Jul. 31, 2006

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one more thing [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 8:25 pm
Guggeli! (served at the Restaurant Rutli in Lucerne).

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SWISS IS NOT A LANGUAGE [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 8:20 pm

i called christine this morning, and she was not having a good monday. bad things all around for her. if you happen to see or talk to her, please try to cheer her up. bad things including driving down the street and having somebody open a cab door into the side of her very nice audi (i can’t remember the number of the audi, but i do know it’s dark blue), taking off the side mirror and generally smashing up the door.

plus more bad stuff.

anyway, this afternoon she called me, sounding slightly better, but she called to say that SWISS IS NOT A LANGUAGE. IN SWITZERLAND IT’S EITHER GERMAN OR FRENCH.

i had some time just now to look up “Frisches Schweizer Güggeli” and at first it just translated as “fresh swiss guggeli” which i must admit wasn’t too helpful. but then i did at least a minute’s more searching online and found out that guggeli is chicken, more precisely, “Guggeli (Small chicken) with Emmental cheese (Swiss): it is a speciality of Bern’s region, where a 600 to 800 grams chicken is called ”guggeli “.”

if you’re interested, here’s more food info about Switzerland:

"The Swiss cuisine is famous for its variety of cheeses and its chocolate desserts.
Cheeses:
Appenzell: cow milk cheese, strong and sophisticated, it can be served as an appetizer with paprika sprinkled on top and with a slice of pineapple or as a starter (Appenzell Salad with ham).
The Emmental cheese: Obwald’s cheese cake (it is the speciality of central Switzerland which is similar to the quiche Lorraine in France. It can be served with a salad or not and it constitutes a light meal.
The Swiss cheese: the wine-growers Rösti is a traditional dish made of Swiss cheese. This dish is prepared with slices of bacon, potatoes and Swiss cheese on top.
Sbrinz: This cheese has of the body and the character of central Switzerland.
Guggeli (Small chicken) with Emmental cheese (Swiss): it is a speciality of Bern’s region, where a 600 to 800 grams chicken is called “guggeli ”.
The real Swiss fondue: not to mix up with the Savoyard fondue. In Switzerland, the Fribourg fondue is made with only one cheese: the Fribourg vacherin cheese .
Röstis: sort of pancakes made with either cooked or raw potatoes. Ex: Rösti of Uri, of Zurich, made of glaronese or appenzell.
Chocolate soufflé
Chocolate fondue: This fondue is generally served with sliced fruits. The cool fruits coated with warm chocolate makes a tasteful harmony and a mix of a very pleasant taste in the mouth.

Food-related taboos

There are no culinary taboos in Switzerland."

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good to know. cheese and chocolate, why aren’t we going THERE for our honeymoon?

hawaii will be great. we can go to europe next year.

ok, here’s one little thing about the languages spoken in switzerland:

"Official languages: German (a Swiss-German dialect is spoken by 64% of the population), French (19%), Italian (8%) and romance (0.6%).
Business language: English, German, French and Italian."

yeah, we only have one language here. and our chocolate isn’t anywhere near as good.

that’s all for now. please try to cheer christine up.

ok then,

monday evening grace.

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monday! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 2:51 pm

i think perhaps i’ve had a little too much caffeine today. i have to give an hour-and-a-half massage in about...and hour from now, and i hope i can make it last more than 20 minutes. maybe a few minutes of vigorous and furious typing will burn off a little of that energy.

first - IT’S RIDICULOUSLY HOT.

this morning MFH and i went running for FIFTY FOUR MINUTES! we went at about 8:30. it was in the 80’s at that point, but felt much hotter. MUCH hotter. right now i’ve been looking up the heat and humidity here, and they claim it’s 96, with 49% humidity, and the heat index is 105. but the thing is, how could the humidity only be 49%? it feels more like 94%.

enough complaining about the weather. BUT MAYBE WE’LL MOVE IN A COUPLE OF YEARS.

ok, so mom has been in switzerland for a couple of days now. yesterday they went to the JESUITENKIRCHE for the mass and then they played their flutes there. this is the JESUIT CHURCH of Lucerne. according to the itinerary, they then had time to walk around in old town, and then they had dinner at RUTLI RESTAURANT. i can’t understand anything on their website because it’s all in SWISS. their specialty is Frisches Schweizer Güggeli, which is served with french fries.

today, they headed to Luasanne. first they stopped at the Cailler of Switzerland in Broc, and here’s a picture of the factory.



the cailler MAKES CHOCOLATE. very exciting.

then they kept going to Lausanne, and it says they can visit Cathedral of Notre-Dame which is in paris, i though, but clearly they have at least two of them.

they’ve already had dinner at Le Chalet Suisse, whose website was translatable. here’s part of the translation:

Authenticate country cottage located in the wood of Sauvabelin, above Lausanne. Splendid sight on the city and the lake Léman. Restoring with musical animation. Culinary specialities of all Switzerland. Carnotzet for molten/scrapers. Folk evenings on request. Room for banquets (to 300 people), panoramic terrace.

i love that phrase, “restoring with musical animation.”

here’s a photo of the restaurant.



the menu didn’t translate and i’m sure i could find a translation but i have to leave RIGHT NOW.

that’s all i know.

ok then,

monday grace.



Jul. 29, 2006

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i can’t help myself... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:45 am
a few more. THERE ARE SO MANY OF THESE! not to mention the lighted fountain cake toppers, and one huge one that’s a sleeping beauty castle with sleeping beauty and the prince and it’s so huge i don’t know how a cake could support the weight.



here’s another cute wedding couple that’s handmade, also from great britain, where there are clearly many creative people. you can choose the color of the clothes and you can include pets and props and stuff.



here’s another one from this same person:



very cute.

this one is a little odd; you send the person a photo and they make a caricature of you. also from GB.



OK, i know you won’t make the effort to look it up on ebay yourself, here’s the over-the-top wedding castle.



it is now 10 o'clock in the morning, ridiculously late to think about going back to sleep, plus maybe i’m not tired anyway anymore. except i only had five hours of sleep and i need at least eight. it’s also too hot already to go running.

oh boy. an unusual start to the weekend.

ok then,

grace doomed to nap later.

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NOT QUITE BACK TO BED JUST YET [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:19 am
i know i’ve mentioned the ludicrousness of the plethora of wedding crap you can buy. here are just a couple of the huge HUGE variety of wedding cake toppers for sale on e-bay. 1,125 items listed under “wedding cake toppers.” this first one is about 20 bucks.



i guess it’s for actual children who are getting married. or maybe very very young adults. but it’s awfully cute.

and this one, the opposite end of the spectrum, it’s sterling silver with Swarvoski crystals. for about $140. a person could EASILY spend bucket and buckets of money on a wedding. and what do you do with the monogrammed crystals when the wedding’s over? mount them on your wall?



wait, there are so many listings, i have to show you a couple more. this one is also pretty funny, kermit and miss piggy:



and this is a handmade bull terrier couple, made of fimo clay. both these toppers are about a hundred bucks. this terrier couple is very cute, but unfortunately you can’t get one outside of great britain.



hmm, that gives me an idea, maybe i could scuplt figurines for the top of the cake...

