No Cure For The Common Cold

The year of the dog has already been biting me in the ass. I'’ve had a cold for the past couple weeks and it's just not getting better.

My brain feels raisiny. And behind my eyes and my temples there'’s constant pressure.

I must say, I am fan of Theraflu.

Also, drinking lots of wine on Friday night probably didn't help my cold.

I haven'’t done what I said I would, clean house to bring in the New Year. But since I'’m hosting Wine Night tomorrow, I have to clean tonight.

I think I like to throw parties because it'’s the only time I clean my apartment. And it'’s still a good way to start the semester - to clean your house and invite friends over.

Wish You Happy Every Day

In my 'day job' I interview prospective candidates for my company's office in Beijing. The majority of my candidates are university students or are only a few years out of school. In the past I have recruited for higher level positions, and while there is a certain challenge to finding the right match for a manager or executive level position that I do enjoy, I've discovered that my heart really lies in helping out recent grads. Their enthusiasm and gratitude is genuine, and I love to check in on them periodically through out their career. I've found that my Chinese candidates are especially eager and grateful. I can say without prejudice that I work for one of the best companies in the world. Alright, truthfully, maybe I'm not THAT objective, but it is a great company. My point is, my Chinese candidates are all very excited about interviewing for my company, and I am touched by their excitement.

This is an example of the sweetness from some of my candidates, the following line is from an email from someone I interviewed earlier this week:

"Chinese Spring Festival is coming. Wish you happy everyday."


The Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival is China's most important holiday.

Part of how they celebrate, or prepare for the new year is to clean house. I think that tonight I will prepare for the New Year, and do just that.

We are entering the year of the Dog, and leaving behind us the year of the horse. So to you I say, Happy New Year, and I wish YOU happy every day!

The strange thing about having a blog, which is kind of like living alone…. Everytime I log on, I’m almost surprised that there’s no new posting. As if I am expecting my secret self to have, behind my own back, posted something. I feel that way when I walk into my apartment. Like, I’m expecting my bed to have been made while I was gone, or my breakfast dishes to no longer be in the sink. I don’t know who would post on my blog, or tidy up my apartment, but it’s always both disappointing and reassuring to realize that I alone am responsible for myself

They Might Be Giants

Word of the day: Quixotic

adj. Absurdly chivalric, like Don Quixote. An insight into the beauty and excellence of this incomparable adjective is unhappily denied to him who has the misfortune to know that the gentleman's name is pronounced Ke-ho-tay.
richardgingras.com/devilsdictionary/q.html

caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals; idealistic without regard to practicality; capricious; impulsive.
users.wpi.edu/~kgagne/vocab/vocab14ab.html

not sensible about practical matters; unrealistic; "as quixotic as a restoration of medieval knighthood"; "a romantic disregard for money"; "a wild-eyed dream of a world state"
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Don Quixote de la Mancha () is a novel by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. It is one of the earliest novels in a modern European language and many people consider it the finest book in the Spanish language.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quixotic

~~~

Where does the name "They Might Be Giants" come from?

They Might Be Giants is the name of a film starring George C. Scott, as a classic paranoiac who thinks he's Sherlock Holmes, and Joanne Woodward, as his psychiatrist Dr. Watson.

Fred Wolf adds:

[The] film you cite was previously a broadway play. The play's title . . . comes from a section of Don Quixote da la Mancha by Miguel Cervantes, where Don Quixote's trusted servant Sanch Panza asks the Don why is preparing to attack several windmills (common in Spain) with his lance. Don Quixote replies "Why, because they might be giants."

Russ Josephson writes:

For me, the key dialogue of the movie, where the title comes from, follows:

Holmes: Here, what do you make of it?

Watson: God, you're just like Don Quixote, you think everything's always something else.

Holmes: Heh, heh, heh, well he had a point. Of course, he carried it a bit too far. He thought that every windmill was a giant. That's insane. But, thinking that they might be ... Well, all the best minds used to think the world was flat. But, what if it isn't? It might be round. And bread mold might be medicine. If we never looked at things and thought of what they might be, why, we'd all still be out there in the tall grass with the apes.

John Linnell explains: "It's the name of a movie made in the early seventies. We wanted a name that was outward-looking and paranoid."

(this posting if for you pj)

Caught without a pen

I had the perfect idea for a story. It was going to be my Pushcart Prize, my O'Henry winner. There was an object in the story and it was the perfect metaphor for something. It was original and brilliant. I thought of it while riding on the bus, but I didn't have a pen on me. I can't remember it now. This is why writers always have a pen and at least a scrap of paper on them.

~~~
I had another venti cup of crack today. I love the starbucks near my office because I actually ordered a "Venti, Nonfat cup of crack, foam, no whip." Love the guys there. Although my barista was pushing the sprinkles. But perfection doesn't need extra trimmings.
~~~
Small things make me happy. Like chopsticks. Eating chicken and broccoli stir fry with chopsticks feels like an occasion. Even if I order from the Chinese restaurant on my corner at least once a week, it still feels like an occasion.
~~~




Now that it is a new year, I've been thinking about the one that just past. It was a big year for me. I changed cities, I changed lives. Plus, on a morbid note, I did not attend one funeral in 2005. Which I think is the first year since 2001 that has happened. So, it I would say, all in all it was a good year.

These are the happy moments for me in 2005 (in no particular order):


Getting into the Art Institute. I had to re-read the acceptance letter several times.


Lunch at Atlantic Grill with my brother. It was a too hot, white sun in our eyes June day and we ordered the Shellfish castle. I went through a shellfish phase this summer, it was like I was addicted to raw oysters and shrimp. The "Castle" is really for four people. They had to move us to a larger table. People walking by on the street stopped and stared at it. It towered over us as we spun it around, searching for the next clam or oyster or shrimp. It was a glorious display of decadence, sitting outside on a weekday afternoon, eating too much overpriced shellfish at a restaurant on the Upper East Side.

