Things that make my world go round.

Things that make my world go round:
A.K.A., a shameless excuse to use bullets.

Erik. He had a "test" this morning for a tour guide/educational position at Seaworld. He had to give a three minute educational presentation about tidepools and seastars. Thus, he was practicing on me ALL EVENING. Ask me anything you want to know about the tidepool ecosystem. Also, I laughed at his splash-zone/shamu stadium joke every time. Mostly because I'm easily amused.

Curb Your Enthusiasm. Our friends let us borrow the first season DVDs, and HOLY GOODNESS, it turns out that being an asshole=really fucking funny.

Sweet baby Grace. We watched her on Monday night while her parents went out to dinner. She is by far the cutest baby in the world, and loves anyone who gives her a cheerio. However, after a mere three hours, we were physically exhausted. As it neared her bedtime, she could only be held and jiggled around a lot, which meant walking up and down stairs non-stop. Hopefully, when we have kids, the first few months of the baby's life will condition us for a 9 month old. Either that or we'll live in a single story house and completely deprive the babies of even the slightest knowledge that stair-climbing-jiggling exists. What they don't know doesn't hurt them. Or mommy and daddy.

The M-W voiceover people. I'm not sure how this got to me, via somebody on the internet via somebody else on the internet via somebody else before them, but I still haven't stopped laughing at the way they say the plural of penis.

I could have sworn the plural was "peni," but hey.

Classical plurals in general make my world go round.

PBS's Colonial House. Hell yes.

This list of fair trade-certified goods, including chocolates. Via Traci. I love a good excuse for chocolate. And Traci is always making me hungry for some reason.

My sweet coworker who is going through a really bittersweet time right now, but still manages to be one of the loveliest and funniest people alive. And she's fine with me interupting her mid-sentence to tell her I love her outfit.

Soy lattes with MattandSarahGrace next week!

The Little Dennis That Might

The Little Dennis That Might
I think that if Kerry does that circus act of not accepting the democratic party's nomination at the DNC, then Kucinich should automatically be the democratic candidate by default. Kind of like how Amber Atkins won State.

Let's not forget there's still another man in the race! And he's vegan! He wouldn't touch the shellfish!

Just a little green



I just started reading Wicked by Gregory Maguire, and so far I'm completely in love with the infant witch. At one point, Elphaeba's parents called her "little green," and my heart skipped a beat thinking about the green-skinned girl and the contrast of love and fear spewing from her parents' affections like stench from a cauldron, and Joni Mitchell's words ran through my head:

Just a little green
Like the color when the spring is born
There'll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow
Just a little green
Like the nights when the northern lights perform
There'll be icicles and birthday clothes
And sometimes there'll be sorrow

Child with a child pretending
Weary of lies you are sending home
So you sign all the papers in the family name
You’re sad and you’re sorry, but you’re not ashamed
Little green, have a happy ending

My vegetable plants are the nearest things we have to pets and/or children in our family. (Except please don't regularly harvest your real pets and children.) I'm ridiculously proud of them. I'm happy when the cilantro looks tall and strong with new feathery stems popping up, when the tomato leaves are deep green, and when the squash flowers are bright and yellow and open. I'm disappointed in myself when they look yellow and wilty or when there's fungus growing in the soil or aphids circulating the pots. Aside from the cilantro, I'm not even thinking about the plants bearing fruit. I just want lush, green, photosynthesis-happy leaves. Green is natural.

Elphaeba is a complex, increasingly evil little outcast who will grow up to be even more complex, evil, and outcast: The Wicked Witch of the West. She muttered her first word, "horrors," over and over again. After her birth, she tasted blood before her mother's milk. Green is unnatural.

There's something deep and painful and appealing about her that I can't really name.

Call her green and the winters cannot fade her.

Sovereign.
When I think of the word "sovereignty," I can only really think of the British monarchy and The Sovereign Principality of Sealand. With those two associations, there are scant resources in the hollow pits of my psyche to not consider America's transfer of power sovereignty to Iraq as much of a joke as Sealand.

