one of the things we were talking about last night was making the choice between the thrills of the single life and the benefits of having a boyfriend. sara's contemplating that right now, and i was totally having one of those "omg i know exactly how you feel" moments. after andrew and after charles, i was all about the single life, all about being able to flirt with whoever i wanted...but when it came down to it and i met a really awesome guy, i had to decide whether i wanted to keep my options open or choose ye olde monogamy. i made the right choice for my situation, and i'm ridiculously happy with tommy, but i understand what sara meant about how she really loves the thrill of new, not-quite relationships, when everything is flirting and everything is uncertain. she's not sure if she wants to forgo that for the stability of a boyfriend, when you get people like rae, who has been happily attached to aj for over two years now (you go girl) saying "flirting? what's that?".

the slightly sad fact of the matter is that while you can still flirt with your boyfriend, and most people definitely do because it's fun, you don't generally get that whole butterflies thing anymore because it's kind of a foregone conclusion. you don't have to wonder "oooh, does he like me" or "hmm, are we going to kiss each other goodbye?" because you know the answers already!

i know it seems like a huge leap, and like you're giving up all these opportunities, but you have to keep in mind what you're getting in return. personally, i feel that giving up flirting shamelessly with every man on the planet (which i didn't really do anyway, cause im not very good at it) is completely worth all the joy i get from my relationship with tommy. (i don't care much about giving up my shameless kissing habits either lol). this might not be true for everyone; i mean, if your options are a bunch of shady guys who all want to date you, by all means broaden your horizons. in sara's case, joe seems like a really great guy who would make her happy. and hey, if they get together and she realizes that she really just wants to be single (cue "freebird"), well, that's where the old "it's not you, it's me" talk comes in handy.

wendy and heather are two other of my friends who've been considering this whole issue of the single life versus having a boyfriend, and they are definitely two girls who have been living the single life to the fullest! lol. in that case, it just kind of depends on whether you find that right guy. there's not much of a point in abstaining from going out and living your life the way you like it because you're waiting to find the perfect guy. that will probably just leave you depressed. i really hope they come across someone who's right for them. till then, carpe diem, ladies.

when you approach every relationship with the thought that this couldn't possibly be 'the one' lying on the back burner, it seems inevitable that that same thought will ultimately play a part in the relationship's demise. any event that doesn't go according to plan and every trait that doesn't fit into your perfect picture becomes evidence of incompatibility. you set yourself up for failure.
disclaimer: this is a random musing, not a reflection of my personal reality.

i can see where you're coming from, rae, but i don't think it has to be that way, exactly. instead, why couldn't your back-burner thought be "hm, this could possibly be the One...just not right now"? then every trait that falls short just proves that the timing isn't right, and everything that makes the grade adds a little more credibility to the idea.
non-disclaimer: this is not a random musing, this is a reflection of my personal philosophy.

i don't feel so great...should not have eaten all the milk duds...definitely rae's fault for volunteering to buy the candy at blockbuster. she and sara and i watched this incredibly depressing independent film, "pieces of julia", which thankfully ended ok or i was really going to shoot myself, and followed that with the infamous "caddyshack", which was really quite funny. sara showed us a picture of a bikini that you can knit. how strange is that.

i found out today that my mom had no idea that tommy has tourette syndrome. i was really surprised; i mean, i know my mom and i don't talk that much, but i was pretty sure i mentioned that somewhere in there over the past four months. apparently she never noticed any of his twitches in the short periods of time that she's been exposed to him. she was very curious about it, and asked a bunch of questions. she also mentioned this report she saw on the news about how the nicotine patch can help control tourette syndrome, which struck me as so ironic because it would serve a double purpose! so i went and looked for information on that, and ended up finding the sites for the national associations that exist for the disease. it was really interesting. the nicotine patch, incidentally, is used in conjunction with medication to treat the syndrome. tommy doesn't take meds, i guess both because his symptoms are mild and because they tried that when he was younger and it dulled his personality and ability to think.

anyway, the most interesting piece of information i picked up from these sites was that people with tourette syndrome also often have related disorders, like OCD and ADHD, and also sleep disorders, which can involve repeated waking, or talking and moving in one's sleep. hmm.....who do we know that talks in his sleep, a LOT? and who do we know who moves in his sleep, sometimes to the injury of people who are innocently trying to get some shut-eye in the same bed? there was nothing on any of the sites about controlling that aspect of it, sadly.

one other thing i noticed was that since tourette syndrome is genetically inherited, someone who has it stands a 50 percent chance of passing it to each child he or she has. tommy has it, and his sister kathy apparently has an exceedingly mild case of it...i wonder whihc side of the family it came from? apparently it's 3 to 4 times more common in men than women, so probably his dad's. reading this kind of gave me pause, because even though tourette syndrome isn't life-threatening, it would be strange considering the fact that any child you have with this person might have the same disease. they might have it mild or have a really serious case, there's no predicting, even based on the parent. they might get ridiculed, feel isolated, and suffer emotionally. i know tommy did, and that makes me feel awful, i wish i could take all that away, but i obviously can't.

don't get me wrong here, i have no plans to have children with tommy in the forseeable future. however, if at some point we decided that we wanted to have a kid, i probably wouldn't let that stand in my way, but it would be something to consider. it would undoubtedly not be the only negative genetic inheritance this kid would receive--my family alone will donate a hell of a lot of heart problems. and cancer, can't forget the cancer. someday, someday soon, they're going to be able to hand you your complete genetic profile for the mere cost of a few bucks and a prick of the finger, and then having children is going to get a lot trickier. when you know that daddy has the gene for huntington's disease, or that both parents show strong predispositions to cancer, how do you make the decision to enter your child into the genetic lottery? it's the same with having a down-syndrome baby; they can determine that in the amniocentesis, and then it's up to the parent. it's not always easy to predict if the baby will have severe down syndrome and be unable to function in society or if they'll be just a little off. to be honest, when i think about decisions like that that i might have to face one day, that's when i don't think that i anywhere near ready to think about having kids. i worry that in that situation, i wouldn't want to face the burden of having a special needs child, that i would be selfish and want a perfect baby.

it's the same with abortion. i realized recently that as i am right now, even though i believe abortion is morally wrong and should never be used as a kind of birth control, i would make that choice. it would be the selfish choice, the morally wrong choice, but that would be the choice i would make. trust me, it was not at all easy to realize that about myself, to realize that i would not pay the price for my own actions, to realize that i'm capable of ending another life to preserve my dreams for my own future. it depresses me just to think about it, but i forced myself to be honest with myself. even though adoption is an option, i just would not put myself through the experience of carrying and delivering a baby. i would be incredibly, incredibly selfish, and even though i would have to atone for it for the rest of my life, i would do it.

