I give in: Pandora rules. (aka Music To Pack By)

That's it. Especially using Erin McKeown to build a station. I got Regina Spektor and Tracy Chapman and Ani DiFranco immediately. Hells yeah.

Oooh, and then I added Dan Bern to my channel, so they started giving me Bob Dylan and Loudon Wainwright III and Sondre Lerche. Goddamn.

Losing Weight

So, I am packing and moving and therefore I am trying to Throw Shit Out. To this end, my wonderful friend Leah came over the other day and watched me try on clothes I bought many years and many miles ago and made the perfect "I love you but THROW THAT SHIT OUT" face at all the appropriate moments and then yesterday I brought nine bags of clothes to Goodwill. I mean, Trader Joe's paper shopping bags, so not huge, but still. Nine bags.

So now I am starting to pack up my books and I'm hearing Leah in my head saying, as she did on Saturday, "do you ever get rid of a book?" And I told her that I did, sometimes, yes, but not so often. And that is the truth; I do sometimes, and sometimes I send them off in the mail to a happy reader elsewhere in the world who wants some specific book I have but don't really want, all thanks to BookMooch.com, which I love. (It's awesome. To date I have sent off 22 books I did not want and received 23 books I did want. Most of the ones I sent cost about $3 to mail; most of the ones I received are ones I would have spent $7 or so for in a used bookstore or $15 for in a new bookstore. Fabulous.)

And so anyway, I'm starting to pack up my books and I just pulled off 10 books I am not going to keep! That is huge for me, trust me. Two of them are signed by the author and still I'm not keeping them - that is unbelievably out of character for me, the girl who has a separate shelf devoted to books signed by their authors. No really; that's one of the 26 shelves: Books Signed By Their Authors.

Ten books, two of which are signed by their authors. I rule.

Things you Need to Know

which is to say, nonsense you don't at *all* need to know:

0. I am twittering. Why? Why?
1. I have packed a box, hooray!
2. Yes, one. The contents of said box are the books of one shelf (lower left-hand corner), almost, meaning the shelf contained slightly more than would fit in the box.
3. I have 26 shelves of books.
4. TWENTY-SIX SHELVES? WOMAN, BUY A TV ALREADY.
5. Never mind the entire rest of my house. One box so far.
6. Ohmigod.
7. I currently own two refrigerators and only want one of them. Want one? Come and get it and it's yours. Side-by-side and big and working ('cept for the ice-maker thingy).
8. How did I get to the point in my life where I own even one fridge, let alone two? I have no idea.
9. Which is to say, I now also own two toilets. Holy shit.
10. Ha ha, that was unintentional.

Undeniable Proof That I Am (Still, Always) a New Yorker:

Things I Love:
Twizzlers

Things I Hate:
Red Vines


The End.

Can you find this for me?

The poem called "My God Father of the Gentiles". I want to read it.

Thank you.

Oh and by the way.....

I BOUGHT A CONDO. I CLOSED LAST TUESDAY. I OWN A CONDOMINIUM.

I need a couch. A dining room table. A bedroom set. Hell, a decorator (ha). Because I'm the sort of kid Anna Quindlen could love:
"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves."

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

The Top Three Reasons I Have Not Yet Put This Book Back On My Shelf, Even Though I Read It A Year And A Half Ago

0. "America's greatest revelation was not the atom bomb, not Fundamentalism, not fat farms, not Elvis, not even the quite astute observation that gentlemen prefer blondes, but the great heights to which she has propelled ice cream."

1. "Not returning phone calls is the severest form of torture in the civilized world. Haven't you read Hit and Run: Crisis in Singlehood America?"

2. " 'Onstage I make love to twenty-five thousand people and then I go home alone,' moaned Janis Joplin, bleary of eye and disheveled of hair."

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - not just for Bugs Bunny anymore!

"I know there is no Santa Claus."
"Yet you must teach the child that these things are so."
"Why? When I, myself, do not believe?"
"Because," explained Mary Rommely simply, "the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination. I, myself, even in this day and at my age, have great need of recalling the miraculous lives of the Saints and the great miracles that have come to pass on earth. Only by having this things in my mind can I live beyond what I have to live for."


Ok, so that's really the end of my post, only I just love this about this book, also, seeing as how it was published in 1943, that is just shows how the more things change, the more they stay the same or somesuch soundbite wisdom:
"Send Francie. The last time I asked for sauerkraut he chased me out of the store," complained Neeley.
"You've got to ask for Liberty Cabbage now, you dope," said Francie.
"Don't call each other names," chided Katie absentmindedly.
"Did you know they changed Hamburg Avenue to Wilson Avenue?" asked Francie.
"War makes people do funny things," sighed Katie.

Freedom fries, indeed.

When in Rome... get out before the earthquake hits.

So, I'm in Israel right now and apparently completely jetlagged, because it's... oh, 4:30am and I'm blogging instead of sleeping.

I'm having an AMAZING time, and enjoying every minute. I'm doing a much better than usual job of calling people up and making plans and doing stuff, and my Hebrew is holding up reasonably well - it's the first time that I'm here with any reasonable Hebrew to try out, so it's a pretty awesome experience to actually understand some shit.

I had a 7-hour layover in Rome on my way here, and I was extremely tired, having already stopped over in Paris. The next leg of my flight was on El Al Airlines, so I had no idea how much time I'd need to deal with security and transferring my luggage and stuff, so it was hard to resist the temptation to spend the hours eating, sleeping, and shopping in the huge airport... but I didn't! I asked a million people a million questions, changed some dollars to euros at a ridiculous loss, took a train and then a subway, and emerged from the Metro tunnel directly in front of the Colosseum. WOW. I spent about two hours walking around the area and taking pictures, ate an eggplant pizza at a cafe from which I could have hit the Colosseum itself with my crust if I'd thrown it hard enough (next time :) and went back to the airport. Amazing, perfect, fabulous. I was so freaking proud of myself!

And then, you know, a few hours later, 130 people died. Sharing that SoCal love? Oy.

I went dancing only one night out of three so far, but I have nine nights left and I intend to dance on seven of them. Yeee-haw!

The first thing to do is to survey the estate.

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW:

0. Pincher Martin is an incredibly boring book.
1. I desperately need a new computer.
2. I am going to Israel in a few weeks and I am soooooooooo not prepared.
3. I am unbelievably bad at talking on the telephone.

QUESTIONS I HAVE:

4. What is it with Joe's colon?
5. Why is it first Mi Chamocha and then Mi Kamocha? No one I know ever knows.
6. Why can't my computer successfully download the California State Tax program for TurboTax, after I finally ponied up and bought the damn thing and spend all this time installing it and doing everything and I have an internet connection and the other updates work yet THE STATE TAX THING ISN'T WORKING AND I'M VERY FRUSTRATED. I mean, ?

But not today.

One day, I'll stop thinking this is hilarious:

or that this is awesome: