Apples of the Earth and Chicken of the Sea

Three times now here in Vienna I've been served dishes that combined potatoes and tuna and I must say they're pretty good, the tuna gnocchi being the best, kosher even if you leave off the parmesean (is that how it works?).  Also, the Esterhazytorte, hands down the best torte.  Leaves the Sachertorte in the dust, eating its hazelnut crumbs.  Am I considering leading the trend of elastic-waisted pants?  Why yes, yes I am.

Some other observations of Vienna:

1. At any given constructions site, at least three males though likely many more, ages varying from 3 yrs on up to 80, will be up against, even leaning over the fence to observe the work at hand.  Basically, construction sites draw crowds.  This happens in Germany too but the Germans are more demure, they stand back a ways and watch quietly.  Here though there is much more engagement.  It's like a team effort with the citizenry.  Yesterday I observed a mini lecture some man was giving his wife about the pavers being used on the Fussgangerzone refurbishment.  Granite is better because it is more magical?  Clearly my German vocabulary is limited by the fact that I've mostly only read documents on sensory perception theory and the Harry Potter books.

2. Fruit and bears I've never even heard of.

3. It's heartbreakingly hot here.  Like, right now, I'm in a crumpled heap on the floor, feeling sorry for myself.  At least Mississippi has air conditioning.

4. I've found that I can ward off the Haydns peddling concert tickets in the Altstadt with the same death-stare that I mastered and employed against the Lyndon LaRouche campaigners at UCLA.

5. Prater Park has trampoline cages!  I'm sure that's not what they're called, but, well they're hard to describe.  A bank of square trampolines separated by soft netting.  I'm guessing they're used for exercise but they look like a bouncy castle subdivision.  Ultimately, they're kind of creepy, each with a different 7 yr-old inside, shrieking as they jump up and down, a little too much like the lemur exhibit at the San Diego Zoo.

Okay!  Back to work!  I finished at the archives yesterday and now I am not allowed to leave my seat until I finish my abstract and my conference talk.  It's just me and the cracked Obama-Biden mug that I discovered with some delight in the cabinet of the apartment I'm subletting here against the world.

All Austro-Hungarian Empire All the Time!

If it wasn't built by the Hapsburgs, then it's not worth looking at.

It's not weird to have coffee with someone you met on the street that was dressed up like Haydn if he takes off his cravat first right?  He says he's also a professional violinist but maybe he says that to all the girls.

It's like The Blair Witch Project but in an 11th-century church, in a former DDR town, anytime between the year 2000 and 2639

John Cage's "As Slow As Possible" is being performed very very slowly in Halberstadt, Germany.

It is a rather strange little town (really cute medieval town center though).  When I first arrived I bought a piece of strawberry cake thing from a bakery.  When I asked the cashier for a fork she seemed insulted and waved me away.  Later, when I ordered a "turkish pizza" out of curiosity at a glum little kneipe I was handed what was essentially a burrito but longer and narrower, pretty much one of the most phallic things I've ever, um... paid for?  The woman instructed me to "eat it like a banana" and then added "See!  You don't need a fork!"

Halberstadt is, apparently, a town without forks.

So that was my outing for today.  Tomorrow I take a tram to a train to the S-bahn to a bus to a plane to a train to a different S-bahn and end up in Vienna.

Some general complaints about Leipzig:

1. The main reading room in the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek is surprisingly drafty.  My fingers turned blue yesterday!  Blue!  Though this may also have been because I was wound up into a tight little knot (stress causes cold hands right?) reading Richard Wagner's wife, Cosima's diary entries about her relationship with Friedrich Nietzsche.  Talk about vitriol.

2. The stupid trams.  They fly around the corner with no warning!  Especially that Number 2 line.  I suppose it doesn't help that I'm staring at the ground, concentrating on getting all the words right to The Decemberists songs.  Still.

3.  The buttons on the remote control at my hotel here are totally lacking in labels.  I was stuck watching a show about ladybugs at a very high volume for a while there.

Some begrudging admissions about Leipzig:

1. The honor system beer fridge at the hotel is pretty awesome.  Not least because it's stocked with some wonderful beer.

2. Free summer evening chamber music concerts on the front steps of the Thomaskirche (where J. S. Bach and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdys were both kantors) also classy.

3. Some evidence to further inform the ongoing debate over whether Kant meant his use of "noumenon" to be synonymous with his use of "thing-in-itself", both distinguishable from the "phenomenon" of appearance only: Taye Diggs dubbed in German remains Taye Diggs!

