Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keep things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!
- from "a prayer for owen meany"

what a sad, beautiful book. i've noticed this about other john irving books (by this i mean, the only other one i've read, being "the world according to garp"): they start out slow and full of seemingly insignificant details, but, when the shit starts to happen, let me tell you that the shit starts to happen. read the last part of that sentence with extra emphasis. every tiny paragraph of "owen meany," especially the ones that you thought were just filler, is suddenly vital to the integrity of the story. i find it absolutely amazing how that works out, because not every writer can do that. if i ever write a book, a whole bunch of nonsense is going to happen and then, out of nowhere, everyone will be maimed by the butler, who will not even be mentioned until you read the words, "then everyone was maimed by the buter." it will befuddle you. of course, now i've just given away the ending of my novel, so maybe i should turn the butler into a dinosaur. a court jester. a crazy, one-eyed chef from lincoln, nebraska, who has a habit of adding extra vanilla to everything. i guess it really won't matter much. who am i kidding anyhow? all i have so far for "my novel" is a bunch of random names and cities scrawled on a wad of cocktail napkins in pink lipstick. but at least i've stapled the napkins together.

the thing that got me thinking after finishing "owen meany" has to do with the quote above, and how everything "came together" in the end. my thought is- at the end of my life, is every little piece of bullshit going to suddenly come full circle? boy, would that be a trip. not to mention one very crowded hospital room. i can tell you right now which icon from my past would probably end up stepping on my life support cord. and which other one would ask to eat my jell-o.

if the past *is* an indication, i can tell you that a car ride will be my undoing. it won't be a car crash that will kill me, but it'll be something that happens in a car. like maybe i somehow catch on fire from a spark that jumps out of my cd player, landing unfortunately on my very flammable pants or in my hair-spray coated hair. not that i use hair spray all that often, but this day will surely be an exception because of the hair spray and yogurt convention i will be driving to as a part of my parole agreement. or, maybe, a rabid dog will jump into my open car window while i'm stopped at a toll booth psychotically counting out my forty pennies, and ... no, the dog won't bite me, that would be too obvious. the rabid dog would have to somehow stab me with a letter opener that he had recently acquired from a mail order company operating out of memphis. trust me, memphis makes sense.

it would be a small dog. a cute one, in a goddamn sweater.

i'm about to leave to go buy a gift for a shower. this means dealing with gift registry, which makes us suckers think that this whole shopping and purchasing thing is really just more of a fun, wacky kind of scavenger hunt. suckers. i've decided that i'm going to register for some stuff. now i know i'm neither engaged or pregnant, but why can't i too share in the joy of receiving? i guess that's what the amazon wishlist is for.... but i'm also interested in tennis shoes and board games and chocolate covered almonds, so i may have to pick a few varied stores for this registry of mine. oh how fun. then i'm going to throw a shower for myself- not a bridal or baby shower, but a "did you buy me all the stuff i registered for?" shower. it'll be a good time; i hope you will all come bearing gifts. hot dogs may be served- possibly. it's going to be all about the profit margin, so unless i get a good deal at costco, the shower may be byob...af. bring your own beer... and food.

ah, yes. then i wonder why i can count the number of friends i have on one lone hand. i guess it's just as well; i need the other hand for flicking everyone else off. good times.

for those of you who missed last month's episodes, our heroine jackie was having a bit of trouble sleeping. by "a bit of trouble," i mean "absolutely none and i was almost suicidal about it." now here we are about to enter july, and i'm sleeping like a baby. the only problem is that this baby is not like your average baby. sure, there are the obvious differences, such as the fact that i'm 5'8" and have a license to operate an automobile, but also unlike your average baby, i'm having nightmares. i'm assuming most babies don't have nightmares because what could they possibly have nightmares *about*? too much milk? the diaper that got wetter and wetter? the animals in their hanging mobiles coming to life and suffocating them in their sleep with their life-size winnier the pooh bears? oh my. maybe i just proved myself wrong.

my nightmares are not your run of the mill nightmares. no monsters. no being naked in public. no dreams of falling or being chased. i have three themes in my dreams. one, pregnancy. oftentimes, i'll dream that i'm having a baby, and it's usually not even a real baby. once, it was a rat. another time, a doll. a third time, a fully grown man that i was strangely attracted to. the second theme is not graduating high school. i'm always back at my old high school, i'm always taking classes too hard for me, and inevitably, i'm always being told, "you don't have enough credits, you're not going to graduate." i'll wake up and think i'm still seventeen, lying there in bed and trying to figure out how many extra credit projects i'll need to get done by monday. now, i was always an honor student.... except for my last semester in high school when i failed calculus. failed. but it was calculus, which was really hard, so even a failing grade in it is still better than your average american high school student, yes?

