Category: Everything

I am home sick this afternoon. I dragged into work this morning, sniffling and wiping my nose, drank a bunch of water, saw a patient and told her I better not shake hands with her, and came on home. I had to go to the grocery store a little later because I didn’t have any…

Who will get the election in November, who who who who who who? What will I do if W gets in? Besides cry and scream and shake my fist at the sky, I mean. Should I grow or cut my hair? How much money do I need? What will I be like in twenty years?…

I am very sore right now, in every single muscle of my body. You know what’s not a good idea? Take three weeks off from dancing and then dance for about two and a half hours for an audition, like I did yesterday. This lovely bellydance troupe I know needs some new people in it…

I went to my friend Peachy’s house, who never updates but does have a fine home karaoke system. Three weeks ago she emailed all of us who were going to go to her house a thousand-song Excel worksheet, so we could…get this…choose our songs beforehand. Peachy is nothing if not organized. It was so fun.…

When I came home just now my housemate C was standing on the front porch, wearing plaid pajama pants, a Boston College sweatshirt, a headlamp and rubber gloves. “Chiara?” she yelled when I got out of the car. “Are you squeamish?” How does one answer that question, you know? I mean, it can so easily…

J needed to get a space heater because it’s getting colder here and we’re not quite ready to turn the heat on just yet. We’re trying to hold out for the middle of October, I think. She asked me if I wanted to go to Fred Meyer with her to pick one up. Now, normally…

I love tiny little plates full of tiny little bits of food, which is why I like sushi, tapas, and cocktail parties. That also explains why I am eating frozen appetizers for dinner tonight. I am justifying it by reminding myself that one of these appetizers involves spinach, which is a vegetable..an anti-carcinogenic vegetable at…

I’m sitting on my bedroom floor waiting for the washing machine to stop so I can get in my tiny little bathtub, the one that is so perfectly shaped like a wee beige cauldron that I am constantly tempted to throw in some onions, carrots, and potatoes and make a nice minestrone. I haven’t done…

I’m sitting on the stepstool in the kitchen while J experiments with the Shrinky Dinks she got when we went shopping yesterday. Her experimental Shrinky Dink idea is so marvelously awesome that I cannot reveal it here but you should trust me that it is tremendously fantastic. I just made some hot chocolate and am…

I’ve been asked, several times in the last couple of days, how the new house is working out for me. I’m happy to report that I hardly ever refer to it as the “new house” at all anymore. This is a wonderful thing. What I’ve been telling people when they ask is that moving this…

I’m feeling politically antsy again. I’m at a particularly annoying stage where I’m aware that I’m not as informed as I could be, but also where the getting more informed is sort of killing me. Everything I read about is freaking me out: the Swift Boat Veterans; the National Guard memos; the convention bounce; the…

Well, you know, I think that maybe my Hurricane Watch 2004 Blog maybe doesn’t even need to happen now because according to Mom and to the internet and to other people, everything seems to be simmering down into a tropical depression. They’re definitely going to have bad weather but it doesn’t look like it’s going…

I’m going to pretend this is a blog for the weekend, as is evidenced by my typing directly into the diary-x box thingy here, and just do a couple of itty bitty entries. I don’t actually have a ton to say about the hurricane, or anything else, really, but I just wanted to say that…

Chiara: Well, I guess you’re right. The hurricane is going to hit regardless of whether you’re there, so let’s still plan on you being here Friday night. Mom: Okay, honey. Living in South Florida makes one a fatalist. I’ll just take it as it comes. Chiara: Probably a good way to look at it. Okay,…

I don’t know that I’ll ever get over the thing where you haven’t seen someone for a long time and you don’t keep in super-regular touch with this person but when you do see the person it feels totally natural to tell this person all your business and have her sleep in your bed with…

My first JournalCon last year was this incredibly adrenaline-producing, overwhelming experience and I met some people I full-on idolized and I thought, this is it, I’ve found this amazing community out of nowhere, all these people I’d never know otherwise, all with their stories. I didn’t even think about the internet weirdness; it was just…

Well, all right, JournalCon. is tomorrow and I haven’t packed yet, of course, and of course I don’t have swag again and I have met exactly zero of my three roommates, and my buddy Sundry is staying here in Seattle and I’m going to miss her, and it’s so different this year than last, you…

JournalCon is next week and you’d think I’d want to be churning out the witty-yet-poignant entries doubletime to get ready for it, you know, to really impress everyone and make someone give me a million dollars to continue inflicting this journal on you all, but, uh, no. Instead I’ll just throw out a couple of…

