GRACE UNCENSORED

Oct. 31, 2005

MORE halloween [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:35 pm
this afternoon we went on a tour of the coors brewery, since we’re right here in golden, colorado, home of coors beer. i don’t like beer. i was unenthusiastic about going on a brewery tour. but it was surprisingly fun. i took quite a few photos, and i liked the smell of the hops and/or the barley, and i was interested to hear how they make the beer, and by the end of the tour i thought, WOW, i hope i like beer! maybe i will! i’m SURE i will!

but the free beer samples they gave us at the end just tasted like...beer. *sigh.*

we went on the regular tour. there’s a VIP tour, for clients of the brewery and members of the coors family. we looked at the barley in the kiln, and i’m sorry i don’t have a photo of it, but imagine a vast floor covered with grain.

except there were FOOTPRINTS in the grain. our tour guide said that people on the vip tour get to WALK THROUGH THE BARLEY.

sure, they’re wearing protective booties or whatever, but this furthered my disinclination to want to drink beer. people walking through the barley.

when we got on the very plush and comfy little bus to go to the brewery, a large tigger, a princess, and a guy dressed as death boarded the bus with us. these were the only costumed tour-goers we saw.

me and christine with tigger

here are the copper kettles. i believe this was where they combined the grains with the water. or at least that’s what christine tells me.

coors kettles

at the end of the tour, we each got three samples of beer. i tried one, just to see if it was somehow better than beer that i’ve tasted time and time again. it didn’t. but then i had an orange zima slushee. craig, the rocket scientist who is also here visiting, was making fun of me for getting a slushee, but then he tried mine, and he LOVED it, and so he and pete also got them. craig got green apple, and pete, black cherry. christine stuck with beer.

zima!

as we finally left the brewery, a truck was being filled with grain remnants, which will be cattle feed.

outside coors

when we got back to christine’s sister’s house, halloween stuff was going on full blast. the family had been downtown to take part in trick-or-treating there. this is how cute the town looks:

golden

will and hanna were both dragons, and after the first trick-or-treating fun, they got to go out in the neighborhood to score lots more candy.

hanna & will

their parents, beth and greg, took the kids out trick-or-treating, so the rest of us left in the house were responsible for greeting the other trick-or-treaters. not a lot of them came, and one was a lone young teenage girl, dressed in some kind of fancy skirt with a coat over it. she looked very depressed.

here’s beth with the kids.

hanna will beth

whew. right now, we’re all sitting around the greg’s huge, 62" hdtv TV. is that redundant, hdtv tv? surely it is. anyway, we’re watching MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL.

i, personally, am not watching football. i made a big thing of guacamole, and it’s all gone now, and i’ve been sitting here writing, and pretty much ignoring the game. but it’s kind of nice right now, very homey. pete has the world’s cutest puppy on his lap. everybody is mellow.

ok then, the next time i write, i’ll be in ILLINOIS.

halloween grace

HALLOWEEN [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:28 am
here is the cutest puppy in the world:
cutest puppy ever

and here is the cutest halloween baby ever:
halloween lucy

it was supposed to SNOW here in denver last night, but it didn’t. whew. instead, it’s a beautiful sunny morning, although only about 40 degrees. i’m seriuously contemplating running, even though i only have a baseball cap to keep my head warm.

this is the very photogenic Will, who went with me out on the balcony yesterday because i was taking photos of the view. he clearly wanted to have his picture taken, so i had to oblige. you can’t really say no to a cute little fellow like this.

will

ok then, i hope you get lots of halloween candy,

grace

Oct. 29, 2005

saturday night... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:09 pm

everybody is sitting around now, full of mediocre mexican food. three of us are typing on our computers. i keep pointing out how odd it is that we sit here together, not talking, typing away, but nobody listens.

casa bonita was very fun. it was also kind of surreal, and very disneyland-six flags-like. we waited in a long twisting line to place our orders, and at the end, we received our trays of food, and were led to our little eating grotto by a host. the place is enormous, with different levels and many little rooms to eat in. ours was like a cave, with both the stalagtites and the stalagmites, plus right behind me was an opening to the waterfall above us.

here’s christine and me at our table:

me & christine

there were, indeed, cliff divers, and i took a few photos of them, but they were too blurry. there was a person doing caricatures, and a mariachi band, and lots and lots of activity - even more so because it’s halloween weekend. there was a haunted house, and inside it was black bart’s hideout, which was very dark. i made christine walk in front of me, because it looked potentially scary, and sure enough, at the end a kid was lurking to jump out at us, but christine warned me so i had time to be prepared.

here’s what it looked like upstairs, although it’s a little fuzzy.

casa bonita upstairs

this photo came out best, one of the many halloween displays.

pumpkins

and here’s what it looked like outside. it’s funny, we watched the south park episode that featured casa bonita before going to the restaurant, and it was actually cooler than i thought it’d be.

casa bonita outside

whew. i’m too full to even want one piece of halloween candy. i took a walk up the road late this afternoon, and i kept going up and up, and after a while i felt a little light-headed all of a sudden. at least i moved around a little today, because i don’t think i’m going to be doing any more moving before morning.

one more photo! brendan and the darling little lucy.

brendan & lucy

ok then,

grace whooping it up here in denver.

jerri’s eating habits [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 4:50 pm

jerri is very, very funny, eating-wise. i mean, she’s a funny person, she makes me laugh anyway, but the things she likes to eat, or, more specifically, the things she doesn’t like, cracks me up.

she does like chocolate. and she likes chocolate chips. but she doesn’t like chocolate chips IN CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES. well, she does if the chocolate chips are hard, not melty and delicious (not delicious in her opinion!). i tried to get her to try Nutella, because we bought a big vat of it the other day, but she doesn’t like melty chocolate.

jerri is a plain food-liking person. when christine and i were at target we called jerri (before she was here in denver) to ask her if she’d like diet coke with lime. we didn’t reach her, but we figured she wouldn’t like lime in her diet coke. just the pure coke, please. nothing crazy and subversive like lime.

we’ve been playing cards today. after going out to dinner, my guess is, more cards. perhaps followed by cards.

all cards, all the time.

ok then,

grace relaxing.

p.s. [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 1:26 pm

the reason we’re going to CASA BONITA is because it was on south park. the tv show. craig, the rocket scientist who is now here, loves south park. so that’s why we’re going. jerri is still watching me type. i’m glad she’s not normally sitting here watching me type, because it makes me not able to think of anything at all.

that is all for now.

grace. still grace.

12:10 p.m. on saturday [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 1:14 pm

here is where we’re going tonight: Casa Bonita!

it’s some crazy mexican restaurant that has CLIFF DIVERS. gold and silver mines. an ANGRY GORILLA. flame jugglers. and a GOVERNOR’S MANSION. hmm. i’m a little dubious, especially about the governor’s mansion. why would the governor want to live in a mexican restaurant? i’ll have to see it to believe it. i’m a little nervous now, because jerri, who reads this a lot, is actually SITTING HERE BESIDE ME, reading as i type.

too much pressure.

the sun just came out.

ok then,

grace

Oct. 28, 2005

suburbia [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:01 pm

here i am in a big huge house. earlier today a child was visiting, and there are two children living here, and it was very very busy. and loud. lots of activity. i understand why children need so much sleep; it’s because when they’re awake, they’re bouncing off the walls. whew. it’s exhausting just watching them.

it’s fairly quiet now. the adorable dachsund puppy is sleeping. the only noise is coming from the gigantic TV. GIGANTIC tv.

there is a big big bowl of halloween candy here. i’m trying not to eat all of it. i’m trying to just eat one piece every once in a while, hoping that nobody notices how the candy level is dropping dramatically. maybe i’ll be able to find a store in which to buy candy tomorrow, and i can fill it up again.

we did go to the grocery store today. when people ask me what i did in denver, i’ll tell them that i went to the store, and i napped.

no, i’ve decided that i’m going to say that i went skiing. and i was great. really great. i mean, why not just start lying? it’s not too late in life to start lying, is it? i’ll just go around acting like things are all much, much better than they really are, i’ll pretend that i’m GREAT at stuff like skiing.

not that things are bad. but i do not want to ski. but who will know? they won’t know. “oh yes,” i’ll say, “i skiied a LOT. it was AWESOME. and i looked so CUTE in my skiing outfit, just like a snow bunny.”

this will also feed people’s desire to live vicariously through me. because if i just tell them i went to target, and to safeway, that’s not quite as exciting.

unless you really like to shop.

the safeway was very fancy, by the way. hardwood floors. i mean, COME ON HERE, do you really need hardwood floors in the safeway?

i have to go to the airport now.

ok then,

grace eating halloween candy very quietly.

one more photo... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 4:27 pm

he went to the statue of liberty. i don’t know why i never managed to make it there all the times i visited. i like this picture a lot.

photo of my building [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 4:21 pm

r. (rupert) got back from NYC, and here’s a photo he took of the w.r. grace building. i like to think of it as mine.

GRACETALK #3! [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 4:04 pm
i’m VERY EXCITED, because i just found out i’m going to get to do a Gracetalk at First Night! put it on your calendar right now, it’s THIS NEW YEAR’S EVE at 10:00 p.m.!

the show is only going to be 45 minutes long, so that’s not a lot of writing for me to do, but i also have to make some videos. i already warned kurt that we’re going to have to be very busy when i get back.

i’m sitting here on christine’s porch again, and i tried to call various family members to tell them the news, but nobody answered their phones. this is slightly problematic, because of what i was thinking while running today -

what if i was running along here in denver, and somebody suddenly stabbed or shot me? i realize this is probably not very likely, but you never know. what if i was injured in some way, and i had to be rushed to the hospital, but when i run i’m completely without ID of any kind. so there i’d be, wounded or dying or dead, and nobody would be able to figure out who i was.

luckily, nothing bad befell me as i ran. however, as i was running along speer’s creek (i think that’s the creek), a guy rode by on a bike, and he turned to look at me, and he was wearing a mask. it was a white mask, i think that’s a fredy kreuger mask? i don’t know, because i never watched any of those scary movies, but anyway, it was a scary mask and it seemed a little odd to me, but i’m hoping he was just doing it because of impending Halloween, not because he was going to randomly start murdering innocent runners running along.

M. (Marvin) said he has a little metal tag on his running shoe that has contact information, plus his blood type and stuff. that’s well and good, and i need to rush right out and get one, but what phone number would i put down? since clearly, nobody in my family is going to answer the phone when somebody calls.

maybe, instead, i should get some kind of clip for my cell phone and carry that with me. then, when i’m bleeding profusely and they need to call somebody to find out what blood type i am, they can have the joy of trying to call the many people in my cell phone book who don’t answer their phones.

actually, also, christine managed to LOSE her phone last night, so i had no way at all to get ahold of her. that’s the thing about cell phones; it’s a fantistic idea that you can just have a cell phone, with no need for a land line, but what if you lose your cell phone? trouble with a capital T.

FIRST NIGHT! i’m going to be in the big theater, theater #1. i’m slightly nervous at the thought of it, but mostly, very, very excited. i guess most of my nervousness is worrying about how i’d fill 500 seats, but i guess i’ll be happy no matter how many people are there. but i get to do first night!

very good. life is very good.

tonight we’re going to christine’s sister’s house, and they have a cute dachsund, and a very VERY cute dachsund puppy that’s only about 10" long, and is crazy and funny and i’m excited about seeing him again. plus their two kids, PLUS brendan and jerri’s baby! many many people and children and dogs this weekend. it should be very busy.

i wonder if i’ll get to go hiking at all? Jim will be disappointed if i don’t, but i guess i won’t, not really. there’s always time for hiking in life, and it’s just going to be nice to spend time with friends.

FIRST NIGHT! if you’re a friend and you don’t live in spfld, please MAKE YOUR PLANE RESERVATION NOW! not that many of my friends who live in other places actually read this. but if you are, do!

ok then,

grace giddy on friday afternoon.

birthday festivities are (finally) at an end... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 2:18 am

...well, for me, anyway. it’s 1:07 in the morning here in denver, and i left the piano bar about 15 minutes ago. the symphony was fun, the conductor wore a pirate costume, all the people in the orchestra were dressed in costume, including a horn section wearing fly-fishing gear (and they’d cast their net and do some fishing in between playing), the violas were wearing wings and antennaes, a bass player was dressed as a shark, and, my favorite, a percussion guy was dressed as pippi longstocking, with braids that stuck out and a jumper.

it was a theater in the round, and we sat in back of the orchestra, which was interesting, because i got to watch the conductor’s face as he worked. he was very expressive. i bet it’s fun being a conductor.

some of the horns were dressed as characters from sesame street, including big bird, bert-n-ernie, oscar the grouch, and the count.

after the symphony, we went to the piano bar and ate dinner, and then we sat at the piano and started to sing. at first we weren’t very loud, but i noticed that as people drank, they got louder. eventually other people joined us, including a young guy with a great voice. a couple of times a drunk guy sat down and belted out a song. sometimes it was the song we were singing, other times it was something entirely different. these guys were always very very loud.

as we sang, it became more and more fun, and i started to think that maybe, someday, i’ll try karaoke.

or not.

after a while, though, my throat started to hurt, and my eyes began to burn. they’re still burning, as a matter of fact, even though i came back to christine’s and took a shower.

i suppose they’re all still singing.

and another birthday comes to a close...

whew, i’m tired.

at one point in the evening, when i started to yearn to get the hell out of the bar, i thought, maybe it’s because i’m getting older. but i’ve never enjoyed staying up really late. i’m very, very happy to be here where it’s quiet, and where i no longer smell like smoke.

i’ve seen lots of people smoking here in denver, which is surprising. i’ve also seen lots of people running, and most people i’ve seen seem pretty fit. maybe smoking is their only vice? hard to say.

have i mentioned how happy i am to be here in this peaceful apartment?

i sleep now.

i hope your friday is good.

ok then,

grace at the very very end of the day, finally.

