Aug. 31, 2005

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wednesday [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 1:08 pm
so, i know most people hate AOL, but i love them. i love all of the people who work there, this one woman in particular.

see, i save all my e-mails. well, i don’t save all the junk mail, but i save all of my correspondence. years and years of it - since 1995, to be exact. right now i have 11,179 incoming save e-mails and 7,300 sent e-mails. i have always been afraid of losing these archived e-mails, because they’re a journal of sorts. sometimes there are practical things i need to remember, but mostly they’re good for remembering the emotion of a time in my life. and there have been plenty of those in the past ten years.

anyway, after the whole re-installation of the hard drive, there were suddenly NO SAVED E-MAILS. i panicked quite a bit about this, and found this out right before going camping on saturday. while camping, B. kept assuring me that the e-mails were definitely here on my computer somewhere.

i believed him, but i also knew that he can SOUND totally convincingly reassuring, but that doesn’t necessarily make it so.

but he was right.

i called AOL,and the nice woman talked me through the SECRET STEPS towards reinstating all my e-mails. at first it didn’t work and i had to re-start my computer,and while we waited for that to happen i asked her if this was going to work and she said she was 85% sure it would. that gave me confidence, at the same time making me leery...but then we tried it again, and THERE THEY WERE!

So, today is a good day. computer-wise, anyway.

i’m ready for all the mosquitos to die now. in addition to the thousands of bites i had from camping, i got a bunch more sitting outside for a few minutes last night. enough already.

camping - we mountain-biked, for one and a half hours. i didn’t do so bad. i almost fell a few times, but managed to stay upright somehow. it’s such an intense thing to do; my heart was beating harder than it ever has. it would be good to do it once a month. we also kayaked and hiked. we were at the jim edgar panther creek park again, and there was one other couple at the primitive campsite, but they left after the first night, and we never heard them anyway.

i did hear coyotes in the middle of the night, and they sounded kind of hysterical. also owls, and birds and other nighttime nature noises. i love sleeping right ou there under the starts listening to all that real nature, instead of being forced to listen to my sound machine. actually, if i took my sound machine camping, then i could hear the sounds of the ocean, and i could pretend i was camping at the ocean. but then again, there’s no power at the primitive campsites, so i’ll just have to stick with the real nature sounds.

OR i could go camping by the ocean. now that would be ideal.

we had blackberry cobbler one night. B. bought a dutch oven, in which you can cook basically anything. we actually had a bunch of stuff that you normally wouldn’t think of when camping, like filet mignon cooked on the grill. no hot dogs and hamburgers this time. if we camp again, how would B. ever top the meals he made this time?

the only thing missing was s'mores. actually, he had some leftover marshmallows, and graham crackers, so i had a sm. it was tasty, and mollie the dog ate some of mine, even though B. claimed that she never ate marshmallows. well sure, if they’re not toasted and delicious.

i have to do some homework now. i hope your week is going well.

i still want to camp all the time. i still don’t know how i’m going to achieve that.

ok then,

grace outside at panera where at least it’s outside although there are way too many people sitting around.


Aug. 29, 2005

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itchy [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:19 pm

i guess that’s my primary emotion at this time. i have more than a dozen mosquito bites ON EACH LEG, and that’s just FROM THE KNEE DOWN.

that about sums up camping.

of course it doesn’t really, but i have no energy/time right now to write much more.

i’m typing this on my newly re-installed hard drive. i’m missing a bunch of things, and am hoping to figure out how to get them back tomorrow.

i got home in time for the comedy (plays) class. for the last hour, we watched a movie version of “lysistrata.” the film is actually greek, with english subtitles. it’s a little bit bizarre. it was made in 1987, but it looks more like the 70’s. the main character wears lots of makeup and does much singing. i wonder how her career went after this film; did she make it big in greece? is she a greek film star now? hard to say.

in one scene, there were supposed to be lots of wome singing, but in the front were a couple of guys in drag. i don’t quite understand this; it’s not like they needed any fake women, because there were plenty of real ones on hand. and why put them in front? odd.

there have been a few scenes (we only saw the first half tonight) which had a monkey on a leash in them. i hated to see this; it reminded me of going to hear jane goodall speak at UCLA when i lived in LA, and she talked about the plight of apes, and i knew this poor little guy wasn’t treated well.

i tried not to dwell on it.

instead i focused on the many production numbers, which mostly featured scantily-clad greek women dancing around like in “laugh in.” erica said it reminded her of laugh in at the exact same time i thought of it myself. it is very nice that we’re in the class together.

we went to steak-n-shake after class tonight and discussed our respective futures. i suggested we open up an ice cream parlor downtown, but i don’t think she wants to.

something will come along.

ok then,

grace overly tired from lots of hiking and kayaking today plus sunburned and many many insect bites including a bee sting which doesn’t hurt nearly as much as the mosquito bites. more tomorrow.


Aug. 26, 2005

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friday! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:11 pm

and so far things are going well. and it’s friday! this morning i got an e-mail to attend dinners on thursday nights, but i said I CAN’T, I HAVE CLASS ON THURSDAY NIGHT. but i don’t feel bad about not getting to expand my social circle, becaause i’m excited about class. i can always have dinner.

here’s something i forgot to write about class last night - a woman asked the professor about people stealing other people’s work and submitting it to be produced. he assured her that this is not a concern.

i was amused by this. when i lived in LA, i took a couple of screenwriting classes at the UCLA extension program. these classes were extremely pricey, and taught by screenwriters who had actually gotten their scripts bought AND produced. it’s actually easier to get a script bought than to get it made into an actual movie that you can view, by the way, and it’s ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to get a script sold in the first place. just in case you were thinking you were going to sell the screenplay you’re working on. FORGET ABOUT IT. not to be discouraging or anything. i could go on and on about how everybody in the world thinks it would be possible to sell a script, but it’s about the same odds as winning the lottery, pretty much.

anyway, the classes i took in LA were ok. kind of boring, and i didn’t really learn a lot. i’d already written some scripts, and the instructors were encouraging, but most of the time i remember being really reallly bored. surely i must have got something out of them.

anyway, the people in the classes also thought they were going to sell their scripts. now, they had a better chance than most people because they were actually LIVING IN LA, and many of them had connections to film industry people, which is really the way you have to have any chance at all of selling anything - BUT NONE OF THEM IS GOING TO SELL A SCRIPT. just so you know. not to discourage you.

but inevitably in these classes, somebody would be very very worried and concerned that somebody else would steal their BRILLIANT SCREENPLAY IDEA.

i just found it funny that somebody here in spfld would have this same kind of anxiety (not to DIMINISH the anxiety, just to point out that it’s kind of RETARDED).

if you have to worry about something (i wonder what life would be like without worrying about something all the time? probably very peaceful and relaxing. perhaps this will happen to me someday. about the same time i win the miss american pageant), you should worry about trying to write something good. and you can hope that you could actually DO something with it, that would be a realistic worry. and then, if you’re insane like me, you can hope that you’ll somehow get SUCCESSFUL and PUBLISHED and all of that. but life would be much, much better with no crazy hopes. FOR ANYTHING.

here’s a funny story the professor told us (will he ever find my website? should i give his name? would he mind?) - he warned against plagiarism, and said that they were reading a script in class, and somebody pointed out that the script, supposedly written by a student, was actually the movie “there’s something about mary.” The student had downloaded the script and changed all the names and tried to pass it off as her own. she was an international student, and “language challenged.”

funny but sad. mostly funny. she didn’t get an A in the class.

there’s this guy in both of my classes who hasn’t taken any notes. in the comedy class, the one that’s very intense and i wrote about 12 pages of notes, so many that my hand started hurting, this guy didn’t take one single note. hmm. was he planning on dropping the course, and didn’t want to waste his time? was he somehow secretly absorbing the information by some top secret means?

he was in my playwriting class last night, and once again didn’t take any notes.

maybe he’s brilliant and remembers everything everybody says to him.

it seems that would be a burden.

ok then. i’m going to go see “men in tights” tonight, which is a benefit by the ballet company, featuring men in town who get donations to be in the ballet, and i’ve been told by somebody in the show that it’s going to be VERY FUNNY. so i hope you have a ticket if you want to go, because it’s sold out. because who wouldn’t want to pay a measly ten bucks to see a bunch of men in tights, dancing around?

that is all for now. camping this weekend, theoretically.

have a good weekend. do something fun. do a BUNCH of fun stuff.

ok then,

grace focused.


Aug. 25, 2005

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thursday night... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:09 pm

no tears today. pretty much.

the week has been fairly crazy.

my computer is very very bad again, and now it’s being fixed. it’s very strange to go home and have no computer. how am i supposed to write in the middle of the night? last night i wrote in my journal, but the problem with that is that frequently i go back and read what i’ve written and i CAN’T READ MY OWN WRITING. i do my best to be legible, but it just doesn’t work out.

so, classes...whew. i was pretty upset having NO COMPUTER, because i on tuesday afternoon I found out that the class i was going to have on tuesday night was going to be online most of the time, and i didn’t know how to do the school online technology and i didn’t know how to log in and i was fairly hysterical most of the day. i finally came to the university (where i am now, and where they have approximately one million computers sitting around, but not that many people actually using them) and logged on and got the syllabus for the class.

i dropped it. well, i haven’t dropped it yet, but i’m about to. i sort of felt like a failure doing this, because it means i’ll only have two classes (eight hours) of class this semester instead of three, and i wanted to be FULLY FULL TIME. but realistically, there was no way i could have read all the required reading for that class plus my other two classes, and also have my two jobs and have time to live and sleep (when sleep actually occurs, which it hasn’t been so much this whole week and i’m getting sick of it).

so after i made the decision to drop the one class, i felt a little less anxious. tonight i had playwriting class, and i want to START WRITING A PLAY. first i have to read a book about it, and i have to get my computer back and then i’m going to start right in.

the professor did mention that maybe we could have our plays put on in our community - community theater - and it could be off or ON broadway. so i’m glad he said that, because then it’s not just me with the insane idea of wanting to be a successful author of some kind.

did i ever tell you about when my sort-of agent in LA was really excited about a screenplay i’d written, and told me he was going to sell it for a million dollars? i didn’t sleep a lot then, either. since that didn’t happen, at least i’m more realistic about things like that.

anyway, the girl next to me in class tonight was drawing a picture in her notebook. it was some kind of dragon, i think, like i’ve seen kids draw before. was she actually only twelve? perhaps.

i have many state fair photos from last year which i want to show you, but NO COMPUTER RIGHT NOW.

my friend erica is also have a rocky first week of school. unpleasant things.

fortunately, tomorrow is friday, although i don’t know how that happened. theoretically i’m going camping this weekend, which should theoretically be relaxing and fun. (never getting hopes up about anything anymore ever again, i promise). last night i finished my first homework, which included reading lysistrata, although i should re-read it before class to try to get a deeper grasp. i didn’t care for it so much; the greek chorus seemed just annoying, and i had a hard time trying to visualize what was going on.

for my other play calss, i’m going to read Six Characters in Search of an Author. I’m going to be SO immersed in plays! exciting. even though at the same time i think, am i actually pursuing something SERIOUS and SCHOLARLY here, is this the right thing to do? all i know is it’s what i want to do, which should count for something, although i must think about the big picture - about the prospect of NOT being a successful playwright, and therefore instead teaching, so i need to think about how to actually take the right things so i can then teach.

all will become clear, i’m sure. and in the meantime, right now, i’m liking school so far.

no more tears.

if you know erica, ask her about the photos of cleaning products on the door. i feel it would betray her confidence to share the story with you here, but it’s quite fascinating, and i’m sure she’d be glad to tell you.

i must go home and read some more.

ok then,

grace in school.