NO GRACE, NO! NO MORE CRAFTS. JUST SAY NO TO CRAFTS.

sleep, back to sleep before it’s noon.

gs

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FREE CAKE [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 8:55 am

When christine called me the other day, she asked how the fitting-into-the-dress was going. let me just give you an example of why it’s not going so great. last night we went to “aida” at the muni and they were giving away GOBS AND GOBS OF FREE CAKE. because it was their whatever anniversary, and they had their one millionth guest, and they gave everybody balloons to let loose in the air.

BUT THE FREE CAKE...kevin and i split a piece. so at least i didn’t eat a whole piece by myself. AND IT WAS VERY DELICIOUS, I MIGHT ADD. and then we sat at the top of the hill eating our free cake and drinking wine that we’d brought and not more than five feet away from me was the TABLE CHOCK-FULL OF FREE CAKE. i mean, they just kept bringing in the cakes. it was like a big pile of heroin, just sitting there, calling to me.

at least i’m not a heroin addict. just a CAKE ADDICT.

food in general. HI, MY NAME IS GRACE AND I’M A FOOD ADDICT.

oh, and the show was amazingly good. it was such a nice surprise to be nicely surprised. the show itself is good, the music (it’s by elton john and tim rice) was great, and the performances were also great. the woman who played aida, tiffany williams, was amazing. when my sister amy had a disco band, tiffany was in the band. i never got to see them perform, something i’ll always be sorry about, but at least i got to see tiffany sing a lot last night. joshua ratz played opposite her; he was jekyll in “jekyll & hyde” at the theater center last fall, and he was also good but i just kept feeling that he was going to turn into mr. hyde at any moment, lurching and sneering and glowering and stabbing people. he didn’t, at least not last night. well, he did a small amount of sneering, but that was at the beginning, before he fell in love with aida. there are two more performances, and you should try to get there to see it.

everybody in the play was good. the choreography was interesting and really well executed. two particularly noteworthy members of the ensemble were a couple of young men who appeared bare-chested. there were a bunch of these bare-chested guys in one number, but they put two of them front and center, because they were the ones who had clearly devoted a lot of time to their pushups and various other pec-enhancing exercises. one of them was sam germann, the son of annie and gary, and i don’t recall seeing any guys who looked that buff when i was a junior in high school.

ann and gary and their sons are coming to the wedding; annie came up to us after the show and rsvp’d in person, and i was happy that she was so enthusiastic about being there. i just mailed most of the invitations on thursday, and i think most people who live here got them yesterday. there are still a few that we haven’t quite figured out addresses for, but i’m sure we’ll accomplish this before the wedding actually takes place.

IN SEVEN MORE WEEKS.

the one slight trauma i’m facing now is that the guest list continues to grow. i told kevin YOU CANNOT INVITE ANYBODY ELSE. but then i think of somebody else i forgot to invite. THERE IS NOT GOING TO BE ANY ROOM AT THE RECEPTION FOR ANYBODY TO SIT AT A TABLE AND EAT. kevin feels that this is not going to be an issue. if it doesn’t rain, i guess it won’t be an issue, because some people can sit outside. but what if it rains? plus, does the facility have that many tables and chairs anyway? it won’t be a fun time for people if they have to stand huddled in a corner eating.

besides that, things are going fine. FINE.

fine.

i have to practice the piano today. oh yeah, the band. did i mention that this band is going to play in a wedding IN TWO WEEKS? and that i believe i’m going to be expected to play with them? i’m trying not to think about it.

i’ve been to one band practice. ONE. i played a couple of songs, and was basically pretty horrible. pretty darn horrible. that was just two tuesdays ago. and then, last saturday, we were all going to go to Pontiac IL to play in some “bluegrass jam.” i tried to avoid thinking about this before we went, because of course having practiced the one time. was it going to be a huge event? lots of people? it was put on by friends and family of one of the other new band members, gary. BUT GARY KNOWS HOW TO PLAY JUST FINE. guitar, keyboards, who knows what else.

so we drove to pontiac and THANK GOD it was much less than i thought it’d be. gary’s brother had a couple of tents set up in his back yard and they had a stage with lots of musical equipment on it and there were chairs scattered around on the grass. but there weren’t many people when we first got there, and then some guys on the stage started messing around with their guys, as guys with guitars are always prone to do, and they played a few songs, and a few more people showed up, and after a while there were maybe 50 people there. and we got up and played a couple of songs.

now, not only was i horrible, but there were two keyboards on top of each other (nobody ever used the top one, i noticed), so there was no room for the music, so the music stand was way off to the side. so not only did i suck, but i couldn’t actually read the music most of the time and so didn’t even know what the correct notes might have been.

the upside to all this is that most of the time we were playing (and we played maybe four songs), quite a few of the other people were out in the garage smoking and drinking. so even if they could hear us, they might not have known it was me, sitting behind my wall of keyboards, playing no correct notes at all.

one of the guys who played a lot, a drummer who also played guitar and harmonica and probably also many other instruments and lived in AUSTIN and played in bands there so obviously he has to be a fine musician, he was really good. when we were leaving he came over to say good-bye (not to me, because i hadn’t talked to him), and i told him he was a really fine musician. and he said, THANKS, SO ARE YOU.

at which point i wanted to disappear down into the ground because i felt so bad that he felt obliged to say this big fat LIE to me. he wasn’t one of the people in the garage smoking and drinking, because he played the entire time and was sitting there playing the drums while i was wrecking the keyboard, not more than two feet away from me.

kevin says the guy just said that because i was wearing a short skirt.

oh boy.

PLAYING A WEDDING IN TWO WEEKS.

luckily i’m not doing anything else with my time, so i have hours and hours to practice.

i feel that even if i had hours and hours to practice, i couldn’t be good enough in two weeks.

when i was in high school, the culmination of all the years of piano lessons was a GOLDEN LYRE PIANO RECITAL. i don’t know why it was called that, but it was just me, playing the piano for a bunch of people. i played about 45 minutes maybe, not a lot of time, but i played many pieces, really difficult pieces, and i practice a lot. sometimes a couple of hours a day. this was a WHOLE LOT for me, because there were years when i wouldn’t practice at all, or i’d just practice a half-hour here and there, i was never serious about it.

i have a problem getting serious about things sometimes.

but anyway, the pressure was on for this recital and i practiced and practiced FOR MONTHS AND MONTHS and it was actually a lot of fun and i really felt i’d accomplished something.

afterwards we had a big party at my house. my parents went to a lot of work doing party preparations, including cleaning pounds and pounds of shrimp, and they made something really complicated like maybe rumaki, which is water chestnuts wrapped in something, i think, maybe bacon, or maybe it’s liver wrapped in bacon? surely not. anyway, they went to a whole lot of trouble but i don’t remember doing anything to help with the preparations, i guess because i was so busy practicing all the time.

liver wrapped in bacon. not liver wrapped in bacon. who would ever eat that? nobody. they’d eat a burger wrapped in bacon, though, and covered with cheese and deep fried.

ok, one more thing, this week we went to lunch at Saputo’s with the judge who is going to marry us, and kevin wanted to order something healthy so he asked for the baked fish. and the waitress said “have you had our baked fish?” and he said no. she said it’s not baked fish. it’s fried fish that they then cover with cheese and bake all that. why? because people LOVE TO EAT EVERYTHING BAD FOR THEM.

cake, for example.

i didn’t go to sleep till 2 a.m. last night because MFH has suddenly become a night person because of his work schedule. and then i woke up this morning at seven and now it’s almost nine and i hope to go back to bed for a while.

that is my plan for saturday.

oh yeah, plus doing a couple of wedding things.

ok then, back to bed,

july grace.