oh, it was so confusing.

anyhow, my third dream theme is time travel. you would think this would sound fun, whimsical even. the thing is, i'm constantly getting *stuck* in other times, with no way of finding my way back to the present. the strangest thing about this dream, though, is that it usually takes place in a mall. like, it'll be present day at one end of the mall, but once i enter sears or something, suddenly it's 1956. i don't know why malls are always involved. maybe it's just a commentary on my spending habits.

but the amount of sleep i'm getting these days, dreams aside, is pretty damn exciting. i'm looking forward to new things on the horizon- a well-rest girl can move mountains, i hear. or at least look at pictures of them. without feeling cranky and drowsy. and that's a plus.

whoever thought up the idea of fortune cookies is my personal hero. also, the magic eight ball guy. and the guy at the cheez-it company who said to the other cheez-it guys- "hey! let's package TWO bags of cheez-its inside ONE box! because people eat a lot of cheez-its." he was right, you know. oh, how he was right.

i think a great job would be to write fortune cookie fortunes. i think that while it might also be fun to write the replies for the magic eight ball, i fear all of mine would be much too lengthy to fit on that way-too-tiny triangular surface. also, i'd probably end up ingesting magic eight ball juice somehow, and then i'd have to have my stomach pumped. i'd probably also have to have my stomach pumped if i worked at the cheez-it factory. because while i have been eating a lot of cheez-its lately, i've also started getting the impression that my intestinal lining is starting to decay, just a little bit. and that's no good. certain things just aren't covered under your average hmo.

what a hot, sticky day. this morning i woke up at the insane hour (and equally insane minute) of 7:45 and headed to the old homestead, la casa de mi familia. i had lunch plans with girls from work (where i *used* to work, sigh) but thought that i would spend the morning with my dad first. so i got home, my dad and i talked for about twenty minutes, and then i spent the rest of the time playing on the internet, doing laundry, soaking up the cable tv, and burning cds. talk about your quality family time.

lunch was with val and nikki. val's a character; if there's more than a four second silence, she says, "boy, wasn't that awkward." she talks. a lot. she works out every decision, even the tiniest ones, out loud. like what she's going to order. where she's going to place her fork. how she's going to light her cigarette. you would think this would be highly annoying; i love it. her chatter's the most refreshing thing since sliced bread. although i suppose sliced bread alone isn't that refreshing- maybe sliced bread paired with a chilled leinenkugel's? a snoopy-machine icee? you get the picture.

of course i had to make my day complete by visiting my old store before heading "home." today i actually thought of the apartment as home. i was wondering how long it would take, and i guess the answer's just under three weeks, like the gestation period of a chicken. true fact. anyhow, how can the apartment *not* be home- all of my shoes are here.?

the old store is chugging along without me, as i knew would eventually happen. i was afraid i would walk in and nobody would even care. i am, after all, yesterday's pudding- whatever the fuck that means. but i was wrong, alas. i was greeted in one of the best ways possible; i was lifted from the floor and spun around by my favorite lab technician and former smoking partner. he told me to transfer back to the store and compared me to the kinds of giant cookies you get from a really nice bakery. "everyone else is just tollhouse," he said. i'm hoping this train of thought catches on; "cookie" wouldn't be a half bad nickname to possess.

i can't tell you how much that made my day. but i guess i did, since it ranked important enough to blog about. i guess if we're using *that* scale, though, to rank importance, i'm probably fucked. i believe i've written entire entries about mascara.

news to lebowskifest goers- time is drawing near. the "dudes" sent me their newsletter today. everyone is quite excited, and i guess there's going to be a costume contest. how hard, though, can it be to dress like the dude? my lord. i'm thinking of gaining two hundred pounds and going as walter- i have access, don't-you-know, to the necessary lens tints i would require for walter's yellow shooting ones. not to mention the aviator frames. it's like i'm halfway there. kind of. shut the fuck up, jackie.

