project meeting at golden west and the rest of my saturday

teegan holiday spirited me to the golden west yesterday morning to discuss what remains to be done for our final epub effort. after that auspicious beginning (zucchini & brie pancakes!) i came home to my youngest sister and to plot a day of low-key fun at inner harbor east. we saw "I Love You, Man." then walked over to teavolve for a leisurely late afternoon/early evening dinner.

we left when the lightning started (the nigerian guitarist had just started but he left something to be desired). our frugal intention to get the bus was undermined by our fear of getting caught in a downpour, so we cabbed it home.

Cloudy with a chance of coffee

i fell asleep wearing my clothes last night and had even more surreal dreams as a result. of course, that might have been because i was drinking coffee right up to the point when i couldn't keep my eyes open a moment longer. also, it would be more accurate to say that i chose to go to sleep with my clothes on because i was too lazy to put on pajamas. i willfully chose such discomfort and wrinkling.

the dog, as usual, came barreling into my room to claim her spot on the floor by the window. i heard the door fly open, but what finally roused me was her spirited barking at some innocent car or person below.

there aren't any actual clouds today, but i'm lost in a fog. i'm ashamed to tell you, but the first thing i do now is refresh twitter.com to see who's been tweeting what while i've slept. then i heated up some of that clouded coffee from last night. i trolled through my iTunes library until i found Patsy Cline. My sister, who for some reason, gets ready in my bathroom asked "who's that?" when i told her, she responded "Oh, that's my bitch!"

"good coffee should be black like the devil, hot as hell, and sweet like a kiss"

i've been twittering a lot lately. the quote that serves as the title of this post was Foodimentary's latest tweet. i post it here to say, simply, that i agree. hmmm. coffeeeeee.

"The Mockingbird is the Perfect Postmodern Bird..."

"...because it has no sounds of its own; it only mimics the sounds of others."
--Poet, Adam Zagajewski

So, the Polish accent is more lilting than I knew it could be when in the mouth of a poet. The city behind him was lost in a fog. the tops of the roofs were smoky with the cold. baltimore seemed eastern european in its essence--that view and that voice together conjured up all the romance i bestow on that corner of the world.

Zagajewski's poems were imbued with humour, understated and contemplative. i haven't written a poem in nearly 3 years. his work made me want to try my hand at it again.

attended the MFA building dedication

with my sister today and after an interesting presentation on words and images (and their electronic, digital, Web presentation), I noshed on hors d'oeuvres. Finger food is addictive. Then I went to the gym for a 50-minute elliptical run. Odd that I didn't break a sweat even though I burned nearly 500 calories according to the machine's calculations.

inexplicably

i am feeling simultaneously hopeful and stupid today.

3 times in 24 hours

that's my current gym visit frequency. a personal best. i'm trying for two-a-days for through friday.

family shopping trip

i've embraced new old concepts like grocery delivery. yesterday evening i had a bulk order from safeway.com shipped to my house, and find, yet, that i need to venture out to a club store for any number of things that a) i forgot to oder and/or b) that cannot be easily ordered (such as cheap, plastic patio chairs). my sisters and i are all together for the holiday, so this will likely be a more complex expedition than it needs to be.

clouds in my coffee

Outside Class

my memoir class met at XS today; the weather beckoned. i sipped my drink while we discussed several really good, evolved pieces written by fabulous classmates. i stopped off at the grocery store on my way home to the dog to pick up the ingredients for the makeshift shrimp saag i wanted to make. Gato Negro wine is still 2 bottles for 9 bucks, so i indulged.

productivity

it was threatening to be another one of those mornings. a morning in which some combination of going to bed late the night before and having no place to be equals one thing. sleep. my bff called me up to tell me about a long dream (or a series of strung together short dreams) she had. in this dream, all i did was take naps. apparently, i had decided i was a cat and said so. some heavy stuff was going down in these nightmares and we needed to book it out of where we were and i announced that "i'm just taking a cat nap; i'm a cat."

between this and her explicit directive to me to rise and shine, i was roused.

i walked to calvert and fayette to head to the big city post office location to mail in a job application to the DLLR. That's right. They're going to pay me one way or another. then i went to Koffee Therapy and wrote a letter to Martin O'Malley and a Letter to the Editor of the Baltimore Sun. i am going to stump for Unemployment Insurance reform. maybe that's my new purpose in life.

sounds podcastable.

tuesday

The Scene: Weekday morning in my apartment. Sunny.
The Situation: I'm eating O's and drinking Eight O'Clock Coffee (french vanilla)
The Dog's Situation: Not yet walked (she's waiting for my sister to mobilize)
Oh, and she's also staring intently out the floor length window in my bedroom, just watching the cars and people go by.

rainy city

#35

I learned something about another bus route today. I've been a light rail rider for the last couple of years, and have only ridden the bus intermittently, but it's like riding a bike, I guess. Anyway, I boarded the no. 35 and sat, for the better part of an hour, with the meth-addicted population of the city.

I heard snatches of conversation that included things like "my best friend, who just got out of prison..." and "that drug program is too strict..."

it was a long ride in so many ways.

I know from riding the no. 21, which couriers a different disenfranchised population, that eventually you become impervious to the initial depression that results from being so close to that level of hopelessness.