Also, I've been thinking a lot lately about children, whether I want any, etc.  I've come to the conclusion that while I'm still generally ambivalent about the prospect, that if I can name my child Ned Nederlander, then I'm 100% on board.

If I close the balcony door, the entire apartment smells like the shag rug in the master bedroom.

If I open the balcony door, five flies come in and circle lazily under the chandelier.

It is a strange dilemma to be faced with but a dilemma nonetheless.

I kickbox for honor. I kickbox for glory.

Some time has passed, allowing me to really work through some of the choices I've made.  I think that I can now say with confidence, that I forgot to pack:

1. My c.phil. to give to Thomas.

2. My favorite pair of black pants.

3. My map of Berlin.  Or did I trade it with Kalil for The Brothers Karamazov?

4. Learn Hungarian in Ten Days or Less!

5. My dignity.

So, I moved across the neighborhood today.  My new sublet is further from the Staatsbibliothek but its cheaper and bigger.  My place last week had a spectacular view (Behold kickass nightview!) but was a bit of a mausoleum.  Like, big blocks of marble/concrete that both muffled all outside noise and amplified your every footstep.  The only sign of of human life (besides the one-man dance parties in my studio) was a short elevator ride I took with a very old man.  After he pressed the button for 11 and I pressed the button for 12 he said something like: "you live on the floor right above me!"  To which I could only truthfully reply: "yes."

I'm going out on a limb here, but if we were to treat Kreuzberg as the Brooklyn of Berlin.  And call my old neighborhood Carroll Gardens.  I am now in East Flatbush, though with more Turks.  I have no idea what the crap I'm talking about.  Anyway, the best part about the new place is that its another family's actual home (the other place was a perpetual short-term sublet) so there's all sorts of charming signs of life.  Like the little girl's paper crown with glued-on feathers sitting on top of the tv.  And the complete discography of Stevie Wonder.

So twice now I've nearly been run over by bicycles, and once by the gay pride parade, because I've stopped abruptly to look at concert fliers papering some wall.  Joe Satriani and Sammy Hagar are in town apparently.  But really, what I may make some extra time for, is the Queen cover band performing at the Planetarium.  The show is titled "Queen in Heaven."  

Awesome.  

Send me all my books and stuffed animals.  I'm not leaving.

shyly, she resumes

Meine Lieblings!  

I have returned.  Both to the blogosphere and Berlin.  

As has, apparently, the Empire.  

We will both try to behave better.

Some why questions about the new house

Some resolved.  Some not.

1. Why is the toilet seat sticky?

Not resolved.

2. Why is there no hot water in the bathroom and yet plenty in the kitchen?

Resolved!

3. Why, at 10:30 pm on my third night here do all these gnats show up?

Not resolved.

4. Why would someone hang pictures with machine screws?

Not resolved (though removed and now there are enormous holes in the wall)

5. Why would someone design a dryer so that there's no easy way to remove the bottom or the siding to fish out the single (and last) screw that is dropped in the outer casing while rewiring the stupid thing for a 4-prong plug (the irony is that I dropped it right as I was thinking how terrible it would be if I dropped it)?

Resolved!

6. Why did I have to see what was both the biggest black widow and the biggest spider I've ever seen on the front porch twenty minutes after moving my last box into the house.

Resolved!  Well, that particular spider has been "resolved."

Okay, I've run out of steam.  I suppose I should go fold my laundry (I'm quite pleased with myself for rewiring my dryer correctly/the house hasn't burned down yet!).

Last week I turned 29.  

And I moved into a new house.  

And I gave birth to triplets without an epidural.

Tomorrow is the last day class.  I will have completed my first year as a professor.

Right this very moment I am either: 

a) stretching out this new hat 

b) squeezing my brain

Does anyone else giggle a little upon hearing that the Ido version of Wikipedia is "Wikipedio"?

Or that the Esperanto version is "Vikipedio"?

Some new developments

1. I use emoticons in emails now without irony and hate myself for it.

2. I have renewed an old college crush on an old college professor - he puts the dap in dapper!

3. I am moving in three days and have not yet even begun to pack.  I suppose this is actually a complete lack of development, though I have reserved a truck and informed all my largish friends that they will be helping me.

4. I am now of the firm belief that eating four waffles and an entire mango before a run is a bad idea.

Clearly, my congressman has not been reading my letters carefully.

The weather has been crazy.

