2003
Fall Girl
Today I felt like this:
I’ve gotten so much done over the past few days that I’m still riding the high that comes with small but satisfying accomplishments. For starters, I finished two books, read a play, and got halfway through another book. Usually after a week spent reading reading reading all day at work, the only thing my eyes are good for is glazing over in front of the tube. But on Saturday for some reason I was a reading machine. And I wasn’t even getting paid for it, so that’s saying something.
I was getting paid, however, for the chunk of freelance work I tackled over the weekend. I’ve been putting this particular project off for months now, dreading the dense subject matter and the sad circumstance that I have to write everything (a twenty-something-page index) by hand because the computer’s tied up. But on Saturday, I finally just sat down, dug in my heels, and indexed away. It’s a good thing I decided to get motivated this weekend too, because I just found out I need to be finished next Monday. I knew it was coming, but still “yikes!”
The other thing I’ve been putting off forever and stressing out about a lot is designing and printing engagement announcements. Since I have so much fun playing around in design programs and since there are still a whole heap of people who don’t know we’ve been engaged for a month (already!), this is definitely something I’ve wanted to do. Last night I finally got on the computer for more than ten minutes (muchos gracias, gordito!) and did everything in one fell swoop, and boy does it feel good to get that off my plate. I think they turned out quite nicely; I think I’ll hang one on our fridge. 
And I also knitted like a mofo over the weekend. I learned to knit last winter and am still working on the scarf I started in December. Part of the reason it’s taken so long thus far is that it just feels wrong to knit in the summer. Another reason is that I have really thin needles and my knits (stitches?) are as small as what make up some of my machine-made sweaters. Another reason is that I have a, well, let’s call it a unique way of knitting, which means I have invented a technique that requires not only two hands, but a knee and sometimes a mouth. As you can imagine, it tends to slow things down a bit.
We also made it to the grocery store on Sunday and got ingredients for a savory lemon-ginger beef recipe that included red wine in the recipe (believe it or not, that was the first time I’d ever cooked with wine). We cook real meals from scratch so rarely these days, it was a real treat. Plus, we had leftovers–yummy!
The highlight of the weekend was on Saturday night, when we went out to eat at our special restaurant, where we both ordered something different for the first time. After dinner we walked around downtown Berkeley and ended up going into the Cold Stone Creamery (yes, for the first time). We shared a Chocolate Devotion. Ice cream and brownies and fudge, oh my! We enjoyed it as we strolled around in our coats and machine-made scarves, Dylan breathing steamy little puffs in the cold air while I balanced a plastic spoon on my nose (my nose was made for balancing spoons). We even made it up to the coolest pharmacy in the world to get birthday cards for Dylan’s immediate family members, whose birthdays are all within a week. (I also love to go to this pharmacy because the purse I’m coveting needs to be visted and stroked lovingly by me on a regular basis.) Normally this would be a nice evening, but what made it even better was that Dylan even took the time out to do it in the first place. For the last week, he’s been working on a rough draft of a forty-page paper due at the end of the semester, and it hardly seems fair for me to ask him out for ice cream and a stroll when the weight of the academic world seems to be bearing down on him like a category-5 hurricane with a temper. But Saturday evening just goes to show that, when you get right down to it, I’m really not that hard to please and even Dylan’s not too busy for ice cream, and spending a night walking around the neighborhood with each other seemed just what we both needed.
It really is the simple things.
2003
Q & A: The Carpal Tunnel Version
Q: What’s better than renumbering an index for a field guide of more than one hundred species of birds while at work?
A: It’s not compiling an index for a genetics journal running more than one thousand pages when you get home.
2003
Identity Crisis, AKA What’s in a Name?
Texas T-Bone brings up something I’ve been thinking about lately. Should I have a “secret” name now that I have a “secret” website? I just can’t seem to find anything that’s right. I couldn’t use my middle name (Kay) because it’s just so, well, blah. And Dylan’s middle name (Jim, that’s right, Jim, not James) is not a proper middle name at all, so that’s out of the question (although we shouldn’t complain because he was given the name “Jim” after a guy who went by “Woody,” so it could have been much worse). I could think of many names that have something to do with my job or my appearance, but I don’t want to be too cutesy or as outwardly obsessed with my career as I am inwardly obsessed with it. And, God love Texas T-Bone, but I just can’t get enthusiastic about being Utah Jello Salad (with marshmallows and shredded carrots!), and I don’t want to be afianced to KFC’s Original Recipe. I don’t have the heart to just make up something out of the blue either; I have to have some personal connection to my name. My instinct is to go with a character out of one of my favorite books, but that would mean I’d be known as Lolita, Daisy (that shell of a ditz who was Gatsby’s object of affection), Sue (the feisty and intelligent yet tragically doomed heroine of Jude the Obscure, which I just finished reading), or Emma, both for Austen’s matchmaker (good) and for Flaubert’s adultress (not so good). Perhaps it’s time to get out the phone book, close my eyes, and point.
