One of the many exciting activities they have planned which I am totally not jealous of is taking the seven hour train trip across Norway that somebody filmed and put online. I figure I'll watch that video while Gene and Clark are on the train and it'll be just like being there. I can even put a couple of Ted Talks on in the background and it'll be as if I'm listening to a Gene and Clark conversation, with the added bonus that when it gets too obscure, I can open New Moon in a new window, which, as I understand it, is not so easy to do on the actual train.

"Write what you know, eh?" my dad said. "I told you that."

"So now I'm writing a book about a woman who works in an office and nothing magical or weird happens," I said.

"I told you that two years ago, I think."

"Because I know exactly how it feels to be a receptionist, and I think I can be funny about it."

"Basically, exactly what I've been saying you should do all along."

I gave him a look. "Next, I'm writing a book about a dad who says 'I told you so' once too often and his daughter gets annoyed and feeds him to the neighbor's dog," I said.

"No, no," he said. "Write what you know."

I'm posting this as a cautionary tale. You kids think the irony is so hip, but let me tell you: it can turn on you. You think it's cool to make fun of things that are empirically good? You think it's funny to wear ugly clothes? It's only a matter of time before you forget all about the mockery. Before the moog starts sounding as good to you as a wholesome old-fashioned electric guitar.

Lucky for me, I saw my own problem in time and stopped before I turned into a real, lifelong racist. But thousands of irony users haven't been so lucky.

Remember, kids: Irony is a gateway drug to sincerity. Take it from one who knows.

I looked at my guy, who had seemed to be dealing with the customer in front of me in a relaxed, ordinary way, and at the other check-out guy, who seemed really worried that my guy was about to lose his mind. Usually you can tell who the crazy is but in this case I wasn't sure. And as I was about to spend a couple of minutes standing with my back to one of them, this was a real problem for me.

I'll save you the suspense and just tell you now that I didn't get sliced with a safety razor or anything. But I was able to eventually identify the crazy, which was the other check-out guy, because I remembered while I was paying my bill that I've had that other guy before and sometimes he sings about my asparagus.

However, I've realized that there are categories of awareness-raising that will lead to actual changes in someone's behavior. A few examples:

- Raising awareness in your boyfriend about the stove being on fire.
- Raising awareness in the guy hitting on you about your particularly horrifying STD.
- Raising awareness in your dinner guests about your dismissive attitude towards personal hygiene.

If you're wondering, the march referenced in the article was raising awareness for National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Week, a multi-layered cake of awareness-raising that blows my little brain.

So far, all I can come up with is to start drinking exponentially more than I do now, to increase my tolerance. Will that work? There's only one way to know, I guess.

"I feel that when I move around God is looking down upon me from high. If he looks at me, I have nothing to be ashamed of. I am not doing anything bad. He will see a human being who is happy and who is climbing rocks."

-Interview

Happy human being.

I was thinking about it and I realized I've only ever flown in and out of Tacoma on my own. Imagine that. All those years when I thought I would grow up to be an intrepid, solitary traveler, roaming the globe in a dusty coat and indifferent hair and only pausing occasionally to send some curious shrunken head home to my doting 'rents; yet here I am, 30 years old, and my most exotic solo trip has been to SeaTac and back. I don't know how far a trip to Philadelphia will go to correct this tendency, especially with a friend waiting at the other end, but it's a start, anyway. Maybe after this I'll finally have the nerve to take that Paris trip on my own.

Meanwhile, Kim and I have big, adventurous plans involving coffee shops, thesis writing and probably a lot of tense swearing at our thesis writing. (I intend to perform all actions in the first person plural while I'm there. For helpfulness.) I'll keep my eyes peeled for shrunken heads, or at least for all representations of pigs that the neighborhood has to offer.

Stuff that does not make me uncomfortable:
- Being pressed against other people on the subway
- Eating things that are stale
- Seeing really old people naked

My folks also got me a food processor for Christmas. I had asked for a dinky little guy to mush up herbs and stuff, but they got me a 12-cup Cuisinart so powerful that the lights dim when we use it. The first recipe I tried suggested that we blend for one to two minutes -- it took six seconds with our machine.

I am fascinated by the possibilities offered by these machines. All I want to do now is blend stuff into paste and freeze it into ice cream. Bananas! Ike's sandwiches! Aquarium gravel!

Dinner at our house has always been kind of a gamble, and now dessert is coming into its own, too.

Also, the clouds are back.

Yesterday I wrote ten and a half pages (at only 400 words a pop, don't get too excited) because working on the book was not the most exciting but merely the least boring option available to me. But today...today there is sun outside. I could go to the grocery store! I could go to the Botanical Gardens! I could go to the Zoo!

Except I have to write another 2600 words first. Sigh.

When is it time for croquet and bocce and baseball and playing on the secret rope swing? When is it time for archery at Golden Gate Park? When is it time to swim in the Yuba? I have my leash, weather. I am standing by the door. When is it time for walkies?

Am I basing my entire library on which books I read in third grade?