AT THIS VERY MOMENT.




Aug. 22, 2005

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...first of all... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:39 pm

what happened to the weekend? suddenly it’s monday night and i could have sworn i wrote here during the weekend...

here’s another photo from last year’s fair. there are a few good photos of chickens, and this is the first. “chicken photo #1,” let’s call it.



so, the fair this year...whew. after working so long on friday, i wasn’t eager to go back for more on saturday. late friday, a huge storm knocked out power at the whole fair, so it didn’t open till noon on saturday. i wonder if that’s unprecedented? i got to the IL bldg. at noon, and it was hot inside. uh oh.

people kept saying that the air conditioning was kicking on, but it wasn’t. not until three o'clock, by which time i was rather surly. only internally, of course, i didn’t snap at anybody or doing anything untoward. i was mighty glad to finally feel the air conditioning, though.

sunday morning was abe’s amble, the 10k run that started at the grandstand and headed over to lincoln park and then into the cemetery. i’ve been hemming and hawing about whether to do this race for a while now, knowing i’d probably be tired from massaging. i didn’t sleep well on saturday night, woke up at four and was lying there feeling more and more annoyed, and finally decided i might as well get up. still very crabby, i drove to the fairgrounds and found a huge traffic jam trying to get inside. a record number of people ran the race for some reason; there were over a thousand people there.

B. (Blandings) ran the race with me, and after we started, i started to get a little less crabby. it was pretty humid, but didn’t feel so bad. last year, it seemed much worse. i remember that i slowed down quite a bit, and walked a few times, but i didn’t walk at all this time. amazing, how some consistent training makes you get better. if i was ever going to do a triathlon again (and i won’t say NEVER, but i’ll say PROBABLY NO WAY IN HELL), i bet that lots of swimming in preparation would make me less slow.

the final hill of abe’s amble was the long climb up the hill on the backside of lincoln park. last year it was utter torture, as runner after runner passed me by, including an old guy wearing a brace. this year, nobody passed me. weird. in a good way.

i mean, i’m not fast at all, i’m a slowpoke slow turtle slow moving vehicle compared to the speedy roadrunners out there. but i’m not as slow as before, and better yet, i don’t feel sore the next day.

today, as a matter of fact, no soreness. i got up and ran for an hour, except i noticed it took me longer to run farther.

i started my day with running and ended with my FIRST DAY OF GRADUATE CLASS.

whew, again.

when i was a freshman in college, i dropped all of my classes the first day. i had intended to be a theater major, but during the summer before i started school, i decided that trying to be an actress was an irresponsible and stupid thing to do. so i became an english major, except on that first day of class, i had no classes. i remember sitting under a tree, crying, because i felt so lost.

fast forward to tonight...crying again before class. i mean, what’s wrong with me? i was a little late for class because i was outside crying. i was panicking, worrying that i wasn’t going to like classes, that it wouldn’t go well, that i wasn’t going to be able to get a master’s degree and actually get a real teaching job with benefits and retirement and all of the stuff that most adult human beings have.

at least this time i had a cell phone, so i talked to my sister and to B., who both assured me that i’m doing the right thing, and everything was going to be fine, and all that stuff i needed to get me actually into the classroom.

when i finally got there, they were all waiting for me. there were only eight of us, and four of the people were just auditing the class. my friend erica is in it with me, which was really nice, and she said some people just like to take this fellow’s classes over and over. does this sound a little odd to you? why would a person want to take the same thing over and over? perhaps i’ll ask them.

i think i’m going to like the class a lot. it’s all about classic comedy, starting with aristophanes, who wrote about 40 plays but there are only 11 of them still existing. i learned all kinds of stuff tonight, and perhaps i’ll share some of my new knowledge with you, and it can be like you’re taking an online class, only with no homework, reading, or papers.

how about this - in the old greek comedies, there were different sections, instead of acts or scenes, and one of the sections was called the “agon,” whereby two main characters would debate a topic. and one was the PROtagonist and one the ANTagonist! how about that? don’t you feel smarter already? those greeks, they began a whole lot of civilization.

also i like the class because the central thesis seems to be that comedy is basically about the celebration of life, and therefore comedy is only trivial if you think life is trivial.

i wanted to yell RIGHT ON! when the professor said that, but felt that since it was my very first night of my very first class, it would be imprudent, perhaps. maybe next time.

he talked quite a bit about the differences between comedy and tragedy, and how if you have a tragic view of life, you take you and your life way too seriously, and you think you’re a tragic hero, with unrealistic ideals and so of course things are going to end badly because your ideals are unattainable. he said that society now has a tragic, dramatic view of life and i wanted to say I KNOW JUST WHAT YOU MEAN, but once again, i kept that to myself.

even though it was an intense three and a half hours, it was also inspiring, because here was a DOCTOR who has not one but TWO doctorates (he also does ASTROMONY in addition to english!!! i took an astronomy class in college and it was the only C grade i got.), espousing many of the very things that i believe in. i’m going to learn a lot, and it’s going to be interesting.

and of course it’s silly that i was sobbing before class, but i think that in order to have this part of my personality that views life as a rich comedy, i have to start with the weeping and/or feeling depressed about things, in order to then realize the absurdity of all of that. because if i was simply happy and carefree, i’d have no reason to try to cheer myself up.

life is interesting, and the professor also doesn’t like sitcoms. i agree with him there, too, except i wanted to point out that i do love “friends” even though it’s pretty silly.

that is all for now.

more tomorrow (more class, anyway, and maybe i’ll have some free time for other things, including writing here and showing you more fair photos).


Aug. 19, 2005

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friday night (zzzzzzz.....) [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:44 pm
the only reason i’m writing this is because i’m waiting for my laundry to finish drying.

i was going to put up another photo of the fair from last year, but i don’t have one that’s been shrunken down right now. tomorrow. perhaps.

it’s funny, the photo i put up, how i’m just a tiny speck in the frame. i like that.

here’s one thing i forgot to mention in my fair reporting: the other day i was giving massages, and these two teenage boys sat down and waited for a massage. i mean, they had to wait and wait, at least 20-30 minutes. they were maybe 15 or 16 years old, and both were wearing black t-shirts. one shirt read “as i lay dying,” and there was a picture of a gun on it. this was very confusing to me; isn’t that a faulkner story? i think that’s right; some depressing story i had to read as a freshman in college, one million years ago. perhaps i even wrote a (shitty) paper on it. i got a degree in Rhetoric at the University of Ill in Champaign, in rhetoric, and that meant it was english with a writing emphasis. but back then i was a pretty terrible writer, because i jsut hadn’t written enough. you have to write a lot, and just keep writing, all the time, or at least a lot.

anyway, somebody told me last night that “as i lay dying” is also the name of a band. this would make me feel old and out of the loop about pop culture, but since i’ve always been out of the pop culture loop, it doesn’t bother me.

i just have to interject that i’ve been giving so many chair massages at the fair that my hands are actually hurting me as i type these very words. just to let you know the depth of my sacrifice here.

the other kid’s black t-shirt said hooters on it. ugh. i wanted to tell the kid, “girls won’t like you if you wear a hooters t-shirt.” but of course i said nothing.

i did think dark thought about both these boys, though; they were clearly hooligans, bad kids, heading straight for prison.

but then i thought about it - they were hanging out in the illinois building, which is also known as the senior building. they weren’t imbibing crack cocaine or methamphetimines, they were waiting for a massage. after they got their massages, they did an online test to see about their risk for heart disease. 15 year olds doing this.

i finally concluded that they weren’t bad kids at all, they must have been geeks. with poor taste in wearing apparel.

power went out at the fair last night because of a terrible storm, and it didn’t open till noon today. unprecedented, as far as i know. when i got to the IL bldg. at noon, the power had been on for an hour. it didn’t feel like the air conditioning was on, though. it was hot. i massaged and massaged and got hotter and crabbier and hotter and crabbier.

finally, at three o'clock, i could feel the coolness, and my crabbiness started to dissipate. whew.

after i finished at five, i met up with B., and we went to the twilight ballroom and danced.

it was perfect.

kind of warm, but perfect.

we did a foxtrot, and a waltz, and a swing, then a polka.

i took ballroom dance classes at different times in my life, and i love to do it, and i never get to. the band tonight was good, and the dancing was so fun. kind of warm, and my feet still hurt from the massaging on the concrete floor, but it didn’t matter at all. a guy who knew B. came up and asked him how long we’d been dancing together, and B. told him this was the first time we’d done these dances together, and the guy didn’t believe him. too bad we haven’t been dancing before, but i’m very happy we did it tonight.

my laundry is done. more tomorrow, maybe. i’m going to run in abe’s amble, the 10k race starting from the fairgrounds, on sunday, so maybe tomorrow night i’ll just go to bed at eight.

ok then,

grace tired which I HOPE TO GOD means i’ll sleep ALL NIGHT LONG. except i’m not counting on it.

p.s. last night i had the most boring dream i’ve ever, ever had, and i wish i could remember what it was about, but i can’t, of course. i’m sure i’ll have another one.

