$1 Vinyl Purchased at Amoeba Today

Orchestral Manouvers in the Dark, "Architecture and Morality"
Jim & Ingrid Croce, "Another Day, Another Town"
Jim Croce, "You Don't Mess Around With Jim"
CCR, "Bayou Country"
bonus: $1 cassette tapes of Police (Syncronicity) and B52s (Wild Thing)

I think my new mission in music listening is to go backwards in time. After conquering 8-tracks and reel-to-reels, I'll move on to 45s and then wax cylinders. Then music boxes.

Morning Sickness

Urgh. Every morning when I get out of bed, they attack. Allergies. Sneezing and snot and swollen eyes. The allergies persist throughout the day to lesser degrees, but they are always worst the first hour I'm up. It bites. What the heck am I allergic to? I've never had allergies before. Perhaps I'm allergic to morning. Perhaps I just need to get up earlier to beat the allergies. Jim Croce is playing again. I love 70s easy adult rock. It's the best, 70s AM rock (or is that 70s FM rock? I was just a wee thing at the time, I don't know). A scholar of rock history is taught to despise everything non-punk and non-glam that the 70s stood for, but I love mellow FM rock. If music sounds good, like it--that's pretty simple. Being good is cool, that's what I say. So all (well, most--a lot) of these Pitchfork bands around now, they are not cool because they are boring, and therefore not good. I'm picky. I like original-sounding stuff. Why listen to the Faint when you can listen to New Order? Why listen to anything when you can listen to Jim Croce? You don't mess around with Jim.

Underusing the Overused

My dictionary says that a pundit is a learned person, but in today's society, it means someone with a lot of opinions about politics and either a radio or cable talk show. A maven is an expert, but usually you see it used to describe Martha Stewart--people seem to assume there's something vaguely feminine about the word. Snarky was not in my dictionary, but it means snide and facetious. Critics are snarky. But I am sick of these words, and I'm trying not to use them. I also have sworn off "a potent stew of..." This is used to describe music that blends differnet genres in a new way, e.g. "Little Bobby Ray Mandell's haunting songs are a potent stew of grungy guitar, reggae backbeats, and suave, R & B-ballad vocals." (That's all made up, thank god.) Anyhow, I almost caught myself using it in an article the other day. No more potent stew! Maybe impotent stew, though. Like, Hobastank is an impotent stew of crap and shit. On the sincere side (that's without snark, kiddies) , I am very fond of Jim Croce these days. That's Lefty's Best New Music July 2005 Recommendation: Jim Croce.

New World Words

Pundit, maven, snarky.

Addicted to Hogwarts

Well, I'm not the only one. I finished "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" on Saturday night. I was fixing to reread the other 5 books in descending order, but the non-Harry Potter book that I put on hold just arrived at the library, so perhaps it's for the best that I take a Harry Potter break. Total brain immersion in one author's very complete alternate reality can do weird things to your body--see, the whole time I was reading H.P. #6, I couldn't run: I had very little energy, and I always felt hungover. That's no good! I did run yesterday, seeing as I had completed the book and needed to join the rest of the world...I decided to put a CD in the same telepohne pole where I found that teenage girl mix CD. I, however, am placing a Willard's Canteen CD there. It's my frind Matt's music project, and about the furthest thing from "#7 Kids Wanna Rock!" It's my own way of adding to the dialoge.

My Mission

This morning I ate two individual tomato aspic molds for breakfast, along with two pieces of multigrain toast. Mmm-good! I think I'm a little hungover, and nothing comforts the hungover tummy like a nice, easy-eating tomato aspic. It's like a blood mary withour the vodka, so it's much more wholesome. Full of lycopene, too. So while breakfasting on this forgotten delicacy, I realized that it's my mission to revive gel cookery. We are losing our gelatin salad heriatge. And some gelatin salads are good--I mean it! It's summer, and gel cookery coulsn't be easier or more refreshing. I have all kinds of cookbooks to assist me in my mission: Knox On-Camera Recipes, The New Joys of Jell-O, plus about 50 assorted Better Homes & Gardens nd Betty Crocker volumes from the 1950s, '60s and '70s. Get ready, world!