Jul. 28, 2006

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MOLLIE GETS A BATH [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 5:11 pm

all day yesterday i wanted to write, i kept thinking i’d find a little time - and then, after going to hear the jazz band “real time” at the Inn at 835, and then going for a run (interesting to go for a run after not eating much all day and then having a glass of wine and some cheese and crackers. not terrible, but i hope i won’t make a habit of this kind of behavior), i was finally, FINALLY going to write.

but there was mollie the dog. VERY VERY DIRTY. she hasn’t had a bath in a very very long time.

i decided i had the energy, the time was ripe (the dog, overripe).

i removed her collar and then had to chase her around the bed, because she kept scooting across it because she knew SOMETHING WAS UP and it was probably one of those VERY BAD BATHS.

mollie weighs 40-something pounds, not that heavy, but since she was completely resisting me, it was a struggle to hoist her off the bed and into the bathtub.

my main dogwashing experiences lately have been washing shortie and gizmo, mom and dad’s pekinese. shortie and the giz are short and lightweight. they don’t care for the baths, but they’re small and can’t get out of the tub. also, i talk nicely to them and sing to them, and i think the singing so intrigues them that they forget to squirm too much.

it was hard to get a lather up on mollie because the grime was so deeply ingrained in her fur. she has very short hair, but it’s dense. at one point i thought, she could easily walk right out of the tub. but thank goodness she’s being a very good dog and is just standing there looking forlorn.

but then, when i’d lathered her, rinsed and repeated, and she was covered with suds...she stepped out of the tub. didn’t need to hop or anything, she just decided she’d had enough. she stood on the floor and shook, of course, and suddenly the floor was covered with lots of shampoo and water. not to mention great quantities of fur.

i picked her up and put her back in the tub and she resigned herself to more abject agony for a while.

i let her get out, finally, and she shook once more, flooding the place all over again.

the rest was pretty uneventful, except that she was then all wound up, as all dogs are when they’re FREED FROM DOGWASHING HELL. i gave her a big treat, and proceeded to try to swab down the walls and floor. but then, suddenly, Winnie the cat when whizzing by, and behind her was mollie. mollie chased the cat! i’ve never seen mollie chasing the cats; kevin says she’s afraid of cats ever since my parents' two big cats attacked her two summers ago. does mollie really remember this? is she actually still traumatized? whenever honey hisses at her, which is whenever mollie is anywhere near her, kevin says that’s because of mollie’s trauma.

hmm. she was feeling no trauma as she chased poor innocent-bystander Winnie down the hall.

after all this excitement i had no energy for writing.

today kevin and i went to hobby lobby, where i bought some cake decorating colors. they didn’t have everything i needed so i ordered a few more cake-decorating things online. i keep buying more and more cake-decorating things, and i feel that this wedding cake that i’m going to MAKE ALL BY MYSELF is going to end up costing a fortune. but now i’ll have EVERTHING i need for making more cakes. so i can start a whole new sideline business.

i can’t believe it’s friday already. we’re going to see “aida” out at the muni tonight, and i feel it’s going to be breathtakingly hot. tomorrow night i think we’re going to see “godspell” at new salem, unless the heat tonight is too unbearable.

last sunday we saw “les miserables” in st. louis, at the Fox Theater. this is the second time i’ve seen the musical, and it blew me away again. by the end we were all drained, it’s such an emotionally exhausting show. it was over at 4:50, and they were doing another one at 7:30. i can’t imagine performing that show two times in a day. the guy who was the lead has performed it all over the world, so i guess he’s had plenty of practice, but still.

this was the last day of the tour, but then it’s going to be on broadway again. i’d like to see it on broadway. it’s funny, even though i spend a ridiculous amount of time panicking about wedding things, i do think a little about other things (like the honeymoon)...but always, in the back of my brain, i keep thinking “i can’t wait to go to new york again.” the last time i was there was july of 2001.

whoops, i’m running out of time here, no time to discuss this whole BAND SITUATION that i find myself in, except to say that i’ve been practicing “desperado” like crazy but it’s pretty hard but i’m getting better but not that great.

and also, christine CALLED ME ON THE PHONE yesterday, a momentous occurrence, and she claims that she thinks about me, and she is always disappointed when she opens this site and i haven’t written anything new, but how do you think i feel when every day i get no e-mails from everybody?

not that i have time lately to check e-mails every day.

she and jerri have both booked rooms for the wedding. very exciting.

ok, i have to spend a little more time thinking about the wedding cake. i hope your weekend is relaxing and cool.

july TIME IS RUNNING OUT grace.

p.s. in addition to thinking about going to NYC, i also think a lot about taking an alaskan cruise. and going to europe. my mom is on a plane to switzerland right at this moment, as a matter of fact. she’s going with the Eddy Flute Choir, a group of high school kids, plus mom. they’re going to play their flutes in a bunch of cities in switzerland. i told her to bring me back some swiss chocolates but to not give it to me till after the wedding day. i just talked to her before the plane took off, and she said it was very crowded and they hadn’t turned on the air conditioning yet and she was sitting next to two people she didn’t know, and the man next to her was talking on his cell phone in italian.

they’re starting off in Lucerne, after flying into frankfurt tomorrow morning and connecting into zurich and then taking a bus to lucerne. and then tomorrow night they’re going to have a fondue party. i wonder if anybody will be awake enough to enjoy the authentic swiss fondue.

i want to go to switzerland.


