It’s all Chiara, all the time.

I’m feeling house envy again. Saturday night Carl and I went to dinner with Sundry and her husband JB. We had some mighty fine sushi. Also, I got to see their house and their dog and their comically gigantic truck and their yard and their candles and their very nice coffee mugs. Their pretty wall…

Hi Californians. Sorry about that governor thing. I don’t know what to tell you. Sorry. I’m sorry. I would have voted no recall for you if I could have. Things is busy here, kids, yessirree. I had a great weekend (yeah, three or four days ago) with three quarters of the ABL, as foreseen. We…

It’s good, every once in a while, to remember all the good things in my life. Good things outside the “I live in the world’s most powerful nation and enjoy rights and privileges pretty much beyond the scope of most people in the world” thing which I really should take time to be grateful for…

My new idea for a Career: Perennial Dinner Guest! At least, that’s what I was this weekend. It’s pretty fun on a volunteer basis, so just think how much I’d like to get paid to do it. So, Saturday night was a another Fish Fin Dinner at the home of the lovely Mark. This is…

Last night I watched The Lost Boys. I don’t know why. Week before that I was compelled to see Stand By Me for easily the first time in ten or so years. Pretty good flicks, I thought. Both are about boys, and you know how I like boys. Both are Kiefer-tastic, both involve Corey Feldman…

A couple of different options I am currently considering: 1) I Am Extremely Successful At My Chosen Career, Whatever That May Be I am the Assistant Director of the campus Women’s Center. Or a therapist in private practice with an established clientele. The chairwoman of the Board at a prestigious environmental non-profit. Doesn’t matter. I…

We start today’s ME ME ME entry with a shot of one of my favorite outfits I wore at Burning Man. The crazy Chillba hat did me a solid not only by providing me with much shade, thereby eliminating the need for sunglasses, but also by acting as a perfect platform for many of my…

So what else was there to see at Burning Man besides Beyond Beauty Camp, you wonder quietly to yourself. Well, frankly I don’t know. I was busy scrubbing feet, okay? Here’s a little taste for you…these pictures only make me wish I’d been able to see and do more while I was there, I tell…

Salon! This is the only picture I have of the Barbie Head. I know. I’m sorry. I will never pimp anything again and then deliver lame goods. I’m sorry. You are just going to have to believe me that I did arrange the other Barbies around The Head and that people made clothes for them…

Without further ado… Getting all the food ready. Carl made me set up a spreadsheet to inventory all our food. We were in charge of snacks, mostly, so you’ll note a preponderance of juice and cookies and a dearth of things with like, protein. We still brought too much food. The cookies, however, were delicious.…

It just started raining a couple of days ago. I was sort of shocked. I heard on the radio this morning that it’s supposed to be nice this weekend, but I am not at all fooled. I know what this means. Means summer is over. Time to haul out the rainshell and the closed toe…

I am working on a picture entry for Burning Man. If anyone cares. That’s the thing about getting all amped up for a specific event and writing about it in anticipation in your journal…you go, you do your thing, you have a great time…and then you must immediately sit down and write your entry. Don’t…

Burning Man was great, thanks. Burning Man was like, sooooooooo intense, man. Burning Man was exhausting in every sense of the word. Burning Man gave me a newfound appreciation for lotion and baby wipes. And peanut butter sandwiches. And pudding cups. Burning Man, contrary to my expectations, did not cause me to lose weight, but…

Okay. Should I even be writing this when the car is still not compleeeeetely packed? When we need to load the cooler? And find the tickets? And call our moms to tell them where we’ll be next week and also make sure that we know what campground we’re staying at tonight? When I still don’t…

My cool boss is back from maternity leave starting this week. It was pretty rough for me with her gone, and I wasn’t enjoying work very much. She is very laid back and supportive and nice, and we all really missed her. Sign of a good boss: when you want her to be there every…

I can’t string an entry together today for some reason. “Some reason” being the usual reason, i.e. nothing much is going on right now. Also I’m working on a couple of entries for a new collab and while that’s satisfying in a dorky sort of way, they can’t go up until the 25th, on which…

Saturday I was really lonely, which is something of a rare experience for me. I’ve been spending quite a bit of time by myself lately, which I have very much enjoyed, but Saturday was a little different in tone. I woke up and looked around and was all, “Uh, what should I do today?” and…

Oh, man. I just dropped Carl off at the airport to fly to Alaska for his two week Alaska Adventure! He got in late from DC Wednesday night and spent yesterday running around Seattle getting boots and skis and sunscreen and oh my lord in heaven don’t forget the lip balm and what about the…

