too, just so that we could get him settled in and answer any questions . . . and also so the Random Cat could get used to him with us still there. We ordered Pizza and watched lots of Comedy Central and Cartoon Network until midnight . . . when I started packing. Yes, that was bad, but we were having a grand old time . . .

Had to go to a going away lunch for our interns on Thursday, just a couple of hours before the cab was supposed to pick us up to go to Union Station. We showed up in shorts and sandals, looking pretty out of character for a work day, but the lunch was fun and our interns certainly were stars this summer, so I really wanted to be there.

We got home just in time to put the bags out and make sure we didn’t forget anything. Mr. Random still managed to forget his shampoo on the living room table, but otherwise, things went smoothly, although we felt really rushed and frantic.

Train to Chicago: Uneventful, but I was so tired I slept a lot. Got there Friday afternoon. We had a “layover” before the train to L.A., so we were walking around downtown Chicago and I was taking lots of photos with my B&W camera. Mr. Random forgot the digital camera in his bag at the station, for which I gave him heck because I wanted to take a ton of shots in color. I think I love Chicago . . . it has a great city vibe, without the ego and self-pretension of DC. We saw a café that just sells cereal all day. That’s right . . . nothing but cereal and related stuff. We didn’t go in, but I took pics of the outside because I thought the idea was so cool. When we got home this week, I found out they are a chain . . . wouldn’t mind seeing one here! Otherwise we just walked along the river and looked around at the buildings. There was even a lunchtime street festival with a band and everything. Very awesome!

Train to LA: Uneventful and got in on time. We’ve done this before so nothing to remarkable to report. However, one of the servers in the dining car remembered us from our trip two years ago. How random is that! Also, we were on the train with about 150 kids who were in a youth dance troupe who were on their way to Disneyland to perform. Had lunch with two of the chaperoning parents who were from the Norfolk area. Small world! Also, there were about 80 Boy Scouts on the train, on their way to go hiking in New Mexico. I’m so glad we were in the sleeper car . . . it would have been hell in Coach – trying to get some sleep with 200 middle-high school aged kids joking around, being kids. They were pretty well behaved otherwise though . . . it was the kids who weren’t with any group and who were being “watched” by their own parents who seemed to be acting the holy terrors.

Into The Glass Menagerie: Week at the home of Mr. Random’s Mom and Sister. Did you all read the Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie? or see the movie? Imagine if Tom, the brother, got married and brought his wife home to that situation. And I’m the wife. It was horrible, and Mr. Random felt horrible because it was horrible, and I felt horrible because it was horrible, but I tried to keep Mr. Random’s spirits up and remind him that there was a reason that he moved across the country and isn’t he doing fine now? The less said about this the better. However, I did get a lot of running done that week, because we really needed to get out of the house every day, and that was as good an excuse as any.

Train LA to Portland: Hell continues. Mom Random comes along with us on the train to Portland since she’s never done a sleeper car before and wants to experience it. She was going to share a room with Sister Random, but Sister Random backs out at the last minute, for reasons wrapped up in the whole Glass Menagerie scenario above that I don’t want to get into. The train is supposed to leave at 10:15 AM on Friday. Mom Random calls a shuttle which comes to pick us up at 5:45 AM – you know, because we will be hitting the hellacious commuter traffic to LA and we want to make sure we get to the train station in time. Well, of course, miracle! There is NO traffic and we get to the train station at 7 AM. Three whole hours to kill. Mr. Random is lousy at waiting anyway, but with his mom there, who also is spastic and can’t sit still, they both go into high fidgits. I’m just trying to be Zen and sit quietly at the station, drinking my iced mocha and reading my book, but nooooo – the other two are up-down-up-down-fidget-fidget-rustle newspaper-up-down the WHOLE time . . . until 10 AM, when we see that our train is going to be delayed. This freaks out Random Mom who is antsy to get going, because we have to be in Portland at a certain time tomorrow because folks are having a cookout for us that night, blah, blah, blah.

