tavie.com

My dad has good reason to gloat right now, but he isn't: for years he has been ridiculed and teased for his extensive collection of Halloween candles, some of which extend back 40 years. Some of these candles I've seen my entire life (we didn't burn those), but a few of them are cheap white wax, painted over, and we had no problem burning those. Lots of cheap melting ghosts and witches, and fragrant pumpkin-pie votives.

There was a delicious spicy-pumpkin scent in the air last night during our adventure. Orange in black.

To add to that motif, my mom and I went downstairs to look at the moon and Mars, and it seemed like half the island was out on the streets, chatting by the lights of the generators. Trellis, the diner downstairs, set up tables outside with huge plastic tubs of cole slaw and things and people were eating up the food before it could spoil. It was like a block party.

My mom said it reminded her of the old days of the stoop culture, which doesn't exist much anymore in our increasingly wired/disconnected world. (The only people you see outside anymore, chatting, under normal conditions, are old people. One of the reasons I love old people.)

We made our way down the dark street with a flashlight, got to the courtyard by Blackwell House and peered up through the trees at the sky over Queens, and there was the moon, big and golden and low in the sky, and I'm pretty sure that we gazed at Mars, too. More orange in black.

And luckily, we only live on the fourth floor, so it wasn't a hard climb back.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 2:23 AM | shower me with attention

Heh, heh: Iraqis Offer Tips for US Blackout.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 2:11 AM | shower me with attention

Friday, August 15, 2003

Well THAT was a long, boring, sweaty night in the dark! I listened to old-timey music on the radio and listened to my dad talk for, not kidding, two hours straight. He doesn't usually get an audience for that long (although Andrew does usually make good time!) so I stuck it out for him. The good thing about my dad is that he doesn't even need you to nod or pretend you're listening. You just have to be in the room...

The power finally came on at around 3:30 pm here. There was much rejoicing.

I was certainly overreacting yesterday and forgetting to count my blessings. I'm over it now. I was much luckier than most of the people affected by the outage. Poor Cleveland. I'm really worried about Cleveland.

I hope there are no snafus with my flight tomorrow. It's going to be very difficult getting to the airport. No subway service, and traffic is so rotten that we may have to call the cab hours and hours and hours ahead of time...

Why are you in Tavie's head? 6:37 PM | shower me with attention

Thursday, August 14, 2003

I told myself I'd never walk across the 59th Street Bridge again after 9/11, but I had to today.

I'm using up the VERY last of the battery power on my iBook so I'm gonna make this brief.

It was hot and exhausting but I made it home in only half the time this time. It's a lot quicker walking from 68th and Lexington than from Wall Street.

We were evacuated in the middle of my math final. Good thing, too. I think I messed up on combinations.

I was very scared and upset but I got myself under control. I didn't like seeing the Mass Exodus making their way across the bridge to Queens. It was very bad memories. I managed not to freak out but I almost did cry.

My dad and sister were at home. My mom took longer to get home, but she made it on the bus. I'm the only one who had to walk. Again.

So my family isn't really understanding what I'm so freaked out about, but none of them were as close to the terrorism attacks as I were so to them it's just a blackout. To me it's a terrible flashback day. I thought the world was ending again, and when I get home people are sitting on their asses. Not even bothering to find candles.

I waited at the tram station for about an hour just to make sure that nothing was going to happen. Then I finally resigned myself to walking. No friends with me this time. I had to sing "Into the Woods" in my head all the way home.

I was very scared but we're okay now so I'll try to have fun with it and not think about the people trapped in subways and elevators or dying of heatstroke.

It doesn't help that I finally finished Good Omens last night, which is a book about the Apocalypse, which is preceded by a worldwide blackout.

Yeah. They don't understand what I'm freaked out about...

Why are you in Tavie's head? 8:20 PM | shower me with attention

Query: do you think a hot Swedish guy would be more likely to fall in love with me if:

1. I admit I'm American

or

2. I pretend to be Canadian?

It's easy to pretend to be Canadian, because I am naturally polite and apologetic, I have the maple leaf on my ankle and on my backpack, and I have an unnatural knowledge of (admittedly very basic) Canadiana for someone of my national background.

But maybe they think Americans are hotter there. There's a question to ponder: who does the International Community find sexier: Americans or Canadians?

Because, I think politically, they'd tend to go with the Canadians. But sexually? Well... we own more of the glamour, the glitz, the sex industry...

Not that you'd get any of those things by talking to me. You'd get some stammery small-talk, likely about the weather. And avoidance of your gaze.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 1:11 AM | shower me with attention

I got new shoes on Sunday.