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friday morning [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 6:38 am

i know it’s an hour when many many people are aleady awake, but i woke up at 5 and haven’t been back to sleep and i need a little more because i have a very busy day at the fair again today.

things related to school are becoming more complicated. i just found out yesterday (by accident) that i have to pay ALL my tuition and all the many vague fees by sept. 23rd, instead of three easy payments. this information isn’t written anywhere on the UIS website. it’s all new this fall. you’d think that this would have been something they’d have updated right away, wouldn’t you?

i’m going to take some photos at the fair today, but i remembered that i have THOUSANDS of photos from the fair last year. B. took many photos of me, and if you didn’t see the article in the paper, you wouldn’t have seen them. so i’m going to put some of them up here. here’s one:



ok then,

just grace


Aug. 17, 2005

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theater of the absurd [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:28 pm
a fellow i know works for the state. actually, i know plenty of state workers. this particular fellow works in a building where they aren’t allowed to touch the thermostat. they’re locked.

today the air conditioning was shut off in his area, for some unknown reason. it got hotter. and hotter. the thermometer near his cubicle read 96 degrees.

they couldn’t just call somebody and tell them to turn the air conditioning back on. they had to call CMS (Central Management Services, which sounds very scary to me) to please send somebody over to their building to make the air conditioning cooler.

CMS then called the person in charge of the office to see if the people who called them were lying. the boss then sent his assistant to the area to see if it was really, truly warm. it was.

CMS sent a guy over. the guy stuck his own thermometer in front of the air conditioner vent and announced that it was 68 degrees! and he didn’t touch the air conditioning, and left the building.

yet another reason never to work in an office.

doesn’t this sound like something out of “brazil?” some guy whose sole job is to adjust the heat and cooling, and he’s now drunk, dare i say insane, with power?

he must have a pitiful existence.

how could he get satisfaction from ensuring that an office full of extremely hardworking people (they had a ridiculously difficult deadline to meet) was miserable?

what’s wrong with people?

there are many other topics i want to discuss tonight, but i have no time. perhaps i won’t forget them all by tomorrow.

ok then,

grace in charge of my own thermostat (at least that’s something).

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been busy gettin' hitched... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:20 pm

as i said, i was going to accept any marriage proposals at the fair, and i did, and the drive down to the farm was very pleasant, and the marriage ceremony very festive, and i’m going to make my own belated wedding cake later on. happily ever after!

of COURSE i didn’t get married.

actually, nobody proposed. not even any offers to go home with anybody. well, not at the fair, anyway...people at the hospital are always asking me to go home with them, but i always say no.

i was mighty busy giving massages at the fair, and i did get something better than a marriage proposal - i got a brownie! i’ve been doing this at the fair for three years now, and the people who run the bingo area at the Illinois building have come to me whenever i’ve been there to get a massage. there are at least five or six of them.

yesterday, they brought me a delicious homemade brownie, which was much tastier than the banana i was going to have for my snack.

i saw a true cowgirl there - she was wearing scuffed, old boots, and a big wide belt with a HUGE belt buckle. i mean, HUGE. i’ve never seen a teenage girl with such a large belt buckle. she looked cool, in her definite cowgirl-ness, not like those dorky guys you see sometimes with their dinner plate-size belt buckles that just make them look foolish.

after i worked, i walked around the fair a little. there was an article in the paper about fair food (the food is the main reason many people go to the fair), which mentioned a chocolate fountain. i’ve seen chocolate fountains before, but the idea of one at the fair was highly appealing. it was in the exposition building (not the EXHIBITION building, as i erroneously called it and can’t ever remember which it is), and i had three perfect strawberries dipped in the chocolate fountain. you don’t get to dip them yourself, because think of the mayhem and mess that would ensue. there was a choice of strawberries, bananas, or marshmallows, for three dollars. for five, you could get a piece of chocolate-dipped cheesecake, i think, but i didn’t want to go overboard. i hemmed and hawed (it used to take me upwards of 45 minutes to make a decision at the dairy queen), and decided that banana was something i have all the time, so dipping it in chocolate wouldn’t be that different. marshmallow sounded delicious, but almot too decadent (is there really such a thing). i was up in the air about strawberry - good in theory, but what if the berries weren’t good?

they were.

i sauntered over to the dairy building, and thought about getting some ice cream, or perhaps an eclair, but decided i needed a little break from sugar. the new butter cow looks good, but there is also a butter 4-H kid standing beside it, holding onto the cow with a rope.

THE 4-H KID LOOKS FRIGHTENING AND COMPLETELY DEMENTED.

his grin is horrible, kind of leering and scary, and his eyes look like he’s been doing lots of some kind of drug (methamphetamines?), or he’s posessed by satan. very scary. i’m glad he wasn’t there when i was a kid, because i’m sure i’d have had bad dreams about him for the rest of my life.

there’s also a butter dog, which is ok, and a little butter cat, which looks kind of deformed.

but like i said, the cow is good, better than last year, when it looked too angular.

i walked over to the coliseum and watched the horses. draft horses and mules it was. the clydesdales are SO HUGE. i like to watch the drivers of the buggies, because many dress up, but you can tell it’s just something they’ve thrown on after peeling off their jeans and boots. one woman had a sparkly dress (the dressed mostly look like they’re from the 70s or the 50s), and dusty-looking flat shoes. the shoes really give them away.

many of the wagons were very fancy, with the owner’s name in huge gilt letters, but that didn’t seem to matter with the judging. it’s all about the horses.

there were only two teams of mules, and then out came the miniature horses. they were adorable, those tiny little horses, parading around the track. one of the little wagons had two people riding in it, and i felt bad for the horses; why were they expected to carry all that weight? but they didn’t seem to mind.

i had a dollar corn dog (delicious) and a cone of freshly fried french fries with vinegar. Culler’s french fries, the best at the fair.

i walked around a little more so i wouldn’t drop dead from the grease intake. it was a beautiful day, but after a while i decided it would be more fun to walk around with somebody, so instead i went home and realized i was extremely over-tired.

ok then,

grace who may remember to take some photos the next time i’m at the fair (friday).




Aug. 16, 2005

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more about today [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:14 pm

i’m about to head to the fair. in that last entry, i meant to say that when i’m giving massages TODAY, i’m going to accept proposals.

i just got an e-mail asking if i’d accept e-mail proposals. and i said NO WAY, of course...i’m not going to accept a proposal from a man i’ve never even SEEN.

i mean, i’m not crazy.

not completely crazy, anyway.

all right, maybe i’ll see you at the fair.

ok then,

grace working like crazy.

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today, [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 4:44 am

when i am giving massages at the fair, if a man asks me to go home with him, or marry him, i’m going to say yes.

so perhaps you won’t hear from me for a while because i’ll be riding in someone’s extra-wide pickup truck, down to some farm in the middle of nowhere, with all my worldly possession piled up in the back, along with a prize-winning cow and maybe a goat.

ok then,

grace who has been awake for over an hour now.


Aug. 14, 2005

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sunday night surliness [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 8:24 pm
it snuck up on me, the S.N.Surliness. and now i’m stuck with it.

i keep driving past a billboard that says MOVE LIFE FORWARD. it’s an ad for lincoln land community college, and i keep noticing it, but suddenly, the last time i drove by, the words kind of jumped right out at me.

time to move life forward. get on with things. moving on.

i gave chair massages at the fair again today, 9-5. ironically, instead of boiling hot, it was cool all day. and drizzly. i was freezing for good portions of the day, both in the illinois bldg and the couple of times i sat outside watching the people tromping around with their umbrellas, wearing all kinds of rain ponchos. why would anybody want to go to the fair on a day like today?

so when people were damp today, it was because of rain, not sweat. except i realized after a while that some of these people were wearing the rain ponchos, and they took them off for a massage...so they were sweaty. is there no way to avoid the sweaty people?

as i drove to the fairgrounds this morning, i passed a guy out in his garage, turing over a big piece of meat. it seemed mighty early to be grilling, in my opinion. perhaps he was going to cook it and cut it up and sell meat sandwiches to people who parked in his yard for five bucks. that’s what i call entrepreneurism.

i was so cold today that i stayed in the illinois building and bought soup for lunch. i sat in the auditorium, watching a 4-H talent revue. i fell in love with a kid in a red t-shirt, strumming a guitar and singing “i just wanna dance with you.” he was heartbreakingly good.

the rest of them were a little iffy. there was a big gal in a sparkly blue dress who played a sort of mechanical “maple leaf rag,” which is a song i actually know. at one point she sort of hesitated, and i was sure that the same thing was going through her mind that had gone through mine while playing it - all of a sudden, you think, “where am i? did i already play this part? is this the third repeat of this section?”

but she recovered and was ok. i believe the worst one was a tap dancing girl. she was skinny, with long hair, and a spangly black cap on her head, and she was the most apathetic tapper i’ve seen in quite a while. the song was “whip it (whip it good),” but she might as well have been tapping to a funeral march. her arms were stiff most of the time, and she never cracked a smile. she wore a polyester shiny top, but it had ridden up in the front in a haphazard way, so that half of her midriff was exposed. why hadn’t she at least pulled it down before going onstage?

two girls did a comedy routine. one wore a cowboy hat, jeans and big boots, and the other wore cutoff shorts and was barefoot. they assured the audience that their jokes were going to be funny, and that they were going to do a “blue collar comedy tour” kind of routine. They actually said stuff like “ok, this is a good joke.” they were all jokes about being in 4-H. “if your cow cost more than your truck, then you’re probably a 4-H'er.” i mean, it wasn’t dreadful, and maybe i’d have appreciated it more if i lived on a farm. i give them an A for effort.

another guy played the guitar and sang, but he was mostly just loud. a girl and her brother did a duet, called “never under-estimate my Jesus.” it went on for about three hours, and every time they sang “never under-estimate” with a little pause between the syllables.

a chunky kid in red suspenders sang a song from “titanic.” the song was about being a coal-shoveler on the boat, and it wasn’t easy music, but it wasn’t very...entertaining. but he did a fine job, had a good booming voice, did many many flourishes and hand gestures. but maybe something a little more...lively...would have been better.

it was a novel way to spend my lunch hour, and it was nice to see them all up there trying to be entertaining, instead of hanging out doing methamphetimines or something.

i have yet to see any meth users at the fair, except this one woman i gave a massage to today did seem drunk. i can’t even remember what she was going on and on about...oh yeah, she kept popping her head up from the massage chair to say something.

i did get a couple of marriage proposals today, and a few invitations to go home with people, but alas, the guys were all much too old, some without an adequate amount of teeth.