Oct. 27, 2005

p.s. harriet miers [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 6:27 pm

thank goodness she withdrew today. this morning christine and i were listening to the radio, and they said something about how she was practicing her question and answer for the hearings, and she was having problems SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGH.

plus, i guess arlen spector sent her a list of questions, and maybe they were hard questions. maybe they involved higher math or something.

anyway, what with her mumbling and inability to answer math problems, she’s out of the running.

she must feel relieved. harried (harried harriet) and relieved.

christine is going on a spa weekend next weekend. i told her she should call harriet and invite her to go. harriet needs a spa weekend. a nice massage or two, a relaxing soak in a hot tub, some herbal wraps and stuff. a makeover, while she’s at it.

this morning while briefly listening to the radio here, there was an ad for all kinds of surgery. this place was offering some kind of special, and they listed all the kinds of surgery you could get, including lips, cheeks, botox, etc etc. i was pretty amazed at the long list - basically, they could build an entirely new person. you could look so different that nobody would recognize you.

all for 20% off.

my question is, do you really want to have an entirely new face/body which is created by a place that needs business so bad that it offers 20% off? if i wanted to get a new face/body, i’d want to go to a really fancy, expensive place, someplace where they don’t even need to advertise at all, someplace where all the stars go.

but luckily i don’t want any surgery of any kind.

more later.

denver grace.

continuing birthday celebrations.... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 6:20 pm

christine is playing me a song by the band Weezer right now. she said maybe i’d heard it on the radio, but i just shook my head - i don’t listen to the radio enough to hear much music, and if i did happen to hear something, i usually never know who actually performs a song.

this song is something about “if you want to destroy my sweater,” and it actually sounds kind of good, except she’s playing it on her computer, so the sound quality is not very good.

we had a birthday lunch at a little italian cafe called Parisi, and it was very authentic. i was slightly sleepy still from not sleeping enough last night, so i just sort of glanced at the menu and ordered a pizza, because it had something on it called baraesola, which is dried, cured filet mignon, kind of proscuitto-like. plus arugula and a drizzle of truffle oil and mozzarella. sounds good, right?

well, the pizza arrived, or should i say “pizza.” THERE WAS NO SAUCE AND NO CHEESE.

what is a pizza without sauce and cheese? in this case, a thin cracker-type crust with a few shavings of meat and a PILE of arugula and a couple of shavings of parmesan.

bitterly disappointing.

but not really, because the company was good, plus i did feel like i was eating a salad, very healthy. we were there with christine’s sister, beth, and beth’s 2 1/2-year-old, will. will has a very very funny, expressive face, and if beth allows it, i’ll take some photos of him when we go to their house tomorrow. will has a green dragon costume for halloween, which he assured me is very, very scary, and he’s going to try it on for me when we get there.

this italian restaurant was also a deli, and i bought a jar of Nutella, the perfect food, really. i only bought the jar because others will be around to eat it. i can’t ever buy it usually, because then i’d eat the entire jar in one sitting. no matter what the size.

tonight we’re going to the colorado symphony, and they’re going to have a halloween program, and they’re all going to be dressed in costume. we could also be in costume, and i did bring my tiger pants, but christine has no costume, so i’m certainly not going to wear those tiger pants, because if i did, people might think i just wore them all the time.

i’ll have to think of some other excuse to wear them.

after the symphony, we’re going to a piano bar, where christine spent an evening recently sitting around a piano with four old guys and one young one, singing show tunes. this could possibly be entertaining, but i’m a little concerned because she described it as “smoky.” hmm.

i managed to finish fixing my english paper today. mostly taking out contractions. fixing split infinitives and particple gerund hanging things. NEVER SAY THINGS. you can’t say things in the paper. DON’T SAY THINGS. it was challenging to try to think of other words instead of things. he also doesn’t want you to write ANYTHING, and that was even more difficult.

but it’s done now, homework done, except for the re-writing of the play, and that’s not critical, so everything is good.

my friend who is in NYC called me; he saw “wicked” yesterday, and he said he understood why i wanted to go see it again right after leaving the show. as we talked about it, i remembered how much i loved it, and now i really want to see it again. i know i said that jekyll & hyde was better, but i don’t think it was. he also went to see “spamalot” last night. wow, what a theater day for him! plus, it’s his first time in NYC. i can’t imagine how neat that would be, going there for the very first time. today he called me from SoHo, wanting to know where i used to live in the village, and as we talked, i looked up a map in order to direct him to my old street, at the corner of Hudson and Barrow.

Funny how easy it is to be connected nowadays, huh?

tomorrow night the other friends start coming in, so we’ll be going to the airport a lot, theoretically.

denver has a very nice airport.

i have to go now.

ok then,

grace who just took a nap in denver, and i’d like to have a nap EVERY SINGLE DAY.

happy birthday, christine! [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:56 am
she wasn’t happy that she had received NO birthday greetings this morning. so here’s one. and i’m sure there will be plenty more today...

ok then,

grace

Oct. 26, 2005

gettng later in the day here in denver... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 5:28 pm

i really started working on my paper, not quite sure how long i did it - maybe an hour? maybe not. but then i got a couple of nice phone calls, and then i got a nice e-mail, and so things continue to be good, although i’m not (never) accomplishing enough.

but here is a funny quote which a friend sent me:

“You see, I don’t believe that libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, and that’s been the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians.”
–Monty Python’s Flying Circus

that is all for the moment,

ok then,

grace here in denver.

NIRVANA ACHIEVED in denver [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:11 pm
i’m sitting on christine’s little front porch. the sky is dazzling blue, and it’s SO WARM. the temp. says 66, but it feels warmer. i strolled down the block to the wild oats grocery store, and wished i’d brought shorts with me.

amazing.

so, WHO CARES if nobody loves me and won’t call or e-mail...i could just sit here for the rest of my life.

i’d like to take a long walk, but my feet are a little sore from the running. maybe after i sit out here and work on my paper, i’ll walk.

or perhaps i’ll nap.

i think the elevation is making me sleepier than usual.

or maybe it’s just the fact that i can do something about the sleepiness.

crystal blue sky.

here’s my view:

outside 4

UNLOVED at 11:25 mountain time [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:15 pm

i’ve been sitting here busily working working working on website things, and suddenly it’s almost noon, and i’m about to go running...however, i just checked my e-mail and i have NO MAIL from anybody, and my phone HAS NOT RUNG.

except once, some guy wanting to sell me some kind of internet advertising service.

unloved, unloved, unloved in denver. friendless. without friends.

i must console myself by RUN RUN RUNNING.

ok then,

grace abandoned by everybody.

10:11 a.m. mountain time [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:20 am
christine will be at work till after four, unless i call her and say i’m bored, in which case she’ll come home. but i AM NOT going to spend my whole day sitting here, looking things up online, goofing off! no sir! i’m going to run, i’m going to fix my english paper, i’m going to read my play and figure out how to make it better. busy busy busy!

but first i must share this with you - my friend who is in NYC showed me a very cool website. it’s
www.earthcam.com.

there are cameras set up in different places, mostly in the US, but also in edinburgh, london, and russia. i clicked on the NYC camera - there are four of them. camera 4 is at street level, and you can watch people walking around at 46th and broadway. i’ve been sitting here watching them walk, as well as checking out other places around the world.

i suggested to my friend that if he’s in Times Square, he should call me, and i can go online and see him, and take his photo! a very cool thing, but i don’t know where he is, or if he’ll call while i’m at home. but here is an example photo i just captured:

nyc

technology is amazing.

it’s also a little scary, isn’t it, the whole “big brother” aspect of it. people being able to see you, without you knowing.

i hope there are no hidden video cameras here in christine’s apartment, showing me here in my new PJs, lounging around.

last night christine showed me another earthcam-type thing, only this one is a map of the world, and then you can zoom in to a particular place. she found my parents' house, and houses of various friends and relationship. it’s also cool, but not as interesting, i think, as the camera showing the people walking around.

ok ok ok,

grace

one more thing at 9:42 a.m. mountain time [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:48 am

christine just left for work. WHEW, she has a taxing life.

almost as taxing as mine.

i might go running really soon, because it was only 44 about a half hour ago, and suddenly it’s 57! crazy, in a very good way.

here’s one more photo. this is from my weekend of dog-sitting. this is Noodle, the beagle who won’t stop pulling on the leash, but he can be a very sweet dog. he’s behind the bars in the dining room, always plaintively looking out at me in the kitchen, hoping for treats. the dogs probably got way too many treats while i was there, but they did have to deal with the emotional trauma of their parents being out of town.

noodle in jail

Jail Puppy

denver in the morning [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:34 am
it’s beautiful and sunny, but pretty chilly right now, so i’m waiting around for it to warm up, and then i’ll go running. i can run way down the street, and eventually i get to the park, and then i run back, and it’s uphill a little, a very good run.

yesterday on the plane when we were getting ready to take off, the pilot said that it would take an hour and 49 minutes to get to denver, but he was going to do what he could to shave some time off that, so we’d get in early.

they always say this. what, exactly, do they think they’re going to do to get there quicker? are they going to suddenly speed, revving the motor way up, so the plane flies a lot fast than it usually does? do they usually only fly kind of slowly? or, are they going to take some secret shortcut, skipping over a few states or something?

i flew on frontier airlines, and the plane looked pretty new, and there are little TVs on the back of each seat. i found them slightly annoying, but also kind of interesting. i forgot to plug in my headphones, but every once in a while there was a trivia quiz, and i learned many interesting facts from them. for example - a woodpecker pecks 20 pecks PER SECOND. wow. fast. Cheerios first were called Cheerioats. Learning good stuff on the plane.

as i walked to the plane, there was a big sign that said “one in four eighth graders has been drunk.” very alarming. how do they know? i didn’t see any drunk 8th graders there at the airport. i didn’t see any drunk people at all, as a matter of fact. the guy in line at security was friendly, and said i should definitely take off my belt, and seemed to be fine with the idea of me taking off other things, but i didn’t, except for my shoes. but i don’t think he was drunk. just friendly. it’s kind of weird, taking your clothes off there in public with others.

soon, will there be drunk eight year olds? eight month olds? somebody needs to do something, or soon we’ll all be drunk all the time, from the moment we’re born.

i, personally, rarely drink enough to be drunk. i was trying to remember the first time i actually got drunk, and i know it must have been when i was a freshman in college, but i can’t remember the specific time. i remember one new year’s eve, my boyfriend was having a party, and i was making punch, and i kept sampling it before the party started, so that by the time it began i was already drunk.

i didn’t start out the new year feeling so great.

here are some photos of the halloween extravaganza that i went to on saturday night. if you want to see more photos, my friend kynda has some great ones at: kynda’s pumpkin photos

here are some of mine:
halloween 1

that’s all for the moment.

ok then,

grace in another time zone.

denver! [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:38 am
whew, here i am in denver. it’s warmer here than spfld. i’m very tired, and christine and i are sitting here on her couch, both of us with our computers in our laps. this is very funny, i think. she said we could IM each other if we want.

my flight was incredibly uneventful, i almost didn’t pay attention that i was on a plane. a friend of mine flew to nyc today, and said it was the second-worst turbulent flight he’d ever taken. funny, how there’s so much different weather all over the place.

here are some photos. this first is at the bar we went to, called the Irish Hound. it was a very nice bar, with delicious things to eat and drink, including root beer freshly brewed in seattle.

but really, how fresh is it, if they have to go all the way to seattle to get it?

we had crab quesadillas and wine.

here’s us:
irish pub in denver

we got back to christine’s apartment, and she told me that she’s a HOBBIRLBE PERSON because her apartment is so messy. in order to be polite, i didn’t disagree with her.

she started washing dishes immediately.
christine washes dishes

i had to take this photo of the inside of her refrigerator, because it contained exactly what i thought it would. wine. cheese. milk. bread. real mayonnaise.
christine’s fridge

that is all for now. i hope your day was good.

ok then,

grace very sleepy in another state.

Oct. 25, 2005

B+, plus more [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:07 am

there’s SO MUCH i want to write right now, but it’s almost midnight, i was going to be in bed by 11, but somehow that didn’t happen.

i got a B+ on my first english paper. not bad, considering that it’s been a really really long time since i’ve written an english paper, plus i think those old papers i wrote were pretty terrible.

mostly i got a B+ because i used contractions. YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO USE CONTRACTIONS. he circled every single one, and there were many, many of them. also, some of my conclusions were “cloudy,” also easy to fix. the great thing is that i’m going to meet with him tomorrow, and then i fix the paper, and then, erica tells me, he’ll probably give me an A! how cool is that, getting to improve your grade?

i’ve been packing, that’s why it’s so late. i spent a lot of time wandering around looking for things. there’s this play i’m supposed to read, and it’s a bright pink book, so you’d think it would stand out, but it seems to have disappeared. i finally gave up, and started looking for this little travel-size bottle of perfume, but it, too, seems to have fallen into a black hole. i decided to give up on that for now, too. maybe i’ll have a little free time tomorrow to seach some more.

of course i packed way too many things. i did take out a sweater and a t-shirt, and that made me feel virtuous. i was talking to my friend kurt on the phone while packing, and he explained that when he packed to go on vacation, it took him 10 minutes, and all he took was a couple of t-shirts and shorts.

but he’s a guy. i pointed this out to him.

i’m also hoping that tomorrow i’ll have time to re-think the many many things i’m taking with me, maybe take some of them out. because i KNOW that you don’t need as many things as i’m taking. and yet i feel that i will need them.

kurt and i are going to make some videos when i get back. funny videos.

i was kind of sad to leave amy and jim’s menagerie today, because all the animals are just so cute. but last night in the middle of the night, i was awakened a couple of times - once because a couple of cats decided to have a big fight, and once when the dogs started barking for no reason, and then began to howl. if i just yell BE QUIET really loud, they stop, but it’s hard to get that much energy to yell in the middle of the night.

tonight my own kittie, winnie, is very happy to see me, and he’s lying here in bed with me, purring, and i feel bad that i’m going to be gone so long.

but he’ll survive. he’s a cat. cats are very resilient.

plus that whole nine lives thing.

i’d kind of like to have that.

sometimes i think about who i’d like to be in another life. i feel that surely, in one more past lives, if i believed in that whole concept, and sometimes i do but sometimes i don’t, i must have been a guy who was really anal and had a very rigid, structured life. and he probably made lots and lots of money, and he was very driven. but also probably not so happy. that’s just my theory. so the only part of me that’s like that now is that i sometimes i wish i were more driven, and i’d like to have more money, and i could be happier. but i’m pretty ok with the life right now, but of course i just happen to be going on VACATION tomorrow, so of course that colors things a bit.

one thing i forgot to mention about “jekyll & hyde” - when i went to see it again on sunday afternoon, i suddenly started thinking about the fancy patent leather shoes that the men wore in some fancy dress ball scene. they reminded me of tap shoes, and i thought about tap dancing, because it’s something i enjoy but haven’t done in years and years. and then i thought, what if i suddenly went crazy and went up on stage and started tap dancing right there in the middle of the scene.

wouldn’t that be awful, if somebody did that?

once i mentioned to someone about a random idea similar to that that i had, and he assured me that he never had thoughts like that.

not that i’d ever act on any of the odd things that i think about, but sometimes i think, what if NOW’S THE TIME that i suddenly SNAP and go crazy, and jump up on a stage and start tap-dancing...or something else like that, entirely inappropriate.

my english paper also had some insubordinate dangling clause participles, or something like that. i’ll have to fix them, assuming i can pretend to know exactly what they are.

good night.

ok then,

grace not feeling like going berserk at this particular moment, which is a good thing, but i’m too tired to even do anything at all right now, and certainly not anything crazy.

Oct. 24, 2005

grey monday [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 2:32 pm

i’m leaving tomorrow afternoon for denver, where it’s going to be SUNNY.

do you think we’ll have any more sun here this year? i hope so.

i have photos from the pumpkin thing at the park on saturday night, but i don’t have the camera cord with me right now, so i can’t put them up. i also have an entire disc of photos from “jekyll & hyde” that randy gave me, and i’m going to put some of those up, too.

i’m here at panera, lounging on the comfy couch. i’d like to lie down and take a nap, but there’s no blanket here.

three older women are sitting at a table across from me having an intense conversation about nail salons. one of them doesn’t seem to like most of the salons in town.

a very nice-seeming man is sitting near them, having a nice little chat with his daughter in college. he’s wearing a suit and tie, and it’s nice to see a suit talking to somebody in their family, instead of just business things.

i wish i could get up right now and go over to the counter and get some pastry thing and something to drink. but i have to leave soon, to give a massage, and then i have to rush around and then go to class, where i may or may not get a good grade on my paper.

there were some definite and specific things i had to do here at panera this afternoon, but so far i’ve just written a letter. and for the life of me, i can’t remember the other things i NEED to get done.

oh well.

i’m already on vacation in my head.

ok then,

grace relaxing.