It’s gray and rainy and I stumble down to the basement to find what is currently serving as my rainshell for the first time in months. Weird August weather so far. I’m shivering and wishing I’d worn socks, and the rain falls down and the cars go by and I hunch over in my chair…

As usual, I am way behind the curve and so I didn’t see Fahrenheit 9/11 until last night. I’m still feeling itchy and anxious and sad from it. I’d read a lot about the film when it came out, of course, and I’d meant to see it opening weekend but first I moved and then…

Theme Of Room Formerly Known As The Bowie Room: We took down the Bowie Towel about a day after we declared it the Bowie Room. Sort of disrespectful, now that he’s had cardiac surgery and everything. Also, it’s a little weird to have a towel in your living room. Anyway, it’s still purple, green, and…

There is something that is freaking me out about my new room in the new house…when will all of this stop being new, by the way? I moved in almost a month ago. Any idea? Anyway, the new room in the new house is very nice and all but it’s causing me to lose sleep…

I was bound and determined not to have another weekend of cleaning my room and staring off into space and sniffling sadly to myself and watching movies alone in the dark house. I mean, that’s fine and all, but there’s only so much hand-wringing I can stand. Also only so much finishing unpacking I can…

Saturday I went to get a pedicure. I had my Fourth Wedding Of Five that evening and I thought I’d try to get a little more spruced up than usual. I figured I’d had a tough-ish week and that I deserved some sort of a treat, right. When “some sort of treat” for me became…

Dear IKEA in general: You are awesome. Don’t believe those haters that say you are overwhelming and huge and located in office-park hell. Don’t listen to those detractors who say your employees are simultaneously astoundingly clueless and terrifyingly perky. All I care about, baby, is that in you, cheap(ish) furniture AND Swedish meatballs are combined…

You know, considering I only moved about fifty blocks, it’s a little surprising how tough this week has been. I’m over my crying phase, thank goodness, but I think I’ve been walking around with a slightly shell-shocked look on my face. People ask me how I like the new house and I usually say ‘It’s…

On Sunday I was driving John and Treasa home after they helped me move because they are good kind fabulous people. A white Nissan Sentra pulled up next to us at a stoplight somewhere on Market, for all you Ballard citizens reading from home. In the car were three skinny white punky-looking guys. Their radio…

I am very tired and more than a little incoherent at the moment so you’ll have to hear with me but amen glory hallelujah, I’m in the new house now. I moved over the weekend with the help of my friends John and Treasa and Matt, who are excellent wonderful people and spend two days…

Sitting outside at the caf頩n the piazza in Menaggio at Lake Como, gelato in hand. Or possibly just at the Pike Place Market because there’s a gelato place there too and I could watch the cute boys throw the fish and get some expensive apple chips and look at the tourists and maybe go to…

I am obsessed with strippers lately. I don’t know exactly why this is, as I’ve never been to a strip club or anything. I don’t really know anything about stripping at all. In college I was obsessed with two-toed sloths, which still still hold a special place in my heart whenever I see them in…

Sundry took me out for lunch and shopping at the excellent Sidewalk Sale at the lovely U Village yesterday. Usually we opt for pho (which we’ve almost stopped pronouncing phonetically now) on the Ave but we were classy and had pasta this time. We discussed boys for a while and when it all got too…

In the car on the way from the airport: Chiara: Man, check out this pimp hat I got special for the party. [Said pimp hat is an oversized lampshade sort of affair in blue shag. I got one in orange, too] John: Wow. Chiara: I know. John: You gotta do pimp hands with that. Chiara:…

I really appreciate all the kind words everyone’s had for me since I posted yesterday’s sad entry. You guys are the best, as you know, and I’m grateful to know that since I’ve been so gauche as to post about my personal life online people have seen fit to be supportive and encouraging. But let’s…

I’ve been thinking about how to write this entry all weekend. I’ve been wondering exactly how to tell you that I broke up with my boyfriend, who is now my ex-boyfriend, I guess, and that I am now single, as of last week. I’m trying to figure out how to adequately express all the pain…

Last night, at Display and Costume with my friend Katherine and her brother. The brother is graduating from college on Saturday and just got a very unfortunate haircut and was looking for a hat to cover it up. We have moved, slowly but inexorably, away from Hats and closer to Wigs. I see a couple…