Blah-blah-blogs, Blah-blah-bombs

Two weeks ago Joe and I woke up to news of the London terrorist bombings; today, two weeks later, we did again. It sounds like this time around the terrorists didn't try very hard. You go, Tony Blair! Show those terrorists who's boss of your country. This is not happy news, but it's better news than it could be--which, in these times, you must settle for as good news on the international scale.

I bet all those professional bloggers are going nuts. You know the people I'm talking about, right? Those folks who think their blog is actually CNN? If Sneezy & Tacky were a cable channel, it would probably be Noggin or Lifetime or the Hallmark Channel. Definetly not FoxNews or CNN. I don't read blogs that are not about everyday life. Is this snobbism? Escapism? Whatever. I just don't understand how someone could feel compelled to run a 1-man/woman ameteur news outlet. I'm about as keyed in to the media revolution as a hermatic monk.

One apsect of my very recent life has become very monastic, and this is in my feverent devotion to study of the written word. That's right--the new Harry Potter installment has sucked me in. I could have stayed up until 2am reading it, but decided to save some for later; perhaps today I'll take off and read on a bench outside somewhere just to shake it up a little. I had forgotten how "The Order of the Phoenix" (Year 5) was very much of its time, in a way; Rowling worked in a lot of post-9-11 paranoia and beurocratic overreaction. So in Year 6, "The Half-Blood Prince,"we have a full-blown war happening, with security measures at their highest. Security...we all hear that word on television and news radio about a zillion times a day. When security works, it thwarts terrorist attacks--just like the foiled bomings in London today. But when security goes heywire, you get things like the Bush Administration using copies of the Geneva Act as butt-wipe. Well, I love my escapism--especially when it had a timely subtext. Today I hope a write a little, but I will probably read a lot of Harry Potter.

Teenage Hookers Slay the Crowd

Today my spacing is back. How wonderful--I can now write in paragraph form, just as I was taught in third grade. Or maybe fourth, I can't remember. It's funny how much you miss your spaces when they cannot be implemented. There's some funny Javascript going on that's always plaguing at least a few pages when I go online--if it's not Yahoo, it's Hotmail or this blog.

Last night I read at this little jazz club called Zebulon's. They have a weekly series of readings, and this was my fifth or sixth time there. Every time I swear will be my last--the reading starts at the totally geeky hour of 7pm. What kind of arts event begins at 7pm besides an elementary school play? 7pm is usually when we eat dinner, and it takes us an hour to drive to the venue, so nights when there are readings screw up mealtime badly. And the alcohol at the jazz club--which is indeed a swank little place--is out of a lowly writer's price range. You gotta be an investment banker to afford putting a drunk on at Zebulon's. But perhaps that's beneficial for me, as there's the hourlong drive home after the event.

The other glitch is the clientelle, the reading series regulars. While kind and responsive and supportive, they are mostly Sonoma County hippy-ish types in their 50s and late 40s who seem to prefer bland poetry to biting and insightful prose. And though I keep on getting invited back to read, I'm always curious who it is--outside of my friends who make the trip up, holla!--that wants me there.

Well, in the case of last night, it was our friend and co-conspirator Matt--who is, incidentally, performing our wedding ceremony next month. Matt had arranged the lineup for the evening, and it was 3/4 really engaging (the remaining 1/4 was good-natured but limp in his delivery, plus I was ditracted because I was on next). The evening totally defied my expectations. I always get grumpy at the thought of reading at Zebulon's and spending $15 on a glass of wine and being hungry because we missed dinner and gettign cornered by some talkative and slightly fawning 'Noma Countyite who appears somewhat imbalanced. It's flattering, but I think sometimes aspiring writer figure a little of you will rub off on them. And it's not like I'm all that successful, anyway. People ask how to get things published, and I say to just read a lot and make very focused pitches. I learned how to pitch from reading books at the library and just writing for free a lot--it's not hard to figure that out, but I guess people need person-to-person encouragement as well. So I'll tell them this, that all they need to do is put their noses to the grindstone, but they never seem to absorb it. I think what they want me to say is "I'll get you published! Just leave it to me!"