Last week we received an alert to stay away from windows because of severe thunderstorms.  I looked at the satellite imagery online and we were in the middle of the red patch!  I've never been in the red before, meteorologically I mean.

And now, we officially have a freeze watch in effect.  Maybe more snow.

I dragged all my newly-potted herbs and lettuces and peppers inside to hang out with us in the warmth of the living room.  Which means we now have enough players for a wicked game of Citadels!

In the last five days I have:

1. driven over 26 hours

2. been in six different states

3. slept a total of 23 hours

4. eaten an entire bag of bbq-flavored kettle chips

5. probably wasted quite a bit more, but definitely wasted at least two hours of my life watching the Sex and the City movie at the hotel instead of going to bed.  Man, its been a long time since I've seen a movie so bad that it made me conscious of my mortality.  It ended and I thought, "wow, I died a little."

Guess who just committed to a 3-1 course load for the next academic year along with a whole crapload of other tasks?  That's right.  She has two thumbs and is named Alix and recently ate an entire bag of bbq-flavored kettle chips.  2009 will be the year my hair turned grey.

Here are Naamah and I on the beach in Tel Aviv.  That's Jaffa in the background.  We had just finished lunch at Manta Ray and were hunting the biggest feral cat ever.  It was a bobcat.  Like, a yeti.

I know.  I know.  Tomorrow for sure.  I promise.

Here are some pictures from Israel, as a down payment.  They are, in loosely descending order (you're smart and cultured, you should be able to figure them out yourself): the port of Jaffa, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, a goalie near the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (that's the Mount of Olives in the background), street leading to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and spices at the market in Tel Aviv.

I could never be an agent of international espionage.

The jetlag is too taxing.

The legacy of the short fork

It occurs to me right now that I am rarely left alone in somebody else's house. I suppose this makes a lot of sense, given that I am neither a burglar (five tries to spell that correctly) nor a stalker, but it still feels very strange being left to my own devices with somebody else's belongings. I just dropped Matt (My Matt? Old Matt? versus Mississippi/Scrabble/Taller Matt?) off at the Altanta airport and now I'm killing a few hours in his apartment before heading back to the airport for my own departure to Israel (If you hear a thunderous noise and then notice the skies darkening it is because I've finally unleashed the full extent of my wrath on Delta Airlines. I can't think of a more appropriate place than the site of our first encounter: Atlanta International Airport). Andohmygoditssotemptingtomesswithhisthings. An avid follower of The Office, and something akin to a master prankster, I think Atlanta Matt (Sacramento Kings Matt? Self-designed Public Health Major Matt?) would appreciate the violation of his home. So here are some quick ideas. There are pros and cons to each, the first of which comes to mind is my lack of fishing line. And a dead bird.

1. Sharpie out the digital temperature display on his enormous wine fridge.
2. Set all of his clocks ahead 41 minutes.
3. Dead bird in the cereal box prank.
4. Cut the crotch out of all his pants prank (Hepatitis C Matt himself once threatened to do this to me. That would certainly show him, Hubris Matt)
5. Take all the screws out of his ironing board - or is this breaking stuff now?
6. The old release three chickens, painted with the number 1, 2, or 5, in the apartment prank ("Ahhh! Where are chickens 3 and 4?").
7. attach fishing line to all of the items on his desk, send it over the back of his desk, and then lash it to the bottom of his desk chair.
8. Hide all but the short fork* which, surprisingly, he still owns
9. Sign all of his framed art/photos with "Best Wishes Friend! -Garrison Keillor"
10. Using the contents of his enormous jar of capers, spell out on the refrigerator shelf: "Capers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!"

I should probably just get some grading done. Bah.



* When Indie Rock Matt and I lived with another couple back in grad school, the other couple and I and a bunch of our friends colluded to only allow Only Child Matt to use the lame, short-handled fork. We would always set his place at the table with it, sometimes frantically washing it while distracting him, before lunch, dinner, whatever. So this went on for months and he never noticed that it was deliberate, even though he'd often launch into long riffs on how terrible this stupid short fork was. Anyway, we finally broke down one day and fessed up, mostly because we were giggling about it all the time. Fun times at 851 20th St.

comets grow back tails!

just like lizards!

