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I know, I never ramble about boys, it's never appropriate. But now I simply must, I'm compelled! It's bewildering to me! This boy, he inhales food like air. I'm not exaggerating. His eating habits cause me to just sit with my mouth dropped opened wondering "how??" and "why??" as I watch him. On Sunday I bought a chocolate donut for him, and I kid-you-not he ate it within the span of 6 seconds. SIX SECONDS. That cannot even be called eating, because I'm reasonably certain there was no chewing involved-- the entire first step of digestion was circumvented. It was like watching a dog eat-- trying to swallow a steak fast enough so that you can't get it out of its mouth. Does my boyfriend think I am going to attempt to tear the donut from his mouth? Is he inhaling it out of fear? Does he realize that by inhaling it, he is only getting a few seconds of flavor and taste and enjoyment, which could also be accomplished by just one bite for a mere 1/10th of the fat, cholesterol, refined sugar, and calories? Is that even how you spell cholesterol? I was a math major, get off my back.

Another odd thing is that he appears to "need" to eat whatever is in front of him. He doesn't choose what to eat, it's as though the food chooses him. Whatever he bought from the supermarket that day MUST be eaten because it was looking at him (and he at it) most recently. Also pet-like. He doesn't remember that there are vegetables or meats on the verge of going bad in his fridge, but instead eats the food he most recently purchased, simply because it's there. As though it was going to try to escape him if he waited a day or two to eat it.

Another example of that "need" is the donut from Sunday. He was not hungry. We had eaten a big breakfast. We had *tons* of food already in the car with us-- healthy food. But we pulled over because I wanted a coffee from Dunkin Donuts. So he then eats a donut-- not out of hunger, not out of need for food even because we already had lots packed. But simply because it was there, in front of him. That bewilders me too. But perhaps lots of people have that problem, and that's why impulse buys exist and that's why dunkin donuts has all their treats on display for you to see when you walk in.

Later that same Sunday we were in Dunkin Donuts AGAIN (for another coffee for me) and again he bought something simply because it was there-- this time a banana-nut-muffin (instead of the chocolate glazed donuts of the morning). I wonder if he knows the muffin had 50% more fat and calories than the donut? I doubt it. I think it's funny that people think muffins are nutritious in the slightest. But people do. The word "banana" makes them think there is fruit involved, but I doubt that.

Funny, now that I notice he doesn't eat based on when he is hungry, he eats based on when the food is within his peripheral vision. So how is that better than the way I eat? I eat based on the clock. A little weird too perhaps.

Happy New Year 9-10-02

Yesterday was the anniversary of my birth. It's the start of a new year, and I've done quite a bit of measuring and stock-taking in preparation. I've recently lost a lot of dead weight, and for that I feel a sizable stress lifted, my headaches lessened. It seemed insignificant, but it was stupid to deny how it wore down my happiness day to day. You've got to cut that shit loose. Please don't think I'm talking about the weight I lost from my body by eating all those carrots (as people like to assume-- the carrots I mean).

So that's good then. It's been a rough but worthy year I think. Somehow I did lose those silly pounds, I own a condo, I joined a swim team despite sucking at it, I finally reached a goal of running 5k. And I appreciate my luck-- I have feasibly the best parents in the world, incredibly wonderful close siblings and friends, and an amazing boyfriend. I know lots of people have not those things, some people have none of them. Tomorrow is the anniversary of many deaths and losses. Spouses and children with holes in their lives. All of us New Yorkers with holes in our lives. Damage that can't be recovered from, can't be re-built or replaced, ever. The media trying to turn it into a love-fest, embarrassing this nation. It's not July 4th, not time for fireworks and parties and declarations of love for the government & it's war mongers.

It's Pearl Harbor. It's murder. It's mourning. It's 525,600 minutes of mourning gone by. And it scares the shit out of me how many people don't care, weren't affected, are so disconnected. Maybe they're just lucky.

No Day But Today 8-23-02

Today was kickass-- to any observer it was identical to other days, but I felt kickass. I woke up too early, hardly any sleep, had a delicious enormous breakfast that courts suggested to me. That reminds me, I want to post great breakfasts, lunches and dinners that I usually eat. People keep asking what I eat. Then I went for a fantastic jog, I think that made all the difference. Then I just enjoyed the day at work. My energy was up, I felt like running a few more miles, but one does have to go earn the pay eventually.

I've been going to see a lot of shows at the Fringe Festival (www.fringenyc.com) this past week, and now you could bounce a quarter off my ass.

I'm pretty damn lucky. I think I have an incredible family and the best friends a person could ask for. The rest is shit, right? As far as I can tell, it is.

