coming up

...and I see by my last entry that I haven't been paying close enough attention to the passage of days. In short, the last time I wrote was last Friday; now, exactly seven days later, I have seven pages of notes to transcribe into journal entries in under an hour. Can she do it? Will she do it?

I'll drag it out during the course of the day and maybe transcribe what's left at some later date. "Quality," quoth she, "not quantity." Which takes me to the fact that if you type 'penis' in as an initial password for most systems, the system will respond with a variation on 'entry is too short.'

Launchcast -- darn you, Flamingo, for addicting me to this heinous thing -- is stuck again, but just a moment ago it was playing Tears for Fears: Everybody Wants To Rule The World. I have an irrational affection for that song, hooked inextricably in my mind with that movie "Real Genius". It's next on my list, and the hardest to find, for all that; either it's an obscure video, or it's out of print. I pad into video stores with high hopes, only to be turned away in disappointment by pimpled teenage clerks who look blank when I ask the question. I mention who's in the movie, and I see flickers of remote comprehension when I mention "Val Kilmer" and "Broods, from the Pretender." You realize that there is a class graduating from college now that wasn't born yet when Star Wars came out?

So. Catching up on notes....

Stomp was fantastic, incidentally. That's in my notes too, but only as a side note. It was a great show; I fell madly in love with the lead dancer, primarily because he was so dynamic and good at what he did. In college I used to do the same thing: I would go to a recital and be completely blown away by a fantastic performer, and even knowing that the person -- there's a specific one in mind at the moment -- was a jackass or reclusive or, well, gay, I would still be madly in love for about two or three hours. Or do I mean lust? It's hard to say. Talent has a tremendously stirring effect, I must admit.

Which reminds me that I talked to Tara late on the phone on Wednesday, and during the course of the conversation I mentioned that if she knew any single guys, she should set me up. "I should start dating soon, I suppose," I said.

There was a small silence on the phone.

"I wish you would warn me when you're about to say things like that so I can be sitting down," she said, plaintively.

My sister has been furiously pushing me to "meet" (in the romantic sense) some guy her boyfriend knows, who sounded cool -- sounds cool -- by her description of her interactions with him. Apparently one day they went to lunch together, just this guy and my sister, and while they were at the restaurant, the guy bought several random, completely unknown people lunch. Which I think is cool, because I've always wanted to do that, and just never had the money.

My sister had been pushing, I should say. The other day, she came to visit me and said, sheepishly, "I finally found out how old he is." All this time she's been vague about his age. "I don't know how old she is," she'd declare. She was evasive about his possible age range as well. "A little older, I guess...."

"So how old is he?" I asked, when she told me she'd learned his age.

"Um. Fifty-eight."

My father is fifty-eight. My father is dead.

"But he's really cool," she wailed, while I just looked at her. "He acts so much younger!"

"Your sister makes me laugh," Smurfette giggled, when I told her the story last night. "At that age, I suppose everybody looks older. You're older, he's older -- from her point of view, I suppose it makes perfect sense."

So, Smurfette is back in town; she came in yesterday afternoon. Today at two, the Norwegian touches down. I'm quite excited, actually, and I'm sure she is too. Last night we talked for several hours, something we haven't done in quite a while. A long absence does that, I suppose.

The outcome of that conversation was that we've both decided we do not want to be living in the tenement any longer, so we'll (hopefully) be moving soon. Where to? "Redwood City," we supposed. It seemed logical, though she hasn't yet found her next job.

"I want something that I'll enjoy," she explained. I can't blame her. She's had two cruddy jobs in a road, and at this point, she needs something fun. Something like my job.

Which, by the way, I'm losing.

That's another story altogether.

The Norwegian is going to be in town for two weeks. My sister is still in town as well, though she's staying at a friend's place this time. And my mother's birthday is coming up next week, early -- gods. What am I going to get her for her birthday?

It's time to go shopping again, (alas!), and spend some hard-earned money. But it's for my mother, which takes the pain out of that; I figure, I only have one, and she only has one birthday a year, so why shouldn't I indulge from time to time to punish her with joy?

My strange little mother. Everything has to be justified.

"...Because your grandmother is coming to visit," she told us when she had Japan TV installed, guiltily forcing herself to believe every word of it. "I'll be teaching and she won't have anything to do, so I'll install Japan TV and she can entertain herself watching television."

Or: "It's good for your health," after becoming addicted to broccoli and forcing us to eat it for six solid months straight. Or: "I need to watch the audience to study American humor, and see how it's different from Japanese humor," when she wanted to go to a showing of Shall We Dance and ended up laughing herself sick on the wages of it.

Now she's addicted to a Japanese soap opera, shown at 4:30 am on Japan TV. She wakes up for it daily, plasters herself to the television screen, then hoards up a backlog of storylines to inject into our unwilling veins when she gets us on the phone.

"It's fascinating," she tells us, brightly. "Japanese culture has changed so much since I lived there. I need to keep up-to-date so that I won't be conspicuous when I visit there." Posted by yhirata at September 22, 2000 10:06 PM