I would like to stress at this point that I’ve been having a very good birthday. Charlie decided to unleash his full purring potential when I petted him at 6 AM, and in addition to pretending he’s a snuggly cat and cuddling up to me, he purred up and down the musical scale loudly enough to wake Rick up. This was a first from our generally hands-off littlest cat, and I welcomed it. At 7:30, I woke up to find a birthday card and $33 in the scratch-off lotto tickets I’ve become addicted to in the past week on the nightstand beside my head, and when I went to the living room to scratch them off (that sounds dirty), there was Rick waiting with a kiss, a Barnes & Noble gift card, and another birthday card. (For the record, I won $24 from the lotto tickets.)

I came to work to find my boss had gotten me a red velvet cake to celebrate, and then later in the morning, my mother had a fruit arrangement sent to the office, so we’ve had plenty of birthday goodies to nosh on today. And people have been wishing me happy birthday left, right, and center in person, on the phone, via email, and on Facebook. The book we’re discussing in class tonight was amazing, and I love this class anyway, so I am looking forward to it. And yet, at the same time…

I really wish I could have taken today off. I’m bored and want to go do something fun. As it’s supposed to start pouring again any minute now, something fun will be tamer than some years, and tonight will involve the loom, no homework, a couple of videos, some wine, the cats, and when he gets home from a work outing, Rick. It will be good.

My original penpals were a girl from England and a boy from Egypt, both my age. Over the years, I exchanged a lot of letters with them (I kept them all in a shoebox). I got some more penpals as well, some by sending away, some as surprises when the company would find a match for me and send my address to them, and then suddenly I would get that first awkward letter from someone saying “Hi, my name is Such and Such, I’m __ years old, and I’m your new penpal!” I think by my senior year in college, I had penpals in Greece, Wales, Japan, Egypt (multiple), France, and England (multiple) – all countries I hoped to visit someday. We exchanged letters, gifts, and one of them even came over and stayed with me for a week on three separate occasions. I was always so jazzed to get another letter would arrive in the mail from one of them, and I could have bought stock in stationery companies. Then we all went to college, email was invented, and I lost touch with all of them.

I thought of them when I was on a stationery search last week so that I could write Amelia longer letters than would fit on notecards. Did you know that it is damned hard to find stationery these days? I mean, for letter writing, not just thank you notes. It took me a long time to find some (at Barnes & Noble, incidentally, although I guess I could have checked Hallmark, that’s where I used to get all my airmail supplies back in the day), and I wondered if letter writing has truly been replaced. It’s kind of sad to think about – how often to we get something in the mail these days that isn’t junk mail or a bill? Or, in an increasingly paperless society, how often do we get something in the mail at all? I correspond with five people via email on a daily basis, and while I value those emails for my sanity, there is nothing that compares with getting a letter in the mail.

I wonder where all my penpals from junior high and high school are today? I wonder if I could track them down somehow through the internet (I’ve been unsuccessful so far), and if they got a letter from me, how would they respond?

Happy 64th, Freddie. For someone I never met, I can’t believe how much I miss you.

- Watched Mr. Obama get sworn in from a South African bar in Ft. Greene. I was in the bar, Mr. Obama wasn’t. But you probably got that. The joy in the room was palpable, though:

- Watched my Steelers win another Super Bowl (this moment was obviously tense):

- Bought a Kindle, because I like to read, and I like the tech. Love this thing like burning.

- Met Franklin Habit at his reading at Knitty City, and just this minute realized how yellow my teeth are:

- Went to Washington, D.C. and Charlottesville, VA with Uncle Norm and took this picture, which is my “Calgon, take me away!” desktop picture at work:

- Went to Stitches South with Regan and Grace:

- Lost my best buddy, Joe, too soon even though he was 18.

- That same week, Jordana and I wrote a grant proposal that brought in $27,000 later that summer. Not bad in this economy, and especially not bad for a week when I was watching Joe die and mourning him and J was jet-lagged from a trip to South Africa.

- Went to Sagamore Hill with my mom for Father’s Day, bringing my total of presidential home visits to three (well, four, I was outside the White House during the D.C. visit, but three dead presidents. Okay, well, four dead presidents because we saw Monroe’s house but it was too late in the day to take a tour. Whatever.):

- Took a flying trip to Philadelphia with J, Thabs, and Samang so that I could see this man and get his blessing on an endeavor that was still in the works. Also, to eat cheesesteaks.

- Rescued this little guy, who brought a little of the light Joe took with him when he died back into my life:

- Moved into a new office.

- Took a trip to Pittsburgh so I could see my family and my friend Kim. And an elephant:

- Went to Ellis Island for my 32nd birthday and then back again a week later when I got into a tour of the South Side of the island, which I will never forget as long as I live:

And then I apparently stopped taking pictures because school got in the way. Oh, yeah, the thing Ben gave me his blessing for was my second Master’s degree, which I started this fall and which turned out to be the biggest time suck in the world. But hey, I got A’s in both courses I took, so it must have been time well spent. Kept me off the streets at least. After I stopped taking pictures, I also went to Asheville with Grace and Regan for SAFF. 17 knitters in a cabin for a weekend with a constant influx of new yarn and fiber. Heaven.