Jul. 24, 2006

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ridiculously busy, also lazy [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:04 pm

too many things going on. not enough time to write. not enough desire to take the time to sit down and write.

friday we went to “the devil wears prada.” it was good; it’s about a young woman, played by anne hathaway, who goes to work for the head of a huge fashion magazine, like Vogue. meryl streep is the evil boss, and she was perfect. do you know about the other film she’s in right now, “prairie home companion,” based on the radio show? in that one, she’s sweet and chatty and ditzy and delightful, and “devil WP” is the perfect contrast.

i do have to say that during the first par of DWP, i felt edgy. i spent too many years of my life temping in both new york and LA, and i had a few experiences with bosses who expected me to know who people were and how to get ahold of them. one asshole in particular, a guy who was a bigwig at some trendy production company, was australian and had an accent so thick that it was difficult to figure out what he was saying. he normally had at least two assistants, and i was the second assistant, and he’d yell at me from his office, which was kind of far from the little space i sat in, GRACE, GET ME SLKJS;LDKJ SDJFKLD; ON THE PHONE," and it was impossible to understand the name, and of course i didn’t have any idea of how to look it up.

i’ve been trying to remember other specific examples of the terrors of temping, but i think i’ve blocked a lot of it out. actually, i remember plenty of people being quite nice, the problem usually was the deathly dullness of the jobs. one time when i was temping in DC - oh yeah, i lived there for a brief time, too - i worked for a guy named morgan death. it was funny because he was this rotund, red-faced fellow, perfectly nice, and on my last day he took me out to lunch. my most vivid memory of that temp experience was trying to merge onto the frightful freeway after working all day.

i’m glad i don’t do any of that anymore.

anyway, both movies are quite good. i do think it’s funny that anne hathaway seems to have made a niche for herself as the girl who is frumpy and gets a makeover so she’s glamorous. this is how she started, in “the princess diaries,” which was a cute movie. then, she was effective as a gawky teen who transforms into the lovely princess, but this time it seemed a little bit forced. maybe it’s just that it’s hard to hide her really good looks. also, when she was transformed, did they just give her all those designer clothes? that seemed kind of unlikely, but i suppose that’s what happened.

the other thing that didn’t seem plausible is that anne and her hangdog boyfriend lived in soho, i think, or somewhere in lower manhattan, and their apartment seemed quite large. how, exactly, did they afford it? not realistic.

the best line of the movie was when the other assistant explained to anne her diet strategy (and it worked, cauze she’d lost weight) “i eat nothing at all, and then, when i’m about to pass out, i eat one cheese cube.”

eat nothing. the only sure way to lose weight.

people have been recommending that i eat no or very few carbs. this, of course, makes me want NOTHING BUT CARBS.

because my mind makes me crazy.

saturday...well, on saturday i was in a band. yep. i’ll have to tell you about that when i’m better-rested. how did i get myself into a band all of a sudden? playing the keyboard. i started taking piano lessons when i was in first grade and continued all through high school. classical music, that’s all they ever gave me, except for an occasional “maple leaf rag” or once, something slightly modern, i can’t recall the name or the composer but i remember how the beginning chords sound.

anyway, i kept taking piano lessons in college, still playing classical music because it never occured to me to want to play anything different.

and then i didn’t play much anymore, until a couple of years ago, MFH and mom and i started playing songs together; i played the keyboard, kevin played one of his (many) guitars, and mom played the flute. it was kind of fun, but mom and kevin were really excited about it whereas i mostly did it because they enjoyed it. i never practiced enough to be really good.

and then we haven’t played at all, and then kevin got in a band, and suddenly they have no keyboard player.

weird, very weird.

randy keeps telling me i can be just like laurie partridge in “the partridge family” show; she didn’t play the piano, but just looked cute and pretended to pound out the notes.

hmm, maybe i can do that too. good idea.

more later.

ok then,

nearing the end of july grace.

p.s. did you notice how i didn’t even allude to wedding plans AT ALL? this morning i felt tired and decided i don’t care about the plans so much. i did go to bed-bath-n-beyond and wandered around for a little while, but couldn’t find one single thing that i wanted to add to the registry, so i’m holding at 42 items.




Jul. 20, 2006

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early on thursday morning [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 4:36 am

i didn’t want to write anything on here right now because i didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that it’s four in the morning and i’m awake. i’m definitely going back to bed any minute now.

i got some positive feedback on my idea for a GOOD NEWS CHANNEL, so i’m going to be going into production on it right after i get back from my honeymoon.

aside from that, things are a little odd. my parents, amy and jim, and randy were all without power because of the storm so we all went to La Mex, where kevin and i had planned on going anyway, and all the chain restaurants on dirksen pkwy were closed because they had no power so there were zillions of people at La Mex and they were a little overwhelmed and we waited a very very long time to sit down and then a very very long time to eat dinner, and the whole thing took at least a couple of hours. too bad they don’t do that well every night, and then they’d have enough wait staff and they wouldn’t run out of salsa. i don’t know why more people don’t go there, but i guess it’s because there are too many chain restaurants right down the road, and people can’t resist the chains.

RESIST THE CHAINS, that’s what i need to get on a t-shirt.

but maybe that’s just four a.m. grace talking, who is not quite in her right mind. not quite.

ok then,

grace.


Jul. 17, 2006

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monday night, and all is pretty ok at the moment [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:22 pm

i was going to think about wedding things tonight, and i was going to open up one of the many books i got at the library about wedding plans but never manage to actually look at, but then scott called and we had a nice chat. so that’s it for the evening, i don’t have time to do any work on anything because i worked all day long plus took mollie for a (short) walk. she was more excited than usual because it wasn’t totally dark yet so we walked throught the park and she found BUNNIES GALORE and she ripped my arm out of its socket only a few times, in her zest at chasing the bunnies.

ok, one more thing i want to throw out there before thinking about going to sleep...it seems like everything bad is going on in the world, all the time, and it just gets worse. so i was thinking that we need to start an alternate news channel, and call it the “good news channel.” and it would just be stories of good, heartwarming things that happen to people. funny things. things that make you smile.

good news channel, i’m going to get started on that right after the wedding is over.

and when i’m back from the honeymoon.

good news channel. good news, all the time.

ok then,

july grace.

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twelve. [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:04 am

that’s the number of things we registered for on saturday.

we went to linens-n-things in order to register for the wedding because even though we NEED NOTHING and had TWO OF EVERYTHING until we got rid of lots of stuff at the garage sale, we’ve been told that people will want to buy us things, nevertheless. so we spent ages and ages going through the store talking about buying things and it felt like we’d picked out a lot of stuff but then when i went online to look at the registry, there were only twelve things.

not enough things.

i find this very ironic.

too many things in the world.

i decided to sign up at bed bath-n-beyond as well, because i figured we might find something we needed.

i guess it’s really that “i might find something i need,” because i don’t think kevin has looked at the site yet. well, he did briefly, but he hated it because for some reason it’s a very crummy site in terms of how long it takes for things to load. basically FOREVER sometimes, which is much too long to wait.

but i kept looking at stuff, and tonight i found an entire line of servingware that i suddenly decided i LOVE AND CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT, so i added several pieces of that. and now, after what feels like most of the weekend spent looking at stuff, i’m proud to say that we have about, oh...maybe 40 or so things registered.

i guess i won’t worry about where we’re going to store all this serving ware since we’re pretty much maxed out on all storage space in the kitchen.

aside from wedding things, the weekend has been ok. so much time spent inside becuause it’s too hot to be outside. i want to go see “the devil wears prada” this week; i’d heard it got terrible reviews but i just read a great review of it in the new yorker and now i want to see it. will i have time? perhaps. i’ll make time.

