new strength

after nearly five months of working out, i'm beginning to feel not slimmer, but stronger, at least. exercises i know would have tired me out earlier i can now do not with ease, but at least not with the painful struggling before. it's a great, empowering feeling, though i know i still have a long way to go. weight training is pretty gratifying, too, since it's so quantitative--i can definitely lift more than i could, say, a month ago or so. significantly more.

in other news, i don't understand freelance people who have no concept of doing business. they never return emails, don't deal with contracts, don't respond to phone calls. um... are you in this to make money or not?

and, amusingly, i was at the laundromat today when a woman started asking me the most basic questions about laundry. her: can i use liquid soap? won't it get all foamy? me: uh, no, i think it will be all right. it's designed to work in machines, after all. her: what do you use? me: powder her: what temperature should i use? me: it depends on what you're washing... and so forth. recent college grad, perhaps. or she just crawled out of a cave and had to do laundry for the first time!

rattling in my head

for the last few days i've had beyonce's song irreplaceable stuck in my head. this happens to me periodically, where i have an odd song, far outside of the genre i usually listen to, that sticks with me for a while. last month it was gwen stefani's hollaback girl. but while gwen stefani's song i find toe-tap, hip gyration, and snap inducing, beyonce's song i've concluded is worth a second look.

despite her unsophisticated lyrics ("I could have another you in a minute/
matter fact he'll be here in a minute - baby" --the repetition of "minute" here really doesn't work for me), her song works because it's great music. She catches you with a great hook "to the left to the left", sung softly, almost sadly, makes you immediately think, what's to the left? ah-- "everything you own in a box to the left..." at that point the song picks up, and she sort of sing/ talks to the rhythm of someone shaking their finger or chicken-necking, both of which she does in her video as she chews out her man for cheating on her and leaving her.

But here's what gets me. She's essentially herself, both in the song and the video, a rich, successful woman empowered by her wealth and possessions. her ex has nothing but a small box of his stuff- everything else, she's bought for him ("And It's my mine name that is on that Jag/ So remove your bags let me call you a cab"). The point of the song is expressed in the chorus: "You must not know about me/ You must not know about me/ I can have another you by tomorrow/ So don't you ever for a second get to thinking you're irreplaceable."

right, there's the catch. even with all her wealth, even with her success and confidence, she still has to kick him out because he was cheating on her-- "So go ahead and get gone/ And call up on that chick and see if she is home/ Oops, I bet ya thought that I didn't know/ What did you think I was putting you out for?/Cause you was untrue/ Rolling her around in the car that I bought you." The Beatles had it right--money can't buy you love.

in the video, she acts as if she doesn't care, and in the last scene another man shows up at her door (at least, that's what i think happens... it's hard to tell because his back is to us and he's wearing a hat.)

but here's why the song, to me, has more depth, despite the video. There's a modulation in the last stanza ("Baby I wont shed a tear for you/ I won't lose a wink of sleep/ Cause the truth of the matter is/ Replacing you is so easy..."

and then the song launches into a coda of "to the left to the left", again, sung softly. the repetition makes it reflective, and this time, you're sure it has to be sad, and the repetition of the statement "Don't you ever for a second get to thinking you're irreplaceable..." becomes bitter and almost vengeful.

and i've given way more thought to this song, more than even beyonce herself, perhaps. can you tell i'm procrastinating?

too cute!

okay, i am now officially addicted to the site icanhascheezburger.com

my recent favorite:
oh noes! (resistance is futile, lil' kitty!)

but this one just makes me laugh and laugh:
can i plz has dis shiny device?

don't know why, exactly. something about the serious look on the cat's face that i know too well.

windows

while coming home on the bart train the other night ryan leaned in close and whispered in my ear, "you keep staring at people."

i averted my gaze, realizing i had been, in fact, rather intently focused on a woman with a tattoo of a witch on her neck. a moment later i realized that i had looked away from her only to study the slack-faced, sleeping teen-aged boy a few seats down.

i've always been a people watcher, and now that i don't get out of the house much these days i guess my watching has intensified. i love trying to figure people out from what they look like, as if their life histories, not just their emotions, are evident in the protrusion of their lips or the dip of their brows. what was that woman thinking that morning when she paired her somber black dress with a pair of bright red shoes? why did that man choose to gel his hair straight up like that, and what might it say about his attitude toward life?