Oct. 23, 2005

brrrr.... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 5:24 pm
i went to see “jekyll & hyde” again, and boy, i’m sad i don’t get to see it anymore. the place was packed again, thank goodness, but i wish there were going to be more performances so more people could see how amazing it is.

i can’t imagine ever seeing a better performance of anything.

the last thing i saw that i loved was “wicked,” in chicago. wicked was fantastic, and as i was leaving the theater, i just wanted to go see it again.

but even though they had so much money for all the sets and costumes and orchestra and paying actors and all, and wicked did blow me away...

jekyll & hyde was better.

i didn’t run this morning, much much too tired, but instead i took all three dogs for a walk.

i don’t want to take noodle for a walk anymore.

by the time our walk was through, i hated him. it’s horrible to hate a dog.

i don’t hate him anymore, even though they’re all leaping from couch to couch, growling and barking and trying to kill each other. at least i’m not involved.

but on the walk, the ENTIRE TIME, noodle was straining and pulling and trying SO HARD to run, and i kept pulling and pulling and it did no good, i told him to quit it, i yelled at him, i’d try coming to a stop and having a reasonable talk with him. he’d stop and wag his tail at me and look all cute, and then i took one step forward and he was OFF.

when i got out of the theater less than an hour ago, it was suddenly FREEZING outside. i was wearing my favorite long grey sweater coat thing, and it wasn’t enough and it was so cold and windy, and now i fear the coldness is here to stay for months and months.

i think i’ll just stay inside.

as i drove home, i was listening to WQLZ, and they’re going to have a GIANT HALLOWEEN PARTY on the 29th. i’m going to miss it, which is too bad because theyr'e going to have OVER TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS OF PRIZES for costumes.

tell me the tiger pants wouldn’t win me that cash. i NEED the cash.

but i’ll be in denver. but maybe, since it’s a big city, there will be costume contests there! now there’s a great idea for something fun AND profitable to do on halloween!

plus, the WQLZ halloween party didn’t sound so great to me, besides the incredibly prize money opportunity. there are going to be strippers there, and i think maybe they’re going to have tattooing? they kept saying the “just a little prick” tattoo parlor will be there.

nice name.

i think the place also does piercings. so, if i was here in spfld on halloween, i could hang out with strippers and get a tattoo and some piercings. yee-haw.

maybe it wouldn’t be worth the prize money.

i’m going to sit at the window and watch for the snow now.

ok then,

grace on sunday evening, trying to stave off the sunday night encroaching bad feelings.

Oct. 22, 2005

post-run [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:32 pm

i was only going to take noodle, the beagle, but numie was frantically, FRANTICALLY pawing over and over and over on the gate to the dining room, wanting so desperately to go with us, so i took both of them for my run.

tomorrow, i think i’m going alone.

for the first 15 minutes, noodle would not stop straining on the leash. he just kept pulling me, and i was pulling back, and maybe that’s why i feel exhausted, which is not how i ever feel after a 35 minute run.

numie, of course, just walked briskly along. he COULD run like the wind if he feels like it, but he had no motivation.

for a while noodle settled down, but whenever we passed people and/or dogs, or a squirrel, he’d pull and strain again and i felt like my arm was getting ripped right out of its socket. there were lots of people and dogs and squirrels at the park.

whew.

i did see a few of the pumpkins lined up near the carillon; last night and tonight there are 2,0005 pumpkins on display! that sounds very neat, and i’m going to go see them tonight. maybe i’ll bring my camera, but if it’s dark, i don’t know how the photo would turn out.

i called my friend kate to see if she’d like to go see “jekyll & hyde” with me tomorrow, and she said she’d love to, but she has too many plans. she saw it last night, and COULD NOT BELIEVE how good it was. she said she expected it to be good, but she had NO IDEA.

maybe next time she’ll listen to me when i say something is TOO UNBELIEVABLY GOOD TO BE TRUE.

i’ve been having a couple of experiences like that lately, as a matter of fact.

a refreshing change of pace.

the gate in the basement here is really, really high, so it’s good for stretching, but mostly just annoying. it would be nice to be in a gate-free place, a place where i could randomly walk from room to room without any hurdles at all to leap over.

not that i’ve ever leaped.

lept?

christine said she forgets to eat dinner ALL THE TIME. this does not surprise me, because she’s one of those naturally thin people, like my dad, who frequently forgets a meal or two.

i never (except for last night) forget a meal. i usually am very good about remembering to eat plenty of snacks, for that matter. when i visit christine, we will not miss any dinners. we’re going to this great indian restaurant that we went to the last time i visited her, for one thing.

i’m hoping there will be NO SNOW.

actually, the forecast for next week says it’s going to be in the high 60’s there. nice.

that is all for now.

ok then,

grace with things to look forward to.

rethinking the kisses... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:27 am

i ate one this morning, just because the bowl was there, and to see if they were REALLY REALLY all stale.

the one i had didn’t taste so bad, but maybe it’s because i’d just gotten up and wasn’t fully awake.

it looks like a beautiful day out there, so i’m going to take one of the dogs for a run.

any more than one dog running is a little too much of a burden.

numie, the italian greyhound, never seems to run, no matter how fast i may be going. he just trots along, no big deal for his speedy spindly little legs.

hmmmm, shall i accomplish anything significant at all today?

perhaps.

perhaps not.

doesn’t really matter.

ok ok ok,

grace who make or may not get dressed before the day is through.

Oct. 21, 2005

underneath the kisses... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:10 pm

when i got back here to a & j’s house, i tried another hershey’s kiss, just to make sure they’re ALL stale.

It was. oh well.

but then, i noticed DIFFERENT CANDY UNDER THE KISSES.

they were faux york peppermint patties.

i ate one. it was all right. not like the real mccoy.

there’s also a lot of good cheese here, a big hunk of dill havarti, a nice wedge of brie.

but the only crackers i could find were unopened, and i didn’t want to go to the trouble of opening them.

maybe tomorrow.

i forgot to have dinner tonight.

this may be unprecedented.

definitely, unprecedented.

ok then, i’m ready to sleep for about a year now,

grace weekending.

friday afternoon [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:56 pm
and i think i see the sun coming out! i’ll go for a little walk before my next massage.

i did something good for somebody this afternoon; i gave a free massage to a woman who lived in apartment on the beach in biloxi, and she’s staying here now with relatives, because he apartment was completely destroyed.

i started to tear up when she told me that; i mean, i read/heard about this happening all the time, but here was a woman standing in front of me telling me, very matter-of-factly, that her home was no more.

this strengthens my resolve to try to not be such a whiny whiner, that my problems in life could be SO MUCH WORSE.

when the woman had called to make an appointment, it was a little hard to understand her accent, but it didn’t exactly sound southern to me.

nope, she’s australian, and she and her husband are going to move to australia, where her family is.

“no hurricanes in australia” she said.

i felt the need to mention the killer plants/bugs/animals that i’ve read about, and she cheerfully agreed.

but she probably took some kind of mandatory anti-death-by-nature class there in australia.

you can’t really take a class in anti-hurricane, all you can do is get the hell out.

ok then,

grace about to walk in the sunshine and be happy about it.

let the cleaning begin... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:38 am

i got to amy and jim’s this morning, and there was poop on the dining room floor.

a rather inauspicious beginning to the weekend, i think.

i cleaned it up, and some pee that was also there, and i let the dogs out because they were HYSTERICAL to get out, and then i let them back in because they were HYSTERICAL to get in, and i wiped their muddy paws as best i could, but i feel this will be a losing battle, since it’s supposed to rain all weekend.

oh well. they’re very quiet at the moment.

...and i suddenly thought WAIT A MINUTE HERE, WHY ARE THEY BEING SO QUIET?

numie and noodle, the two crazy dogs, are confined to the dining room. so i got up to look, and they’d manage to BREAK FREE, which is why they were being so quiet. they were mostly just standing around in the pantry, but nothing was open, and they hadn’t managed to tear anything open yet.

whew.

as promised, amy left a GIGANTIC bowl of hershey’s kisses on the counter.

i tried one. it was STALE. i tried another. also stale.

a third. just to be sure.

stale, and really kind of tasteless.

at least i don’t have to worry about gaining 400 pounds this weekend.

but a good hershey’s kiss sure would be good...

i’m going to put them in the front bedroom, so i’m not tempted to eat them even though they don’t hardly even taste like chocolate.

so, at the hospital, where every day i make people feel a little better who are all stressed out because their loved ones are getting open heart surgery, i also do a very important thing -

i stick their tags back in.

people always seem to walk around with their shirt tags sticking straight up, and in giving the massages, i have the unique opportunity to just quietly stick them back in.

the only problem with performing this invaluable service is that when i see people on the street with their tags sticking up, i have to do everything in my power to resist sticking them back in.

ok then,

grace, doing my best to keep everybody from being a fashion no-no all the time.

Oct. 20, 2005

clarification [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:55 pm

i neglected to mention, because it was morning and i wasn’t fully alert yet, even though it was 10 a.m., that when i dropped my beautiful new suede purse in the street, IT WAS RAINING, AND MY PURSE GOT ALL WET. that was definitely the low point of my day.

many things fell out of the purse and rolled around in the street, but i’m used to that, because it happens all the time.

luckily, it dried and looks ok.

and actually, actually...my day wasn’t so bad. i had some good conversations throughout the day. and i got two good phone calls. one was a total surprise, and i’m going to find out next week if it’s something really great or not. let me just say that if it works out, i’m going to be very happy and excited.

which is why i’m not going to talk about it, because i don’t want to jinx it. which is why i’m just going to try to PUT IT OUT OF MY MIND, because one thing i’ve learned from one bitter disappointment after another is DON’T GET YOUR HOPES UP.

i’m doing my best to have no hopes. if i was an alcoholic and belonged to aa, i could chant “let go and let god.” but i’m neither an alcoholic nor a really strong believer in the religion, so i can’t say that.

but i would if i could.

i’m a failed bulimic, in that i have the bingeing down good, but i can’t seem to make myself purge.

amazing, that there were these little glimmers of light in such a horribly gloomy, dark, grey, rainy day. this afternoon i ran from my office to amy’s salon, and i got completely drenched.

in class tonight, first i got to read the part of a woman mayor, and then i got to be a surly 17 year-old black girl. my professor complimented people on their readings, and then he said to me, “you were good, except i didn’t like your first reading at all.” and then he proceeded to compliment a girl who could BARELY SPEAK, so i was mad. does that mean that he’s going to say he doesn’t like my play? we read one play and i thought it was abysmal, but he went on and on about how GREAT it was, and i thought, am i missing something here? am i not able to see it for all its glory? the characters just talked on and on, bickering incessantly, and i felt like i was going to lose my mind, being forced to listen to it go on and on and on.

class was very unsatisfying. i didn’t have my watch on, and there was no clock in the room, which was weird, and i was going crazy, not knowing how much longer i had to sit there.

i had high hopes for getting to bed early, but of course that didn’t happen again. at least tomorrow is friday, and on saturday i might sleep REALLY REALLY LATE. i can do that at amy and jim’s, because there’s no noise at all there. except sometimes a cat will jump up on the bed and walk over my stomach. their hugest kitty, called Mr. Kitty, does that. they have four cats and three dogs. i’ve felt guilty sleeping late there before, because then the dogs have to stay in their cages till i get up, and they’re used to getting up with jim at six a.m.

but they’ll be fine. we’re going to have a very good time. except that it’s supposed to rain all weekend long, so i don’t know about running with them, not to mention the general mud that i feel will be an intrinsic part of the weekend.

the other play we read, the guy had a few characters who used really big words a lot. people don’t talk like that.

i don’t know why i didn’t mention this.

sometimes i don’t feel like talking.

most of the time this is not the case; most of the time, i realize it can be hard for the person i may be talking to to get a word in edgewise.

but in class, it’s another story. part of the reason i sometimes don’t talk is because i don’t want the class to go on any longer than is absolutely necessary, and i feel that if i start talking, that will just make it last longer.

there was a funny cartoon in the paper yesterday. it was “zits,” a repulsive comic name. but the kid was telling his dad that he had three blogs - one for his thoughts, one for his thoughts about his thoughts, and i think the third was for thoughts about his thoughts about his thoughts. very funny.

when i go to denver, i’m going to take my video camera, as well as my camera.

i hope there is no snow there.

if there is, i’m going to stay inside.

but i’ll take a lot of pictures, no matter what i do. i’m going to have a good travelogue up here. for many years, i wanted to make travel videos. and now i could start doing this, by shooting some video when i’m in denver.

we shall see.

at work, somebody had some tarot cards with a booklet about their meanings. i guess i don’t really believe in the tarot cards so much, although i do have a deck of my own and at least one book for interpretation of them.

i drew two cards, and they were both about the mind, about having lots of burdens in your mind, lots of stuff going on in there, how important it is to try to make it be still.

good luck to me with that endeavor.

ok then, good night, don’t let the bed bugs bite,

grace approaching the weekend.

p.s. amy called yesterday and said she was going shopping, and what kind of food did i want when housesitting? i said she didn’t have to buy anything; i always manage to find their candy, ice cream, and frozen pizza. so she went out and bought candy, ice cream, and frozen pizza. i’m sure they already had these things, except for the candy, and maybe i’ll just have to hide it from myself when i get there. i’d hate to gain four hundred pounds in just four days, but it’s always a possibility.

besides the fact [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:04 am

that this morning it’s cold and grey and rainy and it’s supposed to be like this for five days, and here comes winter, and i pulled into a parking place under a tree that is suddenly bright yellow and at least half the leaves are gone and i KNOW it was leafy and green yesterday...

i started my day by managing, somehow, to set off my car alarm WHILE IN THE CAR. i haven’t set the alarm off for a while now, and i’ve never set it off from inside the car. i was flustered, and got out of the car and dropped my brand new beautiful red suede purse IN THE STREET.

is this a portent of things to come today? i’d like to think, instead, that it will somehow, magically, get better.

but i doubt it.

ok.

Oct. 19, 2005

Exposition of the doctrines of grace [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:45 pm
i’m afraid to go to sleep now, even though i’m so tired my eyes are barely open.

i fear that there’s little chance of actually sleeping.

not a good brain tonight.

so, i thought i’d kill time by looking things up, but i couldn’t think of anything to look up, so i decided to look up myself, to see if i’m there on google. i found me, on the secnd page, and again on the 8th page, i think.

but there are many other graces, and my favorite is the heading above, exposition of the doctrines of grace. i don’t want to click on the link, because i know it’s just some sermon, but i sure do like the title a lot. i think i’m going to finally write a book, and that will be the title.

there was a grace carrington smith who was a pioneering post-impressionist, and there’s a grace smith who writes comics, and there’s some grace smith cemetery. google informs me that there are about 14 million five hundred entries for grace smith, but i don’t think i want to stay up all night looking at them.

i’m going to close my eyes now, anyway.

goodnight.

p.s. JEKYLL & HYDE [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:15 pm

my friend ann bought tickets for the friday night show. i’ll be at the sunday afternoon show, plus i might go one night also because IT’S INCREDIBLE.

please, please go see it.

macaroni and cheese pie [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:14 pm

i’m pretty sure that’s what it was. DELICIOUS.

maybe jerri will make it when we’re in denver.

somebody tonight asked me if it was going to be snowing there. i said I HOPE NOT. he said, but you could ski! i said HELL NO. he said, you don’t ski? i said NO WAY. he said, but you said you weren’t going to do a triathlon, and you did that, so maybe you’ll ski. BEEN THERE DONE THAT. ALMOST DIED (well, i fell a lot and i hated the whole thing).

i forgot to tell you the ending to my desperate yearning for ice cream just yesterday, which was tuesday...

late yesterday afternoon i got two e-mails from people who said if they’d read my posting earlier, they’d have brought me some ice cream. very nice of them and all, but...