Like a lightbulb in a dark room, I'm just sittin' here, waiting for you to come on home 8-8-02

ah, my briefest summer has now arrived. I get my seemingly long week off from cube-land, but 7 days is really absolutely nothing compared to the days I spend IN a cube. I think I need to live closer to a beach, to see it every day. This is nuts how long I can go without getting sand in my toes and ears and belly button.

Uh oh, I'd better pack a bathing suit and towel and some pillows and get a move on. My charriot is soon to arrive. Enjoy the week, at least vicariously through me. :-) I'll be napping, reading, swimming, biking, tennising, shrimping, mmmm !

7-24-02

Okay now this is REALLY trite, which is perfect for a ramble. Oops, I forgot what I was going to say.

I've got white paint on my face. Red quilt on the bed. Yellow vinyl on the seats. Blue coffee cup sitting on my desk. Chai Latte colored sofa in my living room. White all over the bathroom. Black on me. I could use a cotton puff.

Tomorrow I'm going to try again, even though EVERY wednesday so far I end up in painful leg cramps begging for mercy and having to surrender early. I'll try again. I'm trying to swim with a team called Team New York Aquatics. But I am so awful I am suprised they haven't asked me to give up and get the hell out of their way. I'll keep going though-- I just know I can kick some serious ass, as long as i don't let my career get in the way of this. Oh what a pain in the butt. Whether to spend time swimming (and the like) or studying. How can that really be a tough decision? Studying this for godsake? Conflicting interests, whats a girl to do?

I noticed my rambles have been sitting in NJ for a while now. I think I need to move. Where should I live next? Any suggestions? Ah, the options... San Antonio, Seattle, Boston, Philly, Vermont, Bermuda, San Diego, Paris, San Francisco? Where to go? Not sure yet.

I like my brick.

Start by Admitting, from Cradle to Tomb, It isn't that Long a Stay 7-1-02

This is going to sound trite no matter how I phrase it. So I'll just mumble it. But I realized that the probability that NYC gets nuked (or similar) is non-zero, and in fact is non-trivial. It may well happen that millions die or millions are left painfully torturously terminally ill here.

So I realized that, and then realized I should consider moving away. Moving somewhere that No One in their Right or Wrong Evil Insane Mind would ever think of bombing. Like Lubbock, Texas. or Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Anywhere in Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Montana, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, Georgia, The Carolinas, Florida, Oklahoma, Nevada, Illinois, "Ohio" (does anyone really live there?), Kentucky, Mississipi, Colorado, Michigan, New Hampshire, Maine, or Wisconsin. Or the other states so dull I can't even recall their names right now.

Then I realized, and I couldn't be more certain, I'd rather die or be permanently in pain facing slow death in New York City, than to live a healthy long life anywhere else. I'm not running, and I'm not hiding up in my apartment.

Fuck you.

In Daylights - in Sunsets - in Midnights - in Cups of Coffee, in Inches - in Miles - in Laughter - in Strife (How do you measure a year) 6-23-02

Today is heaven, all the sun and breezes and new jeans. Things seem like a yo-yo so often. It's certainly freaky, how up and down we all go-- such dramatic swings, but it's all normal... uh, right? It's not just me being thrown on roller coasters, right? I almost fell off my chair just now. Too much coffee. No, really.

I bought a new sofa-- my first sofa ever. I wish I could show you. It's so lovely-- just what I wanted. Very pillowy and bed-like. It screams "take a nap on me, but don't eat on me". At least that's what I hope it screams. I anticipate being quite anal about it. If anyone sits on it wearing less-than-clean pants, I will probably just hold my breathe until they stand up, then run over and dust-bust and rub stain-stick and whathaveyou.

It's not actually IN my apartment yet, but I'm already tense about it getting dirty, or where to even PUT the thing. My apartment is about the size of a large walk-in closet, so placement is going to be a delicate task. My apartment has plenty of head-space :-) the ceilings are 14 feet high in the front room. But that space doesn't really help when it comes to fitting a sofa and a dining table within my one little room. It's a kitchen-diningroom-livingroom ALL IN ONE little space. One must be space-efficient here in the big city.

That reminds me, I want to change my Current Quiz but I forget how. DANG!!!

It's so goddamned fucking HOT today. I need an AC but I don't have one and apparently I have been quite lazy in taking care of such fundamental tasks as that. Not to mention I still don't have any curtain or blinds hanging in my bedroom. That's means... almost 3 months I have been living in a fish bowl-- on display. I am a Real World, right here in my little condo. Watch tomorrow night, when shannon tries to sort through all her bills and watches the Matrix for the 100th time!