"Please tell me about your mother"

As a cultural/intellectual historian, I don't often feel comfortable framing the world's events in terms of causes and effects.  And as a post-poststructuralist (I suppose), though admittedly becoming increasingly interested in Epicurean epistemology, I certainly question whether we can make truth-claims about a world external to ourselves.  Shoot, I even question whether we can honestly make truth-claims about ourselves.  That being said, because I now have an income that doesn't require as much close monitoring and because I decided this week to play a little technological catch-up, I decided to set up online bill-pay.  See, this rambling introit (wow, introitus is a very different word) is to lead up to the effect: I set up online bill-pay this week.

When you set up online bill-pay with SallieMae you are eligible for a monthly contest to have up to $25,000 of your students loans paid off!  So I was on board (another cause for the effect I guess and see, this is why strict causality in the history of ideas is so problematic; individuals draw on a constellation of resources to motivate their thoughts and behaviors).  Anyway, when setting up your online account you must also set up no less than five "challenge questions" and their affiliated answers (case sensitive!  note to self not to forget that).  I flipped through the options: your first car, your first school, the name of your favorite pet, etc.  

Then one in particular caught my eye: your worst fear.

wha?

Do people actually use that one?  And if they do what kind of answers do they give?  I mean, if I had to use it I suppose I'd probably say something like "millipedes" or "tornadoes with alligators in them."  But do other SallieMaeonline members give answers like "dying alone"?  I'm really curious now.  Oooh, or maybe SallieMae has an automatic answer for that one of "debt collectors."

Things that are cheaper in Mississippi

1. dry cleaning

2. beer

3. over-the-counter pregnancy tests

(yes, they're listed in descending order of cost)

So I've started hanging out with a group of local cyclists.  Sort of.  In the sense that I go to their Thursday evening bring-your-own-wine to the Italian/Bagel place.  Some of them are also runners and have an informal running group which they invited me to join. Wanting to make new friends I said sure.  And thinking that I could keep up with a bunch of forestry professors I joined them in their morning run yesterday.  

We met at the track.  

A bad sign.  

What kind of casual running group does interval training at 6 am?!

I mean, I like running 800s as much as the next person but I don't know if this is best way to meet new people, being that I was fighting back an asthma attack the whole time. 

Then, when I got back to my car I discovered that the first robin of spring had pooped on my door handle.

I may just go back to drinking beer with the philosophers.

Today I ate six cookies!

sublimity - bump; secretiveness - declension; philoprogenitiveness - by=ump

So the very best thing about my Valentine's "date" was that I had a phrenological reading done of my head by a specialist in Victorian literature.

The raw results:

order - bump

number - declension

form - bump

poetry - declension

sublimity - bump

benevolence - bump

veneration - bump

agreeableness - bump

youth -bump

imitation - bump

destructive - mega bump

cautiousness - bump

secretiveness - declension

ideality - bump

parental - bump

philoprogenitiveness - bump

The analysis:

Intellectual: Excessively organized, incredibly good spatial sense, no talent in poetry

(I figure this is why I'm so good at efficiently loading the dishwasher)

Moral: Kind to fellow man/woman... excellent at mimicking others and generally able to acclimatize to any social environment

Animal: Has grounded sense of purpose, able to keep secrets... enjoys destroying things and watching destruction

yup.  sounds about right.

yip! yip! yip! yip!  Spring is coming!  Spring is coming! Spring is coming I can feel it I can smell it the sunlight is changing and the days are getting longer and the daffodils are coming and the bugs are starting to buzz again and I'm going to have in-laws very soon happy birthday Mr. Darwin and Abe Lincoln and Adam Boardman I am a magician I am a rabbit and I AM SO EXCITED!  aaiiiiIIIIIIII!

And I just spent all day boring students to death with the history of science and now its the weekend and I don't want to work so I'm settling down on the couch with my doggy and a copy of Jose Saramago's greatest hits.  No, not in the original Portuguese.  Rebecca if this is boring I'm going back to watching the King of Queens.  Or prepping more history of science lessons.  Its like the same thing.  Lavoisier pretty much was a UPS driver until the Jacobins cacked him.

Question for the team: Do I call/email/bother contacting Captain Surly on Saturday (which is also Valentine's Day) to wish him a happy birthday?  Its been over a year now, perhaps I should be supportive of him turning 43? By 43 I mean 32.  Oooh!  A poll!  Take the poll!

Student Evals Are In!

"She was more than monotone.  That's all that needs to be said if Ph.D. precedes her name."

I'm going to take that one as a compliment.

And as an excuse to incorporate more puppetry and ventriloquism into my lectures ("HEEEEY KIDS!!!  My name is Chuckles!  Ph.D. Hui invited me here today to tell you all about the Jacobins! YAAAAY!").  

a recent conversation

Kroger's employee: How're you doin' today ma'am?

me: Good, good.  How are you?