I’m a bathroom-sink-in-front-of-the-mirror toothbrusher, as a rule. I can make exceptions, like if I’m camping and there is neither, sink, mirror, or bathroom to be had. But as a rule, I prefer to froth up in front of the mirror. I’ve been trying to be extra good to my teeth lately (hi Dr. Ranta!) so…

Today we go to Como, my friends. Right now, actually, I have to confess that I am sort of still in Como. I didn’t take too many pictures there because I was having such an intensely good time and I didn’t want to spoil it by messing with the camera. Also, of course, because the…

Now, the original idea was to go visit Dave and Joey in Grenoble, where they’ve been living and working this past year. I’d emailed them and invited myself to spend a weekend with them and since they are good and sweet and friendly people they immediately accepted and the plan was I’d spend a couple…

Thinking back on it now, I’m not exactly sure why I elected to go to Tours in the first place. I guess I figured, hey, fancy houses, that sounds good. I spent my first three alone days there and was pretty much ready to leave when it was time to leave. Tours was fine, though,…

Let’s start out our Parisian photo essay with the first thing I actually saw in Paris when I stumbled in to the (very nice) hotel at which my mom was waiting. I saw her! And her cute new hair! Now, I don’t know what your mom does when left to her own devices for several…

Hey, it’s time for another un-spellchecked field entry! I’ve got about three hours before my flight leaves and forty minutes of internet time and here we all are today. I don’t want to come home. I’m this close to throwing away my ticket and going back to Como and living there forever. You’d be welcome…

David and Joey and I just got back from a four hour dinner in town. They assure me that though the French do take considerably longer in restaurants than we tend to, that four hours was a little much considering what we got. Weŕe leaving for Geneva in the morning so there isn’t much time…

I’m leaving for the airport in six hours. Every hour since about seven a.m. yesterday has draaaaaaaaaagged on by. These last six hours are the worst. I am ready to go, man. I’m packed. Carl made me inventory everything I’m taking and would have made a spreadsheet had I not protested mightily. I’ve got my…

People keep asking me, in reference to my trip, for which I leave the day after tomorrow; “Are you so excited?” And every time I go “Yeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhh,” and then I pause, and then I go “I sort of can’t believe it, you know? It’s weird.” And that’s the plain truth, I guess. So I’m leaving…

I like to plan things. Certain things. I don’t, for some reason, seem to like to plan what I’m going to eat for the week, which leaves me very often going to the store three or four times a week after work for things like rice or cucumbers or hot chocolate, when I know I…

I am a bad person, and so it’d been a while since I’d been to the dentist. First I didn’t have dental insurance, and then I did have dental insurance but I was scared to go to the dentist and then I was still scared to go but I thought I should go anyway, and…

Two weeks from now I’ll be on the plane to Paris. I’m flying on SAS and for some reason I have this idea that the plane is going to be decorated in IKEA. Probably that’s not true, and probably there will be no blonde buxom Swedish flight attendants to bring me gravlax and aquavit with…

The thing about having a fun weekend is that your Monday morning turns out to be not so much fun. Not just because you have a case of the Mondays or because you have to work late or anything, but because you didn’t do your weekend chores, and hence you have nothing for breakfast, or…

I am feeling a little tired and groggy today. It’s because I stayed up late…first there was the Dixie cup of cocaine I snorted off the lissome belly of a high-priced call girl, which totally makes it hard for me to sleep, and then there was the winner-takes-all poker game I played, and then I…

I was so mad a couple of hours ago. At about 3:30, you see, I called Carl and asked him if he’d like to take a bike ride with me after work, seeing as how the weather was nice and as how we’d both been inside all day. He said sure. I mentally patted myself…

So the first thing that happened to me this weekend was I became grossly ill right as I was picking Carl up from the airport on Friday. Awesome. We had about fifteen minutes to get ready to go to the opera after we got home…except I didn’t make it that far. I swooned on the…

I tried to write something yesterday but I was just too busy. I feel busy for no reason at all right now. Well, I do start the new job next week, which transition process has become extraordinarily complicated considering that I’m really just moving down the hall. But still. I spent the weekend generally vegging…

I need some stamps, at least a whole book of them. I need them to pay bills, to send my grandmother a nice card, to send in my taxes. I need to be able to send something through the US Post Service at a moment’s notice. I need some stamps. Somehow, for some reason I…

I am but lately come to the joys of pranking. During college my silly friends perpetrated many ingenious pranks, most of which involved rappelling off high buildings and stuffed gorillas, but I was never really involved. I don’t have good long-term planning skills, I don’t have much of an eye for design, and I am…

…know how to start a list-y entry like this one. …stop being amazed by seasons. When I moved from Miami to Southern California everyone laughed at me because I was all stunned that some parts of the year were colder than others. People from cold horrible places would tell me that they missed real seasons.…

I love: That I am buying my railpass for my trip this weekend. Probably. I hate: That I am buying some new, very expensive tires for my car today. Definitely. I love: Cherry trees in the spring. Very fluffy and pretty and make you kind of want to pretend you’re a geisha in tenth-century Japan…

Okay! Birthday weekend! Go! Friday I went to work wearing my knee high boots. We went to Red Robin for lunch and I convinced one of my bosses to go for a turkey burger, which he enjoyed very much. There were congratulations on the new job all around, which were very nice, and I spent…

Can whoever sent me this fess up? I appreciate it very much, but there was no card or note or anything and as you know I am not too swift when it comes to figuring out who has sent me something, even if a gift is actually signed by an actual person. As to the…

I was offered a new job yesterday. It’s in the same academic department in which I’ve been working for the past year and a half or so, but doing something completely different. As in, I’ll be doing something that I’m actually trained to do, something I went to school for five years ago, something that…

This entry is pretty much just going to be an extended remix version of the following statement: I Sure Do Love My Friends. That’s what a lot of my entries are, actually, so to differentiate this one from all the others, it will really be an extended dance remix of the following statement: “I Sure…

Okay. I’m writer’s blocked. I can’t write anything that’s not incredibly trite or overdone or stupid or misspelled or ridiculous or dated or clich餠or fake-deep or fake-funny or fake-pensive or isn’t totally copying someone else who is good and actually knows how to write. Unlike me. Who has writer’s block. Is it stupid and clich餠to…

I’m a little afraid of my potential for obsession sometimes. I’m of the slash-and-burn variety, I think, in that I’ll be gung ho for something for a couple weeks, a couple months, and then lose all interest. Case in point: the doula thing. I was all excited about that for a while and was doing…

Saturday I went to the gym. This is pretty amazing for me, going on a weekend. It was just as crowded at 10:30 on a Saturday as it is at 5:30 on a Thursday, I found. I worked out harder that I usually do, which is to say, only medium hard, as I’ve figured out…

First things first: I successfully ate the rest of my green beans last night WITHOUT EATING SOAP. You’re not going to laugh at me when I report that I was seriously, in my heart, very trepidatious when I made the attempt. I’d been thinking about it all day and so I barged right into my…

Item: I made some very nice French green beans last night for dinner. I steamed them up in the steamer and was going to have them the way I did Sunday night (I had a lot of green beans): with a little oil and balsamic vinaigrette. Mmm, beans. Item: I ran out of olive oil…

I think some sort of threshold has been passed…this past weekend, instead of getting hot chocolate to sustain me during my day of errands, I got a Cranberry Craze Jamba Juice instead. Ahhhhhhh. It’s back to gray and rainy today, of course, but I have a little hope that suicide weather is on its way…

In my perfect neighborhood I live in a little house in the middle of the block, down the street from the library and the post office and the grocery store and the bus stop that went right to my job. There would be a little coffee shop at the end of the street that would…

Hey, hi. I’m on the plane now. I just wanted to let you know I made it. That’s great. Thanks again for a really nice weekend. Thank you for a really nice weekend. It was a lot of fun. It was. Are you at the Flight Museum right now? Yes. It’s really cool. I bet…

Okay, I’ll see you in a couple of hours. You’ll meet me at the gate, right? Of course. I’m really looking forward to seeing you. Really? Yes. Really? Yes! I like you. How much do you like me? On a scale from zero to ten? Yes. On a scale from zero to ten, I like…

I’m going to DC tomorrow to visit Carl for the long weekend. He’s been there for the past two weeks for work and is planning to be there another three weeks. We’re planning to go to a bunch of museums and to eat a lot of good food and generally hang out together. Of the…

Friday night after I came home with a delicious Red Mill chicken sandwich in my weary little hands, I was thumbing idly throughThe Stranger and being glad I had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one to do it with, I noticed that the next day was Washington State Caucus Day. The paper…

Monday Job interview in the morning. Worked during day. Talked to Ashley on the phone, who sent me a very nice card for no reason at all. At bellydance class that night, my teacher said she was “taking it to a crazy place.” She did, boy. Travelling mayas with a shimmy on top, can you…

So Friday night I went over to Sundry’s house for an impromptu sleepover. I packed all my very nicest silk negligees and my very pointiest feather mules and spent the evening gazing coquettishly into her eyes and making all sorts of naughty double-entendres. Then all of a sudden, after we’d spent some time painting out…

I was a little nervous going to a salsa night at the Century Ballroom last night, so I did something I learned from Weetabix and announced, immediately upon arriving, that I was the hottest girl in the room. I mainly announced it to my friend M who’d invited me for the evening, but I felt…

Last night I was with my boss’ three kids for a couple of hours. It’s been, seriously, probably ten years or more since I babysat. My poor boss has been called out of town unexpectedly and so various friends and co-workers have been staying at her house and taking care of the kids. Some people…

1) When I was about eight and going to a snooty island community nearby my own snooty island community with an unspecified Key Girl who may or may not want her skinny-dipping activities chronicled on her friend’s ridiculous journal. The island wasn’t developed very much yet and we got to go there and drive around…

So, I have sort of a problem. A very yucky one. To be more specific, an infection that sounds very much like “Black Adder” but without the “ack.” Also without Rowan Atkins in his 16th century outfits, which I might as well admit now, have always made me sort of hot. Mr. Bean, not so…

Sundry beat me to it! Sunday I went to her house and went shopping and made dinner and did crafts and had a lovely time. She, however, took pictures to document all our fun. You’re just going to have to trust me. (By the way, I just started watching 24 on DVD…you know, that show…

It was raining when we left the airport. Hailing, almost. We were quiet in the car, down through the city in the rain. We didn’t speak. It rained and rained and rained and it was very cold. There was no traffic and we got where we were going with no delay. We had reservations at…

On Saturday I went to a memorial service with Carl. It was for an old friend of his family’s, who used to live across the street from them. They used to go to her house for Christmas breakfast. She died suddenly, a heart attack I think, over Thanksgiving weekend. She was still young, not over…

Monday night when I got home from work there was a package from Amazon.com in my mailbox. I thought that they’d messed up my Christmas orders and had sent the stuff to my Seattle house instead of to my mom’s house in Miami. (I checked, they didn’t, everything is on its way. Mom, don’t open…

I’m not so big on holiday stuff. Have I mentioned this here before? I’m a little bit of a Grinch. More than a little, it turns out. I’m stressing about presents and sending out my cards and getting home for Christmas without spending eight million dollars. I don’t enjoy Christmas music very much. I never…

There’s an entry I want to write here. There is stuff I want to tell you. It’s very hard to know how personal to get here, and what to write about. Now that I have, on a regular basis, more than three or four readers a day, I’m more than little scared to write about…

Thanksgiving weekend has been…um, okay. It’s been okay. It turned out that I greatly underestimated how much mashed potatoes eight or ten pounds of non-mashed potatoes makes. Three gigantic Pyrex bowls, is how much. Three heads of garlic was not nearly enough. Oh well. They were still good, as was the rest of the food…

I’m not a big Thanksgiving fan, frankly. I’m not so into The Holidays, period. Probably I dislike Christmas a little more than Thanksgiving because I hate being told to be joyful and loving at a certain time of year, and with Thanksgiving it’s usually just about having a long weekend and eating yummy food and…

I joined a new gym last week and even worked out a little bit that day. It was okay. My goal is to try to work out at the gym twice a week. I have an appointment with a personal trainer the day after Thanksgiving, whom I’m going to try to forgive for not being…

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what my mother emailed me this morning about her weekend. “Eric met me there and we went for haute vegetarian cuisine and then walked around checking out some gay hotels in case he needs a weekend get-away. It was a very interesting experience being very outside the culture – at…

I call it the Nose Funk. I don’t know what the Nose Funk is or how it migrated from outer space and onto my nose…my nose which, you know, already has some issues. It’s not a cute little button ski-jump kind of nose. You know when Anne Shirley got that third hand compliment about her…

If I were a bus driver, I would be the totally cool kind. You know I wouldn’t make people feel bad when they forgot their bus passes, and I would confine my remarks to “Good Morning” and “You have a nice day now,” unlike some people I could mention. I would make sure that blind…

It’s officially cold here. I have retired the Barn Jacket ™ from 1993 and have pulled out the pea coat. I have begun to put the heat on at night. I have officially wished for a heated bathroom floor. I better finish up that basketweave scarf this weekend because I am going to need it…

I’ve had three events this year (the ABL party, Burning Man, and now JournalCon) that made me think, “This is who I want to be more of the time.” I’m trying to decide what about those times made them so much fun, and made me so different during them. I’m also trying to figure out…