First of all, you don’t take the train if you want split second accuracy. Trains always get delayed due to the primacy of freight train traffic on the tracks, so you have to be kind of flexible about when you’ll get in. Secondly, on this route they specifically say on the tickets and when you buy the tickets that there is work being on the tracks, so trains are usually substantially delayed this summer. So you shouldn’t schedule anything around the arrival time and just go with the flow . . . we’re on VACATION, darn it!

But Mom Random has waited long enough and is now complaining to everyone about how crappy the trains are and how we’re going to be late and now we have to call Random Aunt and Uncle and tell them we’re going to be late and ruin their cookout and blah, blah. Hey, it’s not my fault we got here 3 hours early – chill out! So, it becomes 12 noon and the train isn’t there yet and Mom Random is still freaking and bringing Mr. Random with her. I suggest that they both go take a walk outside and have a nice lunch and leave me with the bags to read my book in peace. (Because they were both getting on my bloody nerves!) But no, she wouldn’t hear of it, and so we went to lunch in the station at a pretty nice restaurant (if way pricey), where she continued to complain. Mr. Random knew that I was on my last nerves and tried to keep me calm while at the same time trying to humor his mom.

So the train is finally ready at 1 PM. We hustle and hop on. Me and Mr. Random have a sleeper room in one car and Mom Random is in the other. Mr. Random goes back and forth to check on his mom. The train route is beautiful . . . it goes up the Pacific coast along the ocean though San Luis Obispo and then it goes inland through some lovely mountain areas. Such gorgeous views! Unfortunately, it was very foggy and overcast over the ocean, but still beautiful just the same. (Pictures will be forthcoming.) Mom Random gets out at all of the smoking stops (because smoking is not allowed on the train and she smokes, like, 2 packs a day. Despite her killer cough. And the fact she has been to the emergency room twice in the past month, including the first night we were at her house. But I digress . . .) We arrive in Portland seven hours late. More complaints commence.

I really felt bad for Mr. Random on this trip . . . It was very hard for him to deal with all of this stuff coming at him at once . . . and also stuff that’s been festering for a while. I was really hoping that time at his grandmother’s would go much better than the first part of the trip . . . it just HAD too, for both our sakes.

To be continued . . .

It's Coming, I Swear . . .

The saga of the trip is coming . . . just plowed under by actual work to do.

I also have to figure out how to get my pictures and other goodies up here in a pleasing manner.

In the meanwhile, how has everyone's August been?

Hitting the Fan

Mr. Random and I returned to work at the Random Non-Profit today, looking forward to easing back into the workaday life . . . you know, read some e-mails, open some letters, take it slow. Little did I know how much manure would hit the fan today . . . otherwise I would have stayed in bed and taken another day off.

So I walk in and read my e-mails and find out that nothing that was supposed to happen while we were away actually happened. Things that were supposed to go out didn’t, things that were still in limbo, are still in limbo. We’ve been gone since August 4th, for crying out loud! What the heck did people do these past two weeks? Things have been passed on to me with very little exposition, and the people who sent them to me are gone on vacation until Labor Day.

Also, our uber-boss was fired yesterday. The CEO has been going around all day telling people not to freak out, everything is OK, no one else is getting laid off. So, of course, everyone IS freaked out.

I really try not to complain about work here, but I can’t write anything else until I get this off of my chest. WHEW! . . . Now I feel better. Back to being positive . . .

. . . Well, maybe not. That’s right – I still have to talk about the trip!

Hello? Anyone there?

Greetings, Faithful readers! (if you are still there . . .)

We are back from the long awaited vacation and it was . . . ina a word . . . horrible, with flashes of decent.

Full accounting when I get the chance . . . hopefully tomorrow.

I missed you all! I missed e-mail! I missed . . . real, decent newspapers with actual news!

I have pics, too! We finally did get the digital camera, and I hope to get some choice files up before the week's end.