I went for a walk around Green Lake last night after work with My Friend Treasa. This is a fairly Seattle thing to do: it’s three miles around, which goes very quickly and pleasantly when you have someone to talk to. This time of year there are even some baby duckies to look at, and…

I just had the greatest shopping day ever. Ever in the world. It turns out that when you don’t have to try on clothes in badly lit veal pen dressing rooms, consumerism can be quite rewarding! I started out the day by sleeping in until ten this morning, when I was wakened by the twin…

I am all tuckered out from this past weekend, and it’s already Tuesday. I skipped knitting class last night (I know!) because my yarn was in the bag that the baggage claim people lost and because I had an urgent date with Life of Pi which is our next Book Group book, yay. I really…

I can’t seem to form a coherent sentence lately. All I can write is like “Oatmeal amputee support group! Cup holder! Sting but eighties’ Sting! Wedding Colorado boyfriend Alaska! Knit knit knit knit knit! High of seventy-five, low of sixty-five!” Did you get all that? Let me break it down for you. We’ll pretend this…

One of my more annoying qualities is my utter lack of opinion on pretty much anything. I know this is wrong. I know it makes me not very Strong and Independent. I know it makes me annoying to have any sort of debate with. I know I ought to be giving everyone out there the…

Much as I used to love it in Miami when it would get down to 55 degrees (mercy!) and the folks on the radio would be all, “Get the pets inside! For heaven’s sake, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” and in California when the radio would tell people to put on their windshield wipers when it…

This weekend was this inexplicable Super Hits of the Nineties’ thing on my local Clear Channel station, and once again I kept going “I love this song!” I never understood why people my parents’ age listened to the oldies’ station. Then I started (guiltily) listening to the local “The Best of the Eighties…And More!” station,…

Carl’s leaving for six weeks. He leaves in about forty-five minutes. I can’t even go with him to the airport because his bike box won’t fit in my car and there’s not enough room for me //and// the bike in his mom’s car. He’s going to be in DC working for a month. I can’t…

I am really tired today. I had another busy weekend and then this week is crazy and so on and so forth. So today I’m just going to tell you a little story about this one time at In N Out . This would be the In N Out on Foothill Boulevard in Upland, California,…

So, knitting class last night. After work, six to eight. It’s held at a very nice yarn shop pretty near where I work, and it wasn’t too hard to bus to the park and ride and then drive almost all the way back in the opposite direction in order to make it to class on…

I had lunch with Stefanie the French Girl today, along with Carl’s sister Maria, who thankfully speaks much better French than I do, in that she doesn’t pull one of these every couple of sentences: “Uhhhh, Burning Man, c’est un festival a Nevada ou on fait…um, ou on fait tous les choses…crazy? Les choses crazy…

For those of you who have been biting your nails all weekend wondering how my organization project went, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that in an effort to clean my house, I made it really really dirty, and thus had to clean it some more. I don’t get how…

I’ve been on this online shopping spree as of late. I’ve been wanting to get rid of a lot of my old clothes and buy a whole new wardrobe, so this week I’ve ordered new shoes, a new skirt, and possibly a new bag. This weekend I’m getting a new pair of jeans, which I…

Lord have mercy, another entry about work. I’m worried. For some reason, for no reason, I don’t know. I don’t think I’m about to be fired, or anything, thank heavens. It’s just that it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that I’m probably…not going to really do anything, with this job. I go back and forth,…

I think I’m a bit of a snob. How do you define snobbery, anyway? To be a snob, do you have to have certain standards below which you will not go? Or is it that you believe that your standards are the only standards, and that they confer some sort of superiority on you? Or…

This morning I had to get a grande hot chocolate on the way in to work this morning. Yeah, hardcore. It was great…it lasted twice as long as the tall does. Cocoa is the total replacement for coffee for me, even though it’s mostly sugar it acts like caffeine so I am currently all amped…

Thanks to everyone who wrote me about my last entry. I think I got five emails about this one, which is five more than I usually get, so I appreciate y’all’s comments and feedback. It’s really hard for me to know where my good intentions are, so it was nice to know that other people…

How can you tell what your intentions are when you do something good? I thought about this today when I was grocery shopping. I make it a rule to put something in the food bank barrel every time I go to the store. Today I kind of cheated because I put in an extra bar…

It’s really starting to feel like summer. This is very exciting for a couple of reasons: 1) I am wearing a cute knee length denim skirt today and it’s not that often that I get to feel all that cute. Mostly I feel like I just get by. Not today, though! Today I am wearing…

