ok, seriously, claudia. you are going to get fired.

strolled into work around 10:30 this morning. thank you gub'ment. things are either pouring down, or dead as dirt. and right now we are in the dirt phase. most of the people working on my project are pulled away on other things, or on their summer vacation. there is not much for me to do. i've spent the entire week thinking about one single equation, and listening to this album on repeat. this album will forever remind me of solving equations. my favorites always remind me of something in particular since i tend to find one and stick with it for awhile.

• yoshimi - the long commute back to san francisco

• yhf / elephant - painting the house last summer (that was a big job, so there are two)

• tigermilk - passing through narrow channels on a sailboat in the bvi during our honeymoon. such a great album too, i picked well for that.

the equations will cause problems in my brain since i feel such a strong pull by the postal service album to think of rainy days and falling in love. lounging on the couch, fire burning in the fireplace, thunder stormes outside, and a linear algebra text book. romance, romance. oddly, i think these may have been the conditions when my husband and i first fell in love. exept replace linear algebra with this evil text.

I was in a conversation with one of my married friends the other day. She has a year on me, we’ve only be at this for two months. In those two months I have heard the following question most frequently: “Are things any different now that you are married?” I have answered it an honest “no” every time. Really, nothing has changed. We have been living together for 3.5 of our 4 years of dating; we are on a mortgage together, for Christ’s sake. Really nothing had changed. You may question weather that is a good thing, Im sure someone’s mother would (probably not my own).

Anyway, nothing’s changed, that’s my story. But then I felt maybe something did. Ive been thinking about this for weeks, and as sick as it is, I think ive figured it out. I’m pretty good at dating. Boyfriends have always come very easily to me. But I’ve never been married, and in my family everyone that gets married gets divorced. There are very few exceptions to that rule. I feel scared to death that (for some deep-rooted, evidence of the effect divorce has on children reason) now that he has to be here, he won’t want to be. I have felt more paranoid in these two months than I ever have before. Recognizing this has done a lot to make me less fucking crazy, but it’s interesting what goes on in your head and in your heart. Sometimes I wonder how much control we have at all.

pardon all of the melancholy in this post. it's due to a combination of things. the parents leaving always makes me sad since i live so far away, its been too long since dinner at my parents house on sunday nights. or my mom stopping by to buy me plants and re-arrange the furniture. this weekend, she brought to my attention there was not one single drink coaster in the entire house, i hadn't noticed. then we went to buy coasters. this weekend we talked about where me might go when dave finishes his phd. i've always wanted to leave, that has always been an issue for us, i feel to far away from everyone. but there is so much to do here, nowhere in the country could possibly compare. we have been sailing and snowboarding on two consecutive weekends. we have driven to half moon bay on a motorcycle, bought two live crabs, strapped them to the back, and driven home. i love the stretch of road from the golden gate to the little lunch place in stinson beach. i love saks fifth avenue, and what i love more about saks fifth avenue is neiman marcus across the street. i love baseball games on a worknight. i love the fillmore and the bottom of the hill. i love that you can walk the entire length of san francisco in a day. i love yosemite. nothing compares.

maybe the problem is this album. it reminds me of fall and makes me want sunday afternoon with overcast skies and a fire in the fireplace.

ive gotten a bit tired of the napa valley thing, it always seems like it will be more fun than it is. i usually wind up overly sleepy, and then we have to drive all the way home. and the wines aren't that good, its not like they give away their best vintage to the masses. since we are in the midst of parental invasion 2004 , where both my parents and dave's parents are here visiting us, we figured we check out the other circuit this time around. im kind of excited, there is a lot more out here than i thought. go L-town!

eulogy for those who are deceased

(because they died when the dog ate them)

by, claudia

• navy doc marten's - irreplaceable in that beautiful, worn in, perfectly molded to my foot state
• black doc marten's - dito
• brown shelly's - irreplaceable since i bought them in London seven years ago
• black kate spade *new 8/19/04 - replaceable, technical, but it will cost me $300 to do it

this hasnt been a very good week. maybe this is why i start this again, some kind of therapy. i hit a point when i know my friends are tired of listening to me bitch, and im sure my husban is tired of it.

i had been preparing for a big presentation all week to be given to our sponsor. it was a video tele-conference, and i relied on others to set up the room equipment since i dont have the proper clearances. five minutes before it starts someone comes to tell us we wont be able to give it and the reason is politics. someone in there decided we shouldnt be playing with their toy, i mean, using their equipment, and they were going to take their toy and go home, i mean, not let us give our presentation. politics.

i know i say this a lot, but i really do need to leave this job.

im going to get this thing started again. i changed a few things to make it new.

looking back in the archives shows things started dropping off around the time i got engaged last january. that means a lot has changed since i posted regularly. i got married, its been about two months now. we bought a house and we moved to the east bay. that has been about a year. my job is still a disaster, but my responsibilities have gotten a lot better.