Reading: Alison Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine

Moving: Yes! Despite the charge in my batteries being completely dead and therefore having to deal with radio, and despite or perhaps because I forgot the heart monitor, I had a really good aerobic workout. I kept over 100 strides per minute for 15 minutes and then faded, perhaps because focusing on my heart rate as I usually do prevents me from pushing myself too hard. Plus all my weights.

Viewing: "The Sixth Sense"

Listening: "And She Was," Talking Heads, loudly in the car on the way home

Learning: That Tiffany Plaza in Denver reminds me uncomfortably of Eastbrook "Mall" in Windham. An economic blackhole in the middle of plenty.

23 February 2000: Nap Face, Belly Wounds, and Dead People

Because I'm a sick fuck, I watched "My So-Called Life" on the Fox Family channel last night--at eleven. Thus I had six hours sleep. Plus I really pushed myself at the gym since I blew off yesterday (before I embraced my television junky self). I was ravenous all afternoon despite bananas and yogurt. So when I got home I immediately heated up last night's pasta and broccoli along with Blake's dinner, and Blake and I ate our respective meals, and we watched the ABC and CBS news, and then I slept. Blake did not sleep. Blake had a lot of preening to do, and he littered me with shed feathers and scraps of fluff and feather casing.

Today I got email from HAO: "Do you see dead people?" Accordingly, I hauled myself up at 7:30 and shoved a disappointed Blake in his cage and went to HAO's house. I knocked. She said, "Come in!" and I went in. She looked at me and asked, "Did you just wake up?" Well, yes. I guess it was that obvious. She, her roommate (whose middle name I finally know so I can call her HPS), and I went off to see "The Sixth Sense."

It was much better than I thought, and I didn't guess the big secret at the end until just before Hollywood pointed it out, and I'm glad Douglas Coupland didn't tell us (speaking at the Tattered Cover, he asked for a show of hands whether he should blow it). Even HPS and HAO, who spot all that kind of movie thing, didn't see it. HAO got all distracted watching "Beloved" because when Sethe and Paul D were talking on the porch step, the level of lemonade in the glass fluctuated wildly and the dog must have used a wormhole to get from one side of the porch to the other. I myself was watching Sethe and Paul D talk. HAO was watching everything.

So anyway.

HAO the walking concession stand didn't have much in her pockets tonight. "Just seven Tagalongs," she told me.
"One from each box?" I asked.

Oh. I can't tell about the Great Transition, the transition-shaped hole in the universe that is my speech, without blowing the movie myself. Except also that I made another of my vast conversational leaps, cracked myself up more than I did either Hil/lo/ary, did my impression of yesterday's Ancient Mariner from the bus, and HAO (who'd been wondering during the telling just how what I was saying was connected to the last thing I said) told me, "Now you know what it's like to talk to you."

I have talked to two-year-olds, four-year-olds, drunken 20-year-olds, and myself. I have never experienced more conversational leaps than that man made. I connect my dots, eventually; I'm like James Burke. Even CLH, who says they make her crazy, and HAO, who purports to enjoy them, admit that my seeming non sequiturs do generally make some form of bizarre unknowable but intuitive sense, if you pay attention or allow me to ramble on long enough.

One thing that made me look like I just woke up (which I had) was the entire disarray of my hair. During the day I had worn my usual violet velvet scrunchie at the end of my braid, but at home I folded the braid into my big clip to keep it safe from Blake, and then when I lay down I removed the clip and the braid mostly unraveled. Getting up, I clipped my tangled unraveled hair at the nape of my neck and was on my way. Other people pro'ly go around with much messier hair but since I restrain mine all the time it looked much worse by contrast. Anyway, after she said I looked just woken up and as I pulled my hair into some semblance of order, HPS came into the room while it was still loose. She didn't know it was so long and exclaimed over it.

And Kim Rollins said she "can see that [I] have a classic, gorgeous, regal profile" (from my bored headshot).

And yesterday the Ancient Mariner thought I was in college. Which is a definitive description.

Heh.

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Last modified 26 February 2000

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