1. Get a massage. Thanks, Mom. Love you. You’re the best. 2. Get ready to see all your friends who are coming in for a weekend-long wedding shower for Treasa (who got some very nice wedding underwear, you will all be happy to know) and John. Get ready for the giggling and the talking and…

Okay, brace yourselves. I had a drink over the weekend. Specifically, half a glass (but a big glass) of sangria at a very schmancy place in Vancouver over the weekend. I haven’t been keeping my New Year’s Resolution to take to drink, and so since I was in a different city where no one knew…

Yesterday I went to a talk Carl gave. He’s part of a group of nerds who get together every once and again and talk about their work. They have slide presentations and everything. Yesterday it was Carl’s turn. I have to tell you, I had only a faint idea of what they were talking about.…

I’m finding it difficult to write lately. I have no idea why. Well, okay, I do have a little bit of an idea why: it’s the classic journaller’s conundrum of Not Much Going On Yet Simultaneously, Lots Of Stuff Going On, Except In The Latter Case, “Stuff” Refers To Stuff I’d Rather Not Talk About…

Dear Mr. Balaban: So, I was at the pool last night, doing laps (I was going to try to go to the “water exercise” class but I flaked because I was kind of scared of the music they play there sometimes…I mean, I don’t think of “Piano Man” as a song to get my heart…

Last week I went to Babies R Us as an office outing. My office has three pregnant people in it, you see. Actually, only two, because we just found out that one of those babies was born last night. I think we’re going to visit the mom and baby today after work. Anyway, the other…

I went swimming this evening right after work. I did twenty laps! I felt, for the first time ever probably, that sense of energy that people are always talking about after they exercise. Usually I hate exercising, even swimming, which totally beats pretty much anything else except bellydance as far as I’m concerned in terms…

I’ve had a really nice weekend. It’s been kind of rainy and cold but it hasn’t really mattered. I’m in this very good mood wherein the types of small stupidities that make up the greater part of my life…i.e. I just tried to plan out my lunches and dinners for the next week, wrote up…

I feel kind of guilty about Spike the Cat. She’s kind of mean. Sometimes in the morning when I’m trying to get out the door she doesn’t want to go down the stairs (and I totally feel her there) and I’ll try to assist her with my foot and she’ll just sink her claws into…

Hey. Hi. Four days away from a computer, and not only do you not do any work at work except check and answer your email, you also don’t update your journal. For a week. I have to say though, it makes me realize that I do update fairly regularly, which I guess is nice. For…

This is the greatest thing ever. I am so excited about this. Guess what I did last night, boys and girls? I stuck it to the MAN, is what I did! Here’s how it went down: I had to go to the mall yesterday because I had to exchange some lacy unmentionables I’d received for…

I’ve been kind of sick this week. It’s worse in the mornings, when I’m on the bus, swiping feebly at my nose with my hanky, trying to get into my book but feeling as though all my brain power (yeah, all of it) has gone into snot production and scratchy-throat making. It gets better during…

I’m one of those annoying extroverts you hear so much about. I’m comfortable meeting new people, and get fairly close fairly soon with like-minded folks. Even if I don’t know a person really well, I feel comfortable talking on this weird level of intimacy that I can’t quite describe. I reveal these weird sound bites…

So yesterday was my birthday, and yesterday started the war. Hmm. I spent a lot of yesterday loving my friends. I got some great presents…not one, but two fancy spatulas, and you know there’s no birthday like a two-spatula birthday…and had a great dinner with lots of people I like. I ate what may be…

I am. I’m terrified now. Whatever plan there is to freak me the hell out and keep me scared and docile, it’s worked. I keep listening to NPR sort of against my will because I feel that I have to understand this war as best as I can…which, frankly doesn’t seem very much…and that I…

What I was going to write about yesterday, before I got the Big Baby News, was that I saw my last client last night, and so am therefore, technically, not a therapist anymore. It’s weird. Next Thursday I’m going to just go straight home from work instead of going to another job. No more business…

Don’t worry. Ziggy the Cat hasn’t died yet, of tulip poisoning. All my worries for naught. I’ve started giving him baby spinach leaves, you know, whenever I have some in the house, and he just snarfs those up. He’s apparently a vegetarian cat who just wants a little roughage. He gets a Boca burger tomorrow…