there's a lot more that goes into this, of course. for one thing, i don't plan on ever becoming pregnant because i'm a firm believer in birth control, backed up by condoms. secondly, there is a caveat to all this in my mind: if by some stroke of fate i were to become pregnant, and if by some dark cosmic joke the fact were to evade my notice for, say, a month or two, i couldn't do it. there is a giant gap in my mind between aborting the development of a tiny clump of cells that is only around two weeks old and aborting a fetus that has begun to develop and can feel pain. they told us in high school that a human fetus can feel pain by six weeks. it would be utterly unconscionable for me to cause actual physical pain to something that i was responsbible for creating. this may be hypocritical on my part, but it's how i feel.

the final aspect to this would of course be the father's input. there's been a lot of contention recently about the father's rights vis-a-vis the mother's decision to abort the fetus. in theory i would say yes, equal parental rights apply. but practically speaking, the man has no physical stake in what's going on. he's not the one who will be forced to carry the baby to term, to endure the stress and physical pain, to endure the emotional trauma and social stigma of being an unwed mother. unless the father can figure out a way to carry that kid in his own nonexistent uterus, he has no right to order the woman around. they don't get to choose.

how does this idea of mine mesh then with my own situation? i'm not associated with any particular religion, and my ideas regarding spirituality are pretty nebulous. tommy, on the other hand, is a faithful catholic, and the catholic church of course universally condemns abortion. this isn't a discussion i've had with him yet, although i recognize that we have to, and that any couple who plans to engage in any kind of sexual activity should have the same discussion, so you know where each party stands. if i thought that something had happened, there's no way i would hide it from him. he would have the right to know, even if i would not give him the right to tell me what to do. what has troubled me when i have envisioned a crisis like this one is that my decision could possibly destroy our relationship, but i would still do it. it's not a fun thing to realize that you'd be willing to compromise your own morals in this fashion. it's really not.

interestingly enough, whenever i have pondered this theoretical situation (and i have, many a time), i never take into account the opinions of family and friends. that's unusual for me. as much as kids of our generation like to proclaim that they don't give a damn what anyone things, i do care what the people i love think of me. however, in this situation, i just don't even consider what judgments the people around me would make. i know that some of my more liberal friends would support my decision, and the some of my friends would be completely against it, but it wouldn't affect my choice. this would truly be one of those issues that would be for me alone to decide. that's a pretty heavy thought.

i guess i could conclude this by saying "well, there you have it, i'm a horrible person", but i won't, and nor will i make any apologies for the way i feel. abortion has become another one of those gray areas for me, yet another one of my opinions that has shifted as my life has changed. i hope and pray that i'll never have to make this choice, i really do. thousands of women around the world are making that choice every day. my heart goes out to them. i hope they choose wisely, and well, according to what is best for them.

goodnight.

tommy and i went to see michael moore's "farenheit 9-11" tonight, and found the theater surprisingly full for a monday. my opinion is mixed. i had read in reviews that this documentary will change no one's views on bush--if you went in hating him you'll leave hating him more, and if you liked him you'll just hate michael moore. my views didn't change; i still think he's a moron. an EXCELLENT example: his ridiculous failure in trying to repeat the adage "fool me once, shame on you..." (he couldn't quite figure it out). this guy went to YALE. they didn't let wendy into yale, but they let in this illiterate texas hick. *sighs*

anyway, the best phrase to describe the film, tommy and i agreed, is propaganda. it's propaganda that i generally agree with, but it is propaganda all the same. it is the purposeful skewing of the facts to present a desired picture: basically that bush is the devil and that he is in fact gleefully profitting from the whole 9-11 disaster. i don't believe that. i worry that too many people who know far too little about anything that's been going on outside our country the last few years will lap up moore's words like milk and suddenly be anti-bush. they'll be going down the right path for the wrong reason.

don't get me wrong; i do dislike bush, and i look forward to kerry unseating his sorry ass in november. however, i disagreed with a lot of moore's tactics in the film and also some of his insinuations. for example, he made a huge deal of the fact that two days after 9-11, the white house helped about 25 members of the bin ladn family (friends of the bush family) leave the US. yes, that was a bad move because they should have been questioned, but moore, in referring to this point over and over, tried to make it look as thought the bush family was actively supporting terror by associating with the family of a known terrorist. he tried to make it seem like the bin ladns were guilty by association, and ignored the widely-known fact that they disavowed osama more than a decade ago. him making one appearance at some random cousin's wedding does not mean that they are welcoming him with open arms. also, if every family were to be judged by their black sheep relative-- well, i'd be doomed. look at jen. i just didn't like the way moore tried to spin that issue.

without going into a full-blown critique of the film (which you really should go see, it will at least make you think), i'd just like to say that though i sympathize with moore's intentions vis-a-vis ridding the world of bush, i did not particularly like the way this film was packaged. he made everything seem dirty, everything look bad, when you know that the other side could just as easily spin it the other direction. he had some good points and raised some good questions--mostly, why the fuck are we in iraq--but he also said some really dumb shit, like in referring to our invasion of iraq, saying that we were attacking a "sovereign nation" that had never threatened the US and never threatened a US citizen. he was making it sound like we attacked Norway or something. i'm sorry, but it was FUCKING IRAQ, run by a sadisitic dictator who did threaten American troops in the Gulf war--hello, chemical weapons? and also tried to have a former president of the US assassinated. c'mon, we weren't attacking a kennel full of puppies here.

also, he made insinuations about the fact that the elder bush, now an advisor to a bunch of saudi oil execs and such, exercises his presidential right to a daily CIA briefing, simply because "few presidents ever do so". he hinted that bush was using the information he gained from the cia to basically do insider-tradiing with his saudi cronies. i'm sorry, but the bush sr was a former director of CIA, and knowledgeable about foreign affairs. i can understand that he would want to take advantage of the best news source government money can buy--why shouldn't he?

and finally, in one of a number of stupid theories moore puts forth about what bush is thinking at various moments, moore asks "hmm, don't you think that maybe when bush wakes up in the morning, his first thought is about what's best for the saudis, rather than what's best for the american people?" no, mr. moore, i don't. he may be a greedy, dumb son of a bitch, but he's an american first and foremost, and i think he actually believes in his cowboy-style patriotism. i don't believe that his family colluded with terrorists or that they somehow helped to bring about 9-11. so basically, this movie is a well-documented propaganda piece, designed to make the liberals cheer and the middle-of-the-roads quake in fear of the monster who occupies the white house. i'm voting for kerry come november, but moore has nothing to do with it.

oh, also, tommy mentioned that he may not vote because he hates bush but isn't sure about kerry either. AAAAHHHH. look, if you hate bush, vote for non-bush! and by that i do NOT mean voting for the green party (haha ralph nader, your own party fucked you over) because we all know that such a vote is a wasted one. just don't let bush win, people. turn on a goddamned tv, look that little bastard in his monkey face, and decide if you want THAT running our nation over the next four years. i know the saying goes "better the devil you know than the devil you don't", but unless i see a picture of kerry sporting some hooves and a furry little tail, he's got my vote.

it's kinda like a ghost town around here...sara's away, tommy's away, heather's away with jessi and melissa. some good points--lazer tag tomorrow night, and then tommy's coming on monday after he gets off work!!! giant grin. (i'm so crazy about that boy, but he's worth it). i think i'll take him for a visit to that wonderful playground at the JCC. muahaha.

