Eighty Thousand Cigarettes

If there is a word to define the last year of my life, it is this: sedentary. "There!" you must be thinking, "That is a big word for a little girl!" but I assure you, it's a fluke. A holdover from when I really loved learning and paying attention and participating in stimulating conversations with close friends and new acquaintances. Ever since I moved to the boonies, two things have happened with alarming regularity. The first is that I find myself fantasizing about my last booty call often... Sign in to see full entry.

Over the past year, I have acquired a ton of older family photos. Some of these were sent to me by my (ex) step-mother after my little brother passed away, some were lifted out of family albums that my mother was storing in her uninsulated attic. Others had just been floating around my possession without a proper home for years. The impact of the deaths of close family members, and my grandmother's ongoing but terminal battle with cancer have instilled in me a desire to archive our family's... Sign in to see full entry.

A strange trend has developed on my computer. A collection of one-night stands, possible roommates and witty email partners has begun to show up in the left hand column (advertising) of my Facebook account. These ads urge me to "FRIEND MASON!" Let me tell you about Mason, Facebook, and then you can decide if you really think that the universe needs us to reconcile whatever sham of a connection we once had. Mason is insane, but in a brilliant way. One late night, I was trolling the craigslist CE... Sign in to see full entry.

I'll skip the part about how liberating college was for me, but remind you that I landed there after a particularly impossible summer during which I found out that my "best friend" was shacking up with my not-quite-ex boyfriend, and they'd been lying to my face about it for months. I made it through my first year of school, found a suitably drama-ridden relationship that kept us from ever really letting each other 'in' and made some good friends. One of those friends was Lana. She lived... Sign in to see full entry.

I'm a reality TV show junkie, I admit it. I've been watching Tough Love on VH1 and at a certain point in the season, he confronts a (way way way over the top) woman named Arian who is raunchy and sexually on display in every episode. After she brags about her boobs, being able to suck a mean *ahem* and grabs the guy's (a first meeting, by the way) crotch under the table he confronts her and basically says, "Acting that way invites things like diseases and rape." None of the other girls in the... Sign in to see full entry.

No no, I'm not talking about that little black book that your burned the day you got married. I'm talking about the list that most couples hypothetically come up with as a way to fantasize that their monogamy has a loophole. As unlikely as the opportunity to sleep with a celebrity (too bad we can't add 'real' people to the list, eh?) is, it's still nice to think about. So, without further adieu, here's mine (in no particular order): Mike Rowe - Host of Dirty Jobs, narrator for just about every... Sign in to see full entry.

I left my flat in the city (shared with three other people - two boys and another girl) in May of last year. The reasons for the move were plentiful -- it was time to shit or get off the pot with Spenser, I was sick of Greg (beyond sick of Greg, really, but degree matters little with matters of distaste) and perhaps most influentially - the master tenant of the flat was leaving after 7 years and rent was going to skyrocket if any of us other three stayed. Work was opening a satellite office in... Sign in to see full entry.

I bring up the white trash roommates once again without properly introducing them because it is due to them that we know the next character I'll introduce. We'll name him Duh. Spenser has a "home business" and every few months requires help with a certain aspect of it. Duh is willing to do the work for about half-price provided he can crash on our couch. While I'm not happy about it, I understand the economies of such unpleasantness and try to nail down a firm time-line for his departure. I'm... Sign in to see full entry.

The saga continues. When my aunt died in early December, I was hanging on by a thread for the week it took me to get home. Spenser is amazing but he is a part of my life that started out West and couldn't have entirely understood what I'd lost simply because he wasn't a part of my life "back East" and had only met my family there once. Before I got on the plane, I just kept telling myself, 'you'll feel better when you get there...' and that was partially true. To give you a sense of the scale of... Sign in to see full entry.

I can be a voracious reader, especially when I hit upon an author who's work blows me away with every sentence on the page. I can name only a few authors off the top of my head that have moved me to devour their entire catalogs - Poppy Z. Brite (recovering horror novelist), Jim Carroll (poet/diarist), David Foster Wallace, ee cummings (poet/artist), Charles Bukowski and last but certainly not least, Kurt Vonnegut. This list of course excludes the writers of some of my favorite novels and that is... Sign in to see full entry.