Carl got me some very nice purple tulips for Valentine’s Day. I put them in some water and promptly forgot about them…I saw them there in my room, but didn’t think about them too much, as might be evidenced by my leaving them to softly wilt for several weeks now. Such is my indolence that…

This afternoon at about 3:45, right around the time when the Wall of Complete Workplace Unproductivity begins to rear up from it’s post-lunch recovery, I was seized by the unconquerable impulse to sing. This happens to me sometimes. “SAAAAAAAAAAAAAN-dy, Sandy’s his name, if you please! If you don’t be-LIIIIIIIIEEEEEEVVVVVEEE me, ask! any one! of the…

My Friend Anna emailed me to let me know that there are several people in her house…and possibly several more people in the world…who like Valentine’s Day very much indeed. She herself has her wedding anniversary on Valentine’s Day, so she should know, right? So now I have to shamefacedly admit that there are many…

Okay, so can we agree that no one even really likes Valentine’s Day? No one? I never, ever hear people sitting around going “Oh, Valentine’s Day. I love it so. The stale chocolate, the overpriced banal dozen red roses, the crowded restaurants! There’s just something so magical about this time of year, you know?” No…

Not a lot going on with me. Not like last week when there was a reality show and lunch with a cool journaller, and a trip to the Korean spa. This has, thus far, been a week where the cat scratched me really near the eyeball for trying to pet her, where I ate lots…

This entry is going to be the online journal equivalent of my calling you at about 2:00 on a Sunday afternoon and telling you about the dream I had last night: “And then? Okay, check it, I was totally in this house? And it was on fire? And I couldn’t find the way out, and…

I got to go to the set of the The Big Show of Carl’s Fame last night. I totally wasn’t going to because of traffic and missing dance class and because it was a school night and all. I had the following annoying codependents-in-love type conversation with Carl: Me Okay, but if you want me…

Carl’s gonna live forevahhhh…That’s right, my friends. Carl is, as of today, a Big TV Star. He hasn’t made his debut yet…in fact he’s filming right now…but it’s only a matter of time before there’s an action figure of him (complete with bright yellow vest) and fan sites devoted to him and he’ll be on…

Work is fine. Don’t get me wrong. It’s fine, though busy, and illishly paid. But I don’t need much, so it’s all okay. Get up. Get in the car. Get on the bus…wait, did I put on pants yet? Yes? Because now that I no longer take the ghetto bus, pants are pretty much an…

This has been a good Sunday. It involved raspberry pancakes at brunch, a walk, the cleaning of my hideous bathtub that would make strong men blanch and call for their mommas, a phone conversation with my mom wherein we plotted out all the times we’re going to see each other this year, the cooking of…

I promise you all I’m going out tomorrow night. I’m going to the photo exhibit of a friend of a friend, and then I’m going to a party. A party given by physicists. You know how those rock. Those of you who were with me for New Year’s, I’m going to wear the black and…

When The Two Towers came out a couple of weeks ago, some friends of mine camped out in front of the theater with a laptop, some mac and cheese, and the extended version DVD. They watched The Fellowship of the Rings (or, as I’ve been calling it, The One Tower. The third movie will be,…

I know I’m late jumping on the wagon with both these links, but I just feel the need to share them with you here. They both have sound and require Real Player or something along those lines, so be careful if you’re at work. Both these videos get better and better every time I watch…

See, it all started because of oatmeal. I like it quite a bit. I think that’s kind of a mundane thing to like, but like it I do, and I make no apologies. I especially like steel-cut oats, which are cut with something steel, I’m guessing, and more pertinently, take FOREVER to make on the…

My neck! My back! My shoulders! Ow! yes, friends, Chiara had a session with a personal trainer. last night. I’m shocked myself. Not really my thing, you understand. I’m not so much about the reps but more about the shimmy and the basic Egyptian and then some more shimmy, and I like to do it…

I like girls. Don’t you? Aren’t girls the best? I think so. I’m glad to be a girl, and I’m glad to know a lot of girls, and I’m glad that I like girls. I think everyone has that one woman friend who hangs out with all guys that’s always saying, “I don’t like women,…

I just got back from a very cool boat ride. Carl works in an office full of liberal techno-hippies, all of whom work for a rich dude who retired early from Amazon and now runs a little non-profit for fun. He has a beautiful wooden yacht and likes to go out in it as much…

I guess the weekend’s not techically over yet, but I’m still feeling a little disappointed nonetheless. Nothing terrible has happened. No big scenes or anything. No freak snowstorms. Just…eh. Friday was one of those days at work when you know you have a ton to do but you can’t do it because a) you are…