in other news...wendy is buying tommy's grandma's old car, so she'll have a way to come visit me soon, which is awesome. when the other girls get back, rae and i are toying with the idea of visiting the infamous "art cinema" in hartford. heehee. i personally think we should go incognito, in giant 80s shades and trenchcoats (whihc would serve as much for clothes-protection as for disguise). the place seats 600 people, if you can believe that.

also, i've been reading like crazy....i read two good books that mark suggested to me; one was by the guy who wrote fight club, chuck palahniuk or something, and it was very weird and fatalistic, but intriguing. the other was called "motherless brooklyn", and the principal character has a rather bad case of tourette's syndrome, so a lot of the book is getting inside his mind, with all the tics and compulsions to touch and order things. it was fascinating, not just as a portrayal of what went on in this guy's head (the plot was good too) but because tommy has tourette's, though nothing like what the character in the book has. still, i had never really known anything about the syndrome or met anyone who had it before tommy. personally, i find his twitches adorable. i've told him that a million times and i don't think he thinks i'm serious. i don't know why, they're just endearing, because they make him special. yeah, this might sound strange coming from someone who used to be freakishly disturbed by that facial tic greg's dad had, and that weird breathing thing both greg AND his father used to do that would drive me absolutely nuts when it was really quiet.

in fact after i met tommy the first time, even though it didn't bother me then, i assumed to myself that it would bother me eventually. i kind of crossed him off a mental list right there. yeah, i always seem to have some kind of mental list, whether conscious or unconscious, about men's "potential", i guess you could say. i'd estimate that a good 75-80 percent of guys i come across are just automatically stricken from the list, either because they're stupid, ugly, not funny, or just obviously in the "friends only" category. other guys get weeded out later due to more individual factors that affect compatability, like mutual interests and such. i think i have this kind of mental screening going on even when i'm not interested in finding a boyfriend. it's like i'm noting the men i come across and filing them away for future notice. it kind of helps me understand what i want in a guy, when i see which ones that i can say to myself, hmm, in the right circumstances, i would date someone like him. i don't know whether this is all coming out right. this is NOT some "mmm, i want a piece of that" list i have going on. it's like a mental categorization of the entire male gender according to the traits i'd like in a boyfriend/husband/soul mate. everyone has a place on or off the list. like charles--i now know why he is not on the list, but pace is on the list, even though i have no interest in him, as is tommy's best friend paul. pace is there because he's fun to be around, he's comfortable with his sexuality, he has a sly streak. paul's there because he's so damned friendly and considerate. and he cleans things. i guess if you took a cross-section of every guy i have ever mentally placed on the list, you'd have the absolute perfect man for me. (and the knowing me i wouldn't want him haha)

why did i go into this? oh yeah, me crossing tommy off the list. i honestly was not interested in finding a boyfriend when i met tommy, since i'd just pseudo-dumped charles a month before, yet still i recognized--or thought i recognized--something in tommy that would prevent me ever pursuing something with him. oops, i was wrong. for once my extremely picky nature not only approved of but embraced all those little imperfections. maybe i like his twitches because of the fact that they're imperfections; god knows i'm an imperfect creature! alright, i don't love getting woken up three times in the night by mr talks-a-lot, or getting hit while he's sleeping, but you take the bad with the cute, right?

whatever the case is, i'm prepared to acknowledge that i am so wrong so much of the time. i assume so many things about the future, my future, and i just get it wrong...like assuming i could never date tommy, like assuming i wouldn't want to talk to him on the phone a lot, like assuming we'd be fine not seeing each other for a week or more. HA. i can't remember a night that i've gone without at least saying goodnight to him over the phone since i left school, and i think we've seen each other about once every week. actually this might be one of the longer times we've gone without seeing each other-- a week and two days, gasp! i'm even changing my mind about long-term things, like how i always said i'd never want to get married. despite a number of frustrating moments, there are times when i look at him and realize that spending the rest of my life with someone like him wouldn't be a bad thing at all. tommy has definitely made the list. in fact, he's almost at the top. the ultimate position of male perfection is of course held by--who else?--johnny depp.

or not. but i definitely posted that other one at 11:58. whatever. i forgot to mention here that greg actually called me last night, and left a message telling me to call him. i can't remember the last time he actually called me since like november. ever since heather commanded that i be friends with him, i've been the one to initiate the few phone conversations that have transpired, so i was pretty surprised. i called today but he had to go shower and leave for mike's new house, so we never really discussed why he'd called me. i was actually going to suggest that we hang out and like go to the diner or something, because honestly, we haven't had a face-to-face conversation, just the two of us, since the beginning of december break. not like i want some big heart to heart, but it'd be nice to get an opportunity to see if a friendship between us has a chance of succeeding. we'll see how this goes.

i think this thing's clock is wrong...

i remember writing a while ago about how i was wondering if that little 'honeymoon' period that couples have when they first get together would last longer for me and tommy because we don't see each other as much as some couples might. apparently not lol. i wound up getting really frustrated with him four times over the weekend (once because of him making me drive all the way back to his pool to bring him a bagel and coffee after i'd already frickin been there, once because of something personal that happened that night, once bc of how paul was making fun of us in the morning for something that tommy had told him that i didn't think he should have, and once that evening because he got us lost--on purpose, for fun--in the backwoods of bethel when i told him that i needed to be back at his house at 11 to take my pill. fifteen minutes late won't kill me, but it stressed me out.) then there was the disney thing on sunday night. so yeah, i think i'm definitely past that "nothing tommy does is wrong" stage. haha.

we talked about the disney thing, and he apologized and said he was actually joking about almost everything he said. i had a hard time believing that, honestly, simply because it turned into a heated discussion, and nothing in his tone suggested that it was all a joke. usually i can tell when he's joking, and usually he says that he's kidding, so he could just be copping out to avoid upsetting me any further, but what this kinda reminded me of was situations that would happen early in high school between me and sara, when i would make fun of her for something and she would be convinced that i was serious even though i was really just joking. so i decided to let it drop.

i was moody for a while after that, i guess because i had gotten all worked up over it, and then it was just settled and he started going on about how he was power-washing his deck or something like that, and, cmon, that's not really going to interest me on a good day, so i was just like, whatever. eventually i did manage to get out of whatever conversational funk i was in, but naturally once that happened he had to go to bed. lol.

before all this happened, though, i had a most interesting time with my favorite ladies, since sara and heather will both be leaving for the rest of the week. i went to sara's house around 930, where i was attacked by a caterpillar crawling up my leg and my blood-curdling shriek brought sara rushing to my aid, and from there we rescued princess rachel from the evil cookie tower at the mall and went to borders, furtively eating cookies rae brought for us. heather met us at the goldroc, this sometimes-shady diner near sara's house in WH, after she got off work at vicky's, and we had a rollicking good time of it. our new phrase to use when we miss something: "where was i? getting a gumball?" as in, "we're married? where was i, getting a gumball?". also, we compared horror stories of being forced to use the woods as a bathroom and sara won (pants down, if you'll pardon the pun). on the way out, heather demonstrated her famous bend-and-snap in a not-that-short skirt, only to flee in horror--and almost hit an incoming police officer-- when rae informed her that the men in the kitchen had been winking and waving at her derriere. it was good times as always.

alas, now sara is off in long island with the non-boyfriend, and heather is road-tripping to florida, though she will return sunday with gay best friend steven in tow. tommy's off to maine with his family for four days on thursday. i wish i were going on vacation. honestly, staying at tommy's is just about the most vacationing i'll be doing this summer. if i can just arrange for room service and some chocolates on the pillow, i'll be good.

also, in two minutes, it'll be our two-month anniversary. damn.

well, they say never go to bed angry, or annoyed, or anything like that, because it's just a bad idea, so here i am, several hours after i had intended to hit the sack. i got into an argument with tommy on the phone about--get this--Disneyland. yes, disneyland. as some of you may know, i have never been nor do i have any intention to visit disneyland, for several reasons, one of which is that i consider it one of the most blatant examples of conspicuous consumerism on the part of the US. that's not the main or the only reason, really. the main reason is that i plain don't want to go there. i have no interest in it. the very idea of it doesn't appeal to me. i also don't like crowds and have no interest in the rides. i would rather not pay the exorbitant entrance fees. i'd rather save my money and go somewhere really amazing, like another country. tommy described it as a place where people have no stress, where everyone is mellow and just has fun all the time. it's a fantasy world where americans go to briefly forget their woes, for a considerable price. i don't consider that an awesome vacation.

the main thing that pissed me off was that tommy called me close minded and said i had no right debating this because i had never been there. he later went on to say that unless i had direct experience at the topic at hand, my arguments weren't good enough. that's not true. first off, i wasn't being close-minded, i had an opinion, i stuck with it, and i defended it. i didn't just repeat "i hate disney" over and over. it also annoyed me that he said that anyone else would have just been like, oh, disney? i've never been, what's it like, oh that sounds nice, blah blah blah, but i had to turn it into a debate. well, i'm sorry i'm not everyone else, sweetheart, but i thought you knew that when you started dating me.

and yes, i'm stubborn. i won't give up unless someone convinces me that their position is a better one, or unless i just plain run out of arguments. he said that i didn't take anything away from the discussion, so i was close minded. well, he didn't exactly say anything that i hadn't heard before. he said it was fun. it was relaxing. it made you feel like a kid again. people are happy there. there's so much to do there. why do you have to focus on something like it being commercialized. yeah, those are not exactly mind-expanding arguments right there. usually, i don't focus on what's highly commercialized in our culture. i notice it, a lot more these days after a lot we learned in high school, but i grew up in this culture and i'm pretty used to it. some things, however, stick out at me as examples of what's stupid about our culture and our modern age. reality tv is one of them, and i refuse to watch it. things that promote gross commercialism, like disneyland and the mall of america, are another. i would prefer not to patronize them. as the world progressively falls to pieces around them, americans seek bigger and more fantastic distractions from reality. wonderful. it's not for me, thanks.

it's not even the argument itself that upset me. it was the way tommy acted, like i was this annoying person who can only ever see one side of an argument. that's not true. if you asked me to come up with some reasons why disneyland is great, i could come up with them, even though i wouldn't agree with them. for instance, it creates thousands of jobs for americans. another is that people spending money is exactly what the depressed economy needs. another is that they probably do a lot of giving back to the community, most rich corporations do. another is that they attract tourism to florida and to american in general, which is again helpful in the depressed economy. yeah, maybe i would have taken something away from the discussion if he'd mentioned any of the above, which i just sat here and thought of in the past five minutes. but he didn't, and i didn't find his points to be at all enlightening, and so i didn't give in. at the end, i was just mostly offended by the way he was talking about me and the attitude he was taking, as though this is some cross he has to bear with me turning things into debates. i can count on one hand the number of debates we've actually had that haven't ended in like five minutes with him saying "well, fuck you", which apparently translates to "i don't feel like getting into this". i don't purposely try to make things into an argument, but if i have a strong opinion on something it's going to take a hell of a lot more than "it's a lot of fun" to convince me that my position is incorrect.

he also asked me if i ever "stop being on debate team". if this were actually debate team, we would have argued it back and forth for twenty-five minutes or so and then let the judge decide and then left it at that. but in debate they don't accuse you of being close-minded because they're failing to win you over, and in debate they don't tell you that you can't debate anything you haven't experienced yourself--because, you know, most of what people discuss, in general, they haven't experienced themselves. politics, the war in iraq, the abuse of iraqi POWs, whether slobodan milosevic should get the death penalty, whether human stem cells should be harvested from cloned organisms--no one our age has ANY experience with that. yet we can discuss it, usually in an intelligent fashion, working with what we know and our own personal convictions. that's how opinions are shared and debated. it's a plus if you have direct experience because you'll know things the other person won't. if i were a hawk, i could debate someone who had returned from Iraq being completely against the war. he'd have been out there in danger of getting his ass killed and i would have been safely in the united states, BUT if i truly believed, on the basis of what i knew and believed about the role of the US in the world, about the specific nature of the war in Iraq, and about the competence of the administration, than i could still debate him on it. that's if i were for the war and i'm not. but guess what--there were guys who came back from vietnam believing the US had every right to go in, and there were guys who came back believing it was a huge fuck-up. they both had direct experience and they didn't agree, and someone who hadn't gone could still debate them on principle of whether or not such military action on the part of the US was warranted.

here's another example: i've never been to the running of the bulls in pamplona. i have no desire to see it, even though i love spanish culture and that's one of the most famous aspects. why? because i think it's kind of stupid to watch some really brave/foolish guys in red sashes run like hell from a bunch of pissed-off bulls who have been penned up in a tiny space to get them agitated. yeah i don't have to have been to that to think it's kind of silly, even if it's supposed to be exhilarting, man versus beast. i can form an opinion on that based on what i know.

i know tommy has a completely different opinion of disneyland than i do, and i can respect that. i wouldn't deny anyone the chance to visit disney if they so choose because hey, it's their dollar and their choice. but i didn't feel like he respected my opinion at all, i felt like he just considered it to be idiotic and baseless because i've never visited it, and that hurt.

now that i've released my pent-up frustration in a civilized manner, i'm going to bed.

so, the weekend. the camping trip was interesting...i got down to southern ct pretty early in the afternoon. i wound up driving to tommy's pool, where he gave me his house key, then over to wendy's, where she actually wasn't home yet so i sat in her front yard reading this book tommy lent me, then over to tommy's because our plan was to hang out at his house until the boys came to ferry us to the campsite, but on the way tommy called to ask us to get him a bagel and a coolatta, which meant driving back to his pool and then to his house where we watched zoolander after a fifteen-minute battle with his four remotes, despite wendy's assurances she knew how everything in his house worked. this involved a lot of driving, since down there things aren't so conveniently close together, so i was tired to begin with, which is always a good plan, right? luckily it wasn't really hot, but it rained from time to time.