ok then,

just grace


Aug. 13, 2005

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shortie runs away! plus many other things at 5:02 .a.m. when i should be ASLEEP [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 5:22 am
WHY do i have to be up right now? i was lying here saying “you’re just resting now, you’re just resting now,” but it was doing no good. i was thinking of many, many things, but suddenly all i could think about was logging on here and fixing that photo i posted last night. i wanted to make it bigger, because it’s such a good picture.

whew, got that taken care of. a very good thing, since it was SO CRITICAL TO LIFE AS I KNOW IT.

i wish i was asleep.

anyway, christine has been SLAVING over the website as usual, and she’s just put back a couple of months of archives. i had to remove all the archives from the beginning to last november, because they were riddled with thousands of evil spam comments. so she’s been doing many busy and complicated things with code and stuff in order to make the archived entries appear again, spam-free. thank you, always, christine.

my cat winston is lying here looking at me blearily, not sure why the light need to be on right now.

last evening mom and i went to jewel briefly, and took shortie and gizmo with us, because their lives are very boring and they HAVE TO GO EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME.

we parked, got out of the car, admonishing the dogs to STAY IN THE CAR.

but shortie escape. it was terrible. he jumped out and bolted away from the car as fast as his little legs could take him, headed straight for 6th street which is very busy. he’s so fast and little and black, and i envisioned him getting hit immediately. i yelled at him, i chased him, but of course that made him run all the faster. i was wearing flip flops and carrying my purse, which i threw down on the parking lot in order to try to run faster. he headed right for a car that was leaving the store, but luckily they saw him (mostly because i was shrieking), and slowed down.

finally, before getting to the street, shortie came to a halt at a light pole, because of course he suddenly needed to pee on it. but i snatched him up before he got the chance and carried him back to the car, lecturing him on the stupidity of his actions.

he didn’t listen. he never does.

i’ve said that my dreams are boring, and since i was just asleep about an hour ago, i can remember them pretty vividly right now. one involved my glasses - they were in my purse, and i was about to go to the movie and was going to put them on, and pulled them out, except half of them was sticking out of the case, and they were all bent and scratched up and i was very upset about it. there was also a complicated yet boring part of the dream involving contact lenses, opening the case to find that all the contact lens juice had dried up, so there was a pair of lenses without liquid over them, but then there was yet another pair of lenses that i had and wanted to put in the case, and which were the newer lenses? there’s always something deep and meaningful to think about, even when sleeping.

i also spent a lot of time dreaming about having lots and lots of clothes, or maybe it’s just all the clothes i have now, except i didn’t have enough space to hang them up, and i was trying on jeans, and this dream seemed to go on and on forever.

such boring dreams.

before i turned on the light, i was thinking about school, and the stuff i need to do to get ready (like signing up for classes), and wondering about the amount of work i’ll actually have, which is something i haven’t thought about much, and worrying that maybe i won’t have enough time, and i’d have to cut back on massages, but then i won’t have any money...

i’m glad i turned on the light, at least to stop the thoughts from completely getting out of control. light helps to squelch the more irrational thoughts.

i realize that some people are already up right now; if i got in the car and went for a drive, i’m sure i’d find people out and about. i could go to the fair and see all the true fair people, the ones that sleep there in the animal barns with their animals.

i’d like to go to the fair and walk around and enjoy it, without being exhausted like last night. i hope i’ll have time to do that.

i must sleep for at least two more hours now.

ok then,

grace not sleeping as usual (but i just heard a friend, who had just told me how she hasn’t been sleeping, talking to another woman who also couldn’t sleep. NOBODY is sleeping, as far as i can tell. really, we must get together and do something productive with our non-sleeping nighttime time. i mean, not like working or anything, but something beneficial, like thinking of good ways to GO BACK TO SLEEP ALREADY).


Aug. 12, 2005

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PHIL! plus i hate people. [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:38 pm

i don’t really hate people. but today at about 4:25 p.m., i was very sick of them as a species.

there are many different things i need to cover here, so i need to focus in so i can read something. what, i haven’t decided - something i got from the library. the OLD lincoln library, the one with the books that you can check out, including childrens' books.

and speaking of abe, i ran into my friend phil tonight and i was SO HAPPY to see him! why don’t i see him more often? i really don’t know. but it’s a darn shame. we had dinner at los agaves, which continues to be my favorite mexican restaurant in town, although i could have eaten fried shoes and they probably would have tasted delicious. i was starving, because of all the fair massages i gave.

one word for the chair massages at the fair this year: fat and sweaty.

first, though, here’s a picture of this very cute dog belonging to my friend mike, who has (no exxageration here, i promise!) around 21 dogs. this dog is a new one, and her name is (i don’t understand why) “lil'creek’s tuesday’s child.”

yeah, exactly, why? but they call her gracie for short (because tuesday’s child is full of grace, and if you don’t know what i’m alluding to, you need to find out and quickly). here she is:



ok, the fair - it was a very, very hot day. no wait, first i want to say this about phil - I LOVE PHIL! he makes me feel energized and uplifted and inspired. i’d like to make people feel that way, and i’d like to know more people who make me feel like that.

anyway, phil is KING of the NEW lincoln library, the one where you cannot check out the books, you can’t bring even a WATER BOTTLE. but actually, maybe he’s just the king of the museum, not “just” the museum, because the museum is the BEST museum i’ve ever been to, and i’m very happy for him that he has a cool job like that.

if it wasn’t for phil, i would never have done my first one woman show. and then i did another one, and now he said to me, “when are you going to do another one?” randy says this all the time, too. actually, randy actually says YOU NEED TO DO GRACETALK NUMBER THREE, SO YOU CAN GET RICH AND FAMOUS, AND THEN SO CAN I.

he won’t tell me how we’re supposed to get rich and famous from it, but he continues to badger me about it.

i do think about it quite a bit, actually. but now that i’m going to be in school three nights a week...

we’ll see.

maybe the busy-ness will make me more busy.

it was so good to see phil tonight.

ok, the fair - when i sat down briefly to rest, i jotted some notes about the people i’d seen, but they’re downstairs and i’m upstairs and there’s no chance of me getting up to get them at this point.

last year, it was cool at the fair. i’m in the illinois building, where it’s cool all the time, but today people were walking around out in the heat, getting hotter and hotter and sweatier and sweatier...and then they came in and expected me to massage them.

most of the time it was fine. a few exceptions. one guy, who was really large and creepy looking - he kept staring at me while i gave massages. very creepy. and then i had to give him a massage. not a good experience.

the funny thing - i kept seeing all these people wondering how there can be so many huge sweaty people in the world...and then when i was done, i walked from the illinois building to the exhibition building. and walking along the street were people who were much, MUCH more unpleasant to look at.

so really, i was getting the cream of the crop in there.

i had a honey ice cream. it was delicious.

i also had a brat. i was going to get some vietnamese food at the ethnic village, but i asked for the #2 combo, which was rice noodles, salad, and egg roll, but could i have spring rolls instead of egg rolls? they kept saying WHAT YOU WANT? and finally they plopped a couple of spring rolls in front of me, as i repeated myself. so then they plopped a couple of egg rolls on a plate (lots of plopping going on), and i explained, no, i want the #2 with spring roll...and the older woman in the booth said NUMBER TWO - RICE NOODLE, SALAD EGG ROLL! NO SPRING ROLL!!!! and so i said never mind, just give me the spring rolls and that’s all.

they weren’t that great.

the brat was delicious. better than fried shoes.

two years ago, when i gave massages at the fair, there were chinese people giving massages in the exhibition building, and when i was done with my massages, i’d go over there and pay ten bucks to get a great, intense massage from them. but they didn’t come back last year, nor this year. very disappointing. they gave me better massages than they gave most people, because i told them i was across the way giving massages, and they liked that. probably business wasn’t good enough for them. also, the exhibition building isn’t air-conditioned, which would have been lousy for doing massage, because it does take quite a bit of physical exertion.

today a woman appeared in the building wearing a large-brimmed red hat. she was probably in her 70’s, jet black hair, huge rhinestone earrings. a very fance bright red dress, made of crepe or something, with a big red belt, stocking, and 4" heel red pumps. a red leather purse and a red bag.

what was she thinking?

there was another woman about her age wearing overalls and a white lacy top that barely covered her midriff. also jet black hair and big earrings. this one looked like maybe she was a meth user.

not really, i don’t think i’ve ever seen a meth user. according to newspaper stories, they’re EVERYWHERE, getting in police beat for buy lots of...some kind of drugs...and getting arrested continuously. so they must be EVERYWHERE, right? especially at the fair, because there are so many people from small towns at the fair, and meth use seems to be in small towns a lot. i must look more closely for meth users the next time i’m there. the only thing i know about them for sure is that they have bad or no teeth. must look in their mouths.

i wish i knew what other symptoms are, though. i could look them up online, but quite frankly, i don’t even know why i’m still awake, and i’m certainly not going to start looking stuff up at this point.

in line in the bathroom, there was a girl with some kind of cartoon character costume on, and she put on the top and suddenly she was SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS. very cute. but SO HOT. i said this to her, and she said, “that’s not so bad, but i have to hold my arms up so i can see,” as she struggled into it.

she left, and outside was a scooby doo and a scary-looking planet of the apes ape. they all looked very young, though, and kind of dejected (from the heat, no doubt) and sad. i felt bad for them all. i would have given them good massages.

there didn’t seem to be so many people at the fair today, and there weren’t so many in the IL building, but of course that didn’t keep me from being very busy all day long. really, it wasn’t so bad. most of the sweaty people weren’t leering at me, and i gave massages to quite a few kids, who weren’t sweaty at all plus they were fairly small and therefore didn’t have too much massage room to cover.

it didn’t get bad till near the end, when i was suddenly really tired, sore feet, and my forearms started to have sharp pain, and i just wanted to be done. i didn’t snarl at anybody, though, which i thought was good of me. my hands kind of hurt now, and of course all this typing isn’t exactly the most brilliant thing i could be doing at the moment, but i’m about to stop.

tomorrow, day of rest.

ok then,

grace feeling mostly OK with life although not 100% great in some areas. but soon to start school, which will give me something all-new to think about. maybe that’s all i really need in life; something new to think about. otherwise i go crazy, and it’s not such a long ride.



Aug. 11, 2005

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not all who wander are lost [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:35 pm

that’s the correct wording on the t-shirt. perfect to describe me, i have to admit. it does give me a bit of solace, thinking that maybe i’m NOT lost, even though i wander continuously.

thursday night already! the week has crawled but at the same time has raced by. and now, tomorrow, i get to be at the fair all day long! i’m looking forward to it.

ok then,

grace who must go to sleep RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE.