Please just listen. I know why you're here, Neo. I know what you've been doing. I know why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night you sit at your computer. You're looking for him. I know, because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me: when I found you, you were so slobbering drunk you couldn't buy brandy! And you! Friendless, brainless, helpless, hopeless! Do you want me to send you back to where you were?-- Unemployed-- in Greenland?!"

Today's are Rent, Matrix, and Princess Bride-- quite a mix! :-)

I Am So Depressed I Feel Like Jumping in the River Behind My House but Won't Because I'm Twenty-Eight and Not Eighteen 6-16-02

What can I say. I brought my best toy to show and tell, I was all swollen with confidence to take it out of my plastic bag. But another kid brought a much better toy, you wouldn't even believe how cool it was, and soon I realized there was no point in going up to the front of the class at all. I never even untied the knot in my bag.

This was a deflating blow, more weighty to me that I would have imagined it could be. Now that I'm back at home, I've done the appropriately childish thing, and opened the bag directly over the toilet, flushing it's contents right down and out of sight. Weird to even call it a "blow" because nothing actually happened whatsoever, I dealt a blow to myself perhaps by not taking my turn with the other kids. But it felt like a force anyway.

Anyway some good crap happened too, this weekend, but who can remember. Wow the wind blew so hard that steak and I fell off the filing cabinet. Is that a sign?

dust motes 2-24-02

Oh my heavens. I feel exhausted to my very core. Jeez, my keyboard is filthy, I need a new one. Anyway I feel used up, sucked dry of all energy that had been dwelling inside me. Despite waking as late as 11am today, I felt unable to function as early as 8pm. It's now 9:30pm and the only way I've stayed up so late is to focus on eating some linguine with pad thai sauce.

I've packed a lot of my stuff into cardboard boxes. A week from today I'll be moving all these boxes out of this teensy little crowded irritating apartment. Some boxes are headed into a storage facility, some to a friend's apartment, some to my parents house. And myself-- as much as I wish I was going to spend my nights in the storage facility, I will be heading home next Sunday to sunny Staten Island to hang with my parents until my condo is ready to be lived in.

Staten Island is an evil place. I know lots of people enjoy living there, but it's evil nonetheless. How will I even get along with my parents for days on end, maybe weeks? It's going to be very difficult. There will be arguments, there will be screaming, yelling, stomping, stamping, storming off. Wonderful. I can't wait.

My parents are wonderful and sweet to let me stay with them, but I expect they will be regretting it after even 48 hours of having to see my hair brush on their bathroom shelf and my smelly girly soap in the shower.

So now I need to pass out in hopes of feeling less exhausted tomorrow, even slightly less. What good was this weekend. I never feel rested. Maybe I'm sick.

Unbirthday 2-6-02

Funny. In my last ramble, I explicitly stated the fact that knowing that people-I-know read the rambles, inhibits the very ramblings themselves. So what does one reader decide to do? Call me up and say "I read your last rambling. Cute." That was it. No actual comment or question, just: Yes, we are reading your rambles. We the people who you'd rather didn't, are.

Fine.

Today I received an engagement announcement in the mail. Check out the photo of Eileen and her fiance. I'm sure you've already seen the photos of my sis and her fiance. Oh and needless to say the photos of my cousin Steak and her new hubby. Oh and Jenn is marrying this June. Oh wait, did I mention Greg & Tricia married last September, and Jen and Brian married last November.

I'm an actuary, and let me tell you this qualifies as the Law of Large Numbers. Will people please take a break from all this marrying nonsense? I need a breather! I need to save money! I don't need to worry that my friends are all going to be pumping out babies in a year or two and then will never have time for me again! What nonsense is this?

It's okay. Inhale. Exhale. It's all part of nearing 30.

I recall now that supposedly 50% of marriages end in divorce. Is that stat actually true or was it just a viciously spread rumor by Oprah and Montel to scare the shit out of us all? Or is it true? Let's see. I have 3 aunts/uncles, and 2 out of the three have had to suffer divorce. I have 9 cousins, and all have been married, and I think... 2 have suffered divorce. But they are younger than the aunts/uncles. Maybe more time will change that. God Forbid. But hopefully not-- hopefully with the younger generations marrying at older ages, this divorce thing will vanish under the rug. Of course divorce isn't a purely bad thing. I have no doubt that being in an unhappy marriage can be far more torturous than getting divorced. Of course what the hell do I know. Not much, frankly.

The main point being that I can't imagine any of the above mentioned engaged/married friends ever divorcing. It's unthinkable. Hopefully it will remain as such.

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Inhale This 9-30-02