Kroger's employee: I'm good, thank you.  Have you got a buggy?

me:.... what? oh.  no.

Kroger's employee: No? Alright, well I'll pack these the best I can.

me: okay.

Yeah, its been a real dry spell with the entertaining conversations that offer insight on local culture.  He was asking if I had a cart.  I know, not funny at all.  I'll just make the next one up.

presently

Ego is charmed by the spectacle of a certain red dog dreaming, all snuffly and twitchy-footed.

Ego is also cheered by the lyricism of John Legend.

Ego is, however, generally disgruntled by the prospect of spending the entire night revising an article draft.  Bah.  Is it worth three months off every summer?  Probably.  But still, selfishness, shortsightedness, and an infinite well of misplaced outrage are the only way to be ideologically consistent.  Not sure where I'm going with that (anywhere I want, dammit).

The Sign!

The one out on Hwy 182 was gone before I could get around to taking a picture of it.  But Ellen found a photo of it on the web.  She rightly noted that the "Our children can't read" phrase does not begin with an "if," so the "We are all losers!" is an independent claim.  Laughing and crying at the same time always makes me want to crawl back into bed.

Unicycle Watch 2008: A Retrospective

Open with a montage of slow-motion, sun washed clips of boys wobbly, then mastering their unicycles, milk carton fights in the middle of the street, diligently practicing jumps and spins on their homemade obstacle course...  

(the shrieks of happy children and strains of something nostalgic in the background?  Maybe Louis Armstrong's "It's a Wonderful World"?)

I realized that I hadn't seen the unicycling brothers in a while.  I thought it might be the weather keeping them in.  Or the new season of Big Love.  But their prolonged absence makes me think the cause is more sinister or at least more mysterious.  Like the Mycenaeans, a bright spot in the history of civilization, then never to be heard from again, likely sacked by the Dorians.  Which would explain all the yelling I heard from that end of the cul-de-sac last week, come to think of it.

Well yesterday while walking the dog I noticed the older one in the front yard awkwardly talking to a gangly tween.  Oh.  How pedestrian.  Same timeless story of little boys outgrowing their toys.  Jackie Paper abandons his dragon once again.

Fade out from a still of unicycle lying in the front yard, rusting from its own tears.

Januaries everywhere are out to get me.

Surprisingly, the dog is really warming up to my roommate's new treadmill.

Did it snow in Mississippi today?

Why yes it did.

I was just discussing with my bro that I get a warm fuzzy feeling from the thought that any nearby racists that muttered to themselves during the campaign something along the lines of "...when hell freezes over" are both disappointed and really cold right now.

Turns out, in Mississippi-speak, that "coney" = "hotdog"

Additionally, "tots" = "tater tots" but I figured that one out on my own.

Who's excited for the Mississippi Barrel Racing Futurity at the Mississippi Horse Park this weekend?!

Mais, bien sur.  C'est moi!

Well cut off my arms and call me a ficus!*

It's raining!

Normally, after only two days of delicious, life-affirming sunshine, I wouldn't be so enthusiastic about a Mississippi downpour.  But, well, I'm quite pleased about this one because I correctly predicted its arrival.  Having spent nearly my entire life in California the dramatic changeability of weather here rattles me, like, deep down to my existential core.  I do not like that it can be nearly 70 degrees and muggy in the morning and threatening "snow showers" by dinner.  Anyway, I hopped out of bed this morning, took a look at the sky and decided I needed to get the yard work done early (a family of earthworms has taken up residence in my compost heap so its really humming along now), did that, then took the dog for a walk.  

We ran into a friend in the neighborhood and I pointed out that it was good that we were walking before the sky opened up.  She replied, " Really?  You think it's going to rain?" with all the diffidence fitting of a person that has spent a lifetime with curly, red hair (which she has).  I said I'd give it two hours, tops, with all the confidence of a person that won every schoolyard fight by resorting to biting (which I did).  2:52 pm it began to rain.  If I see her again soon I'm going to lord my meteorological skills over her.  Because, well, isn't that why people live in small, neighborly towns?  In order to be mildly resentful of everyone?

And speaking of clenched jaws, though more in an effort to not burst out laughing, I was walking back to my car after an evening in the Starkville town center when my very best student from last semester toddled up to me with his hiccuping friend, and, with arms open wide, