the asian lesbians at last night's final self-defense class kicked my ass. they kicked each other's ass in a little post-class jujitsu demo, but for a good hour-and-a-half they were all about pulling my hair, giving me the old bear hug, climbing on top of me. i have bruises on my inner thighs. during class someone broke the window of the car parked out front (crime in oakland is that bad that people try to break into cars near a dojo housing at least five third-degree black belts) and the most masculine of the black-belts threw off her jacket and charged outside. whoever it was didnt stick around long enough for the shit to go down. how cool would that have been, to see five asian lesbians jujitsuing oakland street punks?

im totally on a roll today ... how to change "03/01/2002 - 03/31/2002" to a nice and neat: "march"

ah ha! archives are back! How to Fix your archival issues

i love phil

what's with the missing archives?

Thanks to everyone who put yankee hotel foxtrot on their “best-of” lists. This is truly wilco’s best – I’ve never liked them before.

In other news…it’s a wonderful feeling when you can finally describe with words the “general” feelings you have about something. Well, this weekend, I put my finger on one more reason why I don’t like hippies. One thing that hippies do is “give everything a chance.” Everything is good, and no one view is better than another, so who’s to say? Well, this view removes all credibility from what the person really does like and therefore what defines their personality. If you really don’t have an opinion about anything (or if you “like” everything), you’re probably pretty boring. My guess is you have an opinion, but saying it goes against whatever stereotype you’ve picked for yourself. Which is worse.

something is messed up with blogger. most of the time i cant get to this page. anyway, i almost started crying last night from exhaustion. dave's best friend from college plus his girlfriend have made a suprise visit from LA, and dave's parents are in town. we've been up late drinking and then up early touring. i wanted nothing more than to go to bed at 6pm last night. we have been on such a high not sleeping, not stopping, and feeling alright with it. It’s finally catching up with us. We are going on a detox program, which should help. it flushes you out. my body hates me, so it’s a good idea. Here’s a cute sappy picture of us.

Thursday was Dave’s birthday, so I agreed with whatever he wanted to do, more than usual, since normally I am not very agreeable. He didn’t want me to go to my Thursday night self-defense class, and the girl I go with thought that was strange, but I didn’t say anything and went Tuesday instead. He wanted to have his birthday dinner at Bandera’s, best ribs in the bay area, in los altos, terribly inconvenient, but ok. I arrive in palo alto and he informs me that Bandera’s is closed. Booked up for a private party. Luckily, he tells me, a friend overheard him on the phone and suggested an even better bbq restaurant on the coast. Well, ok. That’s pretty far away, but it’s your birthday. Bbq on the coast. We drive out, the sun is setting, and it’s breathtaking. Im scanning the sides of Highway One for a neon sign reading “Serracina,” which serves bbq, and after 30 miles I start thinking, “good god, he’s lucky it’s his birthday,” we’re almost in Santa Cruz. Then we pass “our spot.” The first time we were there was April 23, 2000, and we had “the talk.” We decided we would start dating. As we pass I say, “Look how far we are, there is our spot. It can’t be this far!” He turns around, and says we should stop anyway. Plus, he has to pee. Ok, damn. Has to pee. There I am wobbling down the rocky slope in my traction-less boots, and we get down to the bottom. We walk over to the exact same spot where we were nearly three years ago and not until he was down on one knee did I know what was going on.

ok, this is what i made. it better be good.

Jess should know that her cooking abilities are actually something special, and it’s not, contrary to popular belief, all about simply reading the damn recipe. In trying to be the proper girlfriend who makes a cake for her boyfriend’s birthday, I have produced what resembles much more of a butter volcano than a crisp white, sharp cornered piece of art. As long as I cooked it long enough, which quite probably will not be the case, and actually put all of the right ingredients in it, im hoping that it still tastes good. when its made properly, it is like Mary Magdalen herself spoon feeding you blueberry-lemon perfection, when it is made improperly, its like blueberry-lemon pretty damn good still.

On another note, we will have a house full of people to remove this cake from my hands: two of my best friends from college, their two boyfriends, two of dave’s best friends from college, and one of their girlfriends arrive tomorrow to stay with us in our one bedroom apartment for the weekend. I cant fucking wait. Were having a party, to top it all off, Saturday night. in a pre-emptive move, we tried our damnest to not bang on hat-guy’s door at midnight while he graced us with his latest taste in techno music and his dog’s ability to bark along, filling the lyric void, but alas, we broke down.


ok. UPDATE: in finding the link for this recipe, i fucking realized i MADE THE WRONG THING! I didnt make that recipe!!! where in the world did i find what i did make? it was just butter and cream cheese in the frosting, not chocolate. jess did you make the one with chocolate or butter? wtf?

i wasn't terribly thrilled with edward norton's latest, 25th Hour. there were a lot of unnecessary scenes without a lot of character development. you are meant to like ed norton's character because he is such a nice guy, even though he is a drug dealer, he saved that dog and his best friend is awkward and dorky. But my liking him was all Ed Norton, as in, Ed Norton has that certain something that he carries with him, all crushes aside. (btw: he is probably on top of my “like to make out with” list. No, that’s not true. He’s second. Luke Wilson is number one. and two. Ed Norton is number three.)
and it’s not because he saved that dog. Or due to his befriending the dorky English teacher, who is everything he is because of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and nothing else.

one of my best friends is a documentarian, and for Christmas she sent me a video of our college memories. after laughing at my wearing short-sleeved, collared man-shirts far too often and our drawn out, drunken (completely embarrassing) conversations, I realized how many memories slip away from your mind forever. I am on that video doing/saying things i have no memories of. its not a “i was so wasted, dude” kind-of thing. I was (in some of it) completely sober. i don’t remember large parts of my childhood, but I always thought I remembered most of my adulthood. I don’t find it strange that I cannot describe what happened op May 17, 1996, but if I were to see a video of that day I would expect to be able to say “oh, yeah, I remember that.” but that’s not the case. I think that characteristic varies wildly from person to person. My sister-in-law remembers everything. every conversation, every person she sees, everything they were wearing. (granted, this is all coming from somewhat of a fashion perspective) and I have known some absent-minded professor types who can’t remember what they did earlier that morning. “did you mail that letter?”….”I have no idea.” (guess who?) It cant be any kind of measurement of intelligence, how many useless details one remembers, though it has to be related to the capacity of brain-work. Not brain capacity, but how much one bothers to use one’s brain. Can I practice using my brain more? This is all very disturbing. I feel like a New Guinean who has never seen herself on video.

im not quite ready to make the trek over to actual "work." im going to sit here at my desk and check the four emails (none addressed souly to me) i received while away two weeks.

and make lists:

things that happened while Christmas vacationing:

1) got a neat digital camera and played with it a lot.
2) dog ate a “wheel-o-fudge,” didn’t die, but simultaneously emit liquid from both ends.
3) I saw emilo estevez (and I am never the one to one to spot them)
4) saw a mouse sitting on an extremely pissed off cat sitting on an even more pissed off dog.
5) collected a whole bunch more pictures of my perfect niece
6) decided I am a traditional sushi kind of girl, none of that nouveau fancy sushi for me

wow. wow is what i have to say to the grand junction, co airport terminal, where they have not one but three gates, no magazine nor drink but free wireless ethernet !?! i kid you not. here i am posting away. anyway, it is snowing like a mother out here. my actual flight wasnt supposed to be out of grand junction, but i caught a ride out here for better luck. i will immortalize my holiday experiences a bit later, for now i wanted to prove to myself that im really here.

but i will say one thing: add emilio estevez to my list of spotted celebrities. oh yeah.

one of these days ill do the full list.