Don't get me wrong, I heart Sealand, what with it's "struggle for liberty" and damn-the-man-entrepreneurial spirit and all.

Totally.
If I were a stand-up comedian, I think that rather than the audience just roaring with laugher, I'd prefer it if, in between upper-moderate chuckles, they whispered "oh, that is so true!" or "dude, totally!" to their companions after witty social commentaries, like on Ellen's HBO special with her thing about the public restroom toilet paper dispenser technique, which I think about EVERY DAY.

Brighten.
Today has felt that same sort of wonderfulness as the day after you spend the night at someone's house for the first time. I'm buzzing.

Erik and I have a tendency to stay up too damn late, and I usually snooze from 6:12 until 7:12 when my alarm automatically shuts off because apparantly nobody in the alarm clock manufacturer's beta test group snoozes for over an hour. Today, I finally woke up at 7:30 and took my sweet time getting to work.

It occasionally feels like we're just starting to date, except we have the added bonus of four years and some excellent premarital counselling under our belts. And we don't have to worry about any awkward toilet issues whilst spending the night together. In fact, I once demanded a Reading : Pooing ratio from Erik after one appointment-delaying "issue." Nothing says true love like poo and math.

I crave being around Erik. I look forward to going home from work. I look forward to waking up in the morning and having him next to me. Note that I don't look forward to waking up in general, though. Making Erik laugh feels far better than impressing a room full of strangers. It doesn't seem to matter how or with whom we spend our time, just as long as we're together. Side note: "Just As Long As We're Together" was one of my favorite books growing up.

My heart still races a little when I think of the way he tells me that I'm "damn sexy" and the way he calls me random vegetables when saying goodnight because once I accidentally called him chicken and tried to redeem myself by saying, "You know, it's endearing. Like pumpkin." His presence comforts me and energizes me and charms me and makes everything better. It's not that I can't imagine what life would be like without Erik; I can, and sometimes the twenty years of my life before we met feel as good as wasted, or at best, practice.

Just over eight months ago, we danced to "Northern Sky" beneath a blanket of September stars, and I remember how I tried to sing along with Nick Drake but somehow couldn't make any words come out. Magic, crazy as that.

It's a beautiful spring day today; I have loved him through the winter and I will love him through the rest.

Day 10.
I've approached veganism with a marked intention of never feeling deprived. Thus, I've been going out of my way to eat really well. We've been trying out new, fabulous recipes and new, fabulous chocolate and new, fabulous restaurants.

Basically, I think I'm going to get fat.

Getting fat would be completely contrary to my simple little mind's concept of fat-inducing foods: cheese and bacon and lardy badness.

"I can't let myself feel deprived" equals, of course, vegan chocolate and vegan cookies. Sure, there are no milk fats or butter fats, but there's no shortage of sugar and oils ("good" oils). Mmm, sugar and oils.

A vegan diet has absolutely no cholestorol. And considering my family history, I'm probably better off having a little sugary badness flab than a little lardy badness heart attack.

Vote.
Raise your hand if you hate the new banner up there. It was time for a change. We used the Cezanne font on our wedding invitations, and there were a lot of those floating around our house for a long time. And then I saw it here every day. And it's pretty much everywhere - it's totally the New Papyrus.

However, I just wanted something to look typewriter-y, not evil creepy ransom letter-y. My jury is still out.

Update:
I like it now. I don't care what Will says about simplicity.

Illness
I woke up feeling slightly ill, my stomach acting up as usual, and feeling ridiculously tired from our AMAZING Sarah Harmer/Hayden/Jolie Holland night at the Casbah. I thought to myself, I don't think I've called in sick to work in six months. I really ought to. I really don't have that much urgent work, just one project due by the end of the day Thursday, but for some reason, it feels worse than that. So much seems to be swimming around here. The split-second thought of what Thursday would look like after having taken Wednesday off made me feel even worse.