thad is coming to the wedding, and scott alleges he’s going to show up, too. now i want to have some kind of party before the wedding to hang out with friends who will be here from out of town. so that’s another party to plan. first thad was telling me that i shouldn’t listen to people when they say that a wedding HAS to be a certain way, that i should do just what i want, and then when i told him i don’t want a traditional wedding photographer because i think they’re ridiculously overpriced and i don’t need every second of the event documented in pictures, he started saying YOU HAVE TO GET A PROFESSIONAL and SOMEBODY NEEDS TO BE IN CHARGE BECAUSE IT’S GOING TO BE CRAZY and YOU’RE GOING TO BE TOTALLY OUT OF YOUR MIND AND SOMEBODY NEEDS TO BE IN CHARGE.

i forgot to point out to him that he’d just told me to not listen to anybody, but i did say that i was NOT going to be crazy and i COULD tell people what to do, plus randy is going to be in charge of things.

and then he said that i’m going to be so crazy leading up to the wedding that i won’t have TIME for any kind of crazy pre-wedding party and i said, does this mean you’ll be coming to spfld and i won’t actually get to see you?

he has a warped idea of wedding, clearly. he claims that he’s been to THOUSANDS of them and he KNOWS that it’s crazy and all of that.

but he hasn’t been to my wedding.

by the time i get married, i’ll be very calm because i’ll have accepted the fact that we have to have a ridiculously overpriced tent, and i’ll have managed (somehow) to lose weight to zip up my dress, and everything will be just fine.

he’ll see. he’ll see.

and right now i must sleep because the week looms ahead, supposed to be in the 90’s all week long, plus i’m going to be busy with working plus i have to go see a movie.

i hope, if you’re reading this on monday morning, snarling and snapping because it’s monday morning, that you think about taking time to ENJOY LIFE.

maybe i need to start a t-shirt company with slogans like that, but i guess the “life is good” people already have the market cornered on feel-good t-shirts.

i don’t have time to think about starting a new business right now anyway. i have to read my book and sleep. eventually.

ok then,

july grace.



Jul. 15, 2006

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tent anxiety [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:18 am
i was going to title this “tent trauma” because of the nice alliteration, but i feel that “trauma” is slightly too vehement. i’m not at the point of trauma.

yet.

what if the tent is too hot? it has sides, and the tent renter woman (and yes, tents are pretty damn expensive) said that they thought it wouldn’t be a problem to roll up the sides if it’s nice weather. but she said that the manager of our reception site likes to have them down, in case it’s windy or inclement in anyway.

I’M THE ONE PAYING FOR THE TENT, though, so shouldn’t i get to decide about the situation of the sides? and then i talked to somebody who rented a tent from this place before and she didn’t think it was possible to change the position of the sides from up to down.

should we bring in fans, just in case? the tent renter will rent us fans for a mere $43 apiece, but luckily we have plenty of fans. and what about lights? we have a couple of torchiere lamps in the garage now, should we also bring them? can we have candles in the tent? the tent renter seemed way way too vague about tent details. shouldn’t she know exactly everything about the tents, since they call her the “tent specialiast” there at the rental place?

the tent has added too much stress to the wedding preparations. which, incidentally, are QUITE UNDER WAY NOW because i’m panicking.

MFH sent me an a-mail last night which he found on some website, a funny thing about not stressing. all the hooey about how things will be fine, etc etc etc. yeah, i’m sure they’ll be fine once we’re having the wedding, but what about the nine weeks prior to the date? and what about the stuff that NEEDS TO BE DONE?

i’m thinking that somebody should write a wedding book called “planning your wedding from birth.” because all these wedding timelines start so ridiculously early - 12 months, 18 months, two years before the wedding - you might as well just start as soon as you can hold a crayon and start scribbling notes about the kind of flowers you want for your wedding.

i haven’t given the flowers a thought yet. people are now starting to grill me about specific wedding plans, like what kind of flowers and stuff like that. i just realized that it’s all these people asking questions which are making me think more about things and worry. last night at the tu tu bbq somebody asked me if i had a dress and i gritted my teeth and just said “yes” instead of lamenting the fact that right now i CAN’T ZIP IT UP. it was one of the lovely and very petite ballet women who asked that, and i figured she wouldn’t be able to relate to the whole not-zipping thing.

when i get stressed about the wedding, and suddenly i feel awfully, awfully stressed, i try to think THINK ABOUT THE HONEYMOON INSTEAD. hawaii. that calms me down for a second or two.

this morning i walked around the farmers' market and at first it seemed pleasant with a nice breeze but then i had to walk in the sun and MY GOD IT’S HOT TODAY. sweat was dripping down my back, so i bought some fruits and vegetables and got the hell out of there.

right now i’m in the library, wishing i had some kind of disinfectant to spray on this computer keyboard because i think about the millions of unwashed fingers that pound on the keyboard all the time. no disinfectant at all, i’m afraid.

i’m waiting for kevin to finish teaching fencing class, and then we’re theoretically going to go look at stuff which we might want to register for, even though i’m sure we won’t find anything that we want/need. even if we did find something we wanted, we have no place to put it. we have everything. except for a toaster oven, but we only need the one toaster oven.

my friend randy took the train to chicago this morning at 6:30 a.m. and he gets to go to a Very Fancy Dinner, honoring Steven Spielberg, and it’s a black tie affair and i’m quite excited for him and i wish he had a camera phone to surreptitiously take pictures of the celebrities he’s sure to see and meet. he said there are supposed to be at least 40 movie stars in attendance but he couldn’t remember any of the names except for shirley maclaine who is certainly a big name.

if i was in chicago right now, i’m sure i wouldn’t even be thinking about tents.

that’s what i need, A VACATION. just a short one, that’s all i’m asking.

at least it’s cool here in the library. i hope your weekend is delightful.

ok then,

middle of july grace.


Jul. 14, 2006

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friday night, and all is well [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:41 pm

ok, i don’t know how it got to be 11:30 all of a sudden; i’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time ordering vitamins online. plus magical strawberry soy protein powder that used to give me lots of energy, but this morning it didn’t do the trick. that’s probably because after running last night in the dark, this morning Kevin said “are you going to go running?” and i said NO! and he said, oh, i though we could run before it gets hot.

he got home from work last night at THREE THIRTY IN THE MORNING, by the way. he has to work till two at his job most of the time, except last night he stayed late. so he thought we could run while it was cool and then he’d go back to sleep.

so we ran and i was not awake, and he was awake even though i’d slept about four more hours than he had.

and then i went to work and gave many, many massages and eventually started to wake up around three in the afternoon.

tonight we went to the “tu tu barbque,” another ballet fundraiser, but not as fancy as the other ballet fundraiser they have in the spring. and instead of wine and lots and lots of desserts, i had a DIET PEPSI and then a GLASS OF ICED TEA.

have i ever mentioned that i’m very sensitive to caffeine? which is why it’s now only 11:33 and i’m typing about 800 words a minute and don’t feel sleepy at all.

here are some of the offered desserts at the fundraiser tonight (they were all sitting there on the tables, calling out to me, “grace, grace, i’m sure you want to try me...”) - chocolate cake, lemon squares, cheesecake, chocolate brownies (they weren’t calling, they were YELLING at me), apple pie, plus at least four or five other gooey desserts.

