Fivel stays put + near death by grooming.

There's a mouse in my roomate's bedroom. It's small and brown. I dislike things running lose in my place of dwelling. I brought home the class hampster over Christmas Break in third grade. It escaped from its cage. Horrors! Hampster in cage = cute and cuddly; hampster on the lose = menacing predator. I never really liked the idea of Santa creeping in during the night either.

On two occaisons my roommates have spotted Fivel before me. When one of two people freak out about an intrusive and potentially disgusting pest, the second person, by default, must assume the role of calm and confident crisis handler. After a brief spell with no signs of mouse activity, it was hoped and assummed that Fivel had moved along to new environs. Last night I noticed the tiniest movment near a pair of shoes. Sure enough, it was followed by the scampering of our little brown friend across my roommate's floor. Hooray - spotted it first and braveness avoided! It's still on the lose. No one wants to kill it. Catching it isn't the most pleasing prospect either, because then we'd have to see it up close.

My coping strategy for this problem is leaving town. As such, I scheduled some grooming services prior to a brief visit to Los Angeles. I'd read that having one's eyebrow's threaded allows for more precision and is 'healthier.' Someone also told me that it was less painful than waxing.

Not true! Even though I'm happy that the threading person only cleaned up what my favorite L. A. brow lady does so well, I'm not happy about how I paid someone to torture me. It felt like a thousand very sharp fingernails pinching into my skin in rapid succession. Next time Sally Hansen and I will get by just fine on our own, thank you very much.

I'm an idiot + the trifecta in shipping.

Yesterday I returned from visiting my family in D.C. for the weekend. I had already looked up directions to 'the park' where I had been invited to a birthday celebration for a recently bicoastal friend I know from LA. I stop on the way to pick up a bottle of wine. In the grocery store I begin to wonder if perhaps 'the park,' isn't "The Park" and maybe this isn't a nighttime barbeque afterall. I play it safe by purchasing a four pack of easily tote-bag stashable Mike's Hard Lemonade brand "Mike-a-ritas." Park, it turns out, is a cute indoor/outdoor bar/cafe/restaurant in Chelsea. I'm glad I didn't bring chicken.

This morning the FedEx woman buzzed up with a package for me. Because Claire so kindly fetched that package, I went down when the U.S. mail truck buzzed up. It was a package for our other roommate Kal. The third buzzer was UPS, with a package for Claire. If only every day could be so symmetrical.

Parents' Week

Someone more insighful than me recently suggested that the reason people like my parents are overwhelmed by places like New York City is because they assume that they have to interact with everyone they encounter.

I met my parents at Penn Station yesterday. After several remarks about person density compared to their East Coast origin D.C., we got into a hotel-bound cab. After paying for what my mom later referred to as a "wild cab ride" (too bad she missed out on the one through the Costa Rican bananna farm with the beer-drinking driver), my dad gave the driver an encouraging, "Great job!" for safely navigating the "traffic jammed streets" and waved goodbye to his new friend from the curb. Later, my mom insisted that we tip the apathetic 30-something server more than 20% for barely passable service because he might, in fact, be working two jobs to support two babies at home. Clearly, my sister's insistence that they see the play Nickel and Dimed paid off.

The entire afternoon was peppered with such exchanges. It makes sense for earnest, friendly people like my parents to live in a small town. They'd never get anything done around here for all the sincerity they exuberate.

This summer in eyewear

Given my increasingly more frequent status as a four-eyed individual coupled with trading in Coasts for the summer, I've been experimenting with new looks in eyewear.

The first was inspired by some frames I found, of all places, on the sidewalk. They really fit the bill when you can't quite decide if it's bright enough to warrant sunglasses.



Second, a classy, chic, and fashionable way to casually distract people from noticing red eyes due to allergies, pink eye, or hangovers.

Rocking the Malaria since 2006

I'm visiting Jessie in Chapel Hill. My first visit of any consequence to the official South and I must say, I'm impressed. People are nice here. I mean really, really nice. Bus drivers smile at me. With teeth. Grocery store clerks ask me how I'm enjoying my stay. Ever the Lone Star apologist, I spend a fair amount of time deflecting California peeps' comments about biogtry and the like to other locales, but so far - people have been both friendly and progessive. Maybe it's a little selection bias w/ Jessie's graduate school colleagues who were all Peace Corps Volunteers and Wilderness Camp leaders before starting here. And in all fairness, last night someone (who attended college at Sewanee - my near miss destiny where I planned to go until the last minute) did say something about a lot of 'conservative' students. "Not like Christian conservative," he qualified, "Just people with solid, Old Southern values. I mean they're not racist or anything either." In the name of diplomacy, I did not ask what these values might be excactly, but returned my attention to the bluegrass group.

One feature of the South that has not failed to disappoint is the mosquito count. At first I thought I'd garnered the Best Souvenir Ever (!) with my little bites. Then I remembered how they itch more later. My right foot/ankle region has no less than 14 bites, the left trailing at a close 11. Awesome.