Potatoes in the Mist

It's funny how music can transport you to another time and place...I heard "I Wanna Dance (With Somebody Who Loves Me)" tonight and wham, I was in sixth grade. The future was so bright, Whitney had to wear shades. Later, I was trying to listen to Carole King's "Tapestry", but that CD is marred by another, worse association. During first trimester, when I was nauseous for THREE MONTHS, one of the few things that made me feel better was listening to "Tapestry." Now I can't play the CD because it brings back that wavy, shaky, icky nauseous feeling. Sorry, Carole. I was pleased to hear "The Right Stuff" a few days ago, though. Did you know the New Kids on the Block are reuniting? I was never a hard-core fan -- in other words, couldn't match names to faces -- but I welcome the revival of anything '80s. And I did see them open for Tiffany once (although the concert I *really* wanted to see was Def Leppard). I remember being at a sle...

Every once in a while I remember something that had been eluding me, and it makes me happy. A while back I was trying to recall a book I read when I was a kid, about a girl who had two British soldiers quartered in her house during the Revolutionary War. Then tonight it hit me... Rebecca's War! I looked it up on LibraryThing , and sure enough, there it was. (I highly recommend LibraryThing, by the way. Periodically they put up lists of Early Reviewer books, and you can bid on them. Then they send you a free advance copy to review.) I also found a song. A while back, I tried to find this song on iTunes, typing in "I Could Never Be Your Woman" and "I Could Never Be a Woman" (because it was kind of hard to hear what the singer was saying). More recently, I read a snippet about Michelle Pfeiffer's and Paul Rudd's upcoming movie, I Could Never Be Your Woman , which was inspired by or features the song "Your Woman" by White Town. Yay! With the correc...

So I finished my scarf. Here it is: If you look closely, you can see a little brown dog in the background, wearing a red bandana. The dog looks very similar to my childhood dog, who used to wear that bandana. We call her Pepper II.

This disco ball is integral to my and D's relationship ;) When we met in '99, it was at a friend's birthday party in New York. I thought I'd never see him again...I was living in Massachusetts. Yet, the very next weekend, I saw him at a party in Cambridge. We talked the whole time and he floated the idea of visiting him in New York. I couldn't decide. We had this great connection, but we had just met (well, the previous weekend). Then, somehow, it came up that he had a disco ball. At the time I was very into Saturday Night Fever, both the movie and the soundtrack, and this was just the sign that I needed :) It makes me laugh, because most of the pick-up guides for men probably advise "Drive a Maserati" or "Be mean to her." But the disco ball worked for me, much better than a Maserati or meanness would have.

Tonight I met the lovely Sampson, a butterscotch-colored pug. He lives with my writing friend, K, and is very charming. K and I had dinner at a Thai resto and talked about the writing life, etc. She was working overnight shifts on a Good Samaritan hotline, but she quit because most of the people calling were perverted instead of depressed. Which reminded me of the movie theater pervert, all those years ago: Me (college kid in the box office): Hello? Pervert (man with intense, whispery voice): Hi. I'd like to see The Lion King . What is it rated? Me: G. Pervert: Do they say bad words in The Lion King ? Me: ? No. Pervert (breathing heavily now): Do they say FUCK in The Lion King? Me: Um, no. Bye! Anyway, back to 2006. I was going to take a picture of Sampson, but I forgot my batteries, and K offered some, but my camera is a diva and insists upon fully charged batteries, freshly cut roses and bowls full of red M&Ms. Maybe I can get a picture of him next time. He enjoyed licking th...

It is definitely the sniffles time of year. In class tonight, there was a whole fusillade of them. (Okay, I just wanted to use the word "fusillade"). On the subway on the way over, a father and child sat next to me. The child, a little boy, was upset because he wasn't on the side of the car where there are windows. (Never mind that we were going through a completely dark tunnel...he wanted a window!) Child: (in injured tones) Those people have windows. Father: (sympathetically) I know. Child: They're not even using them. It's not FAIR. Father: A lot of adult maneuvers aren't fair. Child: Adults are badder than kids. Father: There's more than a smidgen of truth in that. Then the train went above ground...it goes along one of the bridges between Manhattan and Brooklyn...I think it's the Williamsburg Bridge. It is a pretty view. The kid and father stood up and went to look out the window. I was glad he was getting so much joy out of it. I remember when we...