I DIDN’T EAT ANY OF THEM.

ok then, good for me, ONE WHOLE DAY OF NOT EATING EVERYTHING.

it feels like it’s been at least a week. i could probably zip that stupid wedding dress up if i tried right now.

i don’t feel like it.

mollie is sitting in the cats' bed. mom brought over this bed that belongs to my cats, they both like to lie in it together. they haven’t been lying in it, though; instead, they’ve spent lots of time outside. but mollie is just sitting there, even though it’s just a bit too small for her. she’s looking at me expectantly, like i’m supposed to be doing something with her. maybe she just thinks it’s time for bed.

we added more names to the invitation list tonight. at this rate we’ll have to rent TWO damn tents.

christine e-mailed me a while ago, noting that she’s a woman and she doesn’t obsess about her weight. i’m sure this was in response to some comment i wrote about how women always obsess about their weight.

you know WHY she doesn’t obsess? BECAUSE SHE’S VERY VERY THIN AND COULD SIT AROUND EATING HOT FUDGE SUNDAES AND QUARTER POUNDDERS WITH CHEESE ALL DAY LONG AND WOULD STILL BE VERY VERY THIN.

that’s all i’m saying.

goodnight.

not that i’m going to be or anything.

maybe i won’t have any caffeine tomorrow evening.

ok then ok ok ok,

grace just a bit jangly on a friday night.


Jul. 13, 2006

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panic PLUS very very FAT [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:12 pm

have i mentioned the dress i’m planning on wearing for the wedding? it’s pink. it’s very beautiful.

i tried it on about an hour ago and have been putting this off because i know i’ve gained some weight in the past few months. but in the past few days i’ve decided that i’ve been losing weight.

HOW do i think i’ve been accomplishing this? all the going out to dinner? all the bowls of sugar-free BUT NOT FAT FREE ice cream? all the glasses of wine and chocolates while playing boggle at randy’s? all the other bowls of ice cream? more going out to dinner? going out to lunch? going out to brunch???

OF COURSE i haven’t lost any weight.

I CAN’T ZIP THE DRESS UP.

i can get it halfway up, exactly.

IT USED TO ZIP UP.

when i bought it, anyway.

i recall that it was slightly tight, but looked really really good.

DON’T PANIC.

panicking is making me want to EAT A BIG BOWL OF ICE CREAM.

damn. damnitall.

ok, i have nine weeks.

NINE WEEKS.

after i tried on the dress i decided to take mollie for a walk. besides this urgent need i now have to exercise more, i figured mollie has been cooped up all day because it’s been so hot.

it’s still hot, but at least the darkness give the illusion of more coolness.

after we walked for about three minutes i got bored and said to mollie LET’S RUN. so we ran instead, for about 23 minutes, which is a paltry amount for us, but it WAS hot and it was also quite dark. i worried a little about the darkness, afraid i was going to fall on my face, but i only almost tripped one time.

incidentally, i did manage to catch myself before splatting on the ground, and i remembered that this was the exact place, a buckle in the sidewalk, where i had actually fallen down a couple of years ago. and that was DURING THE DAY.

maybe i’m getting more agile as i get older.

uh huh.

Winnie is sleeping on the chair next to me and he’s very happy and untroubled because he has NO DRESS TO FIT INTO THAT HE CAN’T ZIP UP.

he just wishes i was a little smaller so he could have more of the chair cushion.

i’m going to go not eat a big bowl of ice cream now.

NINE WHOLE WEEKS. NINE WHOLE WEEKS.

ok, one more thing, when i was looking up tent places today (THE TENT IS GOING TO COST QUITE A BIT), one of the sites had a heading called “wedding countdown” and i KNEW i shouldn’t have looked at it but i did and was of course not happy because they listed stuff like “12 to 18 months before the wedding” and “nine months before the wedding.” I DON’T THINK MFH AND I WERE EVEN TALKING TO EACH OTHER TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE WEDDING. i know that wedding plans were not in our future at that time.

deep breaths. the dress will zip up, you’ll see.

i could always wear a mumu, instead.

goodnight.

july grace.

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PANIC HAS FINALLY SET IN [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:56 am

every day this week, everybody i’ve talked to has asked me, “how are the wedding plans going?” yesterday, seven people asked me. at first it seemed amusing, but then tonight i started thinking about it. TWO MORE MONTHS TO GO.

i wish i wasn’t panicking right now, at 12:40 a.m., because i really should be sleeping, instead. but i was lying in bed and suddenly i thought I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHEN WE NEED TO GET A MARRIAGE LICENSE. this is a very fundamental thing.

tonight we went to our reception site and the manager had said we’d have two rooms for our guests but tonight she said we only got one of the rooms and if we have more than 130 people we’ll have to rent a tent. YOU DIDN’T SAY THIS BEFORE WHEN WE SIGNED THE CONRACT.

oh boy. how much will the tent cost? probably about a million dollars.

i got out of bed and looked at my VERY IMPORTANT LIST of Wedding Things To Do and circled some things and made lots of exclamation points and added a few things like CALL UP AND SEE HOW MUCH A TENT COSTS.

and i’m worrying a little about the cake. have i mentioned that i’m going to be making the cake? i wasn’t worried about it because i’ve made cakes before, but not for my own wedding because I’VE NEVER HAD A WEDDING BEFORE.

deep breaths. Ooohhhmmmmm ooohhhhmmmmm ooohhhmmmmmmm....

my cat, winston, is very calm about things. i need to follow his lead. right now he’s dilligently cleaning himself, but this is about the most rigorous thing i’ve seen him do all day. and now he jumped up on the chair next to me and is cleaning some more but i’m sure this is going to be followed by a long period of sleeping.

he’s not worried.

the thing is, kevin hasn’t had to work for the past three days and we’ve mostly been hanging pictures. the place is looking better and better and i’m sure that at some point i’m going to feel that it’s OUR house instead of HIS house, and there aren’t too many boxes left to unpack and only a couple of rooms are a total disaster. so in that regard we’ve made some progress.

BUT NO WEDDING PROGRESS AT ALL.

we did go see “pirates of the caribbean: dead man’s chest” on monday and it was ok. too much of davy jones who had a horrible horrible slimy-looking octopus head. sometimes i had to look at the ceiling instead of at the screen, and other times i had to cross my eyes so i didn’t have to look at him. also, all his men were really gross looking. i know this is designed to appeal to all the teenage boys who rule the movie-going markets, but yuck.

aside from that, the movie had lots and lots of swordplay plus general fighting and chasing and stuff, a lot like the first one. funny, after i went to see the first one i came home and wrote an essay about it, because of the absurdity of the movie being made based on a disney ride. and then christine suggested that i put it on her website, what’s new LA, and i did that, and then i started writing a column for that website on a regular basis, and because of that i started writing a column in a paper here. and then MFH started reading the column and was SMITTEN because of the very VERY amusing writing, and then he went to my very first one-woman show, and then he took me to lunch.

and now we’re getting married.