camping isn't at all bad when you have a bunch of boy scouts (and one marine) to handle all the setup and cooking and chopping down of trees for firewood. also, it's nice when you have an air mattress to sleep on (and even nicer with a guy to sleep next to). there was a lot of substances involved, i must say. tommy's trying to quit smoking, but he still does, even though he uses a hell of a lot of listerine afterward because he knows i hate the smell. i got my first experience of smelling pot (that's SMELLING, people, not smoking), and then demonstrated my spectacularly terrible olfactory sense by declaring that it smelled just like bad tobacco. i did not partake of this, naturally. i had some vodka, but with the lack of shot glasses it meant literally drinking it out of a red cup, and if you've ever come across really cheap vodka, you know that having to DRINK that is one of the worst experiences known to man. i couldn't even do it the second time around.

amazingly, i didn't see a single animal or even hear a bird. in the woods, in a state park. that strikes me as very odd. i was initially relieved to discover that was a port-a-potty up the trail from our campsite. unfortunately, the drunk kids at the next campsite rendered it absolutely unusable by the next morning, so wendy and i got to go pee in the woods. YIPEE. flashback to HILL trip, except yeah, there were no deep dark woods where wendy and i were, just fairly thin woods surrounding a giant trail in broad daylight. fun fun fun.

oh, if you go camping with your boyfriend, two other couples, and then a couple who may or may not be hooking up, tell your boyfriend's friends to be smart and NOT put the tents approximately three feet away from each other. apparently, sounds travel reeeeeeallly well through nylon. who could have guessed?

WARNING: really really long post. i should really blog about this weekend, but talking to sara and reading heather's latest post has gotten me thinking about the idea of relative intelligence and dating a person who isn't your equal, whether intellectually or physically or socio-economically, and all the attendant issues. heather said a lot of interesting things in her post, including this: "this all has me convinced that it is scientifically impossible to have a lasting relationship with someone who isn't as smart as you. because there will be that constant worrying that you're coming off as superior no matter what you're doing or how hard you're trying not too. and there's that constant fear that the less smart person secretly resents you for being more intelligent. all of this is just a bad set up for a relationship, especially the secret resentment. because then you wonder, is this resentment motivating some of their actions (like how joe insulted me sometimes) or are they just a mean person in general? either way, it's just bad."

that really is the truth. it doesn't just apply to significant others, though, it applies to friends as well. obviously in any group of friends there's going to be some sense of who's prettiest or who's smartest or funniest or whatever, and that in and of itself isn't evil because obviously your brain likes to categorize things and label people neatly, but it can definitely get sticky if one person feels like they have less to contribute or just aren't as funny/smart/hot as the rest, which in turn makes the others feel like they should be censoring themselves in some way so as not to make that person feel bad, which eventually puts strain on the relationship.

this kind of thing used to happen in high school, especially when it came to matters of grades, because i was friends with the 'smart kids', aka not the colleen-style popular girls and tim bourdon-esque jocks, and naturally there was competition there. competition, everyone knows, can be both healthy and unhealthy, and i think we can all agree that there were a lot of times at northwest when it was just unhealthy. remember when some people's report cards accidentally had class ranks on them, and people ran around trying to figure out who was where, and suddenly it was obvious why they weren't listed on there in the first place?

sara mentioned today on the phone that while she felt a lot of the time like she wasn't as smart in high school, when she got outside our group and met other people like her boyfriend tyler's friends she suddenly realized how much more intelligent she was than them. it is true that being really close with people who are also intelligent and like to learn makes you kind of shocked to meet people our age who just don't care.

which brings me to that idea of relative intelligence...you'd think it'd be pretty easy to rank in your mind who, of your friends and acquaintances, would be most likely to get an A on a test or something like that. but it might depend, especially if you have many highly intelligent friends, which test it was. advanced poetry, i got an A in that. now, multivariable calculus? umm.....i'd leave that for popham the math major. history? yeah i could probably do it if i studied my ass off *grimaces at thought of court* but someone like meredith who loves history would have an easier time of it. ditto for someone who enjoys science, like rae taking chem. it's all different, different types of intelligences respond to different things. that extends to things like SATs, where we know damn well they don't accurately represent intelligence. it depends on whether you are good are taking standardized tests as well as how smart you are. for instance take me, rae, and hilary scurlock. when the scores came in, hilary got a perfect, then there was my score and then there was rae's score, which she was not very pleased with. i'll be the first to admit that i consider rae to be smarter than i am, and definitely a harder worker in high school, as evidenced by her lovely saludatory address at graduation. yes, hilary was a smart girl and she deserved her score, the little harvard hussy, but rae's score was definitely not representative of her abilities. it happened to plenty of other people i know, too, whihc is why it sucks that SATs are so important to getting into college (and don't let htem lie to you, i heard it from the horse's mouth in admissions, they really do put emphasis on those scores). not that it hurt rae much lol.

this carries beyond academia, in my opinion. not everyone is book smart, and though i pride myself on my intelligence because for many years i felt like it was the saving grace of an otherwise useless lump of human being, i know that there are other types of intelligence out there, like people who can work with machines, or people who have really good social skills, like diplomats. also, i don't believe someone's level of book smarts significantly affects what i would call their "ambient intelligence", or like their day-to-day reasoning, conversation, and personality. yes there are times when i use really big words or when people tell me i 'talk funny', but it's not like i can't have a great time and interesting conversations with someone who talks differently. i talk and write the way i do because i am a product of many years of voracious reading, and i simply prefer to talk and write in this fashion. people's book smarts don't generally affect their ability to be really cool people who are fun to be around. if the conversation turns to, say, the Cold War arms race or genetic modification of crops, certain people might have nothing to say, but that doesn't mean they have a fundamentally lower level of understanding or analysis.

which brings me to heather's post again, on the topic of relationships. i've learned that yeah, it really does help to be equals. equals obviously doesn't mean the same, since tommy and i have definitely realized that a lot of our opinions are diametrically opposed (music, cars, golf). but there's still a sense of being equal in personality, like that person is a match for you, not in the yenta-matchmaker way, but in the sense that they could take you on, that you could 'clash' with them, so to speak, and it would be a fair fight. over past months and past relationships i tried to evaluate what was it that i wanted in someone to consider them a good match. being able to converse intelligently and argue is high on the list. it's not like i feel the driving urge to argue about stuff, but i enjoy it. tommy and i can argue about stuff without me ever feeling like i have to dumb something down or "censor myself" as heather put it, although if he runs out of things to say he does tend to resort to the old "fuck you!" lol. it's amusing to catch myself going into debate mode, where i actually think of things as "points" and even 'signpost', especially when i fight with my mom.

actually tommy and i had an argument about arguing like last week, because he said something and then couldn't come up with any examples to back it up, and i said that was so not a valid point if you couldn't elaborate or prove it through examples, like on debate, and he called me a nerd and said life wasn't debate team, but (as i then went on to demonstrate WITH examples) it really does give you skills for life, because it teaches you how to argue just about anything, and also reminds you to watch your ass, to know which points are weak and which you should definitely harp on, and to argue intelligently, without personal attacks. if you have to convince your boss that your opinion about a project is the right one, you would have to state your points clearly and concisely and then be able to effectively counter any of his criticisms or differences. it also teaches you to evaluate things from a bunch of perspectives.

