Huzzah! At last, I once again have access to this website via FTP.
I feel like I just turned 18: should I purchase some cigarettes? Star in some pornography? Upload a song? Create a new directory? The sky is the limit.
Open Letter to Visitor
It was Saturday morning and we were still in bed, beginning a very intense discussion, when you happened to knock on our door. “You’re looking at me funny,” he’d just said. “Like you don’t know who I am.”
“Well, I guess it’s just a side of you I hadn’t considered before,” I said. “Not that it’s wrong, it’s just –”
Knock knock!
“Is that someone at the door?”
We laid there, in our pajamas, staring hard at the wall as if we’d hear better that way. “Nah,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
Knock knock!
“It really sounds like someone at our door.”
“The walls here are so thin. It must be someone else’s apartment, it’d be louder if that was our door.”
We waited, listening for a few minutes. Nothing. If it had been you, you’d given up, we thought.
How We Do Breakfast
I haven’t always been “a breakfast person”. But apparently I am now. Actually, it’s kind of gotten out of control.
A typical Saturday morning in Somerville.
Last year it took us about an hour to make our breakfasts: now we’ve got the routine down to twenty-five minutes. You should come over some time, and gain five pounds with us.
Update: now with overly-detailed notes, here!
The Tanning Booth
I had always figured that all tanning salons were created equal.
There’s a dingy waiting room, right — with two folding chairs. There’s the crinkly red/brown receptionist: hair dyed platinum blonde, lips thick with Malibu Barbie lipstick. There will be piles of Cosmopolitan and Racing Cars magazines, all dog-eared, none of them more recent than three years ago. And after you pay your eight dollars, you will wander down a narrow, office-carpeted hallway, searching for “Aruba” or “Puerto Rico” or whatever your closet happens to be named. The door will be like cardboard, the signs simultaneously ornate and cheap. The floors will shake each time the receptionist paces to the supply closet. You will remove your clothing like a prisoner of war, and pull the coffin lid tightly over your body, anxiously anticipating the click and whir before sudden, total immersion in beautiful white light.
It is all it takes to get through February, March, maybe even some of April. You could have taken up another hobby years ago instead, but now you need it, this particular thing.
Having recently moved, I needed to find a new salon near me, but finding Sm@rt T@n was like being on a secret service mission. It’s located behind a thick password-protected metal door, at the end of a twisting hallway, at the top of the stairs, all hovering above business offices, a bookstore and a Starbucks in the middle of Somerville. I burst in, certain of myself as a woman simply running errands, then stood there for a moment, unexpectedly out of place.
“Hi . . .” I said, approaching a golden man, who was busily polishing a glass countertop. “I’m, uh, I’m new here?”
“Ah.” He smiled an unwavering, solid brick of white, and leaned forward. “Let me show you,” he said secretively, “how these beds work.”
New Project . . . in Photo Booth
I was very nearly about to join the Nameless Blog Challenge: I had written out my comment, with my link and solemn oath to post every day. Thankfully I realized it just in time: wait, you’ve done that before. And it did not make for publishable material — which is too bad, because it was all published.
So, I offer another challenge! For myself and anyone who would care to join.
The Fifth Stage of January
A series of self-portraits, themed “my environment”. Using Photo Booth — or some crappy webcam/old-school digital camera equivalent — only. No Photoshopping or altering of images (except to add borders because everyone knows borders are awesome). How decent/interesting could these possibly look? Let’s find out!
Due when it’s done. If anyone else is interested but uncertain about where/how to upload, check out flickr or email me, I hook you up. More coming.