IN TWO MONTHS.

i MUST GET TO SLEEP. because i have MANY THINGS TO DO TOMORROW.

anyway, i guess i’d say you could go see the latest pirates movie, but i don’t know. it was also annoying that absolutely nothing, i mean NOTHING was resolved, plus it was all so disjointed and didn’t make a lot of sense plus it seems that every single character from the first one is referred to in the second one and who can remember that far back? now i feel obliged to see the first one again.

if you want to read that article i wrote about the first one, you could click on that “what’s new LA” link, and it’d be the very first essay.

TWO MORE MONTHS.

ok then,

grace trying not to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.


Jul. 09, 2006

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sunday night [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:00 pm
i bet you made it to the show because there were MANY MANY PEOPLE there. friday night there were about 150, which was sold out, and saturday night there were EVEN MORE. wow. we hadn’t expected such a turnout. i guess people are really anxious to hear some swearing.

jason’s father passed away on thursday night. mac called and told me, and i called jason to express my condolences and he said he was on his way back to spfld to do the show. this was quite a surprise. i just don’t know how he did it. i can’t imagine having the ability to function at all under the circumstance, much less trying to be funny. he arrived at 8:30, and the show went on, and he was great, and it all went really, really well.

the final sketch was one that mac and jason did together, called “howard hopped the a-train,” and it’s about a guy names howard riding the A Train, and jesus is there with him and it’s funny but also poignant and meaningful and we were all backstage crying while they were doing it and like i said, i just don’t know how jason did it.

and then there was last night. jason wasn’t there, and so mac filled in for him. mac was fine, he was TERRIFIC, as a matter of fact. we rehearsed the bag lady sketch a few times and it was never perfect, but it was never really perfect, anyway, and i told him it’d be fine and he kept saying that it was so great that i was doing this with him and well i really didn’t have an alternative, did i? plus i knew he’d be great.

and he was. he didn’t miss one single line, not anything, it couldn’t have gone better.

until i got to the part where i started to go crazy, when i was revealing my true, bag lady-self. i stand up and talk about how bag ladies talk to themselves and scream at people on the street, and then i said “and rummaging through garbage cans,” but then, quickly, i completely forgot which ranting speech i was giving, and i had absolutely no idea where i was or what came next. so i said “and rummaging through garbage cans” agan, and then i said it again, and one more time, and i tried to sound looney every time because i FELT quite looney at that point, and i wondered if i’d keep repeating “and rummaging through garbage cans” till the audience finally gave up and went home.

it felt like i said it about a thousand times, and a couple of times i squeaked out little squeaks and turned to mac, who i’m sure was utterly horrified, and then i said it again...and then, thankfully, somehow i got out of the loop and said another line, and then another one, and i realized i knew where i was and i wasn’t going to explode after all.

but by this time it felt so incredibly ridiculous, and i kept thinking GRACE YOU ARE SUCH A TOTAL MORON! and i was thinking about how we’d worried about mac, and he was PERFECT, and meanwhile i was still saying my lines and i felt like bursting into laughter because it was so absurd, and i kept going, choking back the laughter, till i finally got offstage and laughed and laughed.

afterwards, a friend of mac’s who i didn’t even know said she didn’t know that anything was amiss, so it was very fortunate that at that point i was supposed to be crazy and i guess it didn’t matter that i sounded retarded.

whew.

after the show, things felt very anticlimactic. we tore down the set but there wasn’t really anything to tear down, and then most people said they were going home to bed, so i went home, too, and i felt wide awake for the first time all day.

so that’s that. i liked doing the show because there was no pressure on me to do anything except being in the show; i didn’t have to worry about the publicity or any of that stuff that i hate trying to do by myself. also, going out with the cast after a performance is infinitely more fun that going out all by myself after a show of my own. last new year’s eve, after my show at the hoogland center, i went to my sister and brother-in-law’s house, and they had all been to see me, but it just wasn’t the same at all.

maybe we’ll do this show again since there were so many tons of people there. but i know jason isn’t thinking about planning anything right now, and neither is mac.

life, please, enjoy every moment of it, because you don’t know how much time you have.

i’m even trying to enjoy sunday night even though i always hate sunday nights even if i don’t have to do anything on monday, and it looks like my monday is going to be pretty easy.

ok then,

grace.


Jul. 06, 2006

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the show must go on... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:17 pm

do you remember the part in “moulin rouge” where that one guy, the great english character actor, is singing that line as things are really falling apart, and nicole kidman is walking through the theater wearing a lovely form-fitting jacket and a stylish little hat? i wish i could remember a few more of the details, but that’s how things are right now. well, there’s no french tragedy with some evil guy who’s the producer of the show about to ruin everything and nobody’s doing any fancy tango numbers and there are none of those fabulous riotously colorful can can outfits...

but things have taken a very surreal turn. tonight i was telling mary that it’s like that dream i have of being in a play and having to go onstage even though i can’t recall having rehearsed and i don’t know any of the lines.

she’s had that dream, too, but we agreed this production has gone beyond that.

last night jason, who is the director of the show and is in a few of the short plays, wasn’t at rehearsal. family crisis. we thought he’d be back tonight, but he wasn’t. ongoing family crisis. i don’t like to write details about family crises on here because it seems disrespectful or something, but let’s just say it’s a pretty big crisis and he may or may not be back for the show tomorrow night.

so tonight mac read jason’s lines, except he’s such a quick study that he was able to actually perform most of the stuff without a script. except for the one with me, the bag lady one, the one that’s my favorite. mac has the day off tomorrow, and he’s says he’s going to memorize it then.

hmm. it’s not that i don’t believe him, it’s not that i doubt his ability, but it’s all just very...odd.

troopers. the cast is filled with troopers. not actual police troopers, of course, but people who are right here trooping.

i wonder what the show will be like tomorrow night. interesting. you should come just to see how it goes. i mean, i know it’ll be funny. i just can’t imagine how my own particular sketch at the beginning of act two will go.

there’s been a lot of family crises and tragedy lately - people dying, people having health scares - the older i get, the more serious it all seems.

and that’s exactly why it’s critical and crucial and very very important to have a good time. enjoy yourself. laugh at craziness that is life, because crying about it is too depressing.

i meet too many older people who say to me, after complaining about their many ailments, “don’t get old.”

no, please, consider the alternative.

whew. come to the show, tomorrow night or saturday night, and i promise you’ll laugh.

that is all for now.

ok then,

grace in july.