example here: a debate i judged at NYU, where the crazy kids from simon's rock college proposed that whenever the palestinians committed a suicide attack, the israeli government should systematically exterminate the entire family of that bomber, to discourage future attacks. their reasoning was fight fire with fire, show strength, etc, and that suicide bombers are willing to die but not willing to sacrifice their families. there are so many ways to approach this.
1. from the international perspective, this is a gross violation of any sort of human rights treaties or conventions. even if it's not considered a state of war, those families are non-combatants who have done nothing wrong but be related to the criminal. israel would lose all of its international support, which it desperately needs to cover its ass.
2. from the US perspective: we've always helped Israel, we were instrumental in its creation in 1947, but there's no way the liberals in this country would stand by this policy. Israel would lose its staunchest ally and supplier.
3. the moral perspective: two wrongs do not make a right. this is just adding evil to evil and accelerating the cycle of violence, basically fighting a war of attrition with the terrorists.
4. the home front: as much as israelis hate palestinians, the average israeli does NOT want its government murdering innocent people. it's just insane.
5. psychology: understanding the mind of the suicide bomber. who's to say that a deeply religion person with little to lose won't be willing to sacrifice his family for his god?

i don't actually remember the reasons the opposing side used, those are just the ones that come to mind, but that particular case (which i obviously gave to side Opp because c'mon, that's a horrible idea to even bring up and those kids were fucking nuts) is a good example of how debate preps you to deal with concepts that you may have never even thought about before, and therefore gives you an edge in regular arguments.

i know i'm being heather-esque here in terms of length, but you know, this journal is for me to organize my thoughts, so i don't care. if you're still reading this, kudos.

ANYWAY, back to me thinking about what i wanted in a guy. in early april i posted this: now there's tommy. he's dynamic, talkative, funny, hot...i like talking to him, he challenges me, he makes me feel comfortable and he's aggressive, too. i realized today that this is the kind of guy i want, this is the "type", if you will. it doesn't really matter how they look or how tall they are, i've been all over the map on that one, this is the basic formula for someone who could make michelle happy. the problem is, i've thoroughly convinced myself that i just shouldn't have a boyfriend because i feel like i get infatuated too easily. i go too deep, too fast, and then i break the surface a few weeks later wondering what the hell got into me. i fear my one-month turnaround. i fear asking someone out, losing interest, and then having to hurt their feelings. i fear someone becoming overly attached to me, i fear that i could believe myself to be attached and really not be. " the challenge, that's it. i'm not talking like a conquest, of course, i'm talking someone whose personality challenges you and brings out the best in you. i don't think that someone who isn't your equal can really challenge you; but like i said, you don't have to be on the same level with everything. naturally with me being an english major and a writer and an avid reader, i like things that are spelled properly and grammatically correct and yeah, i'll admit it, it irks me to see people using incorrect grammar or misusing/misspelling words. that's just me. tommy told me i'm a nerd because i looked at a picture paul had made of tommy's house and pointed out that it's not "The Tuccio's", it's "The Tuccios'", but hey, i consider that important. Tommy's grammar skills are not exactly what i would optimally prefer them to be, but he definitely has the upper hand on me with other things. like cars. i'm an idiot when it comes to all things mechanical, i know that. i don't know as much as he does about outdoorsy stuff, or guns. he really likes history, too, he's always mentioning stuff he sees on the history channel. he's teaching me to play chess, which i'm practicing on my computer lol because i would like to be able to play competently. he's also supposed to teach me how to drive stick, eventually, because it'll probably be a useful skill someday.

i just feel like we kind of balance each other out. we have our own areas of things we love, although i don't go on about art or books the way he goes on about engines and car modifications lol. it doesn't seem to bother him that i don't know what he's talking about a lot of the time, or that i really don't care how much power one motorcycle has relative to another, but i wouldn't generally go on and on about art unless i knew the person i was talking to was interested and hopefully knew a bit about what i was talking about. it would feel too didactic otherwise.

what does this all come down to...that i agree with what heather said, basically...i'm not so sure about the part where in order to balance, the poorer person should be hotter or the hot one should be less funny or something. that seems a bit too drastic, because the poor one would still feel like a kept woman, just a hot kept woman, wouldn't she? i can't really imagine dating someone who was excessively wealthy. i really wouldn't be comfortable having someone spend lavish sums of money on me. it sounds nice in theory, but in practice i doubt it would work. hell, i just got comfortable with the let-the-guy-pay-for-it idea, and i'm not really an expensive girlfriend lol. as for someone really hot, i wouldn't mind. please, i SO deserve johnny depp. i think dating someone who was a lot funnier than i am would bother me only if he had the same sense of humor as i did. i don't know if i could deal with someone equally sarcastic...mmm...thinking of steve from high school. yum. as for someone smarter than me, i think i could deal with that, i would enjoy someone who had as much random knowledge as me lol.

thinking of this now makes me think of my parents. my dad was freakishly smart in the math/science department, and an absolute moron when it came to spelling. he couldn't even spell "necessary" (nesessary, in his mind) when i was like in fifth grade, but he doodled Planck's Constant and worked out gas laws in his journal. how he got a master's degree without being able to spell is truly beyond me. i've been tempted to examine his master's thesis for typos, but it's on "radiation creep" in some random isotope, so no thanks. my mom, on the other hand, is a licensed nurse who never went to college. she has pretty good english and grammar skills, but she doesn't have the appetite for knowledge my dad did. yet their marriage worked out, and i considered them equals, although i knew to go to dad with my math questions. actually, i stopped asking for help in like sixth grade, because, as my math teacher ms mandzuk told me, having dealt with my dad with jen, engineers always approach a problem like there is one way to do it, and usually it's really hard and long. it was so the truth.

i recently discovered that this site gives different results if you don't capitalize. i like this version better.