the more i think about writing, too, the more i like to see what people are reading. i find myself craning my neck to catch a glimpse of their page, to see what the title is. it gladdens me to see people reading on the train, anything from michael crichton to malcom gladwell's blink. what sorts of people read these books, i wonder, and what sorts, someday, might read mine?

ah, grammar, and the horrors of high school

walking down the streets of berkeley i passed a sign advertising "clairvoyant classes."
hmmm... don't you mean "clairvoyance classes"? or better yet, "classes in clairvoyance". psychics, apparently, can't intuit grammar.

i also walk past berkeley high almost every day to get to the ymca (i'm too cheap to park in the nearby lot or take a metered spot so i park for free in the 'hoods, which means a three or four block walk). but it means i have to move through hoards of hormone-crazed teens hanging out in front of their campus or accumulating in the park across the streets. i am amazed anyone, myself included, makes it through high school. i am at once charmed by the cute idiosyncrasies teens develop and think are cool (that belt you always wore, those boots you thought were just so you and original) and horrified by how advanced these kids seem to be. i cringe now to think about all the affectations i surely must have had at that age. and sadly, even at my age, that visceral, forever-scarred part of me whimpers under the assessing eyes of The Popular and The Hip, and thinks, i'm cool too! see my jeans? er wait, no, maybe my teeshirt? no no, not that either...

And then i remember that right, i'm beyond all that now. phew!

good bye and good riddance

can i just say how happy i am that the gilmore girls series is finally finally over?? hopefully it won't under go the lazarus effect as seventh heaven did. i swear that show advertised its huge series finale... and then a few months later, oh look, a new episode.

a week or so ago ryan and i made a big batch of oxtail soup. at the time, it was in the 80s, and we sat there sweating as we ate it wondering why the heck we had made so hearty a meal. well, now i know. i'm reheating it now, and it's going to be damn good as i sit here shivering in the freakin' 50 degree, fog enveloped weather.

no wonder the durn tomatoes never grow in my yard. no wonder my poor gardenia never flowers.

okay, clearly this is one of those posts i post to post just cause i don't know what to post and i haven't posted in a while. life has been suspended in a bit of a limbo right now. ryan and i are counting down to the big day. most of the stuff is in place. a few key features aren't, but stressing about them isn't going to do much good. i'm sort of looking for a job but not really, only if something sort of hits me upside the head. but the timing will be all off, since i'll have to arrange time off for the wedding and then time off again for the honeymoon. my writing has come to something a lull too, getting up the momentum to start revising and rewriting, toying with a few new projects, but with no clear direction.

in other words, i feel something like the fog must; suspended, hovering, waiting.

ain't no ordinary chicken

last night we roasted up a chicken ryan picked up from the berkeley farmers' market. it was a little frightening, actually, because anatomically it was so unlike what i've come to expect of chickens. it barely had "breasts" (i really hate that term), and its legs were strong, muscular, long. i could almost picture the beast, proud and powerful, the sort of animal that would give you a run for your money. (who ever prepared the carcass also managed to pack three feet in, though i swear to you, there was no evidence of a third leg to go with it.) anyway, it was delicious, its legs darker than any chicken, duck, or goose leg i've ever seen. at $3.75 a pound it's not much more than the hoffman chicken sold at cafe rouge ($3.50), or rosie's organic chickens at berkeley bowl ($2.99, i think?)

at any rate, dealing with this thing made me remember a life-long dream of mine, to raise chickens. i really like chickens, not just to eat, but for companionship, too. they are unusual creatures and far more complex than most people bother to recognize. or maybe it makes people uncomfortable to think of the creatures that way since they are intended for eating. so the big question: if i do raise chickens would i be able to kill them? if not, i feel i shouldn't even eat meat. but i think i can do it, because i do believe there's a way to raise animals compassionately and lovingly, and still take their life for food.

i told my dream to ryan, who immediately said, yeah, maybe we could have a cow, too you know, for milk.

uh, no, no cow for me. too much flesh to deal with, and think about how much it would eat and shit! besides that, i don't want to deal with breeding it every year and the calves that would result. so i draw the line at chickens.