Jul. 03, 2006

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stuff update [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 4:17 pm
i cut up a watermelon and i started putting it in tupperware containers and suddenly it seems WE DON’T HAVE ENOUGH TUPPERWARE CONTAINERS.

i got rid of all my tupperware.

i’m going to attempt to not spend the rest of my days missing all the stuff we sold/gave away at our garage sale.

here are a few photos from our camping trip to Giant City State Park down in southern illinois.

this is along the road by one of the short hiking places. very pretty.



this is me and mollie along the giant city trail.



and here’s kevin with mollie on the trail.



and here i had hiked up this path and kevin kept saying "just walk back a little bit so i can get you in the picture and i kept saying NO I’M GOING TO FALL AND KILL MYSELF so this is as close as i’d get. mollie, of course, kept running up and down the rocks like some kind of crazy rock-climbing nut because she loves hiking more than anything exept for eating/sleeping.



note how mollie is as close as she can be to the grilling.



remember the torturous 12-mile, five hour hike? this is me at the start of the trail, blithely unaware of the wretched amount of hiking in front of me.



and here’s mollie after hiking and hiking and hiking for hours and hours without adequate food/water. but at least she could drink out of the creeks.



that is all for now.

ok then,

camping grace.

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HOT HOT HOT [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:05 pm

we went running yesterday morning and it wasn’t so hot because we ran on the chatham trail and we went (relatively) early in the morning. but later we were driving in the car when it was almost a hundred outside and first we spotted a (very thin) woman jogging down the street wearing sweatpants. is she nutty about weight loss, was she trying to sweat her legs completely away?

and then we saw another jogger, this time a guy wearing a life preserver. why was he wearing a life preserver? at first we thought maybe it was just an orange safety vest so drivers would see him but as we got closer we realized it was a life preserver.

maybe the upcoming holiday is making people a little crazy. or maybe it’s the heat.

according to weather.com, it’s 93 outside right now but feels like 98. but our thermometer has reached a hundred again.

it was, indeed, hot at muni last night but the play was SO GOOD. go see it, but go on wednesday night because i think it’s going to be pretty cool then. relatively cool.

dad says he’s not going anywhere unless there’s a change in weather and a storm rolls in, with a blizzard.

amy and jim moved their two giant fish tanks from our house today. i’ve been feeding the fish for the past couple of weeks and was proud of myself that i hadn’t killed them. i was about to feed them when amy was here and she said “oh, you feed those fish with this food.” because one tank is TROPICAL fish and the other tank is...uh...plain? domestic? regualr fish. anyway, there were two fish food containers but i figured she just had two because she’s amy and she has lots of everything. but when i actually read the jars, one said TROPICAL FISH FOOD and the other said...uh...i can’t remember...plain fish food. regular fish food.

anyway, they were clearly COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and so it’s actually a miracle that i didn’t kill the fish. because one day i’d use one of the fish foods and the next i’d use another one and i didn’t think about that at all.

nobody’s going to give me a fish-sitting job now, clearly.

oh well.

tomorrow is a vacation day anyway.

i hope your 4th is filled with fireworks.

ok then,

july grace.



Jul. 02, 2006

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P.S. HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY RANDY [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 5:44 pm

we got carryout from the magic kitchen for his birthday, and i made him a decorated chocolate cake with coconut icing and we all played electronic catch phrase and it was fun even though many of us were ready to pass out with exhaustion.

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july already... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 5:43 pm

how did that happen? it’s too hot to go outside right now. the thermometer outside the door reads 100. no point in going outside, except to get ice cream sandwiches, which we just did. i’m going to nap in a minute.

we’re going to muni to see “chicago” tonight but IT WILL BE MUCH TOO HOT. we looked for mini personal fans while at the store buying ice cream but couldn’t find any. wouldn’t it be funny if you took a big box fan and set it up and brought lots of extension cord and plugged it in? of course they wouldn’t let you actually do it, but it’d be funny attempting it.

i can’t imagine that the show will be crowded tonight because IT’S TOO HOT TO BE OUTSIDE.

maybe a cold front will blow through any minute.

this morning i was lying in bed thinking about the garage sale stuff. we sold LOTS AND LOTS of stuff and took the rest to the salvation army drop box over in the wal mart parking lot. the signs around the box said DO NOT LEAVE ITEMS OUTSIDE BOX but all the boxes were stuffed full and there were already lots and lots of things piled around the boxes, so we unloaded all our stuff and left.

but this morning i kept thinking about all that stuff, wishing we hadn’t been so hasty in carting it all away, wishing i hadn’t given away those four white plates even though i have at least 10 others...i toyed with the idea of driving over there and digging through my stuff and pulling out things that i really can’t live without.

this is a little ironic given the one character i’m playing in our show DANGER: ADULT CONTENT which opens this friday, because she’s a woman turning into a bag lady and she does dig through garbage cans quite a bit.

but this wouldn’t be like that, because i’d just be digging through MY OWN STUFF, plus it’s not a garbage can, it’s a salvation army box.

and it’s too hot to do it anyway.

luckily.

because otherwise i’d probably do it.

Kevin says that if we actually NEED any of the stuff we got rid of, we can just go buy a new one. WHY BUY A NEW ONE WHEN I JUST GAVE AWAY PERFECTLY GOOD STUFF?

i was kind of amazed at the things people bought. somebody actually paid 50 cents for my crappy black plastic colander. and randy’s mom had the most ugly thing to hang on the wall that i’ve ever seen, but somebody paid at least a couple of bucks for it. the sale was supposed to start at eight, and people were there by seven and the place was completely crowded until 9:30. after that it died down a little and randy kept saying that it was over, but they kept coming in right up to the end and beyond. at 12, when we said it’d be over, a couple of women and a girl jumped out of a car and the girl ran up and started grabbing things. her mom wouldn’t let her keep my red patent leather purse, but they did buy a bunch more stuff, including this thing MFH had hanging on his wall that i was never extremely fond of and i was glad to see that a little girl wanted it instead of having to toss it in with all the other salvation army stuff.

it was a frantic sale, we made a bunch of money, and we celebrated with lunch at panera. last night we celebrated some more, because friday was randy’s birthday, and then i was more tired than i’ve ever been.

and we’re going to muni tonight and it will be VERY VERY HOT.

today i’m wondering why we live here. it’s too cold in the winter and in the summer it’s frequently unbearably hot, like today.

once i get all my stuff settled here at K’s house, i guess i won’t want to move away because of the thought of doing any more moving.

but maybe i’ll change my mind.

change is good, after all.

brendan and jerri are moving out of their fabulous loft apartment in downtown LA to a house in Pasadena. a house will be better for the baby, and for Brooklyn the dog. but it sure was a cool apartment. i can’t imagine moving all their stuff, because they have more books than anybody i know. but i’m sure they get movers to move everything every time they move, which is a lot. but still, even if movers move stuff, don’t you have to put the stuff away once it’s there?

it seems daunting. it seems daunting thinking of squeezing all my stuff into this house right now, but then again, K got rid of an impressive amount of stuff and i might have a good amount of closet space.

at rehearsal on friday night, we went to carrie’s house and did it in her back yard which i’m not sure you can technically call a yard because it’s more like a concrete place with a little screened house, and we had a cookout and ran the show. and it’s going to be VERY VERY FUNNY so i hope you can make it. friday and saturday nightts, club room at the hoogland arts center downtown, 9:00 p.m. it only lasts about an hour and a half, including intermission, and it’s funny and different and like nothing you usually ever see around here.

plus it’s AIR CONDITIONED.

what more could you ask for?

ok then,

july grace.

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