How to make a michelle

Ingredients: 1 part intelligence 5 parts courage 3 parts beauty

Method: Combine in a tall glass half filled with crushed ice. Add a little cocktail umbrella and a dash of sadness

Username:

Personality cocktail
From Go-Quiz.com

the past couple of days have been a lot of fun! tommy and wendy came up on tuesday night and we went to dinner with sara, heather and rae. it was so awesome just to be there, hanging out with my three best friends from high school, my best friend from college, and my boyfriend, all at once. after dinner we went over to melissa's, who was very excited bc they had new carpets put in their house, and everyone was there...like, everyone, right down to alex taylor, who i had not seen since she showed up at sofia's last year. tommy had to leave, though ,so i took him back to my house while they all went to this coffee place in hartford, except then we found he'd left his keys in mel's house, so we had to go back, and by the time i had said goodbye to him and was on the road they had switched locations like three times because there's nothing open at 11 on a tuesday esp if you have like fifteen rowdy youngsters. these four random guys, old friends of mel and jess, were there, plus danny, also known as Jesus for his previous resemblance to the late great JC.

anyway we wound up in west hartford, at the "JCC", aka the jewish community center, which has this AWESOME playground in the back called Jonathon's Dream....apparently it's for some kid who died of cerebral palsy, his parents donated all this money to build this huge playground that would be accessible for special-needs kids. anyway, it has so much cool stuff and a million slides and zip lines and stuff. there weren't any lights, so i bet it's prettier in the daytime. melissa is very fond of this playground, since she announced that she's had sex there many a time (including with danny-jesus lol). it was so damned hot, though. suddenly all the girls were taking their shirts off, except for me, emily and jessi, because, well that's how my friends do...and wendy just jumped right in lol. amusingly, the four random guys took no notice. they barely spoke to the girls at all apparently, even though three of them were quite attractive. eventually a plan developed to go swimming at one of their houses all the way in suffield, and i was like, what, no, especially since skinny-dipping was possibly going to be involved. wendy didnt want to go either, and emily wanted to go home, so we decided to part ways, and as we're climbing into my car i got hit on by one of the randoms--three hot ones, and i WOULD get hit on by the only unnattractive, one, right? i was like, dude, there's like six hot girls over there. go have fun. and then he said something sketchy and we drove away quickly and had a good laugh.

wednesday i took wendy to sofia's for lunch and we got coerced into driving my boss, izzy, to go pick up his daughter, because when i got there i was like OOOH izzy brought his corvette to work, but apparently he'd forgotten that he couldn't have his daughter in there bc you can't put a car seat in the front with the airbag, so he needed us once i reminded him which car he had sitting in the lot. the bitch owes me. and you know, i love how everone is all nice and talkative to wendy....jen was uncustomarily pleasant, and even izzy wasn't his usual sarcastic asshole self.

we spent the afternoon prepping for the dinner party, which was awesome, in my humble opinion. wendy made the main course, stuffed shells, which came out wonderfully once my mom had made the corrections to her stupid recipe cards that screwed us up. i was in charge of decor, a la fine china and candles, etc. rae brought a beautiful appetizer and heather made this giant chocolate chip cookie in the shape of what was apparently supposed to be a cactus. mmmm.

then we watched strictly ballroom, which is SUCH a good movie and made us all want hot guys who dance really well especially if they're spanish, because the latinos have the special flava...then we all danced on my front steps for a bit, then rae left and then we watched pretty woman, which wendy HAD NEVER SEEN, and which made her cry twice and made all of us want a really hot guy like richard gere to be paying us to sleep with him and then flying us to the opera and then conquer his greatest fear for us and made me in particular have the strange desire to have sex on a grand piano. yeah....but this was also special bc it was the DIRECTOR'S CUT, meaning there were new scenes, only like two, but i was like WHOA what is this, i know this movie by heart. that was beautiful.

this morning i took wendy to westfarms and mama scola came and picked her up, but it wasnt really a sad parting because i'll see her tomorrow anyway when we get all gross and disgusting in the woods and smell like DEET. sexy. before that, though, i will see my fairfield mamas, and good times shall be had, and then i will hopefully see tommy at the pool and give him the gift i finished yesterday with wendy's help. oh and saturday im going to dinner at his grandma's, which apparently requires me to fast beforehand. she's one of those people who overfeeds everyone and you have to eat what she gives you, which is potentially bad because i'm really picky, and i'm sorry, but i'm not choking down peach cobbler just because she doesn't listen when i said i don't eat pie. maybe i'll feed it to tommy on the sly, who knows. but now i must pack and get ready for sofia's...whoohoo...

my car speakers died on me today as i was heading to a hair appointment. needless to say, this caused me so much distress that it's a wonder i didn't crash or veer into another lane as i was frantically trying to determine the source of the problem. it is as yet undiscovered. tommy's going to look at it tonight, possibly. i already asked my mom and no, she will not pay for it to get fixed. i mentioned the possibility that she could pay for that as opposed to fixing the damage she caused to the rear end of the car (which i have the sneaking suspicion she won't do anyway), but we didn't decide anything. it just upsets me, especially the thought of those hour-long car rides to see tommy and wendy WITH NO MUSIC. i will go fucking crazy.

once again, i didn't get anything drastic done to my hair. i had the idea of long layers, but the woman informed me she'd have to take off two inches for it to look good, and i'm just too attached to my long locks to try that. then she made my hair frizzy when she blow-dried it. i was pissed.

did i mention on here that i recently had what could count as a good dream? or dreamlet, since it was about five seconds long from what i recall. it followed immediately on the footsteps of a dream about a nuclear holocaust--go figure. anyway all it involved was tommy and i lying on these separate double beds, and him leaning across to kiss me. it was short, but sweet. i really wish i dreamt things like that more often.

How to make a Michelle

Ingredients: 1 part competetiveness 1 part crazyiness 5 parts empathy

Method: Combine in a tall glass half filled with crushed ice. Add a little fitness if desired!

Username:

Personality cocktail
From Go-Quiz.com

i seem to have the knack of always talking to tommy as he's falling asleep or very close to it. i should probably start calling him before midnight and such. vice versa, though...he said yesterday that he usually calls me when he's already in bed, which of course leads to him getting sleepy. hmph.

last night i talked briefly to joe, sara's kind-of-not-really-significant-other, which was cool. it's strange that i hear so much about this guy yet i've only really met him once. then again, i never even met pat, so i guess i'm lucky with this one lol. however, sara's only really met tommy once too...hmm, i'd kind of forgotten that. anyway his voice reminded me freakishly of greg's, though. sara at the same time was talking to tommy on my phone, and she reported that his voice reminded her of her psycho ex-boyfriend tyler. how ironic.

i finally found a project to put my creative energies into, namely a gift i'm making for tommy. i like having something plan for and think about. i guess i've kind of put off working on my spain and france scrapbook that i started in december. i'm just not really motivated to work on it. i'd like to have other projects in the pipeline too, like sara, cause that girl always has like ten million craftsy things she's up to, but right now this is about it. i haven't written anything in quite a while. i go through spells where i'm just not inspired to write anything, and it doesn't really bother me, because if i don't have any good ideas i'd rather not write stuff that sucks just for the sake of having written, but it just makes me more eager to get back to school and start my creative writing class.

two days till wendy comes!

ughhh. i feel like crap. cramps. supposedly the women in this family have some magic genes that prevent them from getting PMS, and usually i never really get it. actually this isn't PMS, this is MS! what the fuck? the look on my mom's face when i told her to buy midol was amusing. she was like "are you sure?". *rolls eyes*

last night was officially the worst shift i have ever had. thank god for the ability to run on auto-pilot, because between like 5 and 9 i was just this far away from an emotional breakdown of sorts. it had nothing to do with work, it had to do with me worrying and over-reacting to something which has since been favorably resolved, but still. sometimes having a very quick imagination blows, because you stand there imagining all the horrible consequences one little thing could have on the course of your entire life and it's pretty damned scary. but like i said, all good now.

brownies for breakfast, blueberries and chocolate cake for lunch...yum. after another bout with illness i made the trek down to monroe to watch tommy and his friends play paintball for a couple of hours. they want me and wendy to start playing with them this summer, but after seeing the huge welts tommy got on his chest and arm after getting hit at fairly close range, i don't know...i bruise ridiculously easily. tommy also almost gave me a heart attack with one of his E-brake tricks on the way to pick up his friend jackie--REALLY not a good idea when your girlfriend was sick the day before and didn't know you were going to do it beforehand. he was pretty much just trying to repair his ego after horribly losing the first couple of games but still, not at my expense, please.

so a lot of what made me really want to feel ok enough to make it down there yesterday was tommy's promise that we were going on a real date, our first, which was surprise/related to some joke we had. naturally, i was excited, and i was even fine with paintball lasting till like 830 because i was looking forward to whatever he had planned after. after we returned to his house so he could shower (men stink) we headed out, and ended up driving by the housatonic river, and he said he could almost see where we were headed. so, i'm thinking, ohhh, a nice romantic spot on the riverbank, eh? how cute! when we pull into this giant parking lot for none other than mini-golf. yes, mini-golf. try to imagine the look on my face as whatever romantic possibilities i had been considering are blasted into dust. and yeah, i didn't hide it all that well, either. i hate golf (this was the joke) and i also hate hate hate mini-golf. i can only stomach it once in a looooong while, which was in this case a couple of weeks ago with amanda. this was, objectively speaking, a really nice course, with a giant waterfall at one end, but i was pissed, and it showed.

i was better after we finally made it to a bertucci's and had dinner. tommy felt bad for what was unarguably a really crappy first date (can you believe this was our first date? christ on a cracker). at first i was too grumpy to bother assuaging his feelings, but honestly, one bad date won't kill me, and he didn't know i hated mini-golf. it was mostly my fault for getting my own hopes up, anyway (you would THINK i would have learned, no?). next time, either i'll plan the date myself or ask wendy to suggest something.

this morning i woke up at the ungodly hour of ten to go over to wendy's house and go to starbucks and watch the first teenage mutant ninja turtles movie while eating the blueberries and delicious chocolate cake her mom had made. it was the first time we'd spent time alone in a loooong time, or so it felt, and it was really good, especially since we spent so much of it making fun of tommy lol. we decided that he is michelangelo, the really goofy one, and paul (his best friend) is leonardo, cause he's very calm and polite and always taking care of other people. now it's time to get ready for sofia's.....not whoo. BUT wendy will be coming to visit next week!!!YAY!

i've come to the conclusion that the monday day shift is just about the easiest shift EVER. before noon i'd already finished "digital fortress", which is by the guy who wrote the "da vinci code". then i read a couple of newspapers, and by 3pm i was seriously bored. thanks to the construction that's going on, a lot of people think we're closed, so what is normally a pretty slow time was entirely dead. for about a hour we had no more than one table in the entire restaurant, which didn't bother me besides the fact that the phone kept ringing off the hook, because my boss gets calls from every contractor, telemarketer, and thickly-accented italian immigrant in hartford county. or so it would seem.

anyway, i was eventually moved by sheer boredom to pick up a john grisham book that someone had left behind, "the last juror", and i really like it, much to my surprise. when i was younger i read ones like "the pelican brief" and "the stand" because my sister was even then a burgeoning lawyer and read all sorts of crap like that. i usually put john grisham in only a slightly higher categorization than steven king, who is in turn definitely higher than my mom's beloved nora roberts; they're all people who seem to be able to write three or four books a year and have them declared bestsellers before they even hit shelves. super-popular cult authors earn my immediate suspicion. it makes more sense to me that a really popular, well-crafted book could take a year or more to write, like j.k. rowling and the harry potter series, although there it gets to be a little TOO long in the offing.

anyway, i got about a hundred pages into it. it's about a college drop-out who winds up running the only paper in a rural mississippi county in 1970 while there's this huge scandalous murder trial going on. honestly, i'm more interested in this than i was in digital fortress. dan brown can write an excellent thriller and throw in a million plot twists, but he is not that great at interpersonal relations. it becomes pretty obvious that he is a student of the humanities and not of human beings. in terms of his books that i've read, i would rank "Angels and Demons" first, "Da Vinci Code" second, and this one third. in fact, i'm now regretting a little that i even bought digital fortress. unless anyone wants to borrow it to read, there's really not much use in it just sitting here on the bookshelf. speaking of which i am experiencing a major shortage in bookcase space...the one in my room, the ones in the TV room, my desk and the one in here are all full. i haven't been buying many new ones lately, but it's summertime, i know i'll be searching the tag sales soon enough for new additions. hmm.

on wednesday, some fairfield laides will be reunited, as amanda and i are going to fairfield to visit meredith at her job and go out to lunch. i'm looking forward to checking out campus without all those....people....around. lol.

this morning i was up very early to get ready for work, on the sole basis of having had a bad dream that i woke up at noon and izzy was calling me yelling and i was running around in a towel trying to go to work...bad dreams are better than alarm clocks, apparently. why don't i just have pleasant dreams like other people? well except for those couple of future-dreams i had last week, those were happy, but happy in a "oh gee look how happy older michelle is" kind of way.

ever catch yourself thinking something and realize it's completely different from what you'd always told yourself you believed in? that's been happening recently, not a lot, but enough to make me wish i were like one of the ancient philosophers and could just sit down and work out my entire system of values and beliefs, so i'd have something to refer to, a code or at least some guidelines. what i believe about a variety of topics changes a lot. usually it's small changes, especially if i learn something new on the subject. for instance, this evening i was reading Scientific American online and there was an article on stem cells, about how korean scientists have successfully extracted stem cell lines from cloned embryos. now, i think cloning is wrong, but cloning for therapeutic purposes is grayer, because there are so many possible benefits to mankind. however, the article made the suggestion, culled from the President's Council on Bioethics, that cloned embryos be used but only if they were kept viable for a very short period, less than two weeks. i was nodding my head before i realized that i really don't think of those little cloned embryos--what stage would they be then, was it blastocyst?--as human beings. that really surprised me. part of it might be the fact that these cloned embryos would have basically no chance of full development if left to their own devices (hence why reproductive cloning is probably not going to be around anytime soon). part of it, though, is that i just don't consider a clump of a hundred or so cells to be a human being....this of course begs the question, when exactly does it become a human being? i believe in the soul, so when does the soul become present in the body? most religions hold that it is present at the moment of conception, which makes sense...but what happens when that life is taken and cloned? is there another soul in there? see, this kind of thing makes my thoughts go faster and faster and i get nowhere fast.

basically all i come out with is that i think therapeutic cloning should be allowed. maybe i haven't reasoned it all out yet in my mind yet, but i refuse to close out all those medical possibilities because of the possible ethical considerations. it's just not that big an obstacle in my mind, not in terms of the possible gains for humanity. enough thinking for tonight, i think.