Nose.

For some reason, my boogers have been big and noticeable and really pickable lately. I see them as these big white stringly clumpy things hanging on my nose hairs, and as soon as I stick my finger in, they pretty much adhere to that and come right off. I've never gotten a consistency like that before; usually you have to work it more to get them to come out.

Also, they taste salty and a bit crisp.

Chipped cup.

Yesterday morning, too, I discovered that my favorite coffee cup (one I stole from my brother when I visited him in Alaska, that has a picture of an Aleutik on it in native clothing and has the mission statement of the pride on it, something like "Produce profit and benefit the tribe while preserving cultural heritage and pride") was chipped, and just on the part on the rim where my lip unavoidably touches it every time I go to drink coffee, if I pick up the mug with my right hand like I usually do.

Because I was hung over a bit, it felt like it fit the mood of the day.

Plans for tonight.

The friends of my one Dutch friend are going to a lesbian karaoke bar and I got invited along... I can't for the life of me figure out if it's lesbians singing karaoke, or they have karaoke, and you can only sing acoustic guitar-backed, kind-of-whiny songs like the Indigo Girls, or maybe that "I Kissed a Girl (And I Liked It)".

Martinis / More cuts.

Last night I went out to the martini bar to meet a friend who was in town. I got there a bit early, so I sucked down a regular martini with olives and watched some trans-sexuals do lip-synching acts (they do that a lot at the martini bar). This one white one put on an entrancing second number where she sang a really slow, tastefully emotive song while wearing brilliant white-blue contacts and had her blonde hair upswept into a mohawk while the sides where shaved, and while wearing this tight black net thing that had these opaque black fabric flames in it that covered up her nipple and hoo-haw areas.

The card reader was there that night at the table in the corner, too, and I was totally going to get my reading done since I'm a strong believer in vibes and the vibe was right that night, but the place was crowded and I had just about finished my martini when my friend came, so we left to head out to another bar.

At this other bar, later, there was this half-dressed middle-aged leggy Mexican woman with almond eyes staggering around in a Tina Turner wig.

When I got home, toast got stuck in my toaster, and when I was trying to pry it out the bottom, the side of my right index finger got slit on a metal part and started bleeding profusely, and it was still bleeding when I was brushing my teeth before bed, where drops of mixed blood and water and toothpaste foam would drop into the sink.

Cuts / Conversations.

Last night when I was chopping up a carrot the knife slipped and I cut across two of my fingertips, so for like forty minutes I was leaving bloody fingerprints on my cutting board, on my cabinets, on my vegetables, everything, even though the cuts were small and not that deep and I thought they'd scab up fast.

Yesterday at the grocery store, I was talking with the (black) check-out girl, and when I asked her how her Christmas was, she said that she had gotten messed up on Christmas Eve and then again on Christmas Day, so it was a good time, I was like, "And did you have a chance to spend any time with family?", she was like, "I don't have family like that," and I felt really embarrassed.

Today at the coffee shop, I was talking with the (black) counter guy, and when I asked him how his Christmas was, he said it was good, only there were a lot of kids running around and it drove him crazy, and his girlfriend had skipped out from his family function since she was raised Jehovah's Witness and she still has a hard time dealing with stuff like that. After talking a while about how that's crap, he was like, "Next year, I'm gonna break her down and make her go," and I congratulated him on his Christmas spirit, which he found hilarious.

Lost my book.

I lost my book somehow when I was back home visiting friends on my way back to school, one of the cheap paperback books I get at garage sales and keep in my coat pocket to read if I'm bored but I won't get worked up about if I ever lose it:



The version I had had this lovely cover with daisies on it and really flower-y writing, saddly, but I am comforted to know that someone will find the book somewhere and be shocked by what they find, which is almost as good as the look on people's faces when they see me reading a book like that.

People on the train.

I met some interesting people on the train today, in reverse order --

3) An older Midwestern white woman who sat down with me in the dining car who had been in Abu Dhabi (sp.?) helping the airport there create an expansion plan. She kept talking about all her degrees, but when she asked if I would like to work in New York and I said it was too yuppie, she trashed it left and right and said she liked how Chicago is down to earth.

2) A well-dressed (dark jacket, subdued colored scarf) just-the-other-side-of-middle-aged white lady who I sat down with in the dining car when I was looking for space to spread out and do some Greek reading, and who turned out to be a Classics prof who knew people in my department. She did Latin satire, and was able to answer some questions I had about ancient philosophy.

1) This older white lady who was sprawled out on a seat when I first entered the train, and was covered in a blanket and had a neck-thing on for sleeping and looked like she didn't have that much money, and when we started talking, I found out she lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and when I asked her if she worked for the university, she was like, "Yes, I write about cheese," and it turned out that she was a science writer who worked on departmental newsletters that got sent out to dairy industry people about current research. I offered her a sausage from my unopened 4.5lb bag of sausage that the local convenience store owner in my hometown gave me the other day, and she laughed when I said I'd do it, even though it would cause the smell of sausage to waft throughout the car and give the Amtrak riders one more thing to complain about.

Also in the dining car was this really fat middle-aged woman from West Virginia who was wedged in the booth so her fat hung up on the table and down in below it, and who was in a "THIS BE ME LUCKY SHIRT" St. Patrick's Day shirt with a clover on it, and who would tell anyone who'd sit by her about her personal problems (her daughter had a boyfriend that she really loved but who broke up with her since he didn't feel like buying her a Christmas gift, her husband who's 61 left her for a 27-year old who wants his money and now her kids can't stand their father, etc.), and who would talk on her cell phone occasionally, though never about personal things, oddly.

Also also, when I went to the bathroom, I let this older black lady go ahead since I said I was just going to go brush my teeth and I could wait, and later on when I went back to my seat she gave a little smile-head nod thing to me.

Picture of Obama!

Artemis just e-mailed me a picture from the time when me and her saw Obama picking out his Christmas tree:

It looked a lot closer up in person.

Woke up this morning to a text from a friend:

My plane had in-air mechanical failure & we just did an emergency landing. I counted five fire trucks!

I called her and it turned out that as soon as her plane left Orlando and was just about to cross the Florida border, something was burning and they had to turn off the in-cabin air and turn around. They didn't use the slide, and when I called she was back in the terminal waiting for the next flight.

Dog names / coffee cups.

I'm staying at the house of my one friend from high school and her husband's house, and they just got a couple months ago a half-year old Golden retriever that had been pre-named "Bentley". I couldn't stand the name since it's kind of yuppie and doesn't roll off the tongue, so I kept calling it "Bender", and now her husband has started calling the dog "Bender" and is kind of pressuring her to change it.

Also, we went to this hipster breakfast place today -- the cook is tattooed, there's random 50s roadtrip souvenir shit on the walls, the food is kind of upscale yuppie-ish, there's a pirate theme in the logo on the menus and the doors -- hipsters are so predictable! -- and my friend after she got her coffee asked me to grab the empty coffee cup overturned on the placesetting next to me on the counter and give it to her, and it turned out that that one was dirty too, so she had to make do with the coffee cup she had, which had shit on the rim.

That reminded me back when I was a waiter at the local Big Boy back in high school. This one waitress Karen who smoked too much and said she hated everything about the restaurant (the manager, the people, the smell that stuck on your skin when you got home) but stuck with the job since the chain offered health insurance, used to have her after-shift coffee served to her in a white and not a brown cup in the booth where she'd count up her tips, even though customers would always get regular coffee in brown cups and decaf in white cups so that way waiters and waitresses walking around freshening up coffee with a pitcher of regular and a pitcher of decaf wouldn't have to ask customers who had what coffee and interrupt them.

Anyhow, one time I asked her why she demanded her regular coffee in a white cup, not a brown one, and she was like, "You can't tell the cup is dirty with a brown cup."

Years later I ran into her at the local coney island downtown, and you could tell she was very sick. I wanted to ask her about whether her health insurance came through for her when we talked, but it really wasn't the time or place.

Plus, years earlier I had heard a rumor she was excited about the Bob Evans opening up in town, since they offered health insurance too and it was her chance to leave Big Boy. Maybe she switched there and her insurance story was complicated.

What you do when you go to high school in Wheaton.

So, before I left for break to go visit my parents, I ran into this gone girl I know who grew up in Wheaton, Illinois, home of Wheaton College (the grand-daddy of all evangelicals in the U.S.), and also known sometimes as "the evangelical Vatican".

Anyhow, she said that back in high school the bad kids used to go occasionally t.p. the Theosophical Society.