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the return of erica [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 2:30 pm
she made it back from europe alive! very good news. i visited her this morning, and she gave me reeses peanut butter cups. funny, how i manage to get chocolate most of the time. she also got me a t-shirt in canada. it’s a life is good brand t-shirt, and it says “all who wander aren’t lost.” except that’s not exactly the wording, but i like it a lot. you should check out their website, lifeisgood.com. i haven’t actually seen it, but i do have two t-shirts from there now, and i love them and i love all of their products.

she’s going to be in one of my classes this fall. the class that starts in two and a half weeks! must start buying new school clothes...

ok then,

grace gracefully.

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the fair! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:21 am
i’m excited about it. i don’t know when i’m going to go and actually walk around, but i will be there tomorrow and sunday, the IL bldg, giving free chair massages. so if you want one, stop on by. but be prepared to wait! sometimes there is a very long line.

i read in the paper this morning that the couple who is going to get married will actually be RENEWING THEIR VOWS. how lame. i mean, good for them and all, but wouldn’t it be more thrilling if it was a couple getting married for the FIRST time? they did have their first blind date at the fair, so that’s very sweet and all. but still, i think it would be more MEANINGFUL if it was a couple getting married for the first time.

they get free flowers, a cake, and she gets a dress. so she’ll be going on the rides in her dress? that certainly will be in the paper, don’t you think? plus they get to ride on rides for free and stuff like that. i’m going to try to remember to take my camera to the fair, so i can post some photos.

i have to go now, many things to do today. i hope your thursday is good; it feels like friday to me.

ok then,

grace ready for all things fair-like.


Aug. 10, 2005

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p.s. *** [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:33 pm
the ** means that things will be bolded, i guess, here in the strange coding of the blog. i didn’t intend for anything in that last entry to be bolded, it just happened, because of the *s.

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making things happen for myself [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:27 pm
they called! the school, that is, and left a message while i was doing a massage, and i got in! only one guy approved me. thanks, mister! not that he reads this website. YET.

that was a pretty thrilling thing. now i have to be in going back to school mode. what about new school clothes? school supplies? is there a list of stuff i’ll need, books i have to buy? how will that happen? before classes? should i get paste? pencils? what?

i think it used to be fun buying back to school clothes.

i AM going to buy a new pair of jeans, because randy bought me a pair for my birthday except they were way too big and very unflattering, and so he has to get me another one. we tried to find a pair once, but i think now maybe we’ll actually find a pair i’ll be willing to purchase. to have randy purchase.

things are going pretty well now, i have to say. except for the things that aren’t going well at all, they’re the things that i’m starting to give up all hope on. you can read all about it if you find the SECRET PLACE here in the website. but even if you found it, you’d have to have the secret password.

secret place, christine, what do you say?

she said that in order to re-break her nose, they had to stick something up it and break it FROM THE INSIDE. i guess that makes sense; you wouldn’t want to whack her on the nose with a hammer or something. but what exactly did they use? and who decided that that’s the best way to re-break a nose? and are there other body parts that might need to be re-broken on people, like what about your arm? you couldn’t very well stick something inside it to re-break it, now could you; you’d have to use a hammer!

i’m glad i’ve never wanted to be a doctor.

ok, now DO NOT STEAL THIS GREAT TV SHOW IDEA, but here it is, i was talking to a friend today, who said her mom had a parrot who died, but now it’s stuffed and sitting on a shelf. i said, what if they did that with people? and we started talking about a show where you’d have your deceased husband or wife, say, and you could take them around with you, or you could pose them in their usual positions, like in front of the TV. actually, it was my friend who thought this would be a good reality show; it seems slightly static to me. you place your dead husband in front of the TV, but then what? hmm, it needs some work.

she did have another idea, though, that sounds more promising - i said i’d like to be married someday, and she said a good reality show would be to have a single person trade places with a married person (she’s married). and she was SURE that the single person would BEG to return to her single life. and that the married person would not want the husband back.

i guess if i was able to be objective and analytical, i could look at my life and decide that it’s really pretty good.

but of course i’m rarely objective, and never analytical.

time is slipping away from me tonight. i need to finish my garrison keillor book. a friend told me that he actually lived in new york for a while, after quitting “prairie home companion” for a while. and she said he married a scandinavian woman. in the book, he has a short affair with a danish woman. hmm, maybe there’s more autobiography here than i thought.

i’m part danish.

i don’t know what else. a little german, maybe. english?

i’d like to go to denmark someday. in the keillor’s book, he goes to copenhagen and rides a bike a lot. i’d like to do that. i’ll look into it. and not “someday,” SOON.

today i met a man who just went rafting down the colorado river in the grand canyon, and on friday he leaves to lead a cycling tour at the finger lakes in ny. this all sounds good, except for the rafting.

the chiggers itch every night. i may yet have to amputate.

ok then,

grace resigned and still pretty darn neutral.

p.s. when i do have my secret uncensored portion to this website (if it’s not there already), there will be lots more swearing. in real life, sometimes i swear a lot. if i get mad, i don’t yell or anything, but i say things like “i hate that f*ing” f*er SO MUCH because he’s so completely unreasonable and acts like an a*e."

much more swearing. it’s more who i am. who i am when i’m mad, that is, which of course isn’t much to speak of. except the other morning i was driving down sixth street, and you have to merge into one lane before the hoogland arts center because they’re digging up the street (i hear it’s going to take till the end of time), and i needed to merge, i had on my turn signal, and this A**LE in a big white truck, i think it was a CITY truck, WOULD NOT LET ME IN. he kept roaring closer and closer to me, so i didn’t get to merge, and i had to pull in behind him...and i was so mad that i yelled YOU F*ER and then i FLIPPED HIM OFF!

and then i was completely horrified at myself. what made me do this? sometimes, when i drove in LA, i’d bang on my steering wheel and yell in frustration, but that’s just the way you drive there, it’s part of the complete LA driving experience. but here in spfld, nothing is ever that critical.

perhaps it was my mood that morning.

won’t happen again.

probably.

that’s all, for real now.

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Wednesday afternoon [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 2:33 pm
i just got my hair done (more blonde, lots of stripes, very very hip and chic looking), and i’ve had some caffeine and some chocolate, so i’m pretty wired at the moment. i’m going to have to calm right down soon, because i have a few massages to give this afternoon, and they have to last for more than 10 minutes apiece. i could be a record-holding super fast massagist, but i don’t know where those competitions would be held.

there’s going to be a grilled cheese sandwich eating contest at the fair this year. IL state fair, which starts on FRIDAY). doesn’t that sound stupid? in the paper it listed some of the people who’ll be in it, and the other fast-eating contests they’ve won. a woman won a cheesecake eating contest, a guy won a contest eating rice balls. this was an asian man; it seems that a lot of asian people have a thing for these kinds of contests. i was under the impression that many asian people are more studious and serious and scholarly than us. but some of them clearly SNAPPED because of all that industrial hardworking pressure, and decided to instead pursue championships in hotdog-eating.

there was also a thing in the paper a while ago about how you could win a chance to get married at the fair. you and a bunch of friends get free admission to the fair, and i’m not sure who performs the marriage ceremony - elvis himselvis? - and i wonder where they’d hold it. in a beer tent? surely not. but maybe if nobody actually enters the contest, it would be easy to find a couple in a beer tent willing (drunk enough) to get married in between beers.

i think the couple also gets a bunch of tickets for rides. that would be fun - get married, and then go on one of those upside down spinning backwards probably you’ll throw up kinds of rides.

speaking of contests - the other day i met a woman whose granddaughter was in some kind of international beautiful baby competition. i noticed a big trophy and a tiara sitting on her table, and she said her 11 month old granddaughter was in this competition, and this makes me think WHAT’S WRONG WITH PEOPLE? i mean, for one thing, the tiara would never fit the baby, unless she has an unproportionately gigantic head. but if her head is freakishly large, she’s not about to win any trophies, is she? i didn’t get to peek at the baby because she was sleeping (jet lag? was the competition held in paris, so the babies could stroll down the champs elysee wearing their tiaras and dragging the trophies?), so i couldn’t check on her head size.

and how did the baby win the competition? many babies are cute, but are they really that different looking? how would you choose one better than the rest? some weird kind of talent competion, maybe? but what on earth could a baby do? at eleven months...roll over? but how exciting is that? i guess that’s why you never see an International Baby Competition on TV, because they’d be too boring. Plus how could they keep them from bursting into tears at inappropriate times? and wouldn’t the winning be incredibly anticlimactic; would a baby really care about getting the tiara/trophy, would it even notice? and then it’d have to crawl down the runway, but what if it fell off the edge?

maybe they dress them up in different frilly outfits. hmm, i wonder if it’s just for girl babies? because really, most boy babies dressed in frilly outfits would just like girl babies, wouldn’t they? and it seems that it would be discrimination to not include the boy babies. but then again, nobody ever has a problem with men not being allowed in the miss america pageant.

i used to love to watch pageants on TV when i was a kid. i have this vivid memory (and most of my vivid memories are about as boring as my dreams of ironing or walking down the street) of watching the miss a. pageant, eating an open-faced peanut butter sandwich on white bread (smooth peanut butter).

perhaps all the pb sandwiches is one reason i was never able to compete in a pageant of any kind. also, my mom was never pushy. bur really, now, even if mom had been the most ultra of all pushy moms, it wouldn’t have made a difference, because i was never, ever, beauty pageant material. maybe when i was five.

maybe when i was ELEVEN MONTHS OLD! damn, think how different, glamorous and exciting and fabulous, my life would be right now if i’d only won some kind of international baby competition. wearing that tiara around for my entire childhood, carrying a wagon stuffed with trophies, i’m sure the trauma of trying to fit in would have been eliminated. everybody would have wanted to know me, because i’d be internationally famous, with a sash and everything.

the internat'l baby grandma had a big rhinestone pin that read “INTERNATIONAL BABY COMPETITION GRANDMA.”

i sure with i could have gotten a look at that baby.

classes start at UIS in a WEEK AND A HALF. will i be going? hard to say. finally, FINALLY, the english department received all of the materials from the admissions office, after two ridiculous months. but then the woman informed me that the final department decision makers PROBABLY WON’T BE IN TILL NEXT MONDAY.

nice.

i’m going to call again tomorrow, just because calling is part of my routine now. i’m not getting excited about classes, because of course who knows if the admissions process will ever be over. i have been formulating backup plans, though, for things to do in case i don’t get in and i have too much free time. lots of plans. i have lots of plans for lots of different things in my life, as a matter of fact. seize the day! carpe diem! or is that “let the buyer beware?” make things happen for yourself!

it’s just the caffeine/chocolate talking.

ok then,

grace happy for the temporary rush of energy and zest, no matter how artificially induced.