And to top it off, Erik said we'd be organizing the office and garage if I stayed home from work.

So naturally, I'm at work - too lazy to stay home and deal with the consequences tomorrow. This makes me the laziest person EVER.

1/4 Teaspoon Zest of Julia
Human beings have an animalistic tendency to make their mark. Rather than peeing on things, or spraying poo while wagging our tails, we're a little more subtle. We want to go down in history. We want to change people that we date or marry. We want to make an impact on total strangers. We want to see our names on a screen, five feet long and luminous. We want generations to come to think poignantly about our time on earth and proclaim that they are glad that we happened to exist. We want someone to say, "I am so thankful for her. She made me happy/inspired me/changed me." We want to do something meaningful and make a difference, but we rarely want to do that anonymously. We want to mark our terroritory, works, deeds, and auras as entirely our own.

Or, like last night, we grate half inch strips from our thumbs while trying to zest an orange.

Camp
This weekend, we went to the most beautiful and amazing wedding ever. Well, since our own wedding, of course. It was at a small outdoor chapel at a beautiful church camp in the mountains outside of San Diego. Everytime I go to this camp, I declare to myself and everyone in the vicinity that someday, somehow, I will live there and work there and have THE BEST LIFE EVER and then I get sad knowing how out of reach that possibility is. (I had to have known that going to a gorgeous granola wedding there wouldn't help me any.)

But just think... Erik would do some sort of environmental education program at the camp, I'd help maintain the huge organic garden, and both of us would teach/lead the campers and take them on hikes or sing songs for them and clean kitchens and bathrooms and have fabulous wine-soaked meals with the other camp staff and raise our children surrounded by God's beautiful creation.

But until then, I'm just going to write these posts from our suburban condo. Compromising times, compromising times.

A few digicam snapshots from the wedding:



Sweet Erik sitting on the pews before the ceremony began. And that's my sweet guitar sitting on the dirt.


Gilded hiking boot centerpieces:


Feet:


The camp staff came down to the wedding and led all the guests in some different kinds of international folk dancing. Here's my dorky husband and friend Greg after a little country diddy. Yes, Erik kept his thumbs in his belt loops THE ENTIRE DANCE.


Here's what I think of Corona (and you're lucky I'm not posting the picture taken momentarily before this with me at a CHURCH CAMP not only holding Corona in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, but also with ridiculous cleavage).


Over-lit roses:


Power:


Greg driving away, in the most ridiculously fabulous (and polluting) car ever, complete with a guitar case hanging out and an Apple sticker on the windshield:


There isn't much better than being in the beautiful Southern California mountains, enjoying the nuptials of two amazing people, drinking, folk dancing, and dreaming about the perfect life.

Day 3.
Things are going just fine, unless you count my attempts at Vegan Chocolatey Sweetness Independence last night.

In Whole Foods, I'm tempted by a very nicely decorated vegan chocolate raspberry cake. 6" diameter. $14.99. And I totally buy it. I get home with only 20 minutes to spare before I need to be back out the door. I have a ridiculous meal of Wheatabix and oat milk, chased with a tiny slice of cake. However, all does not go according to plan.

Trying to get the box open, I give myself not a paper cut, but a cardboard cut. Strike one. Maybe God Doesn't Want Julia To Be Vegan, Sign #1.

I cut myself a slice. MMM. It's totally not bad at all! The weirdest part is the raspberry jam in between the three layers, incidentally. I decide to be efficient and try to prevent knife-washing in between cuttings. I do this a lot - I'll just keep the utensil in with the casserole dish, or the knife in the cake box. Oh, here would be a good time to tell you that I decided to use a steak knife to cut the vegan cake. The poor steak knives get so bored in our household. They feel so neglected, and I could hear their cries of loneliness from the cruel wooden storage block prison.