Dinner at Pipa with the girls. It was one of those of nights when there was a surprising warm weather and everyone in Manhattan leaves work early to drink cocktails outside. It was right after I got into grad school and SD was offered the job in Singapore and EL had just moved to New York. Later we went to the Brandy Library and MM and EL stole wine glasses. It was just one of those nights that I loved being in New York and I loved having friends who had known me since college.

London. I hated it and I loved it. I hated flying back and forth and being jet lagged for a month straight, a week here and week there. I loved hating it, and I hated that I loved it. I loved everyone in the office there. I missed New York the whole time I was there and couldn't wait for a proper cup of coffee - even at Starbucks the Brits have figured out how to ruin coffee, and yet I felt determined to come back. Of course, waiting for the car service to pick me up at JFK, it was warm and sunny and all blue skies and I thought that I would never want to go to London again in the middle of the summer.

My brother's graduation from Syracuse. Even though he and I fought in the car driving home. Once we are in car together for a long road trip, we are instantly five and fifteen again. But that weekend, it was nice to be with my family and I was proud of him.

Fourth of July, lunch and cocktails at Sushi Samba with KW and VR.

My first night sleeping in my apartment in Chicago.

My birthday. I threw myself a party and invited people from school that I barely knew, and found out that I had new friends.

Sailing on Lake Michigan in my uncle's boat with my parents and my uncles and my aunt. Oh and that same weekend that they were in town, I had a "date" with my dad and we had ice cream at a soda shop in my neighborhood. He can't hide how excited he is that I have moved to the city of his childhood. Like all real Chicagoans, transplanted or not, he believes that Chicago is the best place in the world.

Lunch at the Central Park Boathouse with SD.

New Years Eve at KW's. Seeing all my New York friends again. CH turning to me after I told a dirty joke and saying with real emotion and nostalgia "I've really missed you." SD was back from Singapore, and JC came up from DC, and then we went to Biddy's afterwards. It was the only way I wanted to say good bye to 2005.

Word of the Day

Logorrhoea
Variant: or chiefly British log·or·rhoea /"log-&-'rE-&, "läg-/
Function: noun: pathologically excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness that is characteristic especially of the manic phase of manic-depressive disorders —log·or·rhe·ic or chiefly British log·or·rhoe·ic /-'rE-ik/ adjective

I love this word for so many reasons. 1. I have exhibited Logorrhoeic behavior. I am quite loquacious at times. 2. There is a particular individual that I had class with last semester that to me epitomizes logorrhea.

Speaking of hugging...

I had friends over on Friday night. We drank hot wassail and ate snacks. It was the first time I had seen most of them in three weeks. They hug. Real hugs. The squeeze tight and hold on kind. It was good to see them again and to remember that I do like Chicago, and that I do have some great friends here.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop connected to free wi fi. When I first sat down my computer wasn't connecting. It makes me feel powerless. I have the ip address, but low connectivity. My computer struggles to repair it and tells me over and over again it can't. I'm feeling melancholic today. I wonder, is it a metaphor for my mood?

A women walks around, asking everyone if they have internet problems. I realize, it's not just me. It's everyone. Sometimes I’m too metaphoric for my own good.

A good friend and fellow writing MFA'er once commented that for such a cheery person there is an unspoken sadness in my writing. I think I'm pretty happy. I don't know why my writing tends to be pretty sad. Maybe if my laptop didn't have connectivity issues, I'd write happier stories.

Dave Matthews is playing on the juke box. I can say without irony that I love Dave Matthews. I've loved Dave Matthews since I was twenty one. I saw him play at fraternity parties. Under The Table and Dreaming reminds of my college boyfriend and our tortured messed up love affair, and basically just being young and drunk and in college. I'm happy for his success, but I miss the old Dave Matthews. The play in tiny bars in the south Dave Matthews.

I love my new coffee shop. They are now playing the Cure. It's as if they are playing music from my IPod.

If I only had a blog

I feel the pressure, as a writing student, to blog. Which left me with the thought, if I had a blog what would I write on it?

Just random nuggets of thoughts:

Yesterday:

Walking on Belmont, venti cup of crack in hand (the new cinnamon dolce latte - skim no whip) and a smile on my face because even though it's January it was in the 50's. Edit Piaf was on on my Ipod, and I was a block from the L, when I ran into my Aunt Janella. She is tall and thin, with the kind of short curly hair that makes her look like an artist. Seeing her olive skin and rigid cheek bones walking towards me, I was momentarily shocked. It was her out of context, in my neighborhood, on a Thursday afternoon, and not at my grandparents over the holidays. She doesn't hug. I once hugged her good bye when she was dropping me off at the airport. It was angular and distant, and my arms were back at my side before it even started. I almost reached out my arms to her, but stopped myself. You don't hug a non hugger in the middle of the day on a busy street. We chatted amicably, and I walked away feeling more at home in Chicago than I have in the five months that I've lived here.

My friends in New York are huggers. We don't do those half assed kiss on the cheek things. We hug. Tight hugs, real hugs. I miss them. But then I also miss New York.

Today:
Yuck. Slush falling from the sky.

I sit in a big pretty office with futuristic furniture. It's a Friday that feels like a Monday. And all I can think about is drinking with my friends tonight.

I didn't want to leave my bed this morning. I spent three weeks traveling, and the whole time I missed my bed. Can I be in love with my feather bed? my 400 threadcount sheets, my pillows, my old teddy bear. Because I am.

I keep thinking about tonight, because I am looking forward to seeing my Chicago friends again. Being in New York last week, briefly stepping into my old life felt great and strange. But now I'm ready to taste Chicago again