Aug. 09, 2005

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abandon all hope.... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:38 pm
...and live every day as it comes.

does that sound sad or anything to you? i mean, just because i wrote that my life has no meaning since i finished reading harry potter#6, that doesn’t mean i’m sad. it just means that life has no meaning, but if you don’t expect it to have any meaning (or happiness at all), then if some little good thing DOES happen to sneak in, well, then things feel good.

and if nothing good EVER happens, then it won’t be such a big deal, because i’m not expecting anything good to happen.

but i wouldn’t call this SAD, by any means.

realistic. tonight i’m chock full of realism. before, i’ve been a moronic optimist, and that has never gotten me anywhere. did i win lots of money on the game show? no. did i sell a screenplay for a million dollars (or even half a million)? Uh uh. did a boyfriend actually follow through when we were going to go spend quality time with his parents so we could get to know each other better, because there was talk of marriage? no way, jose. i could go back further, back and back into my life, all the many many countless things that i hoped and expected would happen but didn’t, but then i’ll be re-living the moronic optimism, which won’t do anybody any good.

as a matter of fact, i could even discuss plenty of more current (and therefore infinitely more relevant and potentially prickly) things that i’d retardedly thought were going to magically occur and work out, but then all blew up.

not going there. right now i’m just focusing on the abandoning of hope and trying to keep living each day. not morose. neutral, i’m very neutral. like switzerland. (didn’t woody allen say that in a movie one time?).

this is one reason why i’m not going crazy about the strange and absurd place i’m in with trying to get accepted to graduate school. i do get annoyed almost every day by the latest development, but it’s not like it’s keeping me up nights. if i don’t get accepted in time for classes to start, well then, i’ll think of something else to try to keep my mind from completely falling right out of my head from disuse.

i am reading another book now. it’s by garrison keillor, and it’s called “love me.” it’s kind of odd, in that my impression of garrison and all his lake wobegon stuff and “prairie home companion” is that this is all very midwestern homespun apple pie tender hugs kind of writing. but “love me” is about a writer who writes a successful book, moves to NYC and works at the new yorker, but has writer’s block and spends lots and lots of time having sex with women who aren’t his wife, and he’s kind of an ass.

so of course it’s just weird to read all this stuff by GARRISON KEILLOR.

it’s a very fast read, and i’m already halfway done, plus i got a bunch of books at the library, so theoretically i’ll be filling the gaping, bleeding wound caused by lack of meaning due to no HP.

but of course i’m not counting on them doing a good job of it, not at all.

here’s something i thought about today, when sometimes my mood wasn’t so great - i’d like to have another website blog inside this one. a SECRET one, that would have someplace on the screen that you could click, but you’d have to type in a password to get there, but only i would know the password, and the only way you could read the stuff is if i, personally, told you what the password was. and that way i could be truly, actually UNCENSORED, for just the people who need to really know. what do you think, christine? possible?

christine probably won’t be able to get right on that tomorrow, because she has to have her nose RE-BROKEN.

ouch, is all i have to say about that.

perhaps i’ve been up too long today. i didn’t even exercise at all this morning, because i was awake for a very pointless two hours last night, so now i fear that there’s not a good chance of sleeping through the night tonight because i have no reason to be tired since i didn’t work out, but i did give quite a few massages today, which did make me quite hungry, so maybe i’m actually subconsciously tired, as well.

we’ll see how it goes.

last night i turned on the light and read for a while, because i got so very bored with just lying there not sleeping, and i thought about turning on the computer and writing, but that seemed like much too much effort.

it’s all tied in with the brain cells shrinking, this lethargy and apathy and general laziness.

perhaps tomrrow will be a lovely day.

but i’m not counting on it.

ok then,

grace determinedly neutral at least for tonight. tomorrow might be completely different, however.


Aug. 07, 2005

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the bitter end. it’s all over. finis. finito. dead dead dead. [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 8:43 pm
harry potter #6, i just finished the last page. last night i stayed up till one o'clock reading, even though i WAS NOT GOING TO, and today i re-read part of what i’d already read in order to make it last longer.

but there’s nothing to do now, it’s done. the prospect of reading the other HP books doesn’t seem so thrilling at the moment. yeah, i can read them, i can watch the movies, but i just want HARRY POTTER NUMBER SEVEN right now.

i should have waited till #7 was about to be released to read #6.

i need to read something else entirely.

ok, so even though life as i know it is now over because of no HP, i did read some very informational stuff about chiggers. they do NOT burrow under your skin, as people kept telling me. they insert a sucker or something and suck up your blood, and the red bump is a BITE. but this same website also talked about how bad and itchy they are (i already knew this), and that they can last for a week or longer.

and, of course, you’re NOT SUPPOSED TO ITCH THEM.

this has always been challenging for me.

it said if you itch them, they could get worse. secondary infection, stuff like that.

no more itching.

so the thing about painting them with nail polish is an old wive’s tale, since there aren’t actually chiggers under your skin.

no more nail polish.

no more scratching.

and NO MORE HARRY POTTER, i really don’t know what i’m going to look forward to now.

ummmm.....

ummmm....

the fair?

nope.

more camping?

no camping in sight.

a trip somewhere?

none of that coming up, either.

maybe something will come up when i least expect it.

meanwhile, all that looms right now is monday.

don’t want to think about monday.

i’m going to give chair massages at the fair on friday, so at least that’s something different. i drove past a house today that had a float parked in the driveway. i believe that’s the first time i’ve seen a float in somebody’s driveway.

that is all for sunday.

ok then,

grace

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sunday [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 6:57 pm


this is a photo from the triathlon. it has that name scrawled across it because you can buy the photos from that place. my brother in law jim ran with me for the last 10 minutes or so, and i’m happy he’s there in the photo with me. not that i’m going to pay the eight hundred dollars or so that they want for the shot.

i did, actually, take some pictures today; i wasn’t a completely worthless person, devoid of ambition of any kind. yes, devoid of MOST, but not all ambition. at least i had some picture-taking ambition.

here’s one of my poor ankles, which continue to itch. jim suggested that maybe they’re not chiggers, but i certainly don’t feel like trying to figure out what else they might be, i just want to forget about them altogether. me, personally, anyway, that’s what i want to do.



in addition to a little bit of photo-taking ambition, i also had some biking energy. here’s me on my beautiful new birthday bike, which i just got an odometer for:



i took a 9.1 mile bike ride. i really like having the odometer, because it keeps track of not only your MPH, but also how far you’ve gone, and what time it is, and many other features. except i biked the route i took running yesterday, and wasn’t too pleased that i’d only run 9.1 miles in 90 minutes. this is dreadfully slow; i seem to be getting slower the more i run, instead of faster. but at least i DID the running.

after that bike ride, i decided to go to the interurban trail, which is 13 miles round-trip to chatham. there were quite a few people on the trail, and even though i was crawling along at 13-16 MPH, i did manage to pass many people, especially the older ladies sans helmets and definitely all the families with little bitty kids.

not that i’m trying to be competitive or anything.

when i got to chatham, the path ended at a dog training school, and a bunch of little dogs were running around hoops and things, which was very entertaining, but unfortunately i decided i needed to RIDE RIGHT BACK, so i didn’t stick around. next time, though, i’ll stop and watch.

and speaking of dogs, here are shortie and giz, just because they’re so photogenic:



dogs are sort of like babies, aren’t they, in that i think these dogs are very very cute because i know them and their funny personalities, but everybody always thinks their dog is cute, but that’s because they know them. same thing with babies, except usually people take lots more pictures of them.

actually, somebody just sent me a photo of the ugliest dog ever, but i’ll have to find it and then i’ll show it to you. or maybe i won’t, because the photo is a little bit horrifying.

anyway, two bike rides was quite a lot for me. must bike more.

amy and jim were at mom and dad’s house early this morning, because they’re going to build a house next door. is that something i’m not supposed to mention? between all the things that go on in my head that i DO NOT WRITE ABOUT, and all the stuff that people tell me THEY DON’T WANT ON THE WEBSITE, sometimes it gets a little confusing and restrictive. continuing to bring you graceUNCENSORED, thank you very much.

jim was doing a lot of brush-clearing.



amy wanted to help, but she first had other important things to attend to:



this is the dividing line, so they don’t build the house over on mom and dad’s side:



and eventually amy helped jim quite a bit, as you can see.



much busy-ness on sunday. there’s more, but right now i have to make red lobster cheese garlic biscuits.

ok then,

grace continuing.


Aug. 06, 2005

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saturday night, and i ain’t got nobody... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:56 pm
do you remember that stupid song? why can i rember so many of the lyrics to it? why can’t i selectively delete stupid song lyrics like that from my brain, so there would be more room for lovely memories that i’m sure are SOMEWHERE, but i can’t recall them.

last night i got some pink calamine lotion and smeared it around on my ankles, and went out to dinner looking like that with my parents and randy. mom claimed that i looked just fine. i was wearing a pair of green men’s boxer shorts and a (clean, at least) white t-shirt, with the pink swirls of calamine all over my ankles. quite a vision of loveliness, huh?

luckily we just went to gallina’s pizza, where i hadn’t been in about a million years. it wasn’t crowded, and it’s the kind of place that serves its pizza on paper plates, plus there were velvet paintings on the walls, so it didn’t really matter about the calamine lotion. i could have painted my entire legs pink, and nobody would have minded.

when we went in, i noticed two guys that looked like they were probably in high school. one was on the cell phone. we ordered and sat down, and he was still on the phone. they brought over the pizza, and he ate and continued to talk. eventually, they left, as he kept talking right out the door.

didn’t the friend find this extremely annoying? or maybe the friend didn’t want to talk anyway. maybe the friend was a mute and couldn’t talk anyway. lately people i’ve been around, some people i’m even related to, will talk on the phone while we’re eating or something, and they start to carry on these loud conversations with people on the phone, and it annoys me. sometimes i want to throw the phone across the room.

i don’t, of course.

christine liked my story about letting the lemon pie go. she said she wants to start telling it to people, randomly making comments about letting the lemon pie go, and she hopes that it’ll spread across the country, but people wouldn’t actually know why they said it.