I realize that the steak knife isn't going to fit in a 6" cake box, but only after my pinkie grazes over the serrated edge. Sign #2. It's just God's way of saying "Stay the hell away from the vegan cake."

Regardless, the cake was delicious and the steak knife got some action. Good times.

retrospective

every last HTML tag and nostalgic uncapitalized letter in this post is dedicated to matt grace.

we watched "intolerable cruelty" last night after being pleasantly surprised with a night of no commitments AT ALL. this hardly ever happens, and certainly never on tuesdays. despite low expectations, the movie was really amusing. especially the "Living Without Intestines" magazine.

also last night, my friend shawna shopped in my closet for a trip to her hometown for a wedding, complete with lots of old high school friends she hasn't seen in 10 years. there's nothing like someone else's free clothes to feel cute and self-confident. i think this will turn over a new page in our friendship. we'll just trade clothes every few months to spice things up, and then trade back.

speaking of which, a friend of mine told me about a cost-per-wear value she assigns each item of clothing. that is total shameless rationalization. and an excellent idea.

forcing myself to think about things that make me happy is my new self-awareness/self-improvement exercise. it works like a charm.

making me happy right now is a folded up/packaged t-shirt from jackie on my desk with a cow dressed as a doctor saying "avoid red meat."

if anyone can improve that last sentence with punctuation, you will also make me happy.

today, i took my COFFEE CUP over to a coworker's cubicle and actually LEANED ON THE CUBICLE WALL WITH ONE ARM, all lumberg-style. i instantly felt uncomfortable and embarrased yet ridiculously tempted to say "what's happening?"

my pets, the potted vegetables, are doing very well! despite only getting something like 2 hours of direct sunlight per day, the squash are actually budding, and the cilantro is getting really tall. like out of control tall. pictures coming soon, along with lots of mexican and thai food.

don't judge me if there's an empty sapporo can in any of the vegetable pictures. a guest had been using it on our porch as an ashtray the other day. but hey, if you're going to leave a beer can ashtray on your front porch for any extended period of time, at least try to make it imported and/or rare beer. that's high class.

Day 1 and a half
My boss was in Germany last week. Fifteen minutes ago, she presented me with the most delicious looking box of Belgian milk chocolate truffles to ever taunt my senses. EVER. E.V.E.R.

This is getting difficult much sooner than I'd imagined. We're so bombarded with delicious creamy goodness in our society. It's everywhere. If this little experiment doesn't lead to a life of veganism, it will certainly serve to sharpen my animal-byproducts-are-everywhere bias and totally boost my respect for real vegans.

Coworker Joel just told me to think of all the exploited Belgian cows. You know, with their delicious exploited milk turned into delicious exploited chocolate and mixed with delicious maybe-also-exploited hazelnut and/or vanilla and/or THE FUCKING TEMPTRESS ORANGE CREAM.

Any takers?

Lactose Intolerant, Day 1.
Something I had been halfassedly doing for the last six weeks was kicked into high gear last night at the San Diego premiere of Supersize Me. It's Day 1. I have now been vegan for twelve hours straight and plan to keep it that way. At least for a month.

I'll air out my strange dairy tastes in public, lest I mourn them too much alone. First of all, I pretty much only like brie cheese. I've managed to become thoroughly disgruntled with other types of cheese over the last 5 years or so, partly due to cheese's tendency to wear out it's welcome in/on/around my belly, and partly due to the fact that it just doesn't seem right. Cheese is bizarre, and I'm noticing that we don't mix all that well. I wouldn't say I'm lactose intolerant, though. At least not biologically.

And then there's the Blood Orange Ricotta Torte from Extraordinary Desserts. This one is going to be tough.

I've gradually replaced milk with oat or soy milk. Therefore, the latte habit won't be sacrificed. I think I can do this.

I'm not exactly sure why Supersize Me inspired me to be vegan. Maybe I was so disgusted that I felt like I wasn't doing enough. Maybe it was the vegan chef girlfriend. Maybe it was the puke scene. Regardless, I came home and read as much of Diet for a Small Planet as I could before drifting off into a sweet deep sleep and dreaming about being forced to eat those scary flavored wafer candies in a wax-papery tube.