NOT GOOD ENOUGH, i say!

tonight i made chocolate cappuccino brownies, and i wasn’t so crazy about the coffe part. next time, just the pure chocolate.

ok then, that’s all for wednesday,

grace ready for winter, except i don’t even want to think about the encroaching cold, really.

because [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:34 pm
i keep tilting my computer at a funny angle, because i type while lying in bed, i have stressed my power cord. it’s plugged in, but suddenly it says it’s not plugged in anymore. this has been going on for a few weeks now, and i keep thinking OH MY GOD YET ANOTHER THING GOING WRONG I’M SURE IT’LL COST A MILLION DOLLARS TO GET A NEW ONE AND LIFE CERTAINLY SUCKS RIGHT NOW AND I SEE NO POINT IN EVEN GETTING OUT OF BED AT ALL.

so, tonight i was chatting with christine, and she said she didn’t think it’d cost more than a hundred bucks.

so i went to ebay and bought one just now, and it was all very fast, and it was only thirty dollars.

and now, my life if perfect.

whew.

we were discussing men and relationships, and she was talking about a boyfriend she had when she was planning on moving to italy. i said, “oh, you were still with him when you were planning your move?”

and she said “we were only together in the sense that i hated him.”

this made me laugh for quite a while.

she has a friend who got married even though she knew it was a bad idea, and now, a year later, the friend is (of course) miserable, and the friend just told christine today that she doesn’t believe there are any good men left in the world.

that does seem to be true, except i know at least one man who probably thinks that about women, he was divorced just a few months ago and has a story about his ex-wife that would make your hair stand ON END. so i can’t blame him for any bad feelings he might have for females everywhere. except that most of us, actually, are very, very good.

i feel that, by and large (what is “by and large,” anyway? where did that come from?), men are prone to be more lying-cheating-being baddder and badder in whatever cliched bad man way that they can be till you just want to crawl under the covers and never get out of bed again.

brendan isn’t bad. A+ kudos to jerri for being wise enough to find a non-bad one.

jerri is very wise.

she and brendan are also going to be in denver when i go there to visit christine, and i am going to listen to what jerri has to say. because she’s very wise.

practically sage-like, even.

wiseness-wise, not spice-wise.

she did make me some delicious macaroni and cheese one time, though. or i think it was something more elaborate than that, it was some sort of macaroni and cheese...pie? perhaps i’m hallucinating the whole thing. a lot of that went on back in LA.

i think today was REALLY the last warm day. i thought that last week, or maybe a couple weeks ago, but i think today was the day.

this morning when i drove to work, the leaves were absolutely raining down from the trees.

and last night, i didn’t leave work till seven, and it was completely dark outside.

time to stay in bed, under the covers, until there’s some hope of some possible reason to get up.

maybe in april.

perhaps may.

that is all for this moment.

ok then,

grace on wednesday night, and at least i get to go see jekyll & hyde on sunday, something to look forward to, i’ll definitely get out of bed by sunday afternoon anyway.

Oct. 18, 2005

weird tuesday, and ERICA CONFESSED [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:37 pm

so, after doing very little at panera this afternoon, i went to work, but first stopped in at my sister’s salon, because i had just a little bit of extra time, and she doesn’t work on tuesdays, but the place was open for business, there were three clients there, and suddenly i thought IT’S NOT TUESDAY, IT’S WEDNESDAY.

and i got very disoriented, and i asked one of the women what day it was, and she said it was tuesday.

whew.

i mean, this is what a lot of iced tea does to me. imagine the effect of an entire cup of COFFEE. jim keeps trying to get me to drink coffee. he thinks it’s a necessary part of living.

i told him, i don’t wanna be hooked. what if i get stranded on a desert island, and i’m addicted to coffee? think of the headache i’d get. when i’ve been around christine and she forgets to have coffee in the morning, she gets horrible headaches. that would suck.

not gonna do it. no coffee addiction for me.

not to mention all that coffee snobbery that comes with being an addict, the special coffee beans and all of that hooey. no sir, no thank you.

the occasional iced tea, that’s as far as i’m gonna go.

maybe a diet coke, if i’m really feeling wild. also, the thing is tht jim gets up very very early, so he needs some caffeine. maybe if i was forced to get up early, i, too, would be hooked.

hopefully that will never happen.

erica e-mailed to say that she’s my sole blog reader, she reads it to see if i’m writing about her.

no, she was kidding, she’s not my SOLE reader. i know there are a few other people reading.

today i thought, it would be neat to write a blog just for one person. just something they could read.

and then i thought, THAT WOULD BE WRITING A LETTER. or an e-mail.

i still write e-mails, but they’re not usually as long as the ones i used to write, because people stopped writing back because i wrote so much. or because they got lazy, i don’t know. and this would make me mad, not hearing back from people.

so, having this website is a way for me to write, and i know you’re reading, and i can’t get mad that you don’t write to me, because i can’t say for certain WHO exactly is doing the reading. i could be mad at HUMANITY IN GENERAL, and sometimes i am, for one reason or another, but that inevitably takes too much effort.

randy told me that at the beginning of “meet joe black,” brad pitt, the real guy, meets anthony hopkins' daughter in a coffee shop, and they arrange to meet later, but then he gets hit by a bus or something. and then brad pitt who is now THE GRIM REAPER knocks on anthony hopkins' door.

i feel that he’s forgetting some crucial element here. i kept asking him, ISN’T THE GRIM REAPER THERE IN THE COFFEE SHOP? DRESSED IN A HOODED BLACK CAPE WITH A SYTHE IN HIS BONY HAND?

randy said it definitely didn’t happen like that.

if there’s NOT more to the opening, then it’s very lame.

i’m just going to have to rent it.

maybe this weekend, when i’m house/dogsitting for amy and jim.

ok ok ok,

grace at the end of yet another day.

one more thing at 3:14 p.m. [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:22 pm

i just ordered THREE 28-oz. containers of STRAWBERRY PURE SOY ISOLATE POWDER. they only cost a total of $35! PLUS, shipping is only FOUR DOLLARS! such a deal. i’m feeling more energized, just sitting here realizing that i’m not going to run out of STRAWBERRY PURE SOY ISOLATE POWDER for a very, very long time. (the energy might also be due to the iced tea i’m drinking, but i like to think it’s just because of my good thoughts.)

i’d kind of like to try the CHOCOLATE version, but i guess i’ll be drinking the strawberry kind for a year or so.

ok, so i’m sitting here, and a guy pulls up on a big motorcycle, with some song blaring from it, i can’t remember what it is now, but it was some kind of older rock song, very popular...and he gets off the motorcycle and says hi, and i say hi, and he says, beautiful weather, isn’t it, and i say, there’s no REASON to be inside today, and we chat a bit.

but he didn’t offer me any ice cream.

perhaps i was flirting? i don’t know. it just felt like talking. i guess i’m not entirely clear on the difference between just talking and flirting. i smiled at him; does that constitute flirting? surely not. perhaps if i’d smiled ALLURINGLY at him. he’d probably just have thought i was a mental case. (not that i’m not).

is it too late to go get some ice cream? i have about 20 minutes till i have to give a massage.

probably too late.

i could always opt for the $10.99 ribeye.

there’s always something.

ok then, on this beautiful tuesday afternoon,

grace

3:02 p.m. on tuesday [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:07 pm
ok, i’m a bad person. but you probably already figured that out. i haven’t written one single word of my play this afternoon.

i did, however, look up articles for class. BUT I DIDN’T FIND ANY. i didn’t find any online, anyway; i found some that might work, but i’ll have to actually go to the school library to look them up.

i could do it tonight, if i wanted to, because the library is open till MIDNIGHT.

i won’t be there near midnight.

i’m still wishing for ice cream.

gee, wouldn’t it be nice if somebody had read this a half hour ago, and they drove over to panera and brought me some?

it would probably be more likely that i become “bewitched.”

which probably won’t happen.

but you never know.

tinkle tinkle tink.

nothing. drats.

instead of ice cream, i could go over to the MAVERICK FAMILY STEAKHOUSE, which is right across from me, and get a ribeye dinner for only $10.99.

i’m just not in the mood for ribeye.

ice cream.

ok, i’m going to at least READ my play a little bit. maybe write a few lines. that would be something. and then, OFF TO MAKE A LITTLE MONEY THIS AFTERNOON.

in order to try to finance my trip-taking.

ok then,

grace rapidly running out of time to be productive this afternoon.

ok, just one more little thing b4 i work work WORK... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 2:07 pm

i was checking the statistics of my website, and i’m happy to see that yesterday i had a RECORD number of visitors. so, thanks, whoever you may be. hopefully a whole bunch of people.

not just one person, checking my website every few minutes all day long.

that would ruin my statistics.

but there’s nothing i can do about it.

if it IS just one person, checking my website all day long, well, i hope you’re enjoying the writing.

damn, i wish they had ice cream here at panera. i could get a cookie or a pastry, but it’s beautiful and warm out and I WANT ICE CREAM.

i now have one and a half hours, in which time i could, theoretically, be VERY VERY PRODUCTIVE.

ok then,

grace poised on the brink...(of work, of insanity, of madness, you name it, i’m poised on the brink of it.)

p.s. HAVE YOU GOTTEN YOUR TICKETS TO JEKYLL & HYDE YET? AILEEN, I’M TALKING TO YOU!!!!

tuesday afternoon, once again at panera... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 2:04 pm

i’m sitting outside. because it’s beautiful and sunny, in the 70’s. i walked through the rose garden at washington park at lunch, and there are still plenty of roses.

i’m here ostensibly to study.

note to self: THIS DOES NOT COUNT AS STUDYING.

but i’m gonna.

at least i’m going to look up some critical articles online, because i can do it really FAST here.

i wish panera had ice cream.

ok then,

grace about to WORK WORK WORK.

p.s. BLOOD! [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:27 am
i KNEW there was something good about today. i gave blood. it’s a great way to do something good without having to actually do anything, except answer this litany of questions - haveyouevertakenbovinebeefsupplement haveyouevervisitedtheunitedkingdomhaveyouevertaken moneyforsexhaveyoueverhadsexwithapersonwhotestedpositiveforHIVhaveyouevertakenany WOISDFAXXIWOEIForWOES0GGJRIROT[GGhaveyouhadrabieshaveyoubeentoeuropesince 1980haveyoubeentoafricasince1977haveyoueverhadsexwithanybodyfromafrica...

and then they pump out your blood, and then you get cookies and/or crackers and juice. i could have sat there all afternoon, reading the paper and chatting with other donors, and the thought did cross my mind, because i could have avoided working on my play, but instead i went home and worked.

but anyway, so i potentially helped save a life today, with much effort, plus snacks and juice, so WHAT’S NOT TO BE HAPPY ABOUT??

ok then, really that’s all this time,

grace still with no expectations of anybody or anything WHATSOEVER.

lowering expecations revisited [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:20 am

many times today, i kept wishing i’d deleted that last posting from last night, but i just read it again, and i don’t think it’s really that bad. christine told me that jerri instant-messaged her, asking if i was all right, because of that last posting, i guess.

it’s funny how jerri and christine have an instant-messaging relationship. i wonder if they talk on the phone. how does jerri do all that instant-messaging while taking care of her baby? has lucy learned how to work the computer yet? she’s about four months now, i think, i bet she’s mastered it.

i find the instant-messaging annoying, usually. i had yahoo instant messenger, but i deleted it. when i’m on the computer, i’m usually writing something, so having that instant message is too distracting. and if i’m not writing, i’m looking something up, and i don’t like to be distracted from that. not usually, anyway.

while i wasn’t worrying that i sounded too depressed online last night, i was trying to think of some glimmer of goodness or happiness or joy or anything resembling any of the above, so that i could write about it, so as to not appear to be horribly depressed.

well, i DO get to see jekyll & hyde again next sunday, but i think i already mentioned that. but it does make me happy, just thinking about the fact that i get to see it again.

but sunday seems like a long way away.

i turned in my english paper tonight. done.

i wrote more of my play today, and i think i’m nearing the end. i’m pretty happy with it, and am eager to hear it read aloud.

see, positive, positive, positive...

i’m going to visit christine in denver soon, and i know that will be fun. i may come back or i may not.

i HAVE to come back, because i have to FINISH MY CLASSES.

i still have to write one more paper for english class. it’s due december 12th, exactly eight weeks from today. i wish i knew what the topic was already, so i could get started right now.

erica didn’t start her paper till saturday night, but she managed to write three drafts. the first one, she hand-wrote.

i didn’t tell her that i only wrote ONE DRAFT.

i mean, i changed it around a little as i wrote, but i didn’t write any more drafts.

i think that erica is just a much deeper thinker than me.

i hope i don’t flunk my paper. that would kind of suck.

i have no expectations about it.

no expectations about ANYTHING.

i HOPE to sleep through the night, for example, but i don’t EXPECT to.

tonight in class we talked about “the begger’s opera,” an 18th century comedy. the professor started talking about sitcoms, and how they’re pap for the masses, and then this one guy had a lot to say about tv, and i got bored with his discussion. the guy wanted to know how people who have “hard jobs,” i guess he meant welders and bricklayers and people who do physical hard work, how they feel about magazines and stuff writing so much about celebrities. hmm, in print that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense; he must have made a couple more points about tv being crappy and celebrities, but it got slightly tiresome.

i tried to point out that i know plenty of intelligent people watch some sitcoms, and how they like to escape. it’s a little hard having a discussion about tv with the professor, because he doesn’t even own a tv, and hasn’t seen any tv since about 1950, i believe. is that about when it came out? i feel that maybe he watched a show or two when he was a tyke, but then, no more.

personally, i think tv is just a way to fill up time. not necessarily a bad way, especially when there’s something riveting like “meet joe black” on tv. i told my dad about it, and he wants to see it, but i told him that i ruined it for him, because i told him about brad pitt walking off into the sunset with anthony hopkins, but then brad came back to be with anthony’s daughter. dad said he didn’t mind, and i feel that maybe i didn’t do an A+ job of actually describing the story in a logical manner, so that’s a good thing if he couldn’t follow it, and will be surprised as the story unfolds.

did you BUY your ticket for “jekyll & hyde” yet? because it might just be TOO LATE, and then you’ll miss it, and you’ll be darn sorry you did.

ok then,

grace with no expectations about anything at all. ever.

Oct. 16, 2005

p.s. lowered expectations [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:47 pm
i just read something on somebody’s blog about expectations, and wanting to have lower expectations about people.

I FEEL THE SAME WAY.

i try to have NO expectations. that way you might not get hurt.

but alas, i find, it’s impossible to have no expectations, and it’s also much too easy to have high expectations. i have a friend who, instead of getting sucked in and taking a chance on the possibility of a connection, has opted to instead FLEE at the first chance of anything happening, and this doesn’t seem like such a bad way to handle life, and i wish i could be like her.

there’s this great song in “jekyll & hyde,” i think it’s called “facade,” and it’s all about how everybody has a facade, and how behind the facade lurks all kinds of unpleasant stuff.

i guess i don’t think there has to be something unpleasant behind everybody’s facade, but i do think that everybody has a facade at least to some degree, and i also find that the more i see what’s behind the facade, the more i wish i didn’t know what was there after all.

not to be cynical about human beings or anything.

nope, not me.

ok then, that’s all for tonight,

grace

SUCKED IN AT 11:11 p.m. on sunday night [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:32 pm

how did it get to be 11:11 already?

i’ll tell you how - i got SUCKED IN BY TV.

i was waiting for it to be nine o'clock, so i could call randy to see how his show went today. i had to wait till 9, because i knew he was watching “desperate housewives.” i turned on the TV while waiting, so i’d know EXACTLY when it was over.

meanwhile, i started flipping the channels. i came across “meet joe black” on amc. it had started at 8, and it was now about 8:45, and so i missed the whole setup. but then i kept watching...and kept watching...and every time there was a commercial break, and there seemed to be one about every two minutes, i would get mad that i was sitting there, SUCKED IN by the tv.

and yet i kept watching. i tried to figure out how it began, but after watching the WHOLE DAMN THING, i’m still not completely sure.

the thing is, in the movie, brad pitt is the grim reaper, and somehow he gets into the body of the real brad pitt, i mean a live human, not the actual actor, and he becomes him and falls in love with this woman, and he’s on earth, i think, to make sure that anthony hopkins dies, or maybe the grim reaper actually does the killing of him. anyway, i found it interesting that death fell in love (with anthony hopkins' daughter), and death had sex. and THEN, death wanted to take the girl WITH HIM when he was going to take anthony hopkins, but anthony was quite eloquent and angry and convinced him that this would be both bad and very selfish, and what kind of life would his daughter have, spending eternity with death? wouldn’t death get tired of her, wasn’t he just toying with her?

i mean, i could point out that any relationship at some point is doomed to fail (not to be cynical or anything), but it does seem that being with Death would add some unnecessary complications to love, which is boud to be fraught with pain and heartache and misery anyway, besides worrying that one of the parties is THE GRIM REAPER.