Anyway, last night was good. Matt read about going to Albertson's with his young son. No one writes about grocery stores better than Matt; he's very good at capturing the everyday horror we all take for granted. Our friend Schuyler(and future best man; 3/5 of the wedding party read that night) read this drunken rant he'd scribbled out a few years ago. On paper it failed to engage me--the fate of most drunken rants, especially my own--but Matt saw the piece's potential and encouraged Schuyler to go live with it. Schuyler's soft-spoken voice proved to be the perfect foil to the profane verbosity of the ting, and the audience was right there with him. Oh, and a mystery novelist read an amusing chapter from his current project, a selection that involved porn mags, buzz cuts, chain smoking, baby mice ("pinkies", they are called) and zoo caretakers.

Before leaving, I committed to reading in October at Comedy Improv Night. I guess some of my pieces were funny--most poular was "Mary Magdalanes at the Christian Bookstore" (available in unedited for on this very blog's archives!) People laughed mainly during the hooker passages, which I suppose are funny, but mostly they are sad and tragic; those girls were so young--teenagers, basically. I guess finding the humor in teenage hookers makes it an easier pill to swallow.

So check Sneezy & Tacky in October for another bitchy rant about reading at Zebulon's, which I hope will turn out to be fun after all, just like last night.

Kids Wanna Rock!

Today I found a mix CD stuck in the knot of a telephone pole. I was on my way home from the library and there it was, this CD in a jewel case jutting out of the pole like a badly hidden Easter egg. It wanted to be found. The CD jewel case had no cover, but on the CDR someone had written "#7 Kids Wanna Rock!" in black Sharpie. This set my expectations low--probably some bored teenage girl had burned about a dozen CDs (perhaps mine was #7), hoping place them at random locations around Albany to somehow touch the lives of other people; I suspect this because it's the sort of thing I would have done as a teenage girl, were CD burners around atr the time. Or perhaps someone was given the CD and found not worth keeping, so they stuck it in a telephone pole. "I can always throw the CD away and use the jewel case," I thought. Part of me wished the CD would offer amazing music, maybe some highly obscure 4-track recordings that an unknown prodigy was making in his or her basement. But no, the CD sounds exactly like a mix titled "Kids Wanna Rock!" should sound. There are a lot of cruddy new R&B songs at the CD's beginning, overproduced dance tracks with canned beats and girl singers doing that "ohhh-woo-woo bayybehhh" thing. I figured the whole CD would play out with more of the same until Track 6, which began with a familiar bass line and twangy guitar snippets--Alannah Myle's "Black Velvet"! That song was popular when I was in 8th grade, and I actually think it holds up pretty well today; it's a fine example of a country-tinged song that is, at its heart, pure Top 40 pop. The next song on the mix was Tone Loc's "Funky Cold Medina"--another 8th grade hit. Ahh, the late '80s. I wonder if, for someone who's in their early teens now, a song like "Black Velvet" is the equivalent of me putting some Stevwe Miller Band song on a mix tape...there was also a really crummy rock song (the eponymous "Kids Wanna Rock") that I thought was crappy new Aerosmith, but after a little Googling it turned out to be Bryan Adams. I know nothing about music, I realized. There are maybe three new bands that I like, and all of them have members in their early '30s. Maybe I should make a mix CD and stick copies in telephone poles across the San Francisco Bay...but I doubt that would accomplish much. CDs found in such places are from people like skitzophrenic conspiracy theorists (I found one such CD on a shelf while putting books away at my old library job--"Jews control the country by dominating the media!" kind of lunacy). Maybe I'll stick "#7 Kids Wanna Rock" in another telephone pole--I don't want to hang on to it much longer--but I'll have to listen to "Black Velvet" a few more times first.