Kisses of joy and relief to all!

Always Feeling Fresh

Two posts in one day! It's rather rare, but I just saw this in my e-mail and I felt compelled to share . . .

In the “Only in the Advertising World” category, I was reading the NYT’s “In Advertising” e-Newsletter, and was rather amused by today’s Stuart Elliott article.

I’ll be loving you, Always?
A new campaign for a leading brand of feminine-hygiene products breaks ground in the category by unabashedly urging women to celebrate that time of the month. The unique approach of the campaign, for the Always brand of sanitary pads sold by Procter & Gamble, is typified by its frank theme, "Have a happy period." The campaign takes a warm, upbeat, comforting tone, with a just-between-us-girls kind of voice as typified by some of the headlines: "Queen for a week," "Take a cab home" and "The cookies in your desk aren't going to eat themselves."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/01/business/media/01inads_column.html?8seia&emc=seia

I do hope the link works, because there is an actual whole WEBSITE attached to this entire campaign. I may just have a sick sense of humor, but this was just too odd to let pass by . . .

Counting the Hours

Another busy weekend at the Random household . . .

Saturday morning, did 50 minutes of running – it went really well except that it was pretty muggy, even at 8:30 in the morning. I just walked in, checked my name off the list and went on a nice, steady-paced run. I was done at the exact same time that the speakers for the day were finished and I was SO glad that I did not stay to listen, otherwise I wouldn’t have finished running until after 11:00 AM.

Later, Mr. Random and I had lunch with my friend, C, and her friend, P, who was visiting from Tampa. We went to the Quarterdeck restaurant in Rosslyn which is a total dive that’s been around forever – it is tucked in an out of the way corner of Rossyln that not many folks know about – but it cooks the best hard-shell crabs outside of the Eastern Shore. P grew up on the Eastern Shore and I was quite pleased when he said that they were the best crabs he ever tasted . . . and Shore natives can be quite picky about their crabs.

Then we went to get a digital camera, which I haven’t has a chance to play with yet, but Mr. Random has. While I was out yesterday, he spent this time reading the instruction book and playing with the camera . . . he took a 1 minute short film of our cat eating in the kitchen, and several pictures of his hand. Oooooo, how thrilling. We need to get a memory stick for the camera in the next couple of days or our camera’s internal memory will be filled by Friday, with my husband taking pictures of random objects and of the cat sitting in her Buddha poses, just because he can.

Sunday morning, went to church sans Mr. Random who was not into getting up so early, so I had to leave him behind. It was just me and the music director for a while, practicing the songs for the service, and I was in a panic because I did not want to be the only person singing up front. About 2 minutes before the service started, two other choir folks showed up so I wasn’t stuck doing solos.

Then I went to lunch with my friend, J, the guy who is going to house/cat-sit for us while we are away. His knee is getting better – he went to the doctor on Friday and got his knee drained, along with a cortisone shot, so he no longer needs to use crutches, but he still has a bit of a limp until it heals. He went with me to pick out the birthday present for the 2 year old’s birthday party I had to go to later. The parents gave us the parameters, “S likes stars moons, keys and alligators.” Do you know how hard it is to find stuffed alligators? Dragons, yes. Dinosaurs, yes. Frogs, yes. Alligators, . . . not one. There are not many books on stars or moons geared to two year olds, besides the ever present, Goodnight, Moon, which he already had a copy of. However, after much searching I did find a set of cards with constellations cut out of them that you can use with a flashlight to beam the constellations onto a darkened ceiling. I thought the set was so cool! Even though the age on the package said “age 6 and up,” I am sure the parents will get a hoot out of showing off the stars on the ceiling . . . I know that I would. I forgot to ask J about the blog . . . he’s the one that I hoped would post while I’m gone . . . but his schedule seems a bit hectic. We’ll see.

So after lunch, I drive like a madwoman home . . . or as best I can, going down Route 50 and Route 7 on a Sunday afternoon . . . those roads are always horrible. I pick up Mr. Random and we head to the birthday party, which at this point is almost over. This is a good thing because there were tons of little kids and their parents there, but very few people that we actually knew, besides the birthday boy and his parents and one other couple with their little1 year old boy. We caught each other up on what’s been going on in various folks lives. They did not know that our friend, L, moved to Australia and that my friend, D, was expecting a little girl next month. We did not know that our friend, S, and his wife, M, had moved to Williamsburg because M got a job at a college near there. We also didn’t know that our old friend, A, had become a stay at home mom – she had just gotten married to an older man who had a young son.

So we stay a good 45 minutes, rave over how big the birthday boy has gotten, chitchat a bit with the old friends, and then are given a piece of cake to take home. This was just enough time for us to feel like we made a presence, and not so long that we start to feel like weirdos for being the only ones there who don’t have any little kids to compare notes about.

We then went home and I promptly took an allergy pill and took an hour nap, because I was totally exhausted. Didn’t really fully wake up for the rest of the night either, but I did manage to eat a couple of bites of dinner and some peach ice cream that Mr. Random had just bought at the store.

. . . Now I’m back at work, not thinking of work, but thinking of all the packing I have to do, and all of the cleaning that needs to be done so that J doesn’t think that we live in a pig sty. The good thing about having people over often is that you have to pick up stuff around the house on a regular basis, so things don’t get too bad. Because my sister just stayed with us, the guest room is rather neat and inviting, so that’s not a worry. Just have to scrub down the bathroom and kitchen and get all of the random piles of junk mail and newspapers out of the living room and den. I also have to write down instructions for feeding the cat and changing the litter box.

How much clothing should one bring for 3 weeks? I’m not that good at planning my wardrobe ahead that far . . . I tend to think of what I’m going to wear the night before, and then change my mind again in the morning. I know that there will be washers and dryers available, so I can bring stuff for just a week and then do a major wash, but I’m not sure what I’m going to feel like wearing once I’m in CA. Skirts & Sandals? Shorts and sneakers? T-shirts? Capris? Nice shoes? Nice Pants? Arrrgh!

Well, a traveling mood needs a traveling poem, and I found one to end with for today:

Traveling Alone
Billy Collins

At the hotel coffee shop that morning,
the waitress was wearing a pink uniform
with "Florence" written in script over her heart.

And the man who checked my bag
had a badge that said "Ben."
Behind him was a long row of royal palms.

On the plane, two women poured drinks
from a cart they rolled down the narrow aisle —
"Debbie" and "Lynn" according to their winged tags.

And such was my company
as I arced from coast to coast,
and so I seldom spoke, and then only

of the coffee, the bag, the tiny bottles of vodka.
I said little more than "Thank you"
and "Can you take this from me, please?"

Yet I began to sense that all of them
were ready to open up,
to get to know me better, perhaps begin a friendship.

Florence looked irritated
as she shuffled from table to table,
but was she just hiding her need

to know about my early years —
the ball I would toss and catch in my hands
the times I hid behind my mother's dress?

And was I so wrong in catching in Ben's eyes
a glimmer of interest in my theories
and habits — my view of the Enlightenment,

my love of cards, the hours I tended to keep?
And what about Debbie and Lynn?
Did they not look eager to ask about my writing process,

my way of composing in the morning
by a window, which I would have admitted
if they had just had the courage to ask.

And strangely enough — I would have continued,
as they stopped pouring drinks
and the other passengers turned to listen —

the only emotion I ever feel, Debbie and Lynn,
is what the beaver must feel,
as he bears each stick to his hidden construction,

which creates the tranquil pond
and gives the mallards somewhere to paddle,
the pair of swans a place to conceal their young.


(BTW, Virginia Gal, the plan is to submit the passport stuff on Thursday morning, since our train doesn't leave until late afternoon.)