i’m glad it entertained her, but for the longest time, when somebody in my family would say “let it go, like the lemon pie,” i’d just be annoyed, because i felt that the lemon pie was never THAT big a deal, they just acted like i thought it was. and, of course, whatever it was that i was supposed to let go was also something that i probably wasn’t that worked up about anyway.

if i meditated, i could let the lemon pie go, no problem. i was really doing good with the meditating there for a while, but somehow things are squeezing in on me too much, i’m not finding the necessary time to do it.

a very, very lousy excuse, i know.

i ran this morning for an hour and a half. that’s my excuse for not being out right now doing something fun and exciting. i have this one very cute dress that amy gave me, and i’ve been dying to wear it all summer, and i haven’t had the chance. i considered going out dancing with randy tonight and wearing it, but it’s too late. he won’t even be going out for another half hour. maybe i’ll get to wear it before the weather gets cold. if not, there’s always next summer.

anyway, i wasn’t planning on running that far. i knew if i planned it, the chiggers would make me crazy. but after about 15 minutes they quit hurting, so i just kept running. it was overcast when i started, and the sun didn’t fully emerge until i’d been running for about 50 minutes or so. a perfect day for being outside.

i was going to do lots of writing the rest of the day, but then one thing led to another, and i didn’t get so much done. tomorrow, there’s always tomorrow...

i asked brother in law jim about chigger treatment, and he said to look it up on the internet. i already looked them up once, to try to figure out if they’re actually inside of me, but i didn’t get to the part about treatment, and i just don’t feel like it right now. funny, i used to spend all my time looking stuff up, and now i don’t have that burning need so much. apathy? or do i know everything already?

i keep progressing through H.P. #6, and it pains me to realize that i’m getting closer and closer to the end. i’m up to page 480 now. but tonight i watched the first harry potter movie, and it’s been such a long time since i’ve seen it, so i decided that not only can i go back and read books one through four, i can also watch the second and third movies again.

and then i must, I MUST branch out.

theoretically, of course, i’m going to be starting school in a couple of weeks, and then i’ll have assigned reading. hmm, interesting concept. this week i’m going to force that school to take action and let me enroll already.

must be more forceful. i’m never forceful enough, and i hardly ever get mad. and when i do get mad, i don’t express it, or at least not very well, or very noticeably. this story is for you, christine, except i know you already know it, and i’ve probably already written it here, but maybe it was a long time ago -

when i was little, i got really mad, and my big act of showing the anger was to go upstairs and place my parents' pillows on the floor. i didn’t even throw them, i just set them there gently.

so, i didn’t do anything overt like that for years and years, until i was really mad at a boyfriend, and i was at his house and i poured out a bowl of cereal, and there was no milk left, and i was already so mad at him anyway about i can’t remember what, that i left the cereal in the bowl sitting there on the counter. AND i left all the cabinet doors open.

he didn’t notice any of this. no idea that i was mad, until i told him a few days later.

must express my anger more clearly.

but realistically, i won’t.

tonight christine and i were on the phone, looking at the statistics for the website, guessing what some of the things mean. some of the stuff is a little vague, but we’re both pretty confident that the numbers are increasing, and have been doing steadily for the past few months. so even though i usually don’t actually hear from any of you, i do appreciate your reading, and i’m going to do my best to not be such an INCREDIBLY LAZY person, and i’m going to take some more photos tomorrow, and who knows, maybe i’ll even start editing a new video.

photos - good chance. video - slim odds. i have footage from people talking backstagge during “you can’t take it with you,” which was in february, and i know that someday, SOMEDAY, i’ll edit it together. and some camping footage.

lazy lazy lazy.

and one more thing - i want to make a public apology to my dear friend kate; i’m sorry i didn’t even call you back. kate rarely calls, she’s not a calling on the phone kind of person so much, and she called on friday and i did not call her back, and i have no good reason at all for that, except laziness/forgetfulness. i could have e-mailed, also, but since my computer was being very bad, and i didn’t have it for a few days, i suddenly got very tired of the thought of e-mailing, so i haven’t e-mailed anybody at all lately.

bad bad bad.

not that i’m truly hard on myself. a friend tells me that i’m so hard on myself, but i’m not, because although i ACKNOWLEDGE the badness, i rarely do anything to attempt to change the behavior. which is also bad.

i read HP now. but slowly, and not too many pages.

ok then, goodnight,

grace





Aug. 05, 2005

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the lemon pie [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:07 pm
one thanksgiving many years ago, i decided to make a lemon pie for dessert. it was featured on the cover of gourmet magazine. now, sometimes i’ve made stuff out of gourmet, and it hasn’t turned out so well. this has disturbed me because i don’t like wasting my time making something that isn’t good. the best magazine i’ve found for recipes is eating well, although they quit publishing, which was a darn shame. they started up again, but it wasn’t the same at all, and i don’t know if they’re still in business or not.

so, this lemon pie called for very thinly sliced lemons, sliced with the skins on. this sounded a little weird to me, but they had to be soaked and cooked in sugar for a while, as i recall, and i figured that they’d be ok, kind of like watermelon pickles or something.

the pie looked very very pretty. and it tasted HORRIBLE. tart, like lemon rind, and inedible.

i was upset about it and i guess i talked about it quite a bit, because ever since then, whenever anybody in my family obsesses/worries about something (which happens quite a bit with some of us), somebody else will say, “just let it go, like the lemon pie.”

ok then, letting the bad mood go right NOW.

like the lemon pie.

grace

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CHIGGERS on friday [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:02 pm
at first i thought it was poison ivy.

i just wrote a flyer about trying new things, which i’ve done a bit of lately. i neglected to mention the flip side of trying new things, and that would be the new nasty BUGS i’ve run into. well, i have mentioned the tics.

i thought i had poison ivy from camping. But B., former boy scout who knows most things about most things in nature, said nope, they must be chiggers. i must have got them when i was thrashing around the the weeds in his yard, trying to eliminate all weeds from everywhere.

chiggers are very bad. i’m not entirely clear about them; are they actually down there IN MY LEGS right now, burrowing around? B. said that they are. but here’s what i found online about them:

Contrary to common belief, it does not penetrate and burrow into the skin or suck blood. Instead, it injects a digestive fluid that disintegrates skin cells so they can be used as food. A feeding “tube” formed by the chigger secretion and skin cells of the host permits the chigger to extract food until it is engorged. After leaving the host, it undergoes further development on the ground.
Affected skin tissue becomes red and swollen. It may completely envelop the feeding chigger, making the chigger appear to be burrowing into the skin. Chigger bites have a more severe effect on some persons than others. The bite itches intensely and may continue itching for several days after the chigger is killed or drops off. The itching probably results from the digestive action of the enzymes injected by the larva into the skin.

*******

so it kind of sounds like the chiggers might be gone. i’m going to stick with that, because the thought of them BURROWING AROUND INSIDE MY LEGS is too disgusting to think about.

other people also said they’re burrowing. sharon, who used to work with my mom, said i should put clear nail polish on them in order to suffocate them. christine said she used to get chiggers all the time when she was a kid, and they smeared them with pink calamine lotion to smother them. this is back when she was a tomboy and played outside a lot. as opposed to now, when she’s cleverly eliminated any danger of any bugs at all by avoiding the outside altogether.

actually, she says she waters the flowers for her landlady at her apartment. sometimes i’ll call her and she’ll be outside watering, which is extraordinary to think of. christine outside, it’s a rare occurrence.

anyway, there is now clear nail polish all around my legs. i did this last night, and my sleep wasn’t disturbed. but this morning i went running and after i’d gone about 10 minutes, i was ready to stop and rip off my socks and start scratching like crazy because they were KILLING me.

i tried to think of other things, and made it back home with my legs intact somehow.

i applied yet more nail polish and right now they don’t feel bad and i’m assuming they’ve all at least been smothered, if they were actually there anyway, and maybe the itching will go away soon. i think i’m extra-allergic to itching things - when i lived in texas, the fire ants were the worst ever, worse than poison ivy, even, because they itched literally forever. even after the bite was just a scab and hardly visible. i worry sometimes (when i can’t think of anything else to worry about, so at least i don’t worry about them very much) about the inevitability of the fire ants marching up to springfield.

perhaps at that point i’ll have to flee again, maybe to alaska, where surely it’s too cold for there to be bad bugs lurking all about. but then again there would be all those months of darkness and bitter cold and snow...

it’s always something.

those photos from ireland, by the way, were a trip that I, personally, didn’t go on.

must travel soon.

i’ve been trying to find tickets for “wicked,” and all i can find right now are ones that are at the very edges of the rows. i wondered why they’d all been sold already, but then i started checking around on google, and found a whole bunch of “discount” ticket brokers. all these places seem to have plenty of good seats in or near the middle, but the tickets are over TWICE AS MUCH as the ones on ticketmaster. this seems rather outrageous to me. why should these places get to scoop up all the prime seats, so the public is forced to sit way out on the edges, or else cough up ridiculous amounts of money?

not that everything is annoying today.

i’ve been quietly sitting here for five minutes, trying to think of something not annoying.

so far, no luck.

awfully surly for friday morning.

i have to give a bunch of massages this afternoon, and i’m tired and my hands hurt. i also keep scraping them up, which i must not do, because then the massages are kind of painful.

i just noticed a chiger bite on my arm. B. assures me they can’t climb up inside my skin to my arm, but how did it get there, then?

one not annoying thing, one not annoying thing...

must thing of one thing.

ok then,

grace in need of an attitude adjustment right now.


Aug. 04, 2005

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p.s. [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:10 pm
looking at those beautiful photos makes me want to travel. i haven’t done any of that in a very long time. not a long trip to someplace beautiful, anyway. i can’t even recall the last time i did that.

not that camping isn’t a sort of travelling. the nice thing about camping is that even if you don’t go very far, it can feel like you’re far away, because you’re out there surrounded by nature.

unless you have to sleep on rocks.

even that wasn’t so bad, really, once the air mattress was inflated.

it would have been truly tragic if it had had a hole in it. the first air mattress we had for our first camping trip did have a hole, and by morning we were sleeping on the very hard earth. that was MUCH worse than sleeping on rocks with an air mattress.

it wouldn’t have been so great if the air mattress inflator had been out of battery power, either, but luckily it wasn’t.

everything is good. everything is good. the surliness is merely a product of over-tiredness.

isn’t it?

ok then, the last time tonight finally,

grace

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late on thursday [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:52 pm
i’ve spent the last 45 minutes lying here in bed writing, and when i finally went to post it...it couldn’t find the server.

bitter disappointment.

why did i type it all right here, why didn’t i type a word document and then cut and past that, so that i wouldn’t lose all my words?

argh.

i can’t remember what i wrote.

i remember a little bit of it, at least the last part, but now i feel tired to try to write any of it again.

maybe just a little.

the birthday celebration went pretty well. I wanted to put up some photos of the festivities, but they included B, and that wouldn’t do at all, to have actual photos of him up here. why, you ask? because. because he remains anonymous. except to all the people who know who he is.