i'm a big fan of things mechanical. like those doors at the grocery store that open when you walk up to them, via the great technology of sensors? oh man. sometimes on my break, i'll just walk up and down the strip mall making doors open and giggling wildly. today i found, in the break room, a candy machine in which the candy bars will spin around if you press down a button that says "rotate selections." so now whenever i go back there, i have to press down that button. have to. the noise itself is quite satisfying. whirrrrrr.

chris drinks soda before going to bed. he drinks soda *in* bed, and while i find this absolutely adorable, i am unable to explain why. it's generic soda (costco's "simply cola") and he, while slurping rather casually away, states in a serious tone, "this stuff's much better than either coke or pepsi." i find this assessment extremely funny, but again i can't explain why. what kind of wierdo drinks a can of soda in bed? while naked? before falling promptly asleep? maybe i'm the wierdo for being so hung up on this image, but today all i could do was think about it and laugh. you get a lot of queer looks when you're standing by yourself trying to disguise uncontrollable giggles as uncontrollable coughs or an uncontrollable, perhaps unidentifiable, type of half sneeze, half belch. trust me, i know.

i don't think i've mentioned my Project on this blog, which is a shame because i think that if i did, i'd end up with some pretty cool results. basically, my Project is the collection of t-shirts from different cities... small, little kid t-shirts as to show off my sizely (cough, cough, cough, choke) rack... that say, as an example, "somebody in las vegas loves me." "someone in san francisco loves me." "somebody who loves me a lot went to wisconsin and got me this t-shirt." you get the picture. those are the shirts i have now: las vegas, sf, and wisconsin (which isn't a city, i know, but work with me here), and my ultimate goal is to have one of those shirts from every possible city in the entire world. what a wardrobe!!

i had to buy the first three myself. which works out fine, because if you don't have self-love, what do you have... and, yes, the joke is funnier when you buy those types of t-shirts for yourself, so i guess it works out. carole needs to bring me one of those from new york when she comes home next to visit, but it can't be one of those "i (heart) ny" t-shirts, otherwise i'll punch her. however, if anybody else is traveling or comes across any of those t-shirts from any other city (other than chicago, because everyone here thinks i'm an asshole), please contact me and i will give you my mailing address and the correct reimbursement for both the t-shirt and the postage. kids sizes 14-16, possibly 12, please. and the cheaper the t-shirt, the better. i don't like wearing things that look too nice, it makes me feel like i need to apologize.

the funnier a city sounds, the better.

the book i've been reading for about five or six weeks now is "a prayer for owen meany" by john irving. i'm about halfway through. at this rate, it'll be september before i finish, which means that it will take me an entire summer to read one (1) novel. and that's just horrible. once in high school, somebody i knew told me that it was their goal to read three books over the summer break. to this i scoffed, "three books? i'll have three books read by the end of the second week, you jackass. what are you, illiterate?"

now i'm not so smug.

i read this book on a recommendation. a boy i was on a date with found it odd that i wrote in all capital letters (which i only do sometimes) while my emails were all in lower case letters (which i do all the time, much to the dismay of prospective employers i'm sure). he said, "that's odd how you do that.... ever read 'a prayer for owen meany?'"

"no."

"well, you should."

and that was the end of that. no plot summary, nothing. the only reason he recommended it, i can see now, is that whenever owen speaks or writes, it's all in capital letters. did this guy really think that i would identify with this character for that one reason alone? what a freak. i'm nothing like owen meany. i never killed my best friend's mother by slamming a baseball into her forehead. never.

it was a soccer ball, and it was the mother of a girl i hardly knew. so there.

when i was in sixth grade, i wrote down the title of every book i read for an entire year. by the end of the year, i had read an average of about 1.2 books a day. no joke. most of them weren't even picture books. and here i am taking three months to read one lousy novel. not to mention i keep forgetting key plot points. i think after i finish this book, i'm going to have to pick up something nice and thin, like a single o'henry story. that'll boost this year's average for sure.

this is truly the dorkiest blog entry i have ever written. but is it the dorkiest blog entry i have YET to write? probably not.

today my domestic partner and i got a membership at the local costco, which was either the stupidest or possibly smartest thing we've ever done. possibly stupidest. my domestic partner seems to think that as long as we keep eating at the costco cafeteria, where you can get a huge hot dog and 20 oz coke (free refills) for $1.50, the $45 membership fee will be more than worth it.

