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the latest
waddle: good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03 elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01 building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19 ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09 my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04
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MIMI SMARTYPANTS WENT TO CALIFORNIA AND ALL SHE BROUGHT YOU WAS THIS LOUSY UPDATE First: hi. And a question: Did Popeye belong to any particular navy or was he more of a freelance sailor man? It's been bugging me. EXTRANEOUS SAN DIEGO ANECDOTE: When I arrived I did the usual hotel room thing of bouncing on the bed and checking out my amenities. One of these was a complimentary copy of Golf Digest, with Tiger Woods on the cover. Since I am greatly afraid of Tiger Woods (those teeth! those large, blindingly white, unusually even, preternaturally strong-looking teeth! Chomp chew gulp shred TIGER WOODS WILL EAT YOU!), I cannot sleep in a room that contains an image of Tiger Woods. So I rolled up the magazine, carefully folding away the cover, and threw it in the trash. When I came back to my room the following evening the maid had replaced the magazine. This time I was careful to throw it away outside the room, but she replaced it again. For the rest of the trip, every day I threw away Golf Digest, and every day I had a fresh copy. I considered leaving a note about it, but then I decided I kind of liked the oblique little game we were playing here. I'll run down my trip for a little while longer, at least until I start to bore myself. And of course, you, as reader, have the postmodern power of being able to give up on this text at any point and go do something else. See you later, mimi smartypants, you can say. Call us when you're being funny again. Saturday I already told you about the Kinko's and my wide-eyed wonder at the flora and fauna of San Diego. I got a taxi from Kinko's back to the hotel, which was driven by a stereotypical California middle-aged swinger type in mirrored sunglasses who was hell-bent on selling tai chi to me as a "great healing system." He is opening up his own healing tai chi clinic, and I have his card if anyone is interested. (Sigh.) Then I wandered about the hotel and Mission Bay for a bit. Right near the conference rooms was a pond full of wonderful fat koi.
Oh I loved them so much. I made it a routine every morning to sit on a rock near the pond and talk to them (quietly, to avoid suspicion of mental illness). Hello fishy fish! I would say. They were all different colors, and I named them all. Then I ran a meeting, all professional and shit: suit, shoes, lipstick, semi-chignon (I do not have mad hair skillz so I do the best I can), went to a schmoozy nametaggy white wine reception, and then back up to my room to dump my stuff and get ready to meet Dlove. (Let me just interject here that I recommend online journals if for no other reason than this: to meet people who will go have dinner with you when you are in a foreign city). Good Sir Dlove was nice and prompt, waiting in the hotel lobby, and we went to a yummy little Thai place and then down the street for a beer. I was invited to go meet his crew at a Cinco de Mayo party, and I admit to having brief feelings of trepidation (not so much that I would be lured into the woods and hideously murdered, but more just that it might be boring or pointless or that people wouldn't be friendly toward strangers). But it wasn't far away, so I went, and the scene turned out to be quite normal Saturday night stuff: a keg and some dancing and not too crowded. At first, when I showed up, I thought that a surprising number of the party guests were upper-crusty British, but it turns out that they were just tripping on Ecstasy. (Both conditions result in a similar clenchy lockjaw manner of speaking and a constant flip-flop between brittle formality and overfocused friendliness.) Even though the E thing is kind of not my scene I didn't really mind, it was only a few people and they mingled very well. All of The Dlove's friends are very fun and friendly, and because (a) I was in a very uncranky party-esque mood and (b) I was making allowances for the drug use I allowed the few hippieish comments I overheard to pass unchallenged (such as "YOU CHOOSE EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE IN YOUR LIFE!" I always want to bring up the Holocaust whenever someone says that to me.) Because of the Ecstasy (I think), I was briefly macked upon somewhat by a cute girl (never a problem). This mostly took the form of dancing and one prolonged hug in the hallway where I got a little freaked out by her tachycardic frog heart and really hot dry skin, but those were just side effects of her Substance I guess. Anyway, Dlove and I took it easy with both the beer and the dancing and rolled out of there at around 1 am, he graciously staying sober and driving me back to the hotel so I didn't have to deal with yet another San Diego taxi. All in all a very pleasant evening, and here's the mimi smartypants capsule review of Mr Dlove himself: smart, funny, creative, personable, and a snazzy dresser. Ladies, you have been warned. Sunday: Panels, and my "remarks," (which went okay. I got to wear a lapel microphone like a talk show host), my own panel, and more schmoozing. In the suit all day. After dinner I was completely exhausted. Stared into space at the bar for a while, with colleagues, unable to make any real conversation, and then went to my room for a lonely, slightly depressed evening, with television and oatmeal. Monday: More of the same. I had a nice dinner out, though. Tuesday: Yet more panels and remarks. A board meeting, where I almost had an anxiety attack all over again about what I've gotten myself into with this committee chair thing. Then I went to the zoo/wild animal park. we had a behind-the-scenes tour with a great tour guide, who told us all kinds of off-the-record stuff about how often animals escape (the party line is "never," the reality is "all the time") and how bitchy female elephants can be. I fed a giraffe. That's not my arm in the picture, but I was next. Mostly uneventful flight home, except for one spot of severe turbulence (one of the beverage carts even crashed down the aisle when the attendant forgot to lock it), and the pilot came on over the intercom to say, "Please sit down and fasten your seatbelts" and then just clicked off, with no charming Texas calm or little jokes, and his terseness freaked me out a lot more than the plane's gyrations. But that quickly passed. THIS IS WAY TOO LONG. Soon we'll get back on schedule. I missed you. ---mimi smartypants is waxing her surfboard, if you know what I mean, heh heh. back/forward |
