You're so Vain, You Probably Think this LJ is About You

Hello, dear friends. Checking in and laboriously typing on my iPad because I cannot be arsed to buy the keyboard attachment. I hope everyone is well. I can't complain much. Work is okay, the familia is okay (including bb Gabe, who is fat and adorable). JP and I have Spring plans that include a couple of hockey games, the Scottish Highland Games (turkey legs, wot wot), and a jaunt to both Austin and Lubbock to see the live broadcasts of Prairie Home Companion (JP's birthday present).

This past weekend I met up with Nay-nay. We had dinner and decided to walk around La Cantera, the swank open-air mall nearby that is lovely for like 2 months out of the year when it's not ridiculously hot, humid, damp and rainy, or allergen-ridden. Anyway, unbeknownst to us, Kelly Clarkson was there giving a concert to celebrate the opening of the new Microsoft store (I know, we will celebrate anything). She sounded great and did a beautiful cover of Fun's We Are Young, which I loooove. So, yeah. Free concert! Afterwards, we went for a couple of drinks and went home.

I have other stories, but I have forgotten them because I am old. Boo.

Will check in again, probably to admit that I have broken down and bought a keyboard cause this text-typing is for the birds.

And since I am feeling a little down, I leave you with Anis Mojgani's Shake the Dust

What's up, flist? Not much to report...just one more day of work and then this weekend we are off to the deserts of west Texas (forecast: rain...of course! LOL).

Stolen from poetry community, to commemorate the end of the space shuttle program:

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air...

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew -
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

— John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

So, we left for the coast on Sunday, got back today, and had an okay time EXCEPT:

- Monday afternoon JP slashed his foot open on something sharp in the ocean (you know, the world's TRASH BIN). We got him some antiseptic and band-aids STAT, but that area of his foot has turned red, blue, and purple, so we are a little concerned. He has a doctor's appointment tomorrow.

- Later that night, I got the worst stomach ache EVER and spent most of the evening trying not to hurl instead of kicking back on the balcony with a few cold brews.

Ah, vacation. At this rate, I am positively terrified to go to Arwen's wedding in San Fran next month!!!



In other news, I HAVE AN ADDICTION, PEOPLE:



But ain't they cute???

More poetry because the month is getting on - Bill Holms, speaking of the Icelandic language:

( For once you have begun a sentence, the whole course of your life is laid out before you )

My rental car has xm radio. ♥ ♥ ♥

Have been reading yet another book on Christopher Marlowe (yeah, I don't know why I am borderline obsessed) and reading about him and/or Shakespeare always puts me in the mood for Shakespeare in Love. It's not the best movie, but it's good fun and I love it (Geoffrey Rush is the best thing in the universe) so I have been watching it in bits and pieces, over and over, since last weekend. ^____^ Will seek help in the future. Maybe.

Anyway, I'm just here to post poetry, so here we go!

Love, We're Going Home Now

Love, we're going home now,
Where the vines clamber over the trellis:
Even before you, the summer will arrive,
On its honeysuckle feet, in your bedroom.

Our nomadic kisses wandered over all the world:
Armenia, dollop of disinterred honey:
Ceylon, green dove: and the YangTse with its old
Old patience, dividing the day from the night.

And now, dearest, we return, across the crackling sea
Like two blind birds to their wall,
To their nest in a distant spring:

Because love cannot always fly without resting,
Our lives return to the wall, to the rocks of the sea:
Our kisses head back home where they belong.

- Pablo Neruda

Yay, announcement! I am officially a Treasury Analyst for the VP and I start on Monday! Scary! I am totally frightened of my new boss, but hopefully it will all work out.

I went out tonight and had sushi with a friend - it's a great little place, very chic and low key at the same time. I enjoyed just hanging out at a nice restaurant on a Friday night, sampling sashimi and people-watching. The only thing that would have made it better is if I had a giant martini, but I stuck with hot green tea for dinner. Then I came home and drank 3 large diet cokes with vodka. Yay!

Tomorrow is shopping with mom and a hockey game with JP. I feel like I am riding an incredible winning streak right now. I will enjoy it while it lasts.

In American Idol news, I am in serious like with Paul McDonald, the indie and laid-back singer with the beautiful tone to his voice. ♥

( I will end this entry with MOAR poetry because I love it! )

Today, for the first time in a long time, it was not sticky, scorching, so-humid-you-need-gills-to-breathe hot. I drove with the windows down earlier this evening, enjoying the cool wind an incoming storm kicked up. There was crazy, scary lightning to boot. ♥

Kicking off my Labor Day weekend by drinking some of the airline-sized bottles of flavored rum that Nay-nay gave me last weekend. The cherry was my favorite, but a little too sweet for serious imbibing.