in my office (read: corona box on kitchen floor), there are currently 24 bottles of gatorade, 48 ice cream sandwiches, 12 rolls of paper towels, and all sorts of other food items that are surely going to go bad before any sort of sizable dent can be incurred. also, i have a feeling that with the number of sandwich bags we bought, i'm going to end up bequeathing most of them to my grandchildren. ri-goddam-diculous.

you know you've skipped some vital part of your life when you wake up one day and find yourself signing up for a costco membership at the age of 22. something about it just doesn't seem right. also, the fact that you can buy 1450 q-tips at one time.... that, in fact, if you're at costco, you pretty much HAVE to.

what's happened to me? some days, i feel like a gigantic loser. this is one of those days. i don't think it's because of the fact i had a hard time lifting my lifetime supply of toilet paper into the shopping cart. i think it's because of this dream i had last night. all this great shit was happening to me in this dream- i was living in a water park / go kart park- and then somebody asked me who i was and what i did. and i told them the answer. i sold glasses. and i hated having to say that. i woke up and realized that something has got to change, and soon. i don't want to waste my life working some menial job that will never get me anywhere. really, any job at all will be menial, i'm quite sure of it.... but there's got to be some other way. i want to do something that makes me insanely happy. i know what this something is.... but i'm so weak, i'm so afraid of being mediocre, of failing miserably.... so i stop myself before i can hardly begin. this is not who i want to be. some religions say you get a whole shit load of lives. if i believed that, then i'd say, "i was probably fabulous in my previous lives, so i can be kind of boring now....." but that's not what i believe. this is it, my one chance. and even though i'm young, i'm still kind of blowing it.

sigh. i can always find something to complain about. usually it's men. lately, i'm having trouble complaining about men.... so again it comes back to me. i'm such the stereotypical woman, always taking care of my romantic needs first and then worrying about the rest. funny, huh? oh well, we're all fucked up somehow.

at costco, it's impossible to buy just one loaf of bread.

last night was board game night- chris, ocean, jordan, kim, and i sat around the dining room table, drank beer from a gigantic glass boot, and tried to tackle the mystery and intrigue that is "castle of magic." my vote was for "scrabble," but my vote never seems to count for much when chris has the chance to be a wizard of some sort. it was kind of cool, once i got the hang of it. of course it took me forever to get the hang of it. i think we should all invest in a few less complicated games- but not "mouse trap," because i could never quite get the hang of that one either. i used to like playing "the babysitter's club game" a lot when i was about ten. the trivia questions were way too easy, though- i mean, everyone knows that it's claudia that likes art, mallory who has a hundred siblings, and jesse who's the token black girl. those young adult writers, they understand the importance of having a token everything.

i love playing board games. i'd rather play a board game than a computer game, and, going back to when i was ten, i was quite convinced that what i wanted to do when i grew up was to design board games. i actually made a huge board game about the size of our dining room that had the layout of a streetfront, with different buildings. the object of the game was to catch the robber, steal back the money he had stolen originally, and then return it to its rightful store. i thought it was a lot of fun, but i think if i were to redo that game now, it would be like, first you catch the robber, then you steal back the money, then you buy a whole bunch of string cheese. then you take a gulp from the beer in the boot.

i also wanted to be an astronaut. a detective. a teacher. a writer. a fashion designer. a senator. instead, i grew up to adjust glasses. oh, how cruel life can be sometimes.

my character in the game last night was the former king of some country that had already been assisinated once and was therefore unable to be assasinated ever again. i was immortal. immortal, i tell you. and i was mad with power. before we all got bored and gave up.

oye!! i'm sitting on the floor of the kitchen typing with my laptop on a corona box because for now all we have is dial-up and, of course, this is the only phone jack in the apartment that works. this is how the impoverished must feel, the ones that have computers...

the more things change, the more they stay the same. i'm not quite sure what i'm trying to say with that cliche, but except for moving in with my boyfriend, switching jobs, leaving my hometown an hour behind, and dying my hair a slight burgundy color, not much else is going on. i kind of hate my job. not that i hate it, but i just don't like it very much. remember how in "being john malkovich" all those old people wanted a younger vessel to take over so that they wouldn't have to grow even older and eventually die? i'm the young vessel, and my co-workers are the old people. i can see them planning the take-over- it's in the lines around their eyes, spelled out in the grey strands of their hair. it's in the way they shuffle around rather slowly. after a while, i won't be me anymore. i'll be fifteen old ladies. at least maybe i'll know how to knit. and bake, let's not forget that i've been meaning to bake.

i exaggerate. i tend to do that. everyone is quite nice, and since i too am quite nice, we all get along grandly. since i don't have children in their twenties, though, or the onset of arthritis, we don't necessarily have a lot to discuss. i miss the shenanigans of my old store, the gossip and the drinking and the fun. i need shenanigans. baby boomers and their predecessors don't seem to crave shenanigans.

the apartment is relatively great. it has its problems, such as the phone jack situation i described in paragraph one, and the roaches, and the fact that the people above us sound like elephants when they walk around, but it's a lot of space, and it's starting to feel like home. i like my roommates. i like sleeping next to chris- strangled snoring and all. i like ... well, listing my likes is never interesting. maybe i should go back to complaining.

now that i'm online again, i'm going to call my mother and tell her... that i'm still not online. because she's a fan of writing me emails that read like grocery lists, except instead of listing things like milk, eggs, and cheese, they list things like, "make sure you don't break any legs," and "brush your teeth," and "practice safe sex because if we find out that you're giving birth to any bastard children, we'll drive up there and drown them in the nearest river." typical mom stuff. only with more spelling errors.

i've forgotten how to blog. i'll be back.

the new apartment, which is large and currently cluttered with boxes and mismatched furniture, will not be equipped with internet access until next week. which is truly a death sentence for the likes of jackie. i'm at chris' parents right now using their computer; "saved by the bell" is on the tv behind me and my stomach is full of cocoa puffs. so i guess all's not bad.

detailed blog entries to come. and moving anecdotes, let's not forget the moving anecdotes.

and in sports, i am officially sick of hearing about sammy sosa and his stupid corked bat. this is bigger news than the what-have-you going on in iraq. fox interrupted "that seventies show" today with a special sammy sosa corked bat announcement. interrupted. as if a little cork in a goddamn bat is more important than key plot points of a moderately acclaimed rerun.

i played softball for a brief period in my youth. the year was 1991. "home alone" was a run-away hit, and the clarence thomas/ anita hill hearings had even the fifth graders cracking low brow sexual harrassment jokes. like the one where clarence tells anita he wants to keep her on his staff for a very long time? whoo-ya! surely, that wasn't the best one, but so much time has passed that the juicy ones have been stuffed back into my subconscious. returning to my story, competition was becoming very heated at ye olde "girls ages 10-11" softball field, and i knew i had to do something to re-earn the respect of my peers, whose respect i had previously, and repeatedly, lost due to poor performance in the batter's box. that and there had been several unfortunate incidents resulting in a few of their dogs dying and me for some reason having to shoulder the blame. let's not get into it. what's important is that the pressure was on. i knew i wasn't going to become a great batter overnight, or even over an extended period of time filled with lots of training and practicing, so what i decided to do was cork my bat.

i don't know how i got caught. maybe it was my sneaky, shifty eyes. my profuse sweating on sixty-five degree days. or maybe it was because my method of corking was to simply tape a few wine corks to the tip of my bat. whatever it was that gave me away, i was ejected from that game and then ridiculed for what seemed like minutes. anyhow, my point of this story is that while it was a big deal for the duration of that one game, my bat corking incident certainly did not interrupt "that seventies show." so let's get over this sammy sosa crap and move on, shall we?

i'm typing this blog entry on my new lap top, freshly purchased from the good people at best buy. boy, are those best buy dudes pushy- extended warranty this and payment plan that. just give me my goddamn lap top already.

i think it was incredibly smart of me to spend over a grand on a lap top what with now also having to pay rent and fully support myself on a job that, while not exactly crappy, sure as hell isn't great.

don't you?

i am addicted to the television, which is unfortunate, because here i am stuck without a television. not that i can lay on the couch for hours on end watching mindless game shows and reruns of my favorite sitcoms (remember "news radio," everybody?), but i just like to have it *on* while i go about my morning/afternoon. even if i'm using the computer, i want the tv on. even if i'm totally busy constructing a log cabin out of popsicle sticks (which would require the consumption of alot of popsicles, mmm rocket pops), i want the tv on, as a friendly presence in the background. i'm sure this is a sickness of sorts, but i was raised by the tv and i find it to be a comfort. and i'm a little sad that i can't turn it on. i could put a movie in, i suppose, but movies aren't the same. i need comedy central, or a news broadcast, or even "the facts of life." no, who am i kidding, i hated "the facts of life." but remember when tbs was rerunning "parker lewis can't lose?" oh, good times.