i sort of wanted Death to take her, and then i wanted to see just what kind of life...that is to say, what kind of existance she’d have, being with death. i mean, what form would she take? because she’d be dead, would she be just some floaty thing, in which case they wouldn’t be having any more sex? Death seemed to enjoy the sex, although it seemed a little surreal to me, but then again, wouldn’t it be a little strange to have sex with Death? and would she have to hang out somewhere, waiting around for him as he kept going back to earth to bring the dead people...down...up? see what i mean? i wish i could have seen what Death looked like at the beginning; i’d assume he’d be really, really old, but on the other hand being Death, couldn’t he look however he wanted? I bet they didn’t even show him before he became Brad Pitt. There are many interesting questions about what it’d be like to have Death for a lover (i’m assuming Death wouldn’t actually get married, but then again, you never know), but of course that didn’t happen, because this was a HOLLYWOOD MOVIE. death and anthony finally walked off together, but then brad CAME BACK, only now it was the guy whose body death had stepped into (death being very clever as well as wise and experienced, so of course he chose a hunky body like brad’s), and brad was suddenly all touchy-feely sweet and innocent, and a little...dumb. he seemed a little dumb, anyway, i mean, especially compared to DEATH, who has certainly obviously been around a lot, has seen a LOT of things, and of course death would be all-powerful and everything, and you know that kind of power would be bound to impress a girl...

but instead, she ended up with the regular brad guy. cute but a little vapid. maybe he really wasn’t vapid, maybe he was just a little confused, since he’d been dead (i guess), and was now suddenly alive again. people keep telling me that brad pitt (the actual actor) is a big stoner, so maybe he was just stoned. hard to say.

i’m mad, not only because of all the tv-watching with the annoying commercials, but also because now i’ll have to rent the movie just to see the first part of it.

and why didn’t i go see wallace & grommit? what, exactly, was keeping me from doing that?

well, lots of family things, mostly involving going to restaurants.

i accomplished about exactly nothing today. and no chance of getting to sleep any time in the near future, since i didn’t exercise at all. and i’m suddenly more awake than i’ve been all day.

and WHY do you have to accomplish something every damn day, anyway? isn’t it ok to take a break?

yeah, i don’t buy that. I need to work on that play.

ok already,

still grace

photos [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 6:47 pm
the moon was coming up tonight, and it looked spectacular, and so i took some photos, but they just couldn’t do it justice. maybe a better camera? i don’t know. anyway, here’s the best one:

moon

here’s the folk art that aunt sandy made and gave to me:

kitties

aunt sandy’s folk art

and finally, here’s my new luggage, so i’m READY TO GET OUT OF HERE:

(grace, do you mean to tell me you can’t find ANYTHING better to do with your day than taking pictures of your LUGGAGE? next, will you be putting photos of your STOVE and maybe your HAIRDRYER up here? at least i’m not hurting anybody.)

ok then,

grace about to do yet more family-type things, involving food, games, etc etc etc.

just one little thing early on sunday evening... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 6:12 pm
the catalogs are flooding in, in order to do the early xmas shopping.

my family has announced that we’re not exchanging gifts this year. this is not such great news for me, personally.

actually, it was mom and amy who made the pronouncement. i think dad is already buying gifts anyway, because he likes it. dad can be very quietly subervise, what with the covert buying of gifts and all.

i think that those of us who enjoy buying the gifts should buy them, but for the others who get ALL STRESSED OUT BY XMAS, well, then, they should relax and not buy anything.

i always ALWAYS like giving gifts better than getting them. i think at least once i’ve gotten something REALLY GREAT, but usually, getting the gifts is very anticlimactic.

anyway, that’s not what i’m writing about right now, that’s just an aside - we got this one catalog called AUTOM. some of the stuff is kind of nice. it all has a religious-type slant to it, which is fine for the religious-type people.

HOWEVER, i feel that they CROSSED THE LINE.

in addition to the crosses and the many many nativities and stuff like that, for $24.95, they’re offering a CROWN OF THORNS.

why?
why?
why why why why why why why why?

do you get the crown of thorns for the machocist on your xmas list? do you get it for somebody who you don’t really like, who you think needs a little pain in their life? do you get it for somebody who you find to be rather jesus-like, and therefore they need some ACTUAL PAIN and suffering????

the ACTUAL CROWN OF THORNS comes with a certificate of authenticity.

THANK GOD.

ok, i figure you probably think i’m making this up, so here is the link to the page on their website:

Crown of Thorns!

crown of thorns.

something to make you smile on an otherwise bleak sunday night.

ok then,

grace about to order a gross of crowns of thorns, just in case i can’t find anything more appropriate for my loved ones this xmas season.

sunday afternoon [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:19 pm

yesterday, mom, my aunt sandy, randy and i went to the cat show. there were many very cute cats, and quite a few people there viewing them. there were many cat-related things for sale. the only one i found appalling was a sweatshirt featuring a cat wearing a red hat. appalling.

i wore a pink t-shirt to the show, with a glittery picture of the pink panther on the front. amy gave it to me, and it’s very nice, and i’ve been waiting to wear it all summer.

i tried it on with a pair of my new low rise, flared jeans, but i decided i just couldn’t wear them, because quite a bit of my very very VERY white stomach was exposed. yuck, is all i have to say.

instead, i wore a very presentable pair of my old jeans. they were levis, and they weren’t low rise and they weren’t bell bottom. but i felt they looked just fine. it’s not like it was a fashion show we were going to, after all.

after the show, i explained to randy about my issue with the jeans. i said, “isn’t it OK to wear these jeans, even though they’re not low rise flares?” he said “it’s ok to wear them to the cat show this one time, but no. don’t wear them out in public again.”

oh boy. i discussed this with amy, and pointed out the white stomach problem, and she said IT DOESN’T MATTER ABOUT YOUR STOMACH, WEAR THE LOW RISE JEANS.

what am i supposed to do about the fashion police? maybe i could wear another shirt under the pink panther t-shirt. last night i wore my zipped jacket over it. amy suggested that i use self-tanner, and that made me laugh, the thought of having a striped stomach.

did you see JEKYLL & HYDE yet? i’m going again, next sunday. randy got me a good ticket for the show. i’m very excited. i wish i was seeing it right now. he said it was sold out last night, which is great, it should have been.

i finally got a massage yesterday. i knew i’ve needed one for several months now, but i’ve been bad about doing it, even though i knew i had a lot of stress.

every bit of my body hurt when i got the massage. i knew it was beyond bad when i got my face massaged, and even my temples were sore. there was no part of my body that wasn’t all stressed out. i do feel better today, but i really need a massage a day for the next month or so.

my first paper is due tomorrow, for my english class. all i have to do is format it, and it’ll be done. i feel that it’s not great, but i’m not worried about it, because i did all i could do. erica still had to start writing last night. she didn’t seem panicked about it, but she has the ability to seem very calm and collected about things. i’d be completely out of my mind if i had to write the whole thing, but she’s written plenty of papers.

yesterday afternoon i thought i’d solved all my problems in life. i saw a guy driving down the street in an RV, and i thought, why don’t i just buy an RV? that way i could have a place to live in, but i wouldn’t have to pin myself down to staying here in spfld. i could leave on a moment’s notice, and take my home with me.

for at least eight minutes, i was really happy.

but then i thought about it a while, and decided this isn’t probably the best idea. i have somehow managed to accumulate too much stuff, and it wouldn’t all fit in the RV. and also, i realized that one of my goals in life is to have a basement. if i had a basement, i could store all kinds of stuff. not that i need to store all kinds of stuff, but i could if i wanted to. a basement is a top priority, so i guess the RV is out. at least i was happy for a few minutes yesterday.

not that i’m not happy, please don’t think i’m being NEGATIVE in any way. even though it’s sunday. even though i’m really sluggish today.

aunt sandy is sitting across from me right now, and she’s happy that i’m writing, because she’ll read this tomorrow morning when she gets to work. ok, so at least i’m brightening somebody’s day one day in advance, despite my general overall surliness at the moment.

perhaps i need a nap.

after i format my paper.

and after i work on my PLAY, which i haven’t worked on at all this entire weekend. because of my overall badness.

ok ok ok,
grace starting the sunday night slump in advance.

Oct. 15, 2005

1:12 a.m. - RATZ! [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 1:19 am
i think i’m actually asleep. i should be asleep, anyway, but i’m not.

GO SEE JEKYLL & HYDE. Go tomorow night, or sunday afternoon, or next weekend. YOU HAVE TO GO SEE IT.

my expectations were low. very, very low.

it was incredible.

the musical is incredible.

the acting...i just can’t believe how good it was.

mary jo curry - well, i first saw her a few years ago in “anything goes,” and when she opened her mouth and started to sing, i was bowled over. and i’ve seen her in a couple other things, and every time she’s phenomenal. so i already KNEW she would be great in this. and she was.

she was even better, because the music was so good.

but like i said, i knew already she’d be good.

but everybody was good. the woman who played the other lead, her name is Brittany, she was also really good. i can’t remember her last name, and it’s ONE FIFTEEN IN THE MORNING NOW, so i’m not about to go look it up. maybe i’ll let you know tomorrow. she was also in “anything goes.”

but the thing is - joshua ratz. jekyll & hyde. i can’t believe how good he was. i mean, i just can’t believe it. how good he was. i went to gallina’s pizza with randy after the show, where the cast was eating and drinking, and i finally went up to joshua and told him i was a friend of randy’s, and that he was really good.

i know he heard this all night long, a string of “you were fantastic”s, but i had to tell him anyway. because he was.

i had such very low expectations of the show.

it was so good.

i wish i could find a few more colorful adjectives, but this is the best i can do after one a.m.

amanda neubauer, who was also in the show, is going to go running for 10-12 miles tomorrrow. how does she do that?

randy was also really good. he had to be mean, and he was good at being mean, even though he’s the nicest person i know.

eric huber was also very mean, and an absolute BASTARD, and he’s also the nicest person i know.

they were all good, but especially joshua ratz.

he’s in law school (HOW CAN HE GET HIS HOMEWORK DONE WHILE HAVING THIS HUGE LEADING ROLE????). I really wanted to say to him “why don’t you forget about law school for 10 years or so, and just pursue this acting thing, since you’re so extraordinary at it?”

instead, i just told him how good he was. one of the legions of people saying that.

i must sleep now.

go see the show. i’m going to go again, because it was so very good.

good night, good night,

grace completely delirious with fatigue, and i’m not sure how i’m managing to type at all, but i do have to say that the typing is going much, much slower than usual.

Oct. 14, 2005

5:55 p.m. friday [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 6:07 pm

if you had to sit inside all day today, i’m sorry, but please, please, go outside tomorrow. it’s going to be lovely yet again. it was so warm today that i had to turn on my air conditioning in the car! crazy.

i bought three pieces of lavender luggage. it’s very lovely, and hopefully it won’t fall apart when i take it to denver.

i’m drinking a DIET COKE WITH LIME right now. this is like drinking two cups of coffee, for all you coffee drinkers. no caffeine for me usually, but i need it right now.

today somebody told me that jekyll & hyde is “very dark.” oh brother. i hope i don’t hate it.

i’d like to see wallace and grommit tonight instead, but i have to go because randy is in it.

my aunt sandy is here now; she brought me a beautiful painting of two kitties that she did. folk art, she calls it. maybe i’ll take a photo of it and post it here. i wonder if it would turn out? i’ll try.

i came very very close to finally FINALLY making a new video. i called kurt this week, and we were going to shoot one or maybe even two of them, but he’s going away tomorrow and won’t be back for a week. i have the video camera, i have the software for creating a video on my computer, but i don’t have the knowledge to actually put the video on the website. i need to learn how to do it. but i can’t learn next week because kurt will be gone.

at least i came close! soon, SOON, i will have another video, and then, WATCH OUT, because i’ll have more and more of them.

i wrote a column for the spfld roadrunner’s newsletter today. didn’t work on the play, but i FEEL that i’ll get to it this weekend, despite the much busy-ness. i have to get going on the play, because TIME IS RUNNING OUT.

i read the paper briefly this afternoon, and it’s pretty much too depressing to think about. the thousands of people who died in the pakistan earthquake, and there are going to be 2.3 million people homeless, but they said they’re getting 2 million blankets, so that leaves .3 million people BLANKETLESS, and winter is almost there.

and the avian flu has spread to europe, and even though countries are starting to panic and stockpile viruses, they didn’t give enough to the UN to combat the actual flu that the birds now have. see, if they could eradicate the flu IN THE BIRDS, then WE WOULDN’T GET IT.

doesn’t it seem extremely painfully obvious that this needs to be done?

but they requested the money over two years ago, and they got a paltry amount compared to the amount they requested.

i don’t even want to read the paper anymore.

also, i forgot to mention this, there’s a story here in spfld about somebody stealing a red-tailed hawk from the zoo. the hawk can’t survive in the wild because he doesn’t know how to hunt. they caught the cretin who stole him - the guy wanted the bird to “fly free.” instead, if they can’t find him, he’ll probably die, either hit by a car or he’ll starve to death.

cretin.

maybe the hawk will be found, but these hawks are very common, so he’ll be hard to spot, except he’ll be low to the ground, and he probably won’t fly away if you spot him.

whew, too many bad things. and now i’m going to go see a VERY DARK PLAY.

hopefully it’ll be dark and entertaining.

and tomorrow, the cat show, which i know will be entertaining.

ok ok ok, the weekend awaits.

grace

NOON on friday [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:57 am

tired now. knew the euphoria wouldn’t last.

not a downward spiral or anything, just need a nap.

but it’s only NOON. you haven’t been OUT OF BED LONG ENOUGH for a nap.

yet.

i have a massage in a few minutes, but i’m going to sit outside for a while and absorb some important sunlight.

i hope you have the chance to be outside today, because it’s DAZZLING out there.

ok then,

grace

9:51 a.m. FRIDAY [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:54 am

and i have SO MUCH ENERGY THIS MORNING. because of running (FAST!) and then drinking my magic soy protein breakfast of champions. i hope you order some, but then again, maybe it wouldn’t have the same effect on you. no promises, no money-back guarantee.

as i headed out the door for work, i thought, I COULD RUN TO CHATHAM!

but then i’d be very tired for the rest of the day.

instead of so ENERGIZED.

maybe the energy is also because it’s FRIDAY. whoo, baby.

ok then, i have to make people here at the hospital feel SO MUCH BETTER right now.

nice to be able to do that.

ok ok ok,

grace hoping the mood won’t swing back down anytime soon...

Oct. 13, 2005

9:01 p.m. thursday [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:05 pm
seven pages done! that’s HUGE! plus i figured out some things about where the story is going. i realy love writing, and maybe, just MAYBE i’ll manage to keep going.

tomorrow afternoon, after doing massages, i’m going to buy a new suitcase. the one i usually take places got a big rip in it when it got lost the last time i went to denver. they’re practically GIVING THE LUGGAGE AWAY at a big sale tomorrow at bergner’s, and the one in the paper was PURPLE. i would love to have a piece of colored luggage, because, of course, everybody has black suitcases, making it impossible to identify your own.

but right after luggage-purchasing, i’m going to WRITE WRITE WRITE.

before i go to randy’s OPENING NIGHT EXTRAVAGANZA!

that is all for now.

friday is coming.

ok then,

grace feeling good about at least finally accomplishing SOMETHING, so the whole day isn’t just a complete and total waste.

7:50 p.m. [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 7:52 pm
made it to the end of the scene. YEAH! but just spent several minutes looking things up online. BAD BAD BAD.

must continue to focus...or at least go look at the snack selection in the vending machine.