So, let the intolerance begin.

Geek Dreams
A few weeks ago, I had a dream that my workplace was enshrouded in a criminal government conspiracy. Everyone was either on the inside or totally brainwashed except for me and one other coworker called Dwight, to whom I've hardly ever spoken aside from polite passing hellos. Seriously, don't ask me why Dwight was in the dream. He's a bit geeky. And not so much my standard indie-rock/Human Rights Watch geek-cute that I'm all about, but moreso oxford shirts and lanky engineer-geeky.

Anyway, so Dwight and I were racing against the clock to try and resolve the conspiracy and save the world from corrupt government.

The next day, I was almost tempted to tell my coworker about this, because it was so off the wall and amusing, but I just didn't think it would come out right.

"Hi, I'm Julia. So, you were totally the Mulder to my Scully in my dream last night."

Goo.
Every day this week, the following dilemma has presented itself to me: a) wash out my mug and have coffee, or b) don't wash out the mug and forgo coffee.

And every day this week, I've opted to not wash out my mug and not have coffee. After only one day's worth of leftover cold coffee, my inner procrastinator bursts from the throngs of my psyche. If I'd just wash out the damn cup as soon as I finish drinking, we would never enter this downward slope towards hardened coffee goo lining the bottom of the cup. But no. In my mug right now is leftover cold coffee from Friday. Said leftover cold coffee was well on it's way to hardened goo by Monday morning. Procrastination was inevitable and began the moment I left my desk on Friday afternoon, glancing briefly at the cup and thinking, "oh, damn, I'd better clean that out first thing Monday" and the next layer of somewhat-consciousness was thinking, "first thing Monday my ass, Julia."

So I just had to scrape six days' worth of hardened, disgusting coffee goo from the bottom of my mug USING A PAPER TOWEL AND HAND SOAP. And the free office coffee I just drank was nowhere near worth it.

And I'm totally not going to clean out the cup when I'm done, either.

SEX
Erik and I are participating in a human sexuality study with a group of Lutheran and Episcopalian young adults. The study is called "Journeying Together Faithfully" or something, and was published by the ELCA. It's been every wednesday night for the last month, and we have one more session left.

The first few meetings, I was all gung-ho about fixing things. Finding answers. Figuring it all out. Christians worldwide would say "Dude, that study group Julia was in TOTALLY solved the homosexuality issue!" and we'd all live happily ever after. It was frustrating at first that I was just learning that the other side's viewpoint was equally valid and equally faithful as mine.

I'm learning that we'll never have a consensus on this. We'll never have the answers. And they'll certainly not be attributed to our Wednesday night group. But here are several conclusions so far:

1. I'm figuring out exactly what it is I believe. You know, using words to vocalize it. Words like condition, sex, orientation, loneliness, faithfulness, validity, sin, law, scriptural authority, context, love, natural.

2. I'm learning how I fit into my own church's doctrine, and if I don't fit completely, that's totally okay. If someone asks me "what do you believe about ____?," I shouldn't have to first go and ask a priest or look in a prayer book to find the Episcopal stance.

3. We all need to get over the taboo of talking about HOMOSEXUAL SEX. As a culture, we're very comfortable with discussing sex. Just not homosexual sex. We use "action versus orientation" verbage. Or, worse yet, people say "sodomy," which is a falsely assigned nomen.

4. Using the "I'm a new testament Christian who values Christ's love-your-neighbor message as far more important than anything else," is a strange argument. I use it all the time, because that's exactly how I feel. In the school of thought that "scripture interprets scripture," (versus historical or literary context), this teaching was unarguably spelled out as More Important. However, using it for for homosexuality-in-the-church debate is actually like saying "people who don't think homosexuals should be allowed to have blessed unions or marriages are all about hating your neighbor."