Watched a weird double feature of How to Marry a Millionaire and Lost in Translation tonight. Don't know why, just felt like it. LiT is still one of the saddest, most beautiful movies I've ever seen. It feels so intensely personal, even though I don't necessarily relate to either of the main characters.

I am feeling sad and yet strangely content tonight: God's in his Heaven, all's (almost) right with the world.

That's right - I've been reading Milton. That's good times. I have also recently (re)read Beowulf, most of Shakespeare's sonnets, the first few pages of Spenser's The Faerie Queen (but I dropped that like a bad habit, yo), and a goodly chunk of poetry by John Donne (he will forever remind me of Wizard Howl). At this rate, I will have skimmed a respectable portion of the classics by the end of summer.

Nerd alert!!! ^___________^

In other news, Roberta's wedding is this weekend and there were no good gifts left on her Target wedding registry. Unless I am planning to drop $80 for a Shabby Chic quilt. Which I am not. Oh, well. That's why God created gift cards.

I have ordered many pairs of shoes this summer and returned them all because of bad fits. I finally got a pair that fit, but they are a half size too big and frankly, I don't have the energy to return them. I look forward to flopping around in them and eventually tripping and falling flat on my face. 

In a good mood today, in spite of work and whatnot. Huzzah!

Ah, the kind of memes I looove (thanks, wordsthatfail !)

When you see this meme, post a poem on your LJ


The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy
by Jeffrey McDaniel

Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring
that’s landed on your finger, a massive insect

of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end of a long tunnel.
Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt under the blanket

of your voice, said I guess there's two kinds of women.
Those you write poems about, and those you don’t.

It’s true. I never slid sonnets under the door, or served you
haiku in bed. My idea of courtship was tapping

Jane's Addiction lyrics in Morse code on your window
at three hundred a.m., whiskey doing push-ups

on my breath. I worked within the confines of my character,
cast as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan

of your dark side. We don't have a past so much as a bunch
of electricity, power never put to good use. What

we had together makes it sound like a virus, as if
we caught one another like a flu, and desire was merely

a symptom that could be treated with soup and lots of sex.
Gliding beside you now, I feel like the Ben Franklin

of monogamy, as if I invented it, but I'm still not immune
to your waterfall scent, haven't developed antibodies

for your smile. I don't know long regret existed
before humans hammered a word on it, or how many

paper towels it would take to wipe up the Pacific Ocean,
or why the light of a candle being blown out

travels faster than the luminescence of one that's freshly lit,
but I do know all our huffing and puffing

into the other's throat--as if the heart was a birthday cake
covered with trick candles--didn't make the silence

any easier to navigate. I'm sorry all the kisses I scribbled
on your neck were written in disappearing ink, sorry

this poem took thirteen years to reach you. Sometimes
I thought of you so hard one of your legs would pop out

of my ear, and when I slept, you'd press your face
against the porthole of my submarine. I wish that just once,

instead of joyriding over flesh, we'd put our hands away
like chocolate to be saved for later, and deciphered

the calligraphy of each other's eyelashes, translated
a paragraph from the volumes of what couldn’t be said.

Mmm, nekkid Paul Bettany is so full of win! I love him as Chaucer...

I am avoiding all of the following:

- calling Nay-nay back
- answering my ex's FB message (I don't know why, I just feel weird talking to him and, well, all of my HS buddies. Why the HELL does anyone want to catch up and reminisce anyway? God, I am SO whiny...)
- studying for the GRE (bah!)
- applying to a couple of colleges (bah! also)

Sometimes I feel like life has taught me so much and other times I feel like I haven't learned a damned thing. Tonight I am leaning more towards the latter.

If anyone needs me, I will be hiding under the covers, sniveling.

( You're wondering if I'm lonely )

Thanks to all that informed me that today is Talk Like Shakespeare Day. JP and I quoted the little we knew and then JP did a "rap" about Romeo & Juliet. I feel like I must record him doing that sometime...

So, in honor of the day, I give you a sonnet (#140, I believe):

Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press
My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain;
Lest sorrow lend me words, and words express
The manner of my pity-wanting pain.
If I might teach thee wit, better it were,
Though not to love, yet, love to tell me so;
As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,
No news but health from their physicians know;
For, if I should despair, I should grow mad,
And in my madness might speak ill of thee;
Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,
Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.
That I may not be so, nor thou belied,
Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.

Willie, laying it down like a fool in love. Righteous.