I rarely get new shoes so that was good.

They're a size smaller than I usually wear. Maybe I've been overestimating the size of my feet.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 12:17 AM | shower me with attention

Wednesday, August 13, 2003

Hm: My suitcase for Sweden is so heavy I can barely lift it. That may not bode well. It's heavy because of two factors: the present my mom insisted I bring to Linn's family, and all of the Elfquest graphic novels that Linn's sisters insisted I bring.

(Which, incidentally, will be missing Book One because my dear sister stole my copy and lost it. And it was a rare version I got off of eBay. For only four dollars. Which will not happen again in my lifetime.)

It's very heavy, and I may need to negotiate stairs. Now, I'm not a weakling-- I've wrangled heavy suitcases-- but this one's like trying to lift one of the stones of the Giza pyramids. Without levers, ropes or ramps. So that's a concern.

Hm, also: my aunt cut her hair. 8 inches off it. This is astronomical:
There are four women in my family. My mother, her sister, myself and my sister. We all used to have waist-length (and beyond!) hair. My sister started cutting hers a few years ago. Now it is very short. But as long as I've known Tante Joan, she's always had waist-length blonde hair. On Sunday, my mom and I met her at Lincoln Center for a folk concert (Christine Lavin? Adorable!) and half her hair was gone. Shock. SHOCK.

So now it's just me and my mom. Hair to our hips. The two blondies have deserted us. What is happening to the world?

Why are you in Tavie's head? 4:48 PM | shower me with attention

Got a motherfuckin hundred on that motherfuckin math test.

Two more to go: Afr-Am lit in an hour and a half, and the math final tomorrow (which, it turns out, I DO have to take because he's dropping the lowest grade OTHER than the final).

Motherfuckin hundred thanks to Andrew's Magical Calculator of Goodness and Love. Bay. Bee.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 4:43 PM | shower me with attention

Okay. I'm back. I was going to wait another day, but I can't. It's Wednesday now. I've abstained from posting in this space for a week today.

This is where I've been all week. You can read the details of my Cunning Plan at the very bottom of the page. Even if she is still checking after a week, I hope that my actions have impressed upon my mom the seriousness of my request that she quit pokin' her nose in here. It ruins it for me.

I missed you, faerie. I thought about you every day. I did my obsessive link-checking from here-- I never really left you alone...

I've discovered the name for the bizarre corn on my right-hand middle finger: it's called a "writer's bump". Who knew? I'm on the keyboard more than anyone I know. Why would I have a writer's bump?

I do take a lot of notes in class. It keeps me awake. I rarely refer back to them, but if I don't keep busy I will fall asleep. Perhaps I'm gripping my pen too hard. I thought for awhile the bump was from knitting, but there's more pressure on the index fingers from that.

Anyway, I wish it would go away. It makes the sillhouette of my hands against a bright computer screen look ugly. (Then stop looking at your hands against the computer screen.) (But why, they look so pretty in the dark like that!) (Except for the bump, you mean.) (Except for the bump.)

I saw Secretary tonight. I wanted Kirsten to stay up and watch it with me but she's being all responsible and going to bed before dawn these days. So I watched it with the Inca Stinka. Although I think he failed to appreciate the novelty of the movie's themes and the sensitivity with which they were portrayed, I myself thought it was very good. I did have, although, as I had with Donnie Darko last night (and what is this Maggie Gyllenhaal film festival??), some reservations: I was with them up until the drawn-out, overly-literal, ridiculous climax, which I think did little to explain the satisfying conclusion. It seems like there's a hole somewhere there. But other than that scene (and I don't want to spoil the movie, which I recommend, but for those who've seen it, I mean the hands-on-the-desk/feet-on-the-floor-until-I-come-back scene), I thought the movie was beautiful. The other problem I had was the sound-- the whacking was very loud, and James Spaders' voice was very soft, which I suppose isn't a problem in an eardum-deafening theatre setting, but at home with the air-conditioner running and people trying to sleep, it made for the necessity of frequent volume adjustment.

Which is something I hate about movies lately. Whacking sounds aren't usually a problem (consarnit-- there should be more whacking in films today!), but why is the music in so many movies so much louder than the dialogue? Is it my tv? I have to watch everything with the remote in hand, turning the sound DOWN when the music comes on and UP when the people speak, UP and DOWN and UP and DOWN like I'm Tommy Smothers and the volume control is my yo-yo.

Bah! Always something to complain about!

Why are you in Tavie's head? 5:51 AM | shower me with attention