when i was little, i'd make tv's out of big cardboard boxes, like the sort you'd find a washing machine in. i got the idea from the "muppet babies." and my sister and i would put on our own shows, only our own shows were very limited in action because there's only so much moving you can do in a cardboard box. mostly, we aired the noon o'clock news. "this just in, i want ice cream."

chris and ocean are at work, and i'm in their apartment. a few more days, and we'll all be in *our* apartment. but until then, i have no ownership of this space that i am inhabiting. which is why i think it would be awfully funny if i rearranged all their furniture and maybe taped a whole lot of shit to their walls. like portraits of richard nixon, they'd like that. or perhaps i'll just nail all of my socks to their walls- yeah, that would be pretty random, and i'm sure everyone involved would get quite the kick out of it. i sure would- of course it would be a sock-less kick, but there's no rule saying you need socks on to kick. am i right? am i right?

i wonder if "spongebob" is on.

my "surprise" going away party was last night. a good time was had by all.

i'm going to miss my co-workers quite badly. who grows this attached to their coworkers? you'd think i was leaving behind my family.

speaking of leaving behind my family- except for the pillows i forgot in my bedroom, i'm officially moved out. i have to go back and clean up the incredible mess i left in my wake (23 years worth of junk and gunk) but other than that, i'm gone. we left this morning/afternoon while both of my parents were still at work. i'm a horrible, horrible daughter for not saying a proper good-bye. horrible.

my mother called my cell phone just as we were getting off the highway. and she was crying, saying that she loved me and was going to miss me, asking if *she* was the reason i was moving. we've never had a good relationship, and it's not an odd question, even though i know it sounds odd. no, mom, you're not the reason i'm moving. i looked over while talking to her and saw the reason i was moving; he was sitting next to me in the car.

the only real apprehension i have about this move is the whole switching jobs part. i wish my store could have transplanted itself here in town. i'm going to be the youngest person in this new store, by, it appears, a good ten or fifteen years. oh well, i hear the elderly have a lot of wisdom to share.

i'm at chris' apartment right now, which is basically like being right in the middle of mexico. not new mexico the state but mexico, the actual country which you would pronounce "meh-he-co," turning the x into a j which sounds more like an h. not that i have a huge problem with being in mexico, but i'm rather hoping the new apartment complex will resemble more new mexico the state than mexico the country, if you get my drift. because, not being mexican, i feel a bit out of my element. everywhere i look, there's somebody wearing a sombrero while blaring mariachi music. it's aggravating, and i can't explain why without sounding like some sort of a racist. and i'm not a racist. i just don't like being around so many mexicans- this despite that fact that i'm italian and, if cast in a movie, could easily play the mexican heroine. i've even got the "j sounds like h" part down pat.

i really just think it's all that mariachi music. and when i walk past a group of them who are looking at me and speaking rapid spanish- oh, certainly they're discussing how bad of a hair day i may be having. and that's kind of rude.

here's what just happened, though. i'm sitting here kind of bored and hungry and i hear the delightful bells of what sounds like an ice cream truck. thinking, "sweet, i want a rocket pop," i run outside on the balcony. no ice cream truck in sight. instead, there's a mexican man, in a sombrero, pulling around a little cooler on wheels and ringing a set of bells.

i'm not buying ice cream out of some dude's cooler. i highly doubt his ice cream has been approved by the state board of health, not to mention i'm sure he's lacking any requisite licensing he would surely need. i also know that there have been several knocks at the door here at the apartment by a man (maybe not in a sombrero, although it's likely he owns one) selling homemade tamales. not going to buy. sorry, maybe it's just me, but i like my mexican food pre-packaged and completely americanized by, say, the good people at taco bell. or chipotle. or, really, i do love authentic mexican food- but only when it's sold in a RESTAURANT. these independent, free-lance contractors selling the crap they concocted earlier that day in their kitchen, or bathtub, or who knows where- it just doesn't seem kosher. oh, how horrible this all makes me sound. but i don't care. much.

the complex we're moving into has a very early colonial virginia kind of feel to it- maybe our neighbors will instead sell homegrown tobacco. which would actually be an entirely different situation altogether. something to think about, i suppose.

the song i'm taking credit for writing today is van morrison's "moondance." i mean, jackie's "moondance." it's a marvelous night, wouldn't you say?