November 99 November 98 November 97 _________________ Wednesday 17 November 99

12 27 am est I will own up to it.   I have been in some sort of writing slump lately.   I drag out an entry at the end of the evening, but I don't know why I'm finding this difficult.   I love my diary; I love my daily ritual of recording and analysis.   And I think about things to write about during the day.   It isn't writer's block idea wise, but it may be practice wise.   It is the physical act of typing up my entry that seems to be problematic for me.   Part of the problem is my super non-ergonomic computer setup.   Sometimes my whole forearm aches at the end of the evening.   Sometimes it is my wrist, and tonight my elbow is begging me to stop (but I'm just waiting for my rice to finish cooking).   I suppose I'll go check on it...

2 02 pm est Oh!   Total perfection!   The new Garbage video for the title track to The World is Not Enough beautifully illustrates one of my obsessions: the cyborgization of women.   I have a total thing for the combination of women and mechanization, and the eroticization thereof.   The video has the seamless visualization of Garbage's lead singer as an android being built.   It is truely visually stunning.

2 44 pm est The kitchen is a sacred space, an area where you can disappear for a while, and after adding a bit of noise [I'm envisioning* the clanking of pots and pans] and heat, the magic is worked and you emerge with a delicious nutritious meal.   Except today, when the superintendant came to install the new stove and (having no clue what he was doing) turned the kitchen into a riot zone.   He finally admitted that he couldn't install the new stove, which I could have told him an hour before.   [Are we sensing any hostility?   There's nothing wrong with not knowing how to do something, but I get irked when people won't admit that they are stumped, especially after they have given it the old college try...] * Why is envisioning the word for sounds?   Is there an enhearing, enaudioing, enauraling?   Well, why not?

4 06 pm est I am excited about going out to a party this evening (and with a whole slew of advertising professionals, to boot), and it would be super swanky if I got to see the Leonids tonight.   My current dilema is weather to go with the sphisticated or funky look -- dress wise. I was fascinated to learn of the discovery of The Diamond Sutra, the worlds earlies dated book.   It is dated from 11 May 868 ACE.   I adore dates, and am delighted to learn that people used them back then.

7 41 pm est So I somehow decided that the party tomorrow night was tonight, so I rushed off to the shower and actually shaved my legs.   I had been totally engrossed in setting up a new website for a client that wants it done this weekend.   I don't mind working fast, but she hasn't been good about coming through with content, so I was a bit frazzled making things up.   But I love starting a site from scratch; it always feels like a clean slate.   Anyway, I was drying myself off when I realized that today is only wednesday.   It was a bit of a delight to slip into my flannel PJs, and now my excitement about going out has another day to build. I have been putting in a lot of time on The Readers' Choice Awards [we have an official web site!], and I must have felt inspired, for I went and read over 150 messages from the diarist awards mailing list archives and realized that we are following the same route, which is that everyone is falling silent.   It irks me slightly, but I will do the whole thing myself if that's what it takes to get this off the ground.   It will be a burr in my bottom if I were to drop a project after making such and investment of effort. Last night I watched a fantastic documentary on the Biography show on A & E about the life and death of wrestler Owen Hart.   It was really well done -- touching and filled with the right balance of archival footage and interviews.   Since I don't know anything about wrestling, it was interesting to learn about the strategies behind the "episodes" and the perception of shifts in the industry. I am enjoying my time with my grampa, and will miss New York when I travel back to California.   Sometimes living with him is awkward, because we are so different.   For example, my grandfather doesn't care how much things cost, only how much he saves.   But he is so sweet, and he takes good care of me.   Sometimes I am blown away by how long he had lived; he got married for the first time in 1937!   Everytime he mentions something from that long ago I am struck by my wonder about how the world will look in 50 years and how I will feel about having lived through all those changes.

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