…because, let me tell you, that entry I lost yesterday (if by “lost” we mean “hit the escape key by accident”) was so great. I couldn’t lose any of the stupid entries, now could I? No. Had to lose the one, the only entry I’ve ever written that wasn’t, like, completely terrible. AAAAAGGGGGHHHH. Okay. I’m…

Yall. I just wrote this huge long entry that I was really enjoying writing and I. Just. Deleted. It. Somehow. I want to cry, seriously. You just are never going to know about my Thanksgiving now. Nor about all the family history I learned or all the good things I ate. I am seriously so…

I think if I were going to pinpoint the trait that freaks me out most about myself at this point, it would be the fact that I have no unique personality whatsoever. I mean it. I’m the Terminator version 2.0 guy, who can touch someone and look just like them. Sure, I’m all silvery and…

That’s what I’m doing right now as I write this! Isn’t that so amazingly crazy? Actually, if you must know, I am keeping an eye on the mustard carrots (mmm!) and the shepherd’s pie is in the oven for another fifteen minutes. Clearly I am in the mood for comfort food tonight, yes? So we’ll…

Display and Costume This is one of the few nice things about living in this neighborhood. Display and Costume is great for several reasons, not the least of which is that the folks who work there are pretty much completely crazy. They make something like fifty percent of their profit on Halloween. They have crazy…

Thing One The Time: Yesterday at work, on the phone. Chiara:May I speak to Herbert Thackwhistle, please? Nice Older Lady: Herbert Thackwhistle? Which one? Chiara: Uhh… Nice Older Lady: See, we’ve got the old Herbert Thackwhistle, and then we have the middle Herbert Thackwhistle, and then we have the young Herbert Thackwhistle! Three Herbert Thackwhistles…

I’m writing this at my Small Non-Profit Counseling Agency before my first client of the afternoon. Crazy! I’m used to writing on Carl’s extra laptop at his house which has the crazy DSL and the firewall and the AirPort and all sorts of fun gadgets. Not today baby! Today I’m a rebel! Instead of getting…

I’m going to go across the street to vote in about ten minutes. I’m voting pro-monorail. I’m really really really hoping it wins. I’m hoping a lot of lefty stuff wins, and not just in these mid-term elections, either. In general. I want us not to go to capital-W War With Iraq. I want alternative…

I have a good side. Did you just think that I was a big ball of nervous-babbling, snappish, dysthymic goopiness? Did you? Well, I’m not, not all the time. On occasion, I am cute and flirty and, I daresay, bubbly, even. I have been known to be thoughtful and well-spoken, and, once in a great…

I got, unshockingly, another Pottery Barn catalog yesterday. They don’t seem to care that I’ve called several times to ask them to take me off their myriads of mailing lists. “Please take me off your mailing list,” I tell the nice lady on the other end of the phone. “Take me right off it. I’m…

All day I’ve been thinking about how my last entry would have been funnier if I’d written it in a timeline. Like this: 1975 Dark, wispy, and newborn. 1980 Cut Off, Unbeknownst To Me, in the Pre-Emptive Strike Against Kindergarden Lice Incident. 1982 Bangs. 1985 Austrian rock singer Falco records…ROCK ME AMADEUS! And so forth.…

I got my hair cut yesterday after work. It’s short. Okay, well, not short, but short for me. When I woke up yesterday it hit the bottom of my shoulderblades, and today when I woke up it brushed the tops of my shoulders. Can’t pull it into a braid. Can’t put it into a bun.…

Do you ever have those times where you sit at your desk at work staring off into nothing, wondering how you got where you are today? How you got to be twenty-seven with all these new weird problems and not as much insight as you’d hoped, not to mention not as much money, how you…

Wow, it’s October first and Seattle just decided that it’s time for fall. Over the weekend? Gorgeous and sunny, sort of windy and very clear skies, but certainly not too cold or anything. Last night? Closed all the windows and put an extra blanket on the bed. I didn’t put a sweater on to come…

Oh, food. Yummy, yummy food. I’m a big fan of it. Always have been. Cooking, though, is a relatively new thing in my life. It’s not even happening tonight, as I am currently microwaving a delectable Trader Joe’s frozen product while I write. I got home late and I have to go to bellydance, okay?…

I’ve had not one, but two Crazy Summers. I’m lucky that way. The first was the summer I was sixteen, just like in the movies. I went to Grenada with my church youth group, and when we came home there wasn’t a lot to do. I didn’t have a job. I did have a car…