7:09 p.m. thursday [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 7:15 pm

FINALLY i started writing, after re-reading what i’d written, and i’ve written about a page and a half, not much, but at least i’m FINALLY DOING SOMETHING AGAIN.

how will i continue tomorow, though?

don’t think about that now. just keep writing.

i wrote to my professor earlier in the week and suggested that we meet in the comfy lounge at the library, so here we are. it’s very nice here. i’m sitting in a chair, my feet on a coffee table. just like being at home, except fewer distractions.

ok, one quick story about my love/hate relationship -

it’s BENTOH’S. bentoh’s is this delicious, REALY DELICIOUS restaurant downtown, and they have a little sushi (just rolls), and they have an incredible salad which features two huge pieces of perfectly-prepared pieces of salmon, plus the have many other great things.

the restaurant has about three tables inside, and four outside, and they’re only open for lunch.

whenever we’ve gone there, it’s always too crowded, and so we don’t stay. this is always disheartening, because it’s FABULOUS.

but i always end up hating them, because they don’t even seem to care that they have no tables hardly, and sometimes they’re out of things.

they do a huge carryout business, and do lots of catering, so clearly, this lunch thing is just an aside.

and it MAKES ME MAD.

but today, today...i got there at 11:30. i ran for 50 minutes this morning, and all i’d had was my delicious STRAWBERRY SOY PROTEIND DRINK, so i was starving. i waited for randy, who was getting new glasses.

i waited. and waited. he called to give me updates. i sat at an outdoor table and many people i knew passed by.

i waited some more. and then, finally, at 12:15, he showed up, and we got lunch, and it was perfect. and so i LOVE bentoh’s, but i still hate them, especially because it’s going to be cold and then we’d have to eat inside but there are never free tables, and they’re all very very close together and it’s too crowded.

love and hate. there aren’t enough grey areas in my life.

i have to keep writing.

ok then,

grace and tomorrow is FRIDAY already. (easy to say now that the slow week has kept poking along)

THURSDAY NIGHT: soy, puffballs, and a love-hate relationship. plus the inherent laziness, of course. [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 6:04 pm
this afternoon i confessed to mom (i always have to confess things to SOMEBODY. last night i confessed to amy that i’d just bought THREE NEW PURSES, when i really shouldn’t be buying anything at all. i confessed to amy because she buys expensive purses, plus she buys lots of things, and i figured if anybody could justify a purchase, it would be amy. so that shows how much i suck, that i’d select as a confessee somebody who i knew would tell me it’s ok) that i’ve been being VERY VERY LAZY.

you know what she said?

“i know, grace, i read your website.”

the really bad thing about this is that i thought the laziness was just a phenomenon TODAY. but i just read entries, and yeah, tuesday, also very lazy. so, not only lazy, but of course incredibly, INCREDIBLY forgetful.

bad, bad, bad. especially today, because it was so warm, sunny, beautiful outside. it was impossible to even contemplate sitting down and working...even though i could have done it OUTSIDE.

no excuses. just lazy.

i’m already at playwriting class, though, and i got here at 5:30 and class doesn’t start till six, so i can do a bunch of writing here so i can start focusing on my PLAY at six. which gives me exactly six minutes. luckily i’m a very fast typer (one of my three good qualities).

PUFFBALLS: one time i was taking a walk, and somebody pointed out a puffball to me. i’d never seen one. it was roughly grapefruit size, and sort of dark beige, and when you squeeze it, a puff puffs out. it was cool, and i’d never seen one, and the person taking the walk with me said they were usually bigger. but i didn’t see any anymore.

until i went running at the lake, and i kept seeing a big white ball the size of a volleyball. i ran by it every day, and i thought it was made of cement, a big white cement ball. i was pretty sure that’s what it was, and i idly wondered how a big cement ball could have gotten there, but i never stopped.

finally, one day i stopped and touched it - and it was a puffball! very cool. i see it every day, only now it’s starting to deteriorate, and it’s sort of a green-beige color. but there are other puffballs around, just sitting there, large and white and very lovely. i should take a picture of one, but i don’t take my camera when i’m running.

i thought i’d look them up online in order to give you more info, and i found two websites (there are lots of websites, but these looked pretty good).

the oddest thing i found out is that people EAT puffballs! hmm. i wouldn’t want to eat a puffball. i just like looking at them. the websites have recipes for cooking puffballs. anyway, here are the links:

puffball madness! and more puffball stuff.

puffballs.

ok, onto
SOY.

i’m sure i’ve written this before, but it seems that soon all we’ll eat is soy. i have become highly addicted to STRAWBERRY PURE SOY PROTEIN ISOLATE POWDER. you mix it with milk, and i drink a glass every morning for breakfast, after running. it’s 24 grams of soy protein, and it gives me energy, and i love it and i’m addicted. here is what they say about it in the product description:

“100% Soy Protein, Vegetarian Formula. Pure Soy Protein Isolate Powder supplies important nutrients which the body requires daily for optimum health. It provides essential amino acids in a versatile powder which is low in fat and free of carbohydrates. It is also a superior protein source for vegetarians and vegans. Enjoy the benefits of our low-calorie soy protein powder available in Natural, Chocolate and Vanilla flavors.”

the website, in case you feel you have to order it right now, is: SOY!

sometimes i have the soy drink in the morning, and then a soy burger for lunch. of course, sometimes (today) i also have a big rich frosted doughnut as a midafternoon snack, but that’s just because i’m BAD.

i love soy.

damn, it’s now 6:02 and people are wandering into the library to start class, which is going to only involve WRITING OUR PLAYS, so i don’t have time to talk about my love-hate relationship. MUST WORK.

i’ll take a break, though, and then i’ll get back to you.

Oct. 12, 2005

WEDNESDAY NIGHT... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:01 pm

as the week continues to crawl along at a snail’s pace...

whew, i was going to go to sleep ULTRA-EARLY tonight, but that would have been right now. i don’t know why i’m so tired.

in 1999, for xmas, my parents bought me a UNITED STATES OF AMERICA STATE COIN COLLECTOR’S MAP. it’s made of cardboard, a big map of the US, with holes for the new quarters, one in each state.

all the other people i know who have these things are children.

i felt obliged to start putting the quarters in it, and i even dragged the the thing to la when i moved there (it’s flat and takes up almost no space) and today i was very excited because i got a KANSAS quarter, leaving me only one more for the year. that would be west virginia.

and after that, only THREE YEARS TO GO. whew. it’s been quite a burden, but then my job will be complete. my mission in life, over. i’ll have to think of a new challenge.

that is all for now.

ok then,

GRACE

Oct. 11, 2005

photos [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:34 pm
here’s a photo of gregg and felicia, in “you can’t take it with you.”

gregg & felicia

and here’s a photo of me in the show. having fun. you have to have fun.

grace

smile.

on tuesday night... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:58 pm
i sit here, hoping, always hoping, ever hopefuly (WHEN WILL YOU LEARN TO QUIT BEING SO DAMN HOPEFUL???), that i’ll get an e-mail from somebody. considering all the writing i do, i get an amazingly miniscule amount of correspondence from anybody.

i got a few e-mails today, but tonight there were a couple of note.

instead of especially cheerful things, though, they were just the opposite.

the first, which i’m trying to believe, but it seems so unbelievable to me - one of the people in “you can’t take it with you” died early this morning. his name is gregg tichacek, and he was a really nice guy, low-key, unassuming, friendly. my friend gil sent me an e-mail tonight telling me the news.

erica told me about when they all went to a karaoke night at a bar during “paint your wagon,” which greg was also in, and how he played the harmonica, and he was really good. i’m sorry i missed his performance.

gil also wrote about comedy, his thought on it, and once again, i think, comedy is vital to life.

whew.

i keep saying, over and over i know, that you have to relish life, you have to make the most of it, you have to try to find happiness, joy, fun, in every single day, because you don’t know if it will be your last. don’t forget to tell somebody you love that you love them.

whew again.

i didn’t tell anybody that i loved them today, but i did make my family a perfect pizza. actually, two perfect pizzas, one for my dad with italian sausage, and a veggie pizza for everybody else.

also pretty perfect oatmeal chocolate chip black walnut coconut cookies.

ok, here’s the other sad thing - the warehouse which held a bunch of the props from past wallace and grommit productions burned to the ground. the creator of W&G, nick park, pointed out that in light of the most recent tragic earthquake in pakistan, this destruction isn’t such a big deal.

but it’s still pretty sad to me. here’s the website:
wallace and grommit news

ok, gee, downward spiral here, must think of some funny note to end on...

all right maybe it’s not funny, but it’s going to be fun - well, a few fun things - gee, i can’t believe i haven’t mentioned this before, but randy is in JEKYLL & HYDE, the musical, which opens this friday night at the center for the arts. I’m going, even though he keeps describing the violent murders that occur throughout and i keep telling him that it sounds horrible, but he assures me it’s going to be good.

anyway, go see it, support the arts.

also, the cat show is this weekend, although not the dog show, which is next weekend, and it’s too bad they’re not the same weekend, but that’s ok.

AND, next weekend, there is this very cool thing at washington park - there are (allegedly) going to be 2,000 decorated pumpkins on display a the carillon and around the garden there, friday and saturday nights. it’s a fundraiser, for what i can’t remember, but it’s only five bucks and sounds fantastic.

fun stuff coming up. right here.

enjoy yourself.

(and please, grace, TAKE YOUR OWN ADVICE).

ok then,

grace still on tuesday which is now lasting at least a week.

now what am i gonna do? [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 4:05 pm

(besides TOTALLY WASTING TIME and NOT GETTING ANY HOMEWORK DONE) - i remembered that in class n monday night, people were talking about the schedule for the spring, so i’ve been looking at it.

NONE OF THE ENGLISH CLASSES LOOKS APPEALING AT ALL.

so now what am i supposed to do? i have to take SOMETHING.

and it’s always, always something.

belated wishes, plus VULTURE FEST... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:43 pm

SOMEBODY, at least, sent me belated columbus day wishes. he also sent me a website, about a VULTUREFEST, which sounds kind of cool. it’s in southern illinois, near Giant City state park, where i’ve been wanting to go camping, except now it’s probably too cold for that. but anyway, here'sthe website: VULTURE FEST!

i saw colorado on the national news this morning, because of all the snow. christine says it’s not that bad there in denver. but she also said that she was glad because it got UP TO 48! this from the woman who would start a fire in the fireplace in LA when the temperature dropped below 60 degrees.

her parents from texas are going to visit her this weekend, but they won’t get to see any snow, since it’ll already by 70 there by then. like christine, they haven’t been around snow, really, all their lives.

WOULDN’T THAT BE GREAT???

i wish there was a cheap place to live where it’s warm all the time, except for mexico.

except i do like mexican food a lot.

i should be putting the finishing touches on my english paper RIGHT THIS MINUTE. except it’s not due till monday, which seems like an eternity.

the funny thing about my monday night professor is how he hasn’t seen a movie in about 30 years. i wonder if he’s seen any current plays.

i should also be WORKING ON MY PLAY.

(always hoping that writing about needing to do it will spur me on to actually doing it, trying always to thwart the rampant EXTREME LAZINESS).

ok ok ok,

grace and it’s only TUESDAY, it feels like the week should have progressed a little more by now already.

1:22 a.m. [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 1:21 am

i’ve been up reading.

no excuse to still be awake.

no excuse.

haven’t been this tired in....can’t remember when.

can’t remember anything at all, as a matter of fact.

sleep, now.

Oct. 10, 2005

bitter disappointment as columbus day comes to a close... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:20 pm
i got no columbus day gifts. no invitations to a columbus day dinner, nobody asked me to join them for a columbus day parade, nobody asked me to be IN a columbus day parade.

i didn’t even get a columbus day card.

i’m trying to get over it.

SNOW IN DENVER UPDATE:

it snowed a lot during the day, and it was very heavy snow, which caused VERY HUGE BRANCHES to fall, which christine found utterly, utterly fascinating. this is because this is only her second winter in a snowy climate, and last year they had no heavy snow at all, only the light kind.

but the snow stopped, but they’re supposed to have a couple more inches tonight, but by wednesday it’s going to be 60.

so really, denver is for the lightweight snow person. not like us people living here in the heart of the grey snowy wasteland, where we won’t see the sun all winter long.

class was pretty good tonight, especially because it forced me to sit down. i had problems keeping still today. i thoroughly cleaned my dad’s car, including the interior, which was BEYOND FILTHY, the floor of the car looked like a forest of leaves. and then i took a bike ride because it was sunny and lovely. i saw four more deer, although two of them could have been the deer i saw earlier. once again, the deer didn’t run away. maybe they’re all getting used to me. “there’s that girl with the bright yellow jacket, she’s harmless. doesn’t she have anything else to wear?”

they always look so startled to see me. “what are you doing going by again today, wasn’t that run this morning enough? what are you, some kind of overexercising nutcase?”

christine informed me that i ALWAYS talked about the fact that my hiking boots were lost. i don’t remember ever sharing that information with her.

this is frightening, my lack of memory.

oh yeah, i also did lots of random housecleaning again today.

a little too busy.

we watched a royal shakespeare production of “tartuffe” in class, and it was pretty funny. the guy who had the lead role was very strange, though, and he kept reminding me of the guy who played riff raff in “rocky horror.” by the way, that guy’s name real name is richard o'brien, and he’s the one who WROTE the movie. well, first he wrote the play. i know this because i looked it up online, you can read for yourself at rocky horror.

i was going to make a very important point about tartuffe and rocky horror, but since i spent a bunch of time reading all about rocky horror, now i can’t remember it. AND i want to see rocky horror again.

i think i’ll sleep well tonight. i hope you do, too.

ok then,

grace falling asleep as i type...

happy columbus day [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:52 pm

are you enjoying the festivities of the day - the parades, the food, the presents?

at least i know some people had the day off, because when i went running this morning, there weren’t many cars on the road.

i saw a dead raccoon, and later, two deer (not dead). the deer just looked at me as i ran by. i’m not a threat to anybody.

christine called. it snowed all night in denver. they’re going to get TEN INCHES OF SNOW TODAY.

i’ve been thiking about it, though, and here the thing - it’s snowing a ridiculous amount, and it’s only OCTOBER 10TH, and the thought of that is too awful to think about. but on the other hand, it’s going to warm up there starting on wednesday, and by friday it’s supposed to be in the 70’s and sunny.

that’s a huge difference between there and here. if it snowed 10 inches here, i’m sure it would have already been cold for a while, and the snow would pretty much take forever to melt. it would stay cold, there’d be no happy 70-degree sunny weather to look forward to, but instead, the ceaseless neverending mind-numbing grey cold of winter.

why do i live here again?

i want to buy a house, but i don’t want to buy a house, because if i buy a house, i’m going to live in it for a good long while. years and years. but if i buy a house, that means i’ll be here, year after year, winter after winter.

i guess i’ll see how this winter goes, if i manage to survive another one.

i am glad that we’re not having 10 inches of snow right now.

ok then,

grace, who was going to write on here last night at 1:30 a.m. when i was still awake and very mad about it, but decided it was too much effort to open up the computer and besides, i didn’t have anything at all pleasant to say.