B. and i were in a bike shop the other day, and the guy who waited on us said to me “aren’t you the one who wrote that column?” and i said yes, and he said to B., “AHA! You must be MNB!” I can’t recall if he really said “aha,” but i did think it was funny that he remembered the MNB part, and that he was so fascinated.

when the editor fired me, he said nobody wanted to read me anymore (and why can’t you just let it go already grace, and not think about it anymore, let it go like the lemon pie. ((note to self: remember to write about the lemon pie))), i also feel he didn’t like the fact that i was writing about MNB. but actually, the more time passes, the more i think people would have liked to hear more about him, not less. because other people’s relationships fascinate us. most of us, anyway. us who are human beings, anyway.

human nature and all.

so, since i can’t put any photos of B. here, instead i’m going to show you a few photos he took in ireland last year.





there are many other things i want to write here, but now i’m too tired, and feeling crabby because i lost all that writing, and it’s later than i wanted it to be. maybe tomorrow i’ll write some more. maybe i’ll go to Panera so i can download a bunch of photos quickly.

ok then,

grace

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p.s. [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 5:04 pm
i need to put some more PHOTOS up here! hmm, do i have any new photos? i kind of think i don’t. damn, i need to take some photos. B. has a couple of photos from our camping trip last weekend; maybe i’ll get them from him.

busy busy busy...

ok then,

gs

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thursday, august 4th... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 5:03 pm
and a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY, to B.! tonight we have much celebrating and gifts planned. also many desserts, which i will tell you about tomorrow.

yesterday i called UIS, which is my third part-time job now, and the English dept. said they hadn’t received my stuff from the admissions office STILL. i mean, this has been going on since JUNE. school starts THREE WEEKS FROM NOW.

i called admissions, and the woman alleged that she sent the stuff to the english. dept. yesterday. that is to say, yesterday she claimed that she’d just sent them.

i suspect that they were sitting in a pile on her desk, and when i called, she picked them up and put them into a campus envelope.

so i waited till this afternoon to call the english dept. again. they STILL haven’t gotten them! it’s beyond ridiculous now, i’m afraid. i asked if i could go over to the school and pick up the papers and CARRY THEM OVER to the english office. i should have suggested this months ago.

she said she was sure they’d be there by monday.

HOW CAN IT TAKE SO MANY DAYS FOR PAPERS TO GET ACROSS CAMPUS? DO THEY HAVE TO GET THERE ON THEIR OWN? ARE THERE WIZARDS LIVING AT UIS NOW, AND THEY’RE IN CHARGE OF CASTING A SPELL ON THE PAPERS SO THEY MANAGE TO WALK ACROSS THE QUAD?

i’m reading harry p. #6 too fast now. last night i stayed up till midnight reading, and now i’m over halfway through. no reading today!

i forgot to mention some stuff about running in the Bix last saturday, but no time for writing right at the moment. more later! perhaps tonight, when i’m NOT reading HP in bed.

nope, not reading.

not at all.

no pages.

maybe just a few pages...

ok then,

grace nearing the end of the week, although it doesn’t feel that it’s been too taxing, which is a good thing...


Aug. 02, 2005

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tuesday morning [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:12 am
CONGRATULATIONS again, to jerri and brendan and their new baby girl, Lucy Gallileo.

they sent me a photo, and she is very small and babylike. two eyes, a nose, a mouth, everything seemed to be in order. whew.

so, the Bix 7 - seven miles, starting with a big uphill climb...here’s the funny thing - i could have run faster! it took me 65 minutes, considerably shorter than last year, but most of the time i felt i was holding back, because last year i had to walk a lot of the time because of the great deal of leg pain. but this year it went by so quickly...

i’ve been running a lot since last year, and i think that makes a big difference. also, this year, for the very first time, B. (Bonjovi) ran with me the entire time! this was slightly unsettling, actually; i kept glancing over at him, expecting him to sprint away, and being quite fine with that, since he always sprinted away, and ikept wondering why he stayed at my pace. I worried that he was just doing it to be nice, since he’s a much, much faster runner than me, and that made me feel guilty, and worried that he was going to ruin his own racing experience, but then i decided that he is an adult, after all, at least age-wise, and if he wanted to hang back and run with me, well, that was a good thing, and i shouldn’t worry. easy in theory but never so simple in practice.

it was really nice, i have to admit. we chatted sometimes, and like i said, the whole thing went by so quickly, so that suddenly when we turned the corner to make our final run, we’d passed a stretch that last year was intermitable, and i’d had to walk most of it, cursing and snarling the whole way.

i’m not sure if i’d want to do the Bix again. this year there were 21,000 people! too many people. as i ran up a hill, there was this huge swarming mass of humanity in front of me, which was certainly interesting to look at, and to think that i was a part of it. but the real-life reality, there in the mass of people, is that my personal space was invaded constantly, with people bumping and jockeying to get ahead. and it wasn’t so easy to pass anybody, because there were just too many sweaty running bodies.

when it was all over, we ate our twinkies, which were delicious, but then wandered around looking for popsicles, and notice a few very, very long lines...these were lines for BEER. at NINE IN THE MORNING! who’d want a beer at nine in the morning? especially after running all that way? even if i liked beer, and i hate it, i wouldn’t want one at nine a.m.

actually, i drank an entire beer, all by myself, the night before the race. we found a deliciously authentic german restaurant that had a huge list of beer, and i got a dark one, couldn’t tell you the name of it, just that it’s nothing i’ve had before, and i drank the whole thing. it was kind of good, actually, and maybe i’ll have another one someday.

we also camped, on sunday. a pretty darn busy weekend, and i felt incredibly, incredibly surly this morning about going back to reality. i still haven’t figured out how to camp for a living, but i’m working on it. i hated the thought of going out and driving in the traffic, and all of that. and of course the traffic in spfld. is nothing compared to that in a big city.

have you read anything by bill bryson? he writes interesting, funny accounts of his travels. one is “a walk in the woods,” about hiking the appalachian trail. another is “in a sunburned country,” about australia. i highly recommend his stuff. anyway, yesterday while taking a long hike in the woods, i thought about him and his books, and decided that i need to start taking notes on my camping experiences, because i’d like to write a camping book. i know i mentioned this before, but i didn’t think about seriously, actually doing it.

but also, if i was going to write a book about camping, i’d have to do a lot more of it. it’s probably too early to start writing right now. but soon, as soon as i’ve gone more places.

we camped at siloam springs state park, which a couple of people had said is really beautiful. clearly, these people haven’t gotten out much. i mean, it was pretty nice, but the camping situation was less than ideal. we like camping where there aren’t other people around, which is why the last couple of times we stayed at primitive campsites (that really weren’t that primitive, but were fairly devoid of people for the most part). but this time you had to hike into the primitive sites, and we have way way too much stuff for that, so we stayed at a regular site.

they didn’t have many of them without electricity, i guess so you can blow dry your hair inside the tent, or maybe it was to plug in a portable tv. so we pulled up onto a rocky driveway at an RV site and started setting out tent up in the grass. we’d gotten it halfway put up, when the campground “host” roared up on his scooter and told us we couldn’t put our tent up in the grass. why not, i ask you? is that not retarded? yes, it is. very retarded. rules.

so, we set the tent up in the gravel driveway. SUNDAY NIGHT WE SLEPT IN THE DRIVEWAY. not so great. it was actually ok, because we had an air mattress, but of course we couldn’t pound the stakes into the driveway because it was too hard. the tent stayed up because of its high-tech technological construction, but still, it was annoying. The host (B. started calling him “scooter”) buzzed by soon after we got the tent up, i’m sure to make sure we hadn’t put it back in the grass.

the driveway was connected to a little road that led to a picnic table a little farther down the way, and every once in a while, a car would slowly cruise past. this, too, was irksome. why were they driving by? one came by at three in the morning, but i’m pretty sure it was somebody official connected to the park, maybe Scooter, but what was he doing up at three, anyway? are there lots of scalliwags who camp there, who go around breaking rules (like putting the tent in the grass), so they have to be vigilant about rule-enforcement?

perhaps they were patrolling for raccoons. as we sat in the dark by the campfire, i heard a noise, and B. shined his flashlight on a couple of cute little raccoons in a tree, lurking around, waiting for us to go to sleep so they could rummage around in our food. we put everything in the van, and threw some stuff in the trash can across the road. soon, there was a lot of BANGing and CRASHing as the raccoons threw themselves into the garbage can again and again, foraging for stray scraps. in the morning, B. found the can liner down the hill, with the (well-cleaned out) food containers strewn about.

the last time we camped, there were lots and lots of tics. this time, as we hiked i noticed a tiny little bug on my leg that looked like a teeny little baby tic - it was a DEER TIC, said B., who knows everything about almost everything, or at least that’s how it appears. deer tics are the things that give you LIME DISEASE, which is VERY VERY BAD. i killed the deer tic and we kept walking, and B. didn’t seem concerned about the possibility of lime disease, so i decided not to worry about it either, even though the deer tics seemed very tiny and easy to miss and the cause of bad disease.

we hiked past the primitive campsite, and it was very nice, certainly very primitive and peaceful, and we talked about hiking to it some time and staying there. i’m not entirely sold on the idea, though, because we couldn’t take the air mattress, and there would probably be many amenities we’d have to do without. but on the other hand, BOY would it be remote.

ok then. i must go do things now, including driving in my car and going around, but nothing too terribly taxing. i get to pick up my NEWLY FIXED COMPUTER, which i’m quite excited about. the computer guru said my pest patrol was competing with my norton anti-virus. he also said my computer batter is going bad, because it makes the computer so hot that he had to put it on as hotpad and was worried that it was going to CATCH FIRE while it re-charged overnight! a new computer battery, therefore, is at the top of my list.

the computer CATCHING FIRE, now there’s a worry that never would have occured to me.

i must go.

ok then,

grace going to get things done.

p.s. i’m already up to page 200 on Harry P. #6, and there are only six hundred and some pages, so i’m going to do my best to not read too much this week, plus my plan is to start reading the earlier ones again when i’ve finished this one. in order to continue to have something to look forward to.

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