Too Distracted to Ruminate

A whole bunch of little things happened this weekend. I don't feel focused enought to talk about them. I will say that I bought the new Harry Potter book, and at the Barnes & Noble they gave me a lightening-bolt scar tattoo and a pair of lens-free Harry Potter glasses. Today I should write a bunch of articles, but I also have to clean the house, balance my checkbook, update the wedding budget, get my hair cut, and make some food to eat this week. I should have gotten out of bed at 7:30 right after I woke up from that nice sex dream...but it's so hard to get out of bed after a sex dream. While I had my dream, Joe dreamed about me being mean to him and bossing him around. This does happen in real life to a degree, I must admit. I can be a mean person.

Sugar Tooth

I ate two cupcakes for breakfast this morning: one yellow cupcake and one chocolate cupcake, both with white icing. The icing was a failed batch of Seven-Minute Icing, which is a cooked icing made of egg whites and sugar that's snow-white and fluffy. You need a rotary beater to properly make Seven-Minute Icing, but I only have a standing mixer; I tried to adapt the recipe to use it instead of the rotary beater, but the icing didn't fluff up in the appropriate way. I iced the cupcakes with the stunted icing anyhow. This was last night, when I ate about five cupcakes. In the past fourteen hours, my poor belly has received nothing but cupcakes. I can feel the crusty sugar icing rotting my teeth away at this very moment...I made the cupcakes to test them out for the wedding. Everything is for the wedding, it seems. How did a simple afternoon in a park develop into this elaborate tangle of planning? I've always felt disdain for big weddings, but I fear that ours has mutated into one--and it's *our* doing. You go to weddings and notice this and that--adorable but useless favors, string quartets playing "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," fancy arrangements of cake layers, floral centerpieces--and think "Geez, I have no need or interest in this stuff." But you do...oh yes, in truth, a fierce little part of you *does* want these things, and, in spite of every independent fiber of your being bending otherwise, you WILL have these things. You WILL care about what color and font is used on your program, and which churchy song you play as a processional, and what silly little favor you can inscribe your names on. J & S, or Joe & Sara. Joe is pretty clueless about all of this stuff. He has the right idea. Me, it's too late for me. I've got a mother and a future mother-in-law chirping at me from two coasts about flower arrangements and canopies and all of this shit. I want to not care, but it's too late now. I activated the landslide, and all there is left to do is slide with it until it all compounds into what will hopefully be a really cool day one month from now. I want to have fun and I want other people to have fun, and that's what all of this work is for. I hope.

Just Like a 50s Mom

I made a dress yesterday. I felt like sewing, not writing--so I sewed. The ability to make my own clothing is very appealing to me; I like its combination of empowerment and thriftyiness. I'm still learning, though, and for the time being it's best if I stick to those patterns that say stuff like "EASY! 1-Hour Sew-Fast!" Usually such patterns don't require sewing buttonholes or zippers or complicated plackets and internal pockets. I still have trouble with darts--darts and fitting. I could never be a tailor. My most common problem is that I put all kinds of effort into making something and then it turns out fitting badly--too baggy or floppy. This is what I get for buying vintage patterns at the junk store without looking to see what size they are first...The dress I made yesterday is actually an apron--either that or a dress patterned after an apron. It had an open back, like a sundress, and a sash that ties in the front. The butt part is all covered up because one sash goes through a little hole in the left front like Diane Chambers' barmaid's apron on "Cheers." I tried the dress on and noticed how if I leaned over a certain way, boob vivibility was something like 80%. I didn't like the feeling of my little boobs flopping around, but it was hot and still I wore the dress. When Joe got home he said "What is that thing--an apron? Why are you wearing an apron?" It is cute, though--I made it with a very '50s vintage cotton fabric in a grey, pink, and white floral print that could masquerade as old kitchen wallpaper. The pockets and the halter strap are decorated with pink rick-rack...I couldn't not wear the dress today. It's going to be hot in here (it's always 10 degrees hotter in here than outside for some reason), and I love wearing sundresses when it's hot; it's a woman's entitlement in the summertime. So today I'm wearing the apron/sundress over a pink cotton shell top. That way I can wear a bra and not have my boobs flop around. The pink top only accentuates the apron look, but I guess I do spend a lot of time wearing aprons--just like a mom in the 1950s, which I can't complain about.