Oct. 09, 2005

p.s. [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:04 pm

yeah, soon it’s going to be too late to go to sleep early, but what can i do? i have 15 sweater or little jacket kinds of things, that i’d theoretically wear over a shirt. i waear short-sleeved shirts because of doing massage, but i could have on one of these FIFTEEN different sweater-type things if i wanted to.

but when i was pulling all these sweaters out of another closet and putting them into my main closet, i thought about the fact that i rarely wear any of these sweaters, even though most are cute, most are stylish, and i know that i’ve only worn a couple of them maybe once or twice.

what do i wear instead? i have this black fleecy kind of zippered jacked, that amy gave me a few years ago, that goes with a pair of black sweats. the jacket is a ANIMAL HAIR MAGNET, and usually is pretty well covered with some kind of animal hair.

i wear it all the time.

i lost it for a while last winter, because i left it at the center for the arts when i was in a play, but one day my mom went there and looked in the lost-n-found, and there it was.

since it’s been chilly the past few days, it’s the only jacket i’ve even thought about wearing.

why do i even HAVE those 15 other sweaters, then? to take up room in my closet.

on the other hand, i only have ONE bright yellow hooded jacket to wear when running when it’s chilly. it’s good to wear because it makes me highly visible, but i desperately need one more bright jacket of some kind, so i don’t have to wear the bright yellow jacket every day because it’s just not very hygenic because i don’t do laundry every day.

too bad i couldn’t trade in a few of the sweaters for a new running jacket.

maybe i’ll look for one tomorrow afternoon, except it’s a holiday so there will probably be too many people out in the stores.

garrison keillor wrote a nice little column today about the importance of being happy, making your own fun, stuff like that, stuff that i KEEP SAYING (but not usually heeding).

i’m really going to sleep now.

i wish i had a really good book to read.

goodnight, sweet dreams,

grace

one more thing [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:34 pm

i was looking at the statistics of the site. erica had asked me about the “bad people” i keep talking about who were posting all kinds of comments on the site, and i explained to her that they’re different spam websites, mostly online poker and gambling and diet pills and stuff. they would post lots of comments on each of my entries, which is why i had to eliminate the comments section. they’re still trying to post them, even though there’s nowhere for them to go. the numbers are slowing, at least, and maybe, eventually, they’ll go away.

but probably not.

but at least they’re not able to post.

anyway, i’ve been noticing that there are more and more spanish-language sites. poker4spain, jugar -portales-internet, stuff like that. there are a few sites from the UK, one from australia, but nowhere else. i just wonder how these particular sites managed to find my little obscure site.

there is probably a good, logical computereze explanation for it, but i don’t know what that could be.

i’m not going to clean anything else tonight.

ok then,

grace although the more i notice how dusty things are the more i’m inclined to keep cleaning...

sunday night, the WORST NIGHT OF THE WEEK. [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:12 pm
i just read my entry where i was going to reward myself for surviving the weekend by going to see the new wallace & grommit movie. WHY DIDN’T I DO THAT?

do you want to know the shitty thing i did instead? i got out all my winter clothes, and i kept going through my tons and TONS of clothes and got rid of as many as i could, but i still have WAY TOO MANY CLOTHES, and you’d think that since i have this huge amount of clothes, i’d have a lot more CUTE ones.

and then i did the same thing with my shoes, which mostly involved moving many pairs of black sandals off my shoe rack and piling them in my closet, and taking all my black shoes that aren’t sandals out of the closet and hanging them on the shoe rack.

i do have one pair of spiky green very sexy pumps that randy bought me last xmas to go with a very stylish green outfit, but who knows when i’ll get to wear it. somewhere where i can sit a lot.

anyway, at least things are a little more clean right now, which i guess is rewarding, but it’s NOT A LOT OF FUN.

feeling mighty snarly this evening. mighty snarly. grrrr.

keeping up with this whole purging thing, i started looking through all my old saved e-mails; i just looked at the ones i’ve received. i deleted a few here and there, and now the list is down to 11,309. so at least paring down the list is a job i can continue FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. randomly opened a few, and was amazed (but why were you amazed, anyway? i don’t think you should be surprised at all by this) to see that people were giving me the same kind of advice back in 2000 that they are today. have i gotten nowhere since then? sort of not. sort of, but also sort of not. i’d have to say mostly not.

yesterday i spent three hours in the afternoon working on my english paper, and then two more hours, and then two more hours today. THAT’S A LOT OF HOURS. i’m afraid it’s not good enough, i’ve never really tried to write a paper like this where you have to use critical material, and i keep worrying that maybe i’m just describing things, when i should be making a bunch of salient, thoughtful points about stuff. i don’t know, all i know is i’m very tired of working on it.

i didn’t work on writing my play at all, but at least it’s something i kind of look forward to, so there’s a good chance i’ll actually do that this week. i’m already on the second act, so at least it’s coming right along, and on thursday night during class i wrote a very funny scene.

WHY didn’t i go see wallace and grommit? at least i still have it to look forward to...

but i’m so busy this week, maybe i can go NEXT sunday night. maybe if i start planning that right now, it’ll actually happen.

here’s one good thing that happened to me tonight - i found the control for my electric blanket. the blanket, being very large, was easy to find, but i was sure i was never going to find the controls, but i finally found them in the bottom of a closet in a spare bedroom. AND, and this is the really good thing, i found my hiking boots! i’ve been looking for my hiking boots for at least a couple of years now, and i found them in a bag with some shoes that my sister gave me that i didn’t want.

i’m going to denver soon, and i’d wished i could take the hiking boots, but i figured they were gone forever. but they’re not. but they’re probably too heavy to take to denver anyway, but at least i have them. maybe i’ll do some hiking here in my hiking boots, maybe even NEXT WEEKEND, even though i have to finalize my paper, but maybe it’s already final enough. i want to go hiking. in my boots. (in the words of erica, “these boots are made for walkin'.....”)

the last time i went to denver, my luggage was on some other flight, and i didn’t get it for a couple of days. i’d brought a huge bag with me that was absolutely stuffed with clothes, and before it finally arrived, i just wore this same pair of sweats, and borrowed tops from christine’s sister. at this point i thought WHY TAKE SO MUCH STUFF WITH YOU ALL THE TIME??? so i’m trying to remember that when i travel again.

actually, i might not even hike at all in denver because maybe it’ll be TOO DAMN COLD. christine said that although it was sunny and lovely there today, TOMORROW IT’S SUPPOSED TO SNOW.

yeah. holy moley. gee, what would i do if i woke up in the morning and it had snowed?

i definitely, definitely wouldn’t get out of bed.

and then, what if i was nominated for the supreme court and everybody thought that was a horrible, horrible idea, and they made fun of my severe black eyeliner and they called me a “pitbull in size six shoes,” AND it snowed in the morning? gee, if that happened, i think i’d just stay in bed all week.

i still feel bad for harriet miers, and if i knew her phone number, i’d call her up and tell her to go see wallace & grommit.

all i’m going to take to denver are my tiger pants.

ok then,

grace going to go to sleep very early tonight, although usually this backfires horribly and i toss and turn and finally fall asleep but then wake up a lot all during the night so maybe never mind about the very very early part, maybe i’ll just aim for going to sleep at a reasonable hour.

Oct. 07, 2005

one more thing tonight [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:39 pm

i didn’t know until this morning that EVERYBODY HATES HARRIET MIERS. i never, ever read ann coulter’s column, but today she wrote that bush might as well pick his chauffer to be head of NASA, since he picks miers for the supreme court. this made me laugh.

the very conservative conservatives hate her, but there was a good editorial in the paper this morning about how nobody should like her, because she’s just this random person who happened to be bush’s own lawyer who he decided to nominate, and she doesn’t know much about supreme court things, which are VERY IMPORTANT.

this is how i imagine bush’s thinking might have been - “hmm, i need to pick somebody for the supreme court AGAIN, a lawyer would be a great idea, and laura’s been nagging me about getting woman...do i know any woman lawyers? hey, MY lawyer is a woman! well, there ya go, that’s simple, DAMN, i’m good at making fast decisions!”

right now i’m just glad i’m not harriet miers, because i’d hate it if everybody across the board thought i was horrible. that would be awfully depressing, i think. i mean, sometimes i have enough trouble trying to think of a reasn to get out of bed in the morning, but if i knew that everybody thought i was bad, if i knew that i was going to be raked over the coals and scrutinized to death, well, i don’t think i’d even get out of bed at all.

hopefully she’s got some rose-colored glasses handy.

ok then, goodnight,

grace

p.s. christine just called me from a very very loud bar, announcing, i think but i’m not sure because it was very very loud, that she’s found a friend who wants to go with us to the fair isle, where you can rent a house for two hundred bucks a year. i’m thinking this fair isle thing is a very good idea, in light of the flu pandemic, because i bet it wouldn’t hit there, because it’s too bitterly cold and INCREDIBLY WINDY. i can’t say i’d want to rent this house with christine AND this woman who i don’t even know at all, because it seems you’d have to have a very good idea that you’d get along with a person before moving to a very remote location with them. christine was very enthusiastic about the whole thing (i think), but then again, she can get these crazy ideas sometimes, especially when she’s had a couple of drinks. hopefully not more than a couple, because she has to drive home.

NOW i go to sleep. all night long.

ok then,

grace smith, happy to not be harriet miers (even though she makes SO MUCH MORE MONEY THAN ME!!!).

wikipedia.org, and stay away from semis [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:11 pm
christine read my entry below about the asian flu virus, and this morning she was looking up the flu pandemic in 1918 online on a free online encyclopedia. its wikipedia.org, and i feel, once again, that christine knows many secret online things that she’s KEEPING FROM ME. but at least sometimes she lets one slip.

i know there are many people who spend much much much more time on the computer than me, and they have lots of this secret knowledge.

but that’s ok if you don’t want to share. i don’t feel left out or anything.

one time a guy told me a story about when he used to be a cop, and he was trying to get a semi truck (which was MOVING) away from this guy who had stolen it, and the thief started punching him, and the ex-cop fell out of the truck and was run over. i don’t know how he survived, but he’s had constant pain since then, plus he doesn’t walk so well.

now, today, a guy told me that he’s had neck pain for a few years, because he drives a semi and it ROLLED. i finally said, “you mean, it rolled over?” yep, he said. very high winds.

i feel that it a semi rolled over, the person inside would die.

when i was a child, i was sure that if you threw a brick at the TV, the TV would catch fire and explode and your house would blow up and you would die. i have no idea where this odd idea came from, but i was quite sure of it. it’s not like i knew anybody who threw bricks at tvs, i wasn’t around violent people, we had no bricks near the tv as i recall.

just one of those things that a kid thinks.

but because of these incidents in trucks, i’m just going to stay clear of the semis altogether.

this wikipedia online encyclopedia is also available in spanish, italian, french, german, portuguese, swedish, japanese, and dutch. there aren’t as many articles in these other languages, and then there are even more languages like Bulgarian, chinese, and hebrew, with fewer articles, and even more languages like persian, kurdish, low saxon, and west frisian, with even fewer articles, and this keeps going on until there are languages which only have one article published thus far. but if you want, the website says you can another version in some other language, but just so you know, they already have articles in the language that the sesothos speak, as well as the guarani, the avars, and the kyrgyzs. and the igbos. but maybe you know a REALLY obscure language, and then you could be responsible for starting yet another addition of this fascinating encyclopedia.

this is just a little bit of the article about the Spanish Flu of 1918:

“In August 1918 the more deadly version broke out simultaneously in three disparate locations — Brest, France; Boston, Massachusetts; and Freetown, Sierra Leone. Many of the worst outbreaks of the ”Flu" were among soldiers, both at the front lines and in camps far away which soon spread into civilian populations. Severe outbreaks often required hospitalization and even with the best of care often killed one third of those infected. The strain was unusual in commonly killing many young and healthy victims, as opposed to more common influenzas which caused the bulk of their mortality among newborns and the old and infirm. People without symptoms could be struck suddenly and be rendered too feeble to walk within hours; many would die the next day. Symptoms included a blue tint to the face and coughing up blood caused by severe obstruction of the lungs.

Mortality in the fast-progressing cases was primarily from pneumonia, by virus-induced consolidation. Slower progressing cases featured secondary bacterial pneumonias while some suspect neural involvement led to psychiatric disorders in a minority of cases. Some deaths resulted from malnourishment and even animal attacks in overwhelmed communities."

here’s another little chilling tidbit from the article:

“The social effects were intense due to the speed of the epidemic. AIDS killed 25 million in its first 25 years, but the Spanish flu may have killed as many in only 25 weeks beginning in September 1918.”

just something to think about. read the article for yourself.

i didn’t spend my entire day thinking about the flu. i mostly spent it running around trying to get a new cell phone. i was talking to christine on the phone, and my phone just kept hanging up. i kept thinking that maybe it was just some kind of fluke, and would somehow, miraculously, heal itself, but then i decided to just go get a new one.

i got one just like my old one, only it’s a newer model. i got this particular phone because i could use my handsfree thing with the new phone.

of course it didn’t work.

i drove across town to buy a new handsfree thing, but they didn’t have any $8 ones at wal-mart. luckily there’s a cingular store on almost every corner, so i didn’t have to drive across town again, but i did have to pay 20 bucks for a new handsfree thing, and it least it works. somehow, SOMEHOW, i must figure out how not to break/lose it immediately. this will be a challenge.

there are many many other little annoying things that happened with the phone purchase, things that filled up hours of time, but at least i have a working phone again. whew. it does have about one, or maybe two, new features, and one is that i can have just a plain ring. i like that, just the ring, no fancy song or anything silly like that.

“ring ring,” that’s all my phone does.

the new wallace & grommit movie opened today, but i didn’t go. maybe i’ll go on sunday night, as a reward for getting SO MUCH HOMEWORK DONE. if i think of it like that, maybe that’ll inspire me to GET A LOT OF HOMEWORK DONE.

all right already,

grace

Oct. 06, 2005

9:00! [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:03 pm

we get to leave! but now i don’t want to leave - i’m on a roll, i’ve gotten SO MUCH DONE tonight! being forced to sit here and write is a very very good thing. We get to do it again next week, and i just suggested to the woman sitting next to me that next time we need snacks and wine (as my characters eat snacks and drink wine).

ok then,

grace ending the day (but really, you have a while more to the day anyway, don’t you) in a good way, full of productivity.

8:22 p.m. [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 8:25 pm
i finished my soy butter-n-jam sandwich. i’m sick of sandwiches all the time.

the characters in my play are sitting around in their tent at night, as it rains outside. They’re three old friends, getting drunk on the wine that one served at her wedding, 15 years ago.

i wish i was sitting in a tent drinking wine right now.

except not getting drunk. just having a couple of glasses.

except it’s probably too chilly right now for the camping.

8:07 p.m. [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 8:11 pm

i’m getting a little writing done. i hate these flourescent lights.

YET MORE CONFESSING ON THURSDAY NIGHT [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 7:14 pm

i’m sitting here in playwriting class, and we now have two hours to work on our scripts. but suddenly it struck me that i have wireless service here! i could spend this whole two hours looking things up online if i wanted to! i mean, i’m sitting here in my chair, the professor isn’t going to come around and see if we’re writing, because he can see that we’re writing...but i’d better slow down my speed here, if he was paying any attention he’d know that a person couldn’t be writing a play this quickly.

i’m going to work now.

right now.

here i go.

ok then,

grace, continuing to be bad.

p.s. the flourescent lighting in here is really not conducive to being inspired to do any playwriting whatsoever.

p.s. [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:36 pm

i just want to confess to you that i’ve had this break this afternoon, i don’t have another client till 4:30, and i could have spent a good deal of time STUDYING, because i have plenty, PLENTY of stuff to do. and instead, here i sit, eating tiny candy bars and typing on my website and looking things up online that i feel i MUST KNOW ABOUT RIGHT NOW.

very bad.

can’t help it.

ok then,

grace very self-aware but that doesn’t make me get any better or change at all.

asian flu pandemic pandemonium [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:24 pm

people have been talking a lot lately about an asian flu pandemic. randy said he read that we’re CERTAIN to have one. this is alarming. here are a few things i found online about it.

this first one is from the voice of america, talking about the 1918 pandemic: “It was the 20th century’s greatest plague. Estimates of the 1918-1919 flu death toll range from 20 million to 50 million, more than died in the war that had just preceded it.”

how come we studied the world wars in school, but nobody ever mentioned any flu pandemics? i bet if teachers had talked about stuff like this, more kids would have thought about becoming scientists, in order to try to combat viruses. it makes me wish i’d become a scientist, except that i just can’t figure science out at all. as a matter of fact, just yesterday i was flipping through a magazine, and it had descriptions of various health things, like asthma and diabetes, and there were explanations of how medications and things worked on the cells, and there were big pictures and the print was all small words - and i kept reading it over and over, and i just couldn’t get it to make sense. this part of my brain has always been grossly stunted. i took chemistry my freshman year in college, and i got an A, but i never, every knew what was going on - i just furiously memorized everything, not having and kind of clue about what it all meant.

this just came out today:

WASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. administration sent mixed signals on the threat from bird flu on Thursday, with President George W. Bush urging mass production of vaccines while his health secretary played down the risk of a pandemic. All officials conceded the United States was unprepared for a possible pandemic, and pointed to a number of meetings being held this week to confront the problem.