Let’s see, what else happened that I didn’t take pictures of? (stupid Flickr, letting me down) I took a tour of an abandoned subway tunnel under Atlantic Avenue, which was awesome. I went to Pittsburgh the day after Christmas to surprise my high school BFF, Colleen, at the reception her mom threw for her because she got married on a lovely island this summer and most of us couldn’t go. I watched Sage graduate from 8th grade and start high school, and I watched Amelia start her senior year of high school and apply to many colleges. I got a mostly permanent roommate (their father) only seven years into our relationship (I don’t call him Ant Speed–lovingly, of course–for nothing). I got my first smart phone. I paid off one credit card and am $450 from getting out of credit card debt entirely. All in all with a few major exceptions, it’s been a pretty damned good year, which I desperately needed. Actually, I could use many more so here’s hoping 2010 is another one for all of us.

Happy New Year!

This happened to me yesterday, while I was knitting on the girls’ balcony for a couple of hours. The sun was stronger than I thought, even indirectly and it was the first time my fishbelly white legs had been exposed to the sun for any length of time. As you can tell (I think), the sun was on my left and I was stretched out on a bench – my left leg is also burned on the left side, but I showed you the pale part for comparison. True story, I didn’t even realize I was this burned until several hours later because immediately after I came in from the balcony we saw Mary Stuart on Broadway and in the pitch black of a theater, my legs just felt a little itchy and I was blaming that on the seat upholstery. It was only when we got out of the theater that I was like, “Oh. OUCH.”

Flash forward to today in the office when I am wearing business shorts (the very thought of fabric touching this burn made me want to scream, so I didn’t even attempt it). We have three part-timers in their 20s in my office. All three are black, and one’s family is from Jamaica. I tell you this because I became an object lesson for them this afternoon when they came in.

“Oh my god! I didn’t know skin could get like that!” Well, yes, I’m pale. I burn (new concept for them, I don’t think any of the three of them has ever had a sunburn).

“That’s going to peel, isn’t it? And then you’ll be brown?” Yeah, it’s going to peel like a mo-fo, but after that I will be just as pale as I usually am.

“You don’t get tan? I didn’t know white people could burn like that and not get brown from it!” (calling other young part-timer over) “Dude, come look at Julie’s legs!!” That’s because you have never seen Irish/German people in the summer. We are unique.

I’m looking at this as a culture exchange. They have taught me about weaves, braids, and hair moisturizers, so I feel like it’s only fair that I can teach them about pale-skinned freaks like myself.

So with all this time speeding by, I’ve been resorting to things that move in more “manageable” chunks than an unwieldy blog entry. Twitter, Plurk, Ravelry forums, those are where I’ve been hanging out. Places where I don’t have to think about the craft of writing, where I can just call someone “hoar” and get instant feeback. But starting in the fall, I’m going to be doing something where the writing requires thought again, and I’d better get back into practice. In the fall, I’m going to take advantage of the fact that I work at Some College by doing so get a tuition waiver, and I’m going to start my second master’s degree.

See, I took a flying trip to DC and Virginia to hang out with my Uncle Norm back in March. It was supposed to be for the purpose of taking pictures of the cherry blossoms, but a few storms killed that (they’re very delicate, those cherry blossoms), so we went to the Capitol, the Newseum, Monticello and Mount Vernon instead. And somewhere in the middle of being surrounded by all that history, and having someone I could discuss all of it with, and quite possibly because we watched John Adams and damn, that really brought history to life, I remembered that once upon a time I had quite enjoyed history. Enough to major in it as an undergrad. And I thought “Huh, I wonder if I can take some classes when I get back” which turned into applying to the MA program in history, because I like to do things right. And I got in. So in the fall, I’ll be taking a course in historiography as well as a course in pre-modern China. I’m looking forward to it, to reading and learning again. I won’t lie, I also have moments of panic because while I’ve read quite a few books about history over the last few years, there was never any pressure to take it to the next level and synthesize my feelings about what I was reading. I was reading them for pleasure, which is great, but is a whole other can of worms from really studying it. So wish me luck, because I’m going to need it.

But in the meantime, I need to practice writing out my thoughts in more than 140 characters, so I’m going to try this blogging thing again. What the hell, the domain’s paid up for a while, might as well get my money’s worth. But since I’ve just written what Word Press tells me is almost 800 words, I need to take a bit of a break. So I’ll show you some of the other things I’ve been up to in pictures.

Samang and Thabiso at the Life is Living Festival. Samang wanted “Baba wear coat!” so he did. On his head. That’s her coat, it really wouldn’t fit him any other way.

Sage, Rick, and Amelia after Sage’s school performance in Iolanthe. Sage was the ingenue. Of course. Note how tall both girls are – 5’10″ and Sage might still be growing. At least Samang is still shorter than me.

We took this picture in Prospect Park to taunt Samang’s Uncle Lucas, who is an insane Baltimore Ravens fan. She’s almost able to say “Steelers” now, although it sounds like “Stee-ers!”. Next task, teaching her to say “Ravens suck!”

Oh, yeah, I went to visit Regan and Grace for Stitches South. Blurriness of this picture caused by wine. Which is also what caused me to rip back the shawl I was working on when I took this picture. Actual knitting content to come…soonish.

In the meantime, this was my haul from the first day at Stitches. I might have fallen down a bit more on the second day.

Oh, wait, I do have knitting content! I knit these socks for Lori. They’re her birthday present, but since she’s in West Virginia doing regional theatre all damned summer, I had to give them to her a month early. She owes me.

I love this picture so much that it’s my desktop wallpaper at work. Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

And to wrap it up, my favorite picture from this spring. Don’t photograph George Washington’s dentures. They mean it.

I am on the mend from a cold of epic proportions that I got because certain people in my office can’t be bothered to protect the rest of us when they get sick. No, they come to work and cough and share their germs. And then Julie gets to pay the price. After 8 days, I can breathe out of my nose again, only have a bit of a cough, and feel less like a truck ran over me than I did last Tuesday night. These are all good things. And they might even spell a return to blogging, because I’m pretty sure that even a five-year old blog will go feral if left alone long enough. Let’s not risk it, okay?

And then I spent Wednesday night and all day yesterday at the Under The Radar festival at the Public Theater. Jordana and I were doing what we called the “soft launch” of our notforprofit, which is going to be a producing company that offers developmental and artistic support for artists. Basically, we’re going to find some artists we feel really passionate about (we’ve already got two) and give them whatever support they need to make it, whether that’s fundraising or strategic planning or dramaturgy or whatever. We spent that time at the Public plugging ourselves to some very important people in the theater community and spreading the word that we were looking for artists to work with. We got a really positive response, and while we’re going to be there this weekend as well drumming up some more business, I feel like we got something great started. Everything we’ve been talking about for the past couple of months became real to me in the last 48 hours.

Yeah, so what does all of this have to do with resolutions? This morning when I woke up, my mind was buzzing with creative ideas and parts of my brain were working that I thought had atrophied. You know, the creative/theatrical part. The part I trained for years, and then kind of abandoned because I got a day job to pay the rent. I was in a great mood, I was happy with myself, I got to work and was all set to keep that creative buzz going, and then work intruded. Work and insurance and all that fun shit.

This afternoon I started thinking that I don’t need to make resolutions. I just need to set a goal. That goal is that we are going to make this company work and it will eventually rescue me from my day job. Maybe not this year, maybe not even next, but eventually this company of ours is going to be my ladder out. I just have to keep that goal in sight. I have to focus on working out that creative side so it doesn’t atrophy again. I think I can keep to it. I need to keep to it. As Barack says, I need to be the change I want to see. The change is coming.

Christmas was bery bery good to me, and although I have a new Nikon Coolpix that is small enough to go everywhere with me and have taken a fair amount of pictures with it, I have been too busy playing drums on Guitar Hero in my jim-jams to upload any of them. I hope to get a picture of Samang on her new Sit n Spin tonight as an incentive. That kid on a Sit n Spin is freakin’ hillarious, especially when she gets off of it and is too dizzy to walk. Exactly why I gave it to her. Because Christmas presents should be just as much about how much enjoyment they give to me as how much it gives to the recipient, dammit.

Now back to the grind. First day back at work after a five day weekend sucks, y’all.

Colds 1.0 and 2.0 have really diminished my multi-tasking abilities, which irritates the hell out of me. I used to be able to come to work, look productive, blog, play on Ravelry, and actually get shit done all at the same time. Perhaps that was like my superpower, pathetic as that may be. Wicked multitasking skills and the ability to goof off at work! But Colds 1.0 and 2.0 are like multitasking Kryptonite. I can no longer keep my mind on several different and totally unrelated tasks at once. I can barely keep my mind on one task. And it sucks, people. I don’t think the comic books accurately portrayed how pissed Superman probably was when he lost his powers. My superpower is lame compared to his, and I’m bitching like a fiend. He lost the ability to *fly*, and in the comics, he was not bitching.

On second thought, I think that’s because Superman was lacking my other superpower: Raging PMS. I could stop a Mac truck with these snarky hormones, baby! Wait, is rambling incoherently also a superpower? Because I seem to have tremendous aptitude for it today.

A story about how my cell phone was lost and found at the Ravelry party and details about the spinning class I took at Rhinebeck will come when my latent superpowers go away with Aunt Flo. Couldn’t get them out today to save my life. Sorry.