Walk On By

Last week I was in downtown Petaluma for an interview--an interview for my music column, not a job interview. This very nice musician named Kirana met me at the local non-Starbucks coffee shop. Afterwards, on my way back to my car, I passed a few spots where I used to cat around a little bit, like Gale's Saloon. I once caused a drunken scene there and had to be dragged out of the bar. It's not a thing I'm proud of, but it did happen (only once, thankfully)...Those emotionally corrupt times are past me now, and thinking back on the loutish wannabe I was back then and the self-involved people I hung out with makes me uncomfortable. I think I needed that part of my life to happen, but I'm happy it's behind me. So I usually get squirrelly in Petaluma, thinking I'll run into someone I used to know but would have no idea what to say to now...and then I did pass somene. It was this crazy guy who used to be in this sample-based band/music project. We went out on a date once, and in the middle of the thing he informed me that we were not on a date. But then he said that he was too drunk to go home and he should stay with me, so we talked in my room all night long. I was super horny and wanted to engage in some physical contact, but out of respect for his "let's just be friends" position I retrained myself. It was terribly awkward...He revealed to me that he was into submissive S&M stuff, and throught the lens of retrospect I can now recall that my cone-breasted, black-corseted Madonna costume was hanging in plain view in my closet, which had no door. Perhaps he had read me the wrong way, pegging me for a dominatrix type--if he saw the Madonna costume, that only could have confirmed it! But, being a shy dork with no dominatrix skills or desires, I could not and would not deliver. He didn't know that the Madonna costume--albeit sexy and domineering--was only dress-up for Halloween. We went to Denny's and had a very early breakfast, then I got dressed and went to work, where in a drowsy haze I retraced the steps of the evening and tried to make sense of it all...I really did like the guy. He was cute and talented and unavailable and mentally unstable, a combination I always fell for. For a good few months I fixated on him, but, save a few cryptic phone messages, he made himself scarce. Then I met the man who would become my husband, whose kindness and unspoilable goodness and honesty quickly erased the spectre of this manic-depressive, sexually submissive sampling musician from my brain...But then in Petaluma the other day, I saw him walking down the sidewalk in these 1960s throwback rocker sunglasses. What should I do--pretend I didn't see him and walk on by? No, that never works; people can sense the effort you out into not looking at them. So I looked right into his eyes (or rather, directly into his sunglasses) and smiled as we passed each other. He nodded kindly, but didn't smile much. And we both kept on walking and that was it...I was overjoyed. He he not recognized me? Had he recognized me but not known how to react with my own superior looking-directly-in-the-eyes manouver? It didn't matter--I was long ago released from the chains of doting on idiotic man-boys, and I was overjoyed to realize that I didn't really care what this guy thought one way or the other. I thought of that Burt Bacherach song "Walk On By," which is a great song, especially the Dionne Warwicke version. But the melancholy sentiment of hearbreak in the song was gleefully inappropriate for the situation, so intead I just thought about how much I liked that song, and where Joe and I would go for dinner that night.