The White House said Bush would meet U.S. manufacturers on Friday and urge them to come up with ways to mass produce a vaccine for the H5N1 avian influenza virus. The virus has killed or forced the destruction of tens of millions of birds and infected more than 100 people, killing at least 60 in four Asian nations since late 2003.

The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said an influenza pandemic that could kill millions is certain and may be imminent. However U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, while urging preparations for a possible outbreak, said the risk was relatively low and a pandemic probably would not happen.

“The probability that we’ll have a pandemic flu is unknown,” Leavitt said at a Washington health technology conference. “I will tell you from all I hear from scientists and physicians it is relatively low, but it is not zero.”

The risk is high enough that the United States should be prepared, he added. And it is not. “Here’s the dilemma: we’re not prepared as a country. No one is prepared in the world. We’re not alone in this,” Leavitt said.

“H5N1 may happen, but it probably won’t. If it does we need to be better prepared.”

i find it very weird that the head of the CDC says a pandemic is CERTAIN and may be imminent, while the health & human svs. secretary says it’s probably not going to happen. was he not listening to the head of the CDC? is he maybe another guy whose only prior job was being in charge of arabian horses? troubling.

so, in light of all this info. about the (probably going to happen) pandemic, i’ve been thinking a lot about how we all need to make a concerted effort to live life to the fullest, because we could all be dead by spring.

not to be negative or anything. but just being prepared.

so, right now, today, tell somebody you love that you love them. maybe you think they already know it, maybe you just said it yesterday, but it’s good to say. and DO something for somebody to show them you love them.

and, and this is harder, you should do something for somebody you’re not so crazy about. make an effort to reach out to somebody who gets on your nerves. sometimes i’ve done nice things for people i haven’t cared for, and it feels kind of good.

that’s all the lecturing for now. except who knows what tomorrow may bring, so you’d better make the most of today.

my friend judith is making the most of today, or at least of tomorrow - she and her husband are going on a two-week trip to egypt, leaving tomorrow from NYC. i looked at their itinerary this morning, and it’s filled with stuff like going to see this or that pyramid, going on a cruise, visiting some island...wow. i immediately became very jealous, and have decided i must try to save my money so i, too, can take a fabulous trip like that. not to egypt, i still hope to go to the south of france where i know there’s this wonderful place to rent, but i’ve been thinking about that for years and YEARS now, and i need to start taking action. saving money. working harder. making more of myself. getting things done. getting up earlier. taking vitamins more regularly. eating fewer chocolates.

the thing about the chocolate is that right now i’m at my sister’s hair salon. i was at panera earlier, where i had a healthy lunch, and then i was going to go online, but their system was down. this was a little alarming, but these things happen, so instead i came to amy’s.

but amy has lots of chocolates lying around. maybe i’ve mentioned this before - she has little bowls of mini hershey’s candy bars. i feel obliged to eat them when i’m here. sometimes before i come here i say DO NOT EAT ANY HERSHEY’S CANDY BARS TODAY, but it usually does no good at all.

very bad.

i’m eating one right this very minute.

making the most of today, but only in a satisfying-my-seriously-overdeveloped-sweettooth kind of way.

the other day while waiting for something, i was flipping through a “woman’s day” magazine. it was slightly horrifying to see that there was an article about xmas stuff, all the xmas stuff you can be starting RIGHT NOW.

as far as i’m concerned, summer just ended yesterday. i realize that technically it ended a few weeks ago, but yesterday it was hot, and today it feels like fall. i did take a nice walk last night, and it felt so much like summer, and i was wearing a summer dress that i bought and never got the chance to wear till last night, and so that was a pretty nice way to end the summer.

ok, i have to get out of here before i eat all the little bitty chocolates that are around.

tomorrow is FRIDAY, which is coming very quickly this week, i feel.

ok then,

grace on thursday

Oct. 04, 2005

I SURVIVED MONDAY, I HOPE YOU DID, TOO [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 1:02 am

but i did it just barely.

so, here’s the good thing that happened - well, last week i lost my stapler. i know it’s somewhere, but i kept looking in my office, and i got more and more mad, mostly because i have WAY too many pieces of paper in there, and i couldn’t find my stapler anywhere, and i NEED MY STAPLER. i printed out some critical articles for the paper i need to write, and i needed to STAPLE THEM TOGETHER.

so today i had to go to office max to buy a printer cartridge, because this morning i tried to print out more critical articles and first the printer jammed, and then it was out of ink, which was a very annoying way to start the week.

but i bought my printer cartridge, and decided i’d just buy a new stapler, even though i figured if i did that, my old stapler would drop right down out of the sky and land on my head. or my toe, which i broke last year and was very pissed off about because it took forever to heal.

anyway, i decided i wouldn’t buy a stapler if it cost more than 10 bucks.

office max had LOTS AND LOTS of staplers. some cost upwards of 50 dollar, i believe, although they were electric or something silly like that - who needs electric staplers??? how much stapling could a person do, anyway?

i got a stapler that was a STAPLER PACK. it included a stapler that’s nicer than my old stapler, which i’ve had forever and have no memory of buying, plus a box of staples, plus a staple remover! and guess how much this sweet deal cost me - FIVE DOLLARS!

i mean, how could they make something that cheaply?

this made my day.

i also had lunch at the new Qdoba mexican restaurant, right by office max, with my friend kurt. we had GIGANTIC burritos, but somehow we managed to eat all of them. they were pretty good, but the tortillas weren’t so great. a good tortilla is key to a good mexican restaurant. maybe they’ll improve. they were a little bit...i don’t know...sort of rubbery? not exactly rubbery, but the texture was more like a spring roll wrapper, almost, than a tortilla.

why do so many mexican restaurants in spfld have such unpronouceable names? Qdoba, is that short for something that i just can’t figure out? it’s near xochimilcho mexican restaurant; maybe qdoba felt they had to match the unpronouncability.
kurt’s son ben is in kindergarten, and he has to go from 8:30 till 3. doesn’t that sound like a very long day? AND, they take no naps! isn’t that crazy, no naps?

and sad, too.

speaking of naps, WHY AM I STILL AWAKE, IT’S ALMOST ONE IN THE MORNING!!!! very very bad. i won’t be able to run, because by the time i finally roll out of bed, i’m sure it will be swelteringly hot.

i just have to mention the TRAFFIC NIGHTMARE tonight. i left work at 5:05 and i figured it’d take me 15 minutes to get home, grab a quick bite to eat, and rush to class by 6:00. i roared down I-72, but then traffic slowed, then stopped...weird. we don’t have this kind of issue in spfld.

other cars were illegally crossing over to the other side of the highway and heading back, and i finally decided to follow them, because the traffic clearly wasn’t going anywhere. i headed back to veteran’s parkway and roared through westchester and down wabash and up sixth street...and suddenly MORE TRAFFIC NIGHTMARES! up ahead, there were cop cars and clearly traffic was being diverted. WHAT WAS GOING ON???

i made a u-turn and cut through that business area in back of hollywood video, and ended up on 11th street, where i figured i’d be able to quickly head over to stevenson...AND MORE TRAFFIC NIGHTMARES! up ahead on stevenson drive, even though our light was green, semis were hogging up the lanes, blocking the traffic. finally, finally, after about a million years (approximately), i got onto stevenson drive, and it was very weird, because semis lines the street, on both sides, crawling along. i just didn’t realize how many trucks are on the highway usually.

i guess I-72 was closed, as well as I-55, it was a two-car accident, and on the news tonight it looked very grim.

it was just so weird, being caught in a traffic jam with no way to take a shortcut.

it ended taking me 50 minutes to get home, and i had to be late to class because i was STARVING as well as mad.

i didn’t miss anything important in class.

he said a few pithy things that i’d like to share with you, and my notebook is actually right across the hall in my office, but i just can’t get out of bed. BECAUSE IT’S ONE IN THE MORNING.

must sleep.

crazy, crazy girl.

boy, i’m glad i don’t live in LA anymore.

ok then,

grace up too late yet again.

Oct. 02, 2005

sunday night [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:03 pm

whew, how quickly the weeekend goes by. tonight i showed my family the photos we took before dicso night. my computer was sitting on the counter, with the little thumbnails of the photos. my brother david glanced at them and said “who’s the stripper?” i said “me.”

he was chagrined.

it was the biggest compliment i’ve gotten all weekend.

but on the other hand, hmm, stripper is not the look i was going for.

disco night was...anticlimactic. as i was pretty sure it would be. it was fun getting all dressed up (like a stripper!), and it was really fun going to amy and jim’s house and taking lots of pictures. here’s a photo of some of us:

randy and his babes

jim was taking the picture, because he didn’t choose to dress up, and lara’s husband bob isn’t in the picture because...well, i don’t know why, i guess because i thought it would be funny if it was randy and all these women. sorry, bob.

this is erica and bev and me; it turned out so dark, but i like it - it looks like it should be an album cover.

the trio

here’s erica, being a wild and crazy disco chick. i convinced her to wear the silver shoes i was going to wear that belong to amy, but she refused to wear any outlandish 70’s jewelry. erica can be a very stubborn individual. she’s the most polite and well-mannered person i’ve ever met, but she can be stubborn. she reminds me of shortie, mom and dad’s dog who i’ve put pictures up here of, because shortie, too, can be very stubborn. his stubbornness, though, usually involves going for a walk or refusing to go for a walk. i’m pretty sure erica wouldn’t balk at walking.

erica

and here’s randy and me:

i have to put up this photo of me, just because i like it. it’s really crazy, i know, with the wild pants and the cacophony of color in amy and jim’s living room. Let’s call it “stripper in the living room.”

stripper in the living room

ok, so bev was pretty frantic because the event was supposed to start at 7:30 (DOORS OPEN AT SIX THIRTY!) and i guess she thought there were going to be millions of people clamoring to get in.

we talked her into wearing a sparkly top, and amy foofed her hair up, and gave her some big earrings (she gets frantic, but she’s MUCH EASIER to persuade than erica), and i think we finally left amy’s house at about 8:30.

we got to the warehouse, where the dance was, and a drunk couple weaved around in the space where we wanted to park. they seemed like a fairly angry drunk couple, but they finally staggered out of our way.

the warehouse is this new place in town where they have bands, but inside it looks kinda...dumpy. i mean, some of the dance places i went to in LA looked dumpy, too, so the dumpiness wasn’t really so bad. but when we first went in, the table where you paid was in this horribly brightly lit flourescent room, and that was bad.

we got into the main part of the place, and the crowd was sparce, and of course most people weren’t dressed up at all. there was a guy with an afro as big as a beach ball, with disco-type pants that he must have fashioned himself, because they had little wedgest of CD’s sewn down each leg.

this was an “all ages” dance, and yes, there were actual small children there.

the first band was...the hue corporation. “don’t rock the boat” is their big hit, and they were singing it when we came in. they were good, but then denny terio from DANCE FEVER came out, and he didn’t look bad for an old guy with dyed hair. he had women come up on the stage to dance with him.

he didn’t pick me.

i was relieved.

he mostly danced with older heavier women.

maybe he was afraid of me because he thought i was a stripper, and he was afraid i’d start taking my clothes off.

he danced with amy, who is the QUEEN OF DISCO.

he danced with this woman wearing a bright red weird pantsuit kind of thing - it was pretty tight, and had straps on the bottom, those kind of pants - stirrup pants? yeah, only it was one big outfit. she wore spiked red heels, too. i wonder what decade she was trying to represent.

we saw a guy there we knew, and he was wearing a slightly loud shirt, but he did have a big medallion on. i think jim was wearing an orange t-shirt that said “wheaties” across the front. maybe that was his silent protest to being dragged to a disco night.

he did seem to be having a pretty good time, though.

after denny terio danced (mostly he dance with the women just to show off his many high-energy fancy pants dance moves), TAVARES came out, and they were good. randy said their pre-recorded backup music included extra vocals, but i didn’t care, because they did sound good.

but anyway, we got there a little after 8:30, and it ended at 9:40. not a whole lot of time, but we were there long enough. at the end, they promptly snapped on the very bright overhead lights, which of course made everybody flee.

as we left, some scantily-clad younger women staggered in - actual strippers, maybe? no, probably just drunk 20 year olds - maybe they were the cleanup crew.

afterwards, we went to la bamba (if you don’t live here in spfld, it’s where you get BURRITOS AS BIG AS YOUR HEAD).

there were only two people in line in front of us, but i think they must have been extremely stoned, because it took them at least 20 minutes to order. finally, we got our food, and it was quite tasty, as well as fun to be out on a friday night, eating a quesadilla, drinking an horchata, wearing my crazy disco pants.

the rest of the weekend wasn’t nearly as glamorous. i spent a long time this afternoon reading william wycherley’s “the country wife,” a restoration comedy (written in 1675), which i have to write a paper on. ho hum. the beginning of the paper is supposed to be a page and a half summary of the play, even though erica said she’s always been taught that you should NEVER EVER summarize what you’re reading. but i figure, that’s one and a half less pages i have to fill with thinking up things to say about the play.

i need to be more enthusiastic about this endeavor, clearly.

i wrote the summary, and it was three pages, and i’ve been trying to cut it down, but then i got very tired.

i should have done more homework yesterday, but my mood was just a trifle too black for thinking about homework.

not to be negative in any way, of course.

today i also ran for 50 minutes, although i didn’t start till 10, and it was much too humid. then i went to the fit club and lifted weights, and then i was VERY TIRED. i have to be good about lifting weights, because i don’t want to get osteoporosis. at least twice a week. i really, really didn’t feel like going to the gym, but i dragged myself there, and when i finally started doing it, it wasn’t so bad, except sometimes it’s just so boring that i almost can’t stand it at all. there weren’t a lot of people there; i go there frequently on sunday afternoons, and the place is always pretty empty. maybe everybody went early in the day to get it over with, or maybe they were thinking about sunday being a day of rest.

there were big billboards in LA that read YOU CAN SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD. maybe they said YOU CAN REST WHEN YOU’RE DEAD. no, i think it was sleep, not rest. but will you enjoy it? I don’t think so, because you’ll NEVER WAKE UP.

and also, do you ever think about sleeping, how weird it is, really, that you’re just lying there unconscious (theoretically, hopefully) for hours and hours? it’s not the sleep per se that feels so good, it’s the lying down in bed and turning off the light and being able to REST and knowing that (hopefully) you’ll soon be asleep.

sometimes it does seem very wasteful, all the sleep, but boy, do i need it. mom said she was taking a poll about sleeping, and she says she thinks it’s only women who don’t sleep well, not men. i wonder why this is. do we have all the worry? or is it that we can’t let the worry go?

let the worry go. like the lemon pie.

ok then,

grace WILLING MYSELF NOT TO THINK ANY NEGATIVE THOUGHTS AT ALL even though it’s sunday night.

sooooo late on saturday night... [ General ] - grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:20 am

i should have gone to bed at least an hour ago, but there you have it.

entirely too tired to write right now, but here’s just one photo of the disco pants:

disco pants 2

more later.

goodnight,

disco grace (ironically, last night i was so over the top dressed up, and most of the day today, i looked like a completely different person. more of a cutoff shorts old t-shirt with a hole in it kind of day.)

1.204 [powered by b2.]

VIDEOS
Obama for President!
Singing
Shorty 'n Giz
State Fair Commercial
Carmen Miranda
My Big Weekend
Naps
Daytona Bike Week
Land O' Betrayal
Behind Gracetalk1
Gracetalk1
Jay Leno!
E.L.E.M.
Naked People
On The Boat

PERFORMANCES
Gracetalk #5
coming soon. hopefully. "soon" being a relative term.

PUBLISHED ARTICLES
Grace About Town,
published by the Illinois Times

Grace's Goodies,
published @ WhatsNewLA.com (sadly, now defunct)

OTHER BLOGS/LINKS
krinkle.net,
written by my friend Craig

Canada Garden,
beautiful photography by one of my readers

SITE SEARCH: BLOG ARCHIVE
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004

login

4 sp@mbots
e-mail me