5. My husband is not only the handsomest man ever, he's also the smartest and the wisest. He recently taught me or reminded me or what have you that we should embrace the fact that the world is not going to agree on this. This study isn't intended to give me my fancy answers and arm me for arguments with Coworker Josh. It's intended for us to understand every perspective as loving and faithful and important. Erik suggested that we need to take it a step further and cherish what is different and learn from it. Diversity is the fabric of life.

6. Speaking of fabrics, several seasons ago's mixed-fabric texture trend (i.e., fluffy wool with satin) was TOTALLY A HOLY CRIME.

Coachella 2004
The day was fantastic. While much of it was riddled with a) "FUCK, it's hot," and b) "FUCK, i wish we had been here yesterday," it was still an amazing experience.

And here it is.

So, it turns out that this is a giant fallen chandelier. I just noticed (with some prompting) that it has those little crystals and a CHAIN. Giant bugs with flagella do not have chains.


The lovely boys of Hybrid. It turns out that it was hotter in the tent.


Sweet Stuart The Scot. From Belle & Sebastian.


I love how the Radiohead bear is talking in Japanese.


Julia and Erik, in front of the main stage. And thank all that is holy, the sun is weakening.


Belle & Sebastian. My coworker (who went) asked me today, "what is up with them?" Excellent.


The main stage at sunset.


Air. You know, the FRENCH band. Who needs to turn on their lights or something. Also, this was mere moments after SETH COHEN walked by.


B.R.M.C. They had some bass malfunctions, so they started to do some acoustic stuff! Erik yelled out for some Jesus and Mary Chain songs.


And this is as close to The Flaming Lips as I could get. The singer had a dream that he "descended upon Coachella in a giant bubble." So of course, being The Flaming Lips and all, he decided to do just that. He rolled around in the crowd in a giant plastic hamster ball. Also, the costumed people on stage are creepy.


We seemed to spend a lot of time in the techno tent. GOOD TIMES. These pictures are all during Ferry Corsten or Paul Van Dyk. They all sound the same to me.




And I'm pretty sure this is Robert Smith, looking quite haggard, on the screens. Haggard aside, he was excellent. I was impressed. I think people might have wept and wiped their tears from their pale faces with their black t-shirts.


This is about as close as we could get for The Cure.


Yeah, enough of The Cure. Back to the techno tent for Paul Van Dyk.
This is Erik glowing in the green laser light. I was actually trying to get a picture of the guy dancing in his tighty whiteys, but he looked my way and I felt voyeuristic and embarassed. So instead of a sweaty, dancing stranger in tighty whiteys, this is what Erik looks like reeeeeeally close up.


Green lasers...


...blue...


...and red. Nothing says you've made it in the techno world like having your name in laser projections.


Interesting image


And finally, Ash. The guitarist really rocked out. She was inspiring and looked delightfully indie rock with her shaggy hair and black dress. And I'm sure she was either wearing flats or no shoes at all.


And with that, we sat around for another HOUR waiting for my brother-in-law's friend to show up. And she never did. So then we sat in the car for several more hours trying to get out of the parking lot. We finally stumbled home around 4:45am, slept for a few hours, and then grabbed a 3x latte and put in a full day's work. And I'd do it all over again this Sunday if I could. In a heartbeat.

Fox Teen Drama Heroes in the California Desert
A huge weekend involving 110°-ish weather at Coachella on Sunday. More to come (including pictures!), but for now, i'll leave you with this highlight: SETH COHEN. Seth FUCKING Cohen! He brushed right past me during Air's set. holding Summer's hand! The best part, however, wasn't being brushed by Adam Brody, but that my wonderful husband recognized characters from The OC without any prompting. We just looked at each other with wide eyes. Erik said, "they're so little!" I said, "SETH FUCKING COHEN!" and I said it again, every half hour or so thereafter.

Seriously, good times. I love my husband. (And Seth Cohen.)