Don't Know How to Recycle

What's up with this white space? I thought it kept appearing because I am a dunderhead (there's that functionless ENERT key problem, too), but I checked the updates page--which is actually a Blogger blog--on Jonathan Ames' website, and he has a massive white space too! I was thrilled and soothed; Jonathan Ames and I have the same computer problems! He's probably a computer dunderhead, too, but he's also had a number of books published, and so I find it inspiring that we are equally illeterate when it comes to Blogger. Perhaps he's using a Dell Inspiron 1000 just like me, who knows?...My fanny hurts from the bike ride still. Fanny is a perfect word for it, too: in America, a fanny is a butt, but in countries of British persuasion it means poonanny. My butt and a small region of my poon are sore from the bike ride, so let's collectively an intercontinentally call this anatomy my fanny...My allergies are acting up again. It's because of the mold in the windows; they were never this bad before, but now that I spend most of my day here in the apartment I have swollen, itchy eyes and a nose like a gooey waterfall. I could ask our landlord, Mary, if she could replace the windows--they're pretty much shot. I've tried to clean them, but it's a thankless task. I'm afraid to ask her about he windows, though, because what if she replaces them and then raises the rent? She's a really nice lady in her late 60s who lives in this same building; she and her husband Ernie lived here, but Ernie died last summer, and I think since then Mary's been depressed. She's still pretty active, but I realize things will never be the same around these apartments...A while ago we got new trash cans. The city switched over to a solid waste recyling program, which means you can dump yard clippings and any food waste (including, like, raw chicken bones) straight into these big green bins. The city picks this up weekly and sells it to a composting company. I was quite excited over the prospect--less landfill waste! So I started dumping our food waste in the green bin, but there were always plastic bags full of wadded-up Kleenex in there. For a while I moved them out, but other non-compostable trash would show up in the green bin in place of the plastic bags: silk flowers, styrofoam packing material. I'm no astrophysicist, but I do know that plastic will not decompose in a compost pile. Neither will styrofoam. It made me mad--I knew it was Mary doing it, because at one point she had voiced her intention to put her food waste in plastic bags before placing it in the green bin. I didn't tell her that plastic bags defeated the whole point. Why not? I guess there's a part of me that does not want to tell my 60-something landlard that she's wrong and stupid. She's very nice--nice in a boring way--but she never came across as dumb. Perhaps there's a generational thing, some block programmed into her head and now she can't conceive the reality that you can compost organic waste but not petrolium-based products. But I think other people in their 60s and 70s could...I decided not to let Mary's possible ignorance keep me from composting, so I started moving the plastic basgs out of the bins and dumping our carrot peels and corncobs right in the green bins. After about a week, there was a note on the green bin: "All trash going into this bin MUST be in a plastic bag." Jesus. That's Mary for sure. I don't like thinking she's dumb, and I'm too much of a coward to tell her she's wrong. So I'll just not compost and sit here in allergic misery with these moldy windows because I am a wuss.

Patriotism Liveson a Schwinn

Yesterday my friend Bryan and I rode bikes all over his neighborhood. It was the 4th of July and a perfect summer day, really clear and sunny and hot the way it gets in inland Sonoma County--much more like the summer days of my childhood than the ones here in the Easy Bay, where it takes until past noon for the fog to burn off. I rode his wife's Schwinn, which is the "Good Vibrations" model. It has boxy wire baskets on the back. Bryan rode his bike, which is "Hollywood." Hollywood. What a great name--really, do you think anyone in crummy old Hollywood rides cruisers around except for vatos?...I hadn't been on a bike in at least a year. We had a really cool brown Schwinn 5-speed with collapseable wire baskets on the back, but Joe rode it to Trader Joe's one day to quickly get eggs and milk. He didn't lock up the bike and guess what? Some dillhole stole it. That'll learn us...I love cruisers. They are so much easier to ride than fancy 10-speeds or mountain bikes--I hate those strap-in foot holders, and I hte that click-grind noise when you change gears. Cruisers are all about cruising. We pedaled over to the elemetary school and I rode around in circles on the playground, swerving gently between the basketball hoops...We pedaled all over, to this private pool and tennis club and to another high school and to another elementary school and past a few houses where Bryan used to live, plus past this creek where an older kid he knew once found a decomposing baby's head in a jar...Most of the time were'nt even on roads, but these little paved paths that criscrossed backyards and property lines. When we did ride on streets, they were quiet and wide with hardly any traffic. Houses had American flags out, but most everyone was either in their backyards or cowering inside in the coolness of the air conditioning...I didn't have a helmet on, plus I was wearing flip-flops. When I was little, my Mom wouldn't let me ride my bike in flip-flops, so yesterday I wore them on purpose. It is dangerous to wear flip-flops on a ten-speed, but on a cruiser on lazy neighborhood streets it's pretty okay. It's just fine. Good Vibrations was a little too small for me and my knees started to hurt, but we kept on going all over the place, just for fun. I felt like I was 10 again. It was the best. I don't think there's any better way to celebrate freedom and democracy than riding bikes for 2 hours on a patch of neighborhood that's probably 3 square miles. That's what America is all about. I love America and I'm taking it back, one cruiser at a time.

