cleaning

I've spent the past few days trying to put my house together in preparation for Mike's big sibling reunion 2009. It's been 4.5 years since all the kids were together -- since our wedding, actually -- so it feels pretty momentous.

I swept and swifted and dusted and vacuumed and washed down the sides of appliances. It's a two bedroom apartment, but I could spend all my time cleaning it. I just walk from room to room with a wet rag, occasionally getting so swept up in a streaming episode of Fresh Air that I forget what I'm doing.

So now the house looks in order, and there are clean sheets on the guest bed. It's very quiet -- Mike's at the airport retrieving two of the siblings -- and I'm sitting in the semi-darkness wondering why I don't keep the apartment this nice all the time.

home

My neighbor is selling a Model T for $10,000.

Open Letter to Jewel Staite

Dear Jewel Staite,

When I saw you in Trader Joe's this afternoon, I had just eaten half a pan of brownies and was on something of a sugar high. It was just two weeks ago that Mike and I watched our first episode of Firefly. We watched the whole first season over three days. The minute it was over, we ran out and rented Serenity. Then we cursed Fox for canceling it after just one season. Stupid network honchos. (See also: My So Called Life and Freaks and Geeks)

So Firefly has been on my mind a lot these past few weeks. I've looked at some fan sites, I listened to an hour-long interview with the creator, and I came this close to downloading a screen saver.

And I love your character, Kaywinnit Lee Frye. Also known as Kaylee. Also known as the coolest girl on television.

I swear you are not the first celebrity I have seen in LA. Or even in the Trader Joe's. Half the cast of The Office shops there. So do the guys from Flight of the Conchords, and most of the former contestants on Project Runway. And I've seen Andy Garcia, Meg Ryan, and Giovanni Ribisi at the ArcLight. I'm not even going to talk about New York, where I used to see Uma Thurman nearly every month. (See also: yesterday's posting).

Which is all to say that when I saw you in the frozen foods aisle of the Silverlake Trader Joe's and yelled, "Oh My God! Oh My God! Oh My God!," it was something of an aberration. And then when I asked if I could take your picture with my phone? That was totally unprecedented.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say I'm sorry for being so totally uncool. I know the deal, I really do. Living in LA means that when you see celebrities you just act super chill. You might nod a "hey, nice work" nod, but really it's best to just look away, kind of like when you see someone getting arrested in front of a bar on Saturday night. Shrieking, camera phones, fluttering hands? Not cool, I know.

I'm sorry for creating a scene, I really am. But thank you for letting me take your picture, because seeing you in real life was really exciting. O.M.G.

Long live Serenity and her gifted mechanic. May you fly forever in our hearts and on DVD.


xoxo,
La Critika

star, rock.

Saturday night we joined P + Q at the Eagle Rock Music Festival for some moonlight strolling and music. It was a free event, and it felt very low pressure. We listened to the bands we liked for as long as we liked. I spent the better part of the biggest act's set wondering around looking for caramel corn. The Occidental College students were out in force, many dressed in essentially the exact same outfit I wore for the better part of 9th grade. Yes, I mean to say that I saw girls in mom shorts, band t-shirts, and sneakers with black socks. No, no one was wearing a t-shirt as cool as the Holiday in Cambodia shirt I'm sporting below. Perhaps because that was the coolest shirt ever.


At the end of the night, just as we were getting ready to walk back to the car, we stopped to listen to a band called The Happy Hallows. I really liked them, enough that I apparently didn't notice we were standing next to Adam Goldberg of Dazed and Confused, Friends, and 2 Days in Paris fame. Q pointed him out, and since he was just a few feet away, I predictably squealed and buried myself in P's chest. Because in the excitement of the celebrity proximity, I forgot that I was standing next to P and not Mike. In one smooth move, I think I managed to alarm Adam Goldberg, Mike, P, Q, and myself.

I pulled it together and we went home, walking back through the residential streets of Eagle Rock by the light of the harvest moon.

nice.

Yesterday felt momentous. It wasn't, but it felt that way. At 5 p.m. I felt like I had finally put something to rest. It's not entirely clear what that something was, but I'm just happy to note that I felt a lightness last night that I haven't felt for a long, long time.

At Intelligentsia, where I was the only person in the entire place with a PC, I wrote a 4 page mini-prospectus for my entirely new dissertation topic. They were strangely easy to write, those 4 pages. What I produced was better, on every level, than the 15 drafts of mini-prospectuses I produced for my other, now abandoned, topic.

Then my computer battery died, crappy PC, and I left the beautiful people at Intelligentsia. I was bouncing after drinking a real coffee, the first real coffee I have had in months. Bouncing doesn't really describe it. I was sparking. I think the kid behind the counter winked at me on my way out.

I stopped by the fancy store next door, which I always do when I leave Intelligentsia. I like to look at this one purse.

And it was on sale. My purse was on sale, and I spent about 45 minutes talking to the sales guy about the purse, about the possibility that it would ever go on sale again, and about his biggest sale so far this year (6 bags at once).

And then I bought the purse. I left before I could change my mind. I'm pretty sure I really was sparking at that point.

I raced home and finished the mini-prospectus, the bag in my lap while I typed. I sent it off 30 minutes before my self-imposed 5 p.m. deadline, and then I just sat there, staring at the giant map of California on the wall in my living room.

I wrote some emails and waited for Mike to get home. He wrote a paper about mortgage backed securities, and I went out for drinks down the street with my girlfriends. And the bag.

Themed

You might not know this about me, but I am a big fan of themed events. And matching pajamas. I feel like both speak to my desire, mostly sublimated and certainly not realized, for an ordered, coherent life.

Last night Mike and I went to see Taking Woodstock and ate at a macrobiotic restaurant. That I am planing on changing my dissertation to something about the cultural history of the 1960s made this evening was something of a triple-themed event: movie, food, dissertation.

The movie was sweet. And honestly, I enjoy anything by Ang Lee. The protagonist is a young gay man who accidentally brings Woodstock to his small hometown. I loved that the lead was gay, and I especially loved that his gayness wasn't the central drama of the film. And the Catskills are beautiful, and young people on acid are beautiful, and Emile Hirsch is beautiful. So overall it was a nice film, more enjoyable than excellent, but certainly a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

The macrobiotic food was good enough that I might be toying with the idea of actually going macrobiotic. Watch out carrots, you are too yang for me!

They have arrived

After two years of desperate pleading and empty threats, Mike's little brother's ex-girlfriend sent me Mike's D&D Books. Some 14 books and countless pages of character data sheets and hand-drawn maps; it's all there.

I had given up on getting the books back. While it occurred to me that it might be worth it to fly to Texas and retrieve them in person, it also occurred to me that they might have been tossed-out at the end of the brother's relationship with said ex. That she kept them, and mailed them, is a testament to her character. If my heart had been broken, and I still had the guy's stuff stored in my grandmother's basement, and some of that stuff included books belong to the guy's older brother, would I have boxed it all up along with some homemade scented candles and sent it across the country?

Here's a big, old cosmic Thank You to the girl from Texas.

I sort of can't wait for Mike to get home. I'm expecting swooning at the very least, but I'm hoping for tears.