Category: Everything

I pretty much never talk about work here, for some of the obvious reasons (bad form, mate) but also some non-obvious ones, the foremost being that I have never managed to put together a cocktail party-appropriate sentence about what I do for money and to keep me off the street. I could just look at…

I just crawled up the stairs to the cloud room after falling asleep on the TV room carpet for fifteen minutes. Several late-ish nights, a lot of rich food, and two very hard dance classes this weekend have finally caught up to me. A couple of hours ago at Renee’s I was all HEY WHERE’S…

My Memorial Day barbecue this year is going to involve a hot tub, and then my work conference is at a hotel with a pool, and then of course there’s the week I will be spending on the beach in Fiji on my way to New Zealand. I have a little bit of a hard…

Are you getting your hair cut tonight, at least three weeks overdue, and is KC totally going to, like, whinny at you when you come with your front hair looking all like some sort of Shetland pony? Yes, yes, YES. KC, if you’re reading this, let me apologize in advance. WHEEE-hee-heee-nee! Also, is your band…

I consider myself something of an expert on lying, in that I have spent a good deal of my life being either the perpetrator or the recipient thereof. I’m familiar with, from both perspectives: the out-and-out black-is-white-up-is-down lie, the lie of omission, the half-true lie, the honest-mistake lie, the embroidery-for-comic-effect lie, the not-completely-informed-of-all-the-relevant-facts lie, the…

Ever since the 2004 elections I’ve been trying to become, slowly, more politically aware of my surroundings. Unfortunately for me this is not saying much, as I’ve spent much of my life being cheerily ignorant of the actions and redactions of my policy makers…and let’s not even touch on my historic ignorance of matters outside…

Is God, like, a person, or is God a feeling? Or a thing? Or an idea? Or a joke? Or a lie? What do people mean when they say they love God? And what do they mean when they tell you God loves you? What’s the relationship between God (whatever or whoever God is) and…

I’ve been enjoying my post-birthday week so much that even the removal of my top wisdom teeth hasn’t ruined my day or anything. This is possibly because I am still high from the combination of Valium, nitrous gas, and Vicodin I got to have yesterday, or possibly because getting my teeth out has mostly been…

I really honestly truly did think it was a cop, when he started banging on the door and talking down to me in an intimidating way. I have lived a sheltered life, okay? “Is this your house?” he growled. “Is this your party?” Super tall and bald with big arm muscles and sort of mean.…

The worst part was, when he showed up at the door, I honestly believed he was a cop.

My thirty-first birthday is on Sunday. I’m having a little brunch at my house that will, I hope, involve a cake made out of donuts and some sunshine like we had over the weekend. I’ve ordered a new octopus shirt and have made a stop at Display and Costume for those really classy plastic wineglasses…

Yesterday started out bad when I was getting dressed in the morning, one eye on the clock and one eye on my substandard collection of warm socks, and I noticed that the pair of pants into which I was struggling was too tight. I used to need a belt to wear those pants. A belt…

(Originally written at my livejournal) Was it a good idea to see Brokeback Mountain alone this afternoon or not? I kind of think that maybe it would have been smart to have someone to pass me a steady stream of hankies to mop up the steady stream of tears and snot leaking from my face…

(originally written at my livejournal) My heart is still broken by the viccissitudes of diary-x but bravely I soldier on by reporting on Valentine’s Day, past and present, “content manager” be damned. Livejournal, by the way, seems amazingly informal to me…I have resisted, all day, the urge to do a thousand little posts about what…

If I were a sin I’d be envy. If I were a color I’d be dark red. If I were an emotion I’d be schadenfreude. If I were a fabric I’d be slightly wrinkled linen. If I were cheese I’d be chevre. If I were a phobia I’d be athazagoraphobia (fear of being forgotton or…

The thing about love, I said at work on Friday afternoon, at dinner last night, at brunch this morning, is that whatever type it is and whomever you do it with, it’s always hard. It’s hard when you’re partnered, it’s hard when you’re single, it’s hard when you’re somewhere in between. It’s hard when you…

It’s the weather, or I’m going through a second adolescence, or my period is due next week, or it’s the end of the world and we’re all going to die, or something, but this week just sucks . Actually these past couple of weeks sort of suck and I don’t understand why because nothing is…

**What did you do in the past year that you’d never done before?** \\ Got a UTI. Put soap on my green beans instead of olive oil.\\ \\Sang karaoke. Got a job that actually requires that pesky\\ \\MSW. Foiled my boss’ office. Wore fishnets in public.\\ \\Learned the Thriller Dance. Volunteered at the polls. Got…

What I learned from Eliza: Left foot, right foot, breathe. What I learned from bellydance: Improvisation takes a lot of practice. What I learned from Rohini: There is so much love in the world and everyone is so beautiful. What I learned from KC: My hair should always have layers. What I learned from Ruth:…

I have this thing where I only hang out with hot girls. It’s not that I have any sort of “no uglies” friendship policy or anything, it’s just worked out that every single woman friend of mine happens to be gorgeous. Are you a girl? Do you hang out with me? Then you are hot,…

I am still in a really good mood, thanks for asking, especially since you all have been writing me the nicest congratulatory emails this past week. My beautiful friend Kate sent me a New Zealand Lonely Planet guide the other day and you best believe that I have been poring over that thing like it’s…

I don’t feel much like writing about my weekend, not about the gorgeous-yet-condescending Apple store guy named Marlon, nor about the fun Narnia party I went to, nor about the pea soup I made on Sunday that is really bothering me because I can’t tell what I did wrong to it to make it taste…

Body stuff has been really hard for me lately. Food and fat and body image and all of that: worrying about what I’m eating, worrying about exercise, worrying about how my clothes fit, worrying about being so HUNGRY all the time, worrying about gaining back some of the weight I lost earlier this year, worrying…

Friday as planned I made it over to Linda’s with only minimal delay, considering it was pouring down rain the entire drive over. That, in fact, was a theme this weekend: Chiara Driving Her Car In The Pouring Down Rain And Discovering She Doesn’t Totally Know How To Vent Her Car Even Though She’s Had…

It’s been raining all day today, from when I finally woke up this morning and pried myself out of bed, talking to myself the whole time (“Get. Up. No! Get. Up. No! Get! Up! Noooooo! GET! UP! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”) to right this minute. One of my coworkers, who is new to Seattle, came in with a…

plus plus equals Add and and you have pretty much the best Halloween ever, my friends. I also recommend going Axl Rose shopping at the Hot Topic on Capitol Hill (“Pleather pants, dude!”), going to see The Dudley Manlove Quartet at the Tractor, and dancing with a beautiful blonde dressed as a seventies’ cop a…

I’m a little early for my lunch date on the main campus so I spend some time watching a fat and busy spider weave her web, in the medicinal garden below the main fountain. She is so big and round I can see her from several yards away in her flowering shrub and she is…

I guess I’ll just come out and say it: there’s someone new in my life. I’m a little leery of writing about him here, after everything that’s gone on with me for the past year and a half or so, but I think it’s the right time. He’s sweet and funny and very caring, a…

Since I first wrote about the subject back in 2002, I have been having a difficult time with my breakfast. Here’s the situation: a) I really like to eat hot cereal in the morning. Steel-cut oats are my favorite. Mmm, fiber. b) Steel-cut oats take a minimum of forty-five minutes to make. I am not…

I had to ask a grown man for a pork butt on Friday night because this past weekend was Not-Really-A-Party Weekend at my house. My job was to make pulled pork (and to make a cake and to buy goat cheese and also to freak out a little bit) and I had emailed all the…

I am very much in love with bed, pillows, blankets, pajamas, and all other things having to do with sleep, but since I’ve been sick all week (yes, still) I have been coming home early from work and taking a nap right away, and then when it’s actually time to go to bed, at night,…

Monday nights have been sacred to bellydance for me for about two years now, and ordinarily I’d be warming up for my first class of the evening right now, doing shimmy drills and cat-cow stretches in my skirt and hip belt. Sadly, this Monday evening finds your friend Chiara in her pajamas instead, blowing her…

I think I maybe started thinking about the idea of “manifesting” when she-who-will-be-known-as-Piefessor mentioned something about her and Weetabix’s winning some art they really liked and wanted at a craft fair. That’s pretty cool, right? I’ve been talking and thinking and emailing about it all week. The idea, if I understand correctly, is that you…

The clouds have come down with a softly audible whump this last week, and when I haven’t been listening to the Cure on the bus I’ve been listening to music about having consumption and parents not consenting to marriage with a commoner and running bloody through fens and leaping to one’s death from wide verandas.…

It has to just be that I’m getting older, but I found myself, this morning at work, a little overwhelmed by my very fun and busy and social and awesome weekend. There were parties and dinners and visits people I haven’t seen for a while and people I see all the time and people I…

Worst Nightmare: you have to drive stick shift when you’re not very good at driving stick shirt, stopped at a light facing upward on a hill and you’re half an hour late and the person in the passenger seat is yelling at you to turn left when you’re pretty sure it’s right and also it…