Home Alone

I got super bored last night. Joe's gone with his band on a mini-tour to San Diego. That leaves me alone for a few days over this holiday weekend, though for me at this moment every weekend is a holiday weekend. In a way it makes holidays less special, althoughI can't claim to not enjoy this windfall of personal time. There's only one glitch: money. I'll be okay for a while, but I don't like t spend money if I'm not making money. And I think it's silly to get a job before the wedding, because I want to use this time to focus on writing. Yesterday was going to be my writing day, but instead it became cleaning day. Cleaning the apartment taps a lot of juice from a gal--I clean very thoroughly. So I didn't write. This morning I made potato salad and burnt-sugar gelato, recipe I'm playing around with for articles about potato salad and ice cream. So it's not writng, but it is necessary. Food articles are fun, but they take a little more investment of personal time, plus the cost of recipe-testing ingredients. So even though I can make $150 on a 1400-word article about ice cream, it's really more like $115 after everything is said and done. Ah, the life of an artist. The burnt-sugar gelato was an experiment, and a semi-failed one; the gelato is silky-smooth, but it tastes like...burnt sugar. Oh, well--back to the drawing board. I guess whole milk and white sugar don't really cost so much after all.

Kickin' It Delia's Catalog Style

It's 7pm and I need to get a move on if I wanna run, which I do. Today was yet another day committed to WEDDING. Joe and I went to the county clerk's office to get our marriage license. In California, they replaced the blood tests with this lame-o booklet called "Your Future Together" which talks about genetic diseases and domestic violence and getting enough folic acid--you know, all of the things that a couple needs to know about to stay together. The booklet is illustrated with these incredibly retarted drawings--like clip art that a 10-year-old traced. Message to single folks: get married, because it's totally worth it for the booklet. ...Then we got our wedding rings from this 78-year-old jewlernamed V.G. White. The "V" stands for Verl. It was slow in the store and Verl was all about talking. He's a neat old guy who's happy to share his stories. Joe was conflicted about this, because he had to pee badly and didn't want to be rude and leave in the middle of V.G. White's story.... Then we went to the Dick Blick art store and bought more wedding stationery supplies: a guest book, some fancy pens, and a decent glue stick (I fully endorse Uhu Color Clue Stick--Avery Color Glue Stick is crap! Go for the best!) Joe was supposed to help me with the invitations today, but instead he went to San Francisco to "check out the Mission." Gee, that must be nice. So I put on some nice old-fashioned punk rock (the Queers, the Raincoats, the timeless punk vixen Loretta Lynn) and set up a wedding invitation sweatshop. Most of the elements were in place; I just had to address and assemble everything, plus use the paper cutter for some trimming. It's fun work, brainlessly creative . I now have tremendous respect for anyone who's ever had a wedding...I pulled a serious fashion crime yesterday. I had on this cute horizontally-striped dress that I'd made. It's on the short side and has longish sleeves and a floppy turtleneck collar, very early 70s. I was going to walk to the store when I caught a sunbeam illuminating my figure in the mirror, and I realized that, in the sunlight, the dress is somewhat sheer on the bottom.....There's a photo of Princess Diana back when she was still just Engaged Diana. The sun is shining through her lightweight skirt and you can see the outline of her thighs and crotch. The picture became a sensation/scandal and really embarrassed her. It was probably the first incident in a chain of episodes that she regretted--i.e. her entire marriage. So, as a tribute to Princess Diana, I decided not to make the same mistake myself. I'm still getting married, because I love Joe even if he is flaky about helping with the invitations. But I wasn't going outside in that dress. So, in a fit of laziness, I pulled on this pair of grey low-waisted pedal pushers: the dreaded dress-with-pants combo! I looked like an older version of a Delia's catalog model. Not too bad, I guess. But I hope this will not be the start of a bad fashion habit.