alright, i confess it. my secret guilty pleasure: WB dramas. i’m particular to gilmore girls, but really, any one of them will do, and i don’t have to watch the episodes in order or on a regular basis to derive great, idiotic pleasure out of them. i drag the circa 1970 black and white television out from under the bed and set it up in which ever room i’m doing housework and revel in the pretty people, picturesque sets and mindless sappy plots. it actually makes me do more ironing/dishwashing/folding than i otherwise would, just so i can indulge in the entire hour (or two). there, i’ve said it. think of me as you will. it’s better for my blood pressure than watching george bush invade my televison.

andy and i were foster parents to our friend piaf’s impossibly cute chihuahua for the weekend. while i do tend to sneer at dogs that are so small my cat could make hamburger out of them, it’s true that lola is pretty irresistible. and smart, too, i suspect because piaf leaves the radio set to NPR when she’s gone to keep lola company. andy found she was a chick magnet of the first order, but as soon as he told the googly-eyed girls in the park that the dog’s name was Lolita, the conversation was over in a big hurry. hey, we didn’t name her. zeke gave me a dirty look whenever i’d come back from walking lolita all weekend. “you stink like dog” his glare seemed to say.

from last tuesday’s Science Times section of the NY Times:

“Dr. Bianchi…stumbled into the field [stem cell research] when she was trying to find a new method of prenatal diagnosis. She knew that a few fetal cells enter a woman’s blood during pregnancy…But then she discovered that the fetal cells do not disappear when a pregnancy ends. Instead, they remain in a woman’s body for decades, perhaps indefinitely. And if a woman’s tissues or organs are injured, fetal cells from her baby migrate there, divide and turn into the needed cell type, be it thyroid or liver, intestine or gallbladder, cervix or spleen.”

okay, i don’t normally get all excited about mothery sorts of things (my ovaries have apparently procrastinated the biological tick-tick-tick until later in life), but how amazing is that? a woman’s offspring physically become a permanent part of her own body, and the act of giving life to a child could in turn prolong or protect her life from illness or injury years later.

science is cool. nature even more amazing.

tonight marks one year since andy and i arrived in chicago in our gasping, rusty moving truck, with frantic cat and frazzled nerves in tow. to be honest, the sight of a uhaul still makes me a bit nauseous. this is the longest i’ve lived in any single place since i left my parents’ house at age 18. i’ve been fighting grass-is-always-greener urges lately, feeling homesick for places i’ve been before, idaho and california, but we’re not giving in this time, not for now. in the past, every time a place starts to bite my ass, i’ve just picked up and moved on – new project, new people, different set of worries/benefits. but that nomadic lifestyle was taking its toll. i haven’t really put in the effort to be a part of a community in a long time, not since college, and i can start to feel what i’ve been missing out on. there’s endless amounts of chicago left for us to explore, but our neighborhood is starting to feel like ours. i’m no longer eyeing my apartment like a game of survivor, deciding which possessions will have to get voted off the island with the next move.

the following ad, for a cheap furniture store popular in chicago called Affordable Portables, appeared on the back page of section 1 of the Chicago Reader in the august 13th issue. so the question is, am i the only person in chicago with enough free time (at work) to have read the fine print on this ad? a close examination reveals the following:

the lower right-hand corner or the ad reads:

oh yeah, and that’s a mushroom cloud on the televsion set.

is there something i’m missing, or is this just cynical hipsterism done in really poor taste?

you know those little workout shorts that girls wear to work out, the ones that say “sassy!” or “USC” on the butt? saw a girl with those at the gym yesterday. hers said “poop deck.”

dude, i got spam from Alan Keyes today:

Good day;

We at Inspira tional Word Publishers are proud

to announce the release of:

“On Eagles Wings-The Fight for Chri stian America”

http://www.amer icasgra ce.com

“Rob Thompson will forever be a great service to his God, nationa and

party”.

-Ambassador Alan Keyes

“Rob Thompson has written a book that must be read by all those who

have a love of Chr ist and American history”.

-David Schippers Majority Counsel Clinton Imp eachment

For a short time only by 1 copy and get the 2nd copy FREE!!!!

Isaiah 40:31

Jennifer,

You are receiving this email because you email is part of an opt in targeted program.

We have provided a convienient remove link if you wish to stop receiving more mails

To unsubscribe from: our list, just follow this link:

Click here to delete yourself from our email list

yeah sure, clicking on that link will take me off your spam list. hey alan keyes, get out of my eudora! and my state! (i registered to vote, i can call it my state now).

oh, and ps – there’s like three typos in your letter. not including the spaces i added to certain key search phrases.

love in the mail: the IKEA 2005 catalogue arrived today, an unanticipated treat. oh IKEA, how you do seduce the nesting instinct in me. i want to crawl into your clean white kitchens and fresh, grass-green living rooms filled with smooshy furniture and mysterious swedish storage possibilities.

not that we’ll have time or money to buy anything from IKEA; i’m about to launch into another year of working 3 part-time jobs (two theatre, the third of the “day job” variety), and andy, besieged by a sudden flood acting and improv offers, has turned down the salaried promotion his cafe offered him. as we move into our late twenties, i admit that the specter of financial solvency, health insurance, IKEA furniture, grows stronger and those “what am i doing with my life?” doubts do come nagging around the edges.

still, we’ve gained something in our first year in chicago: momentum. a lucky few rocket to success in this biz, but most of us labor at it the hard way – one friendship, one job-well-done at a time. and it feels like a slow race between two possibilities: will we make it before we get so tired/poor that we give it up? it’s the elusive definition of “making it” that’s a slippery slope. when do we know we’ve made it? when we’re making a living in the arts? then how do we define a living? in financial terms? when we’re happy? when we finally think we can relax and let down our guard and occasionally pass on an offer because we have faith that another one will come along? when it all stops being so scary?

last weekend was new york, chez lauren and joe, who were marvelous hosts. as i was on vacation, i skipped out on my professional obligation to spend the whole weekend seeing plays, but i do confess to finding a unsuspecting harvard grad with theatrical leanings at a party and talking at him for a good solid hour about the financial problems facing theatre in america. he was very nice and asked just enough polite questions to keep me going ad nauseum. i think he finally escaped on the pretense of needing a cigarette.

the weekend was a blur of excellent thai food (duck curry, mmmm…, not to mention some pad thai that rivals my own), hip art venues (the owner of the future perfect offered to buy my MRI for a project entitled “Resident Evil”), flea markets and impromptu shopping trips, and lots of good conversation (joe claims that entire conversations between lauren & i can be boiled down to: “my cat goes mrrow.” “and then my cat goes mrrow.” “and then my cat goes mrrow.” i’m not disputing his point, tho i fail to see anything wrong with that).

it’s nice to have a girl friend to hang out with again.

some pictures:

the giant bamboo canopy that arched over the gravel courtyard of P.S.1, one of MOMA’s satellite venues. the art was good, but the people-watching was better.

the view of the sky from battery park, where lauren and i were too late to get into the actual concert venue for the lyle lovett concert, but spent an idle afternoon lying in the grass behind the stage.

ms. liberty, from battery park.

the penguin tries to deal with the pressures of life in new york city.

explain this sign:

“vegetarian cookies available here!!!”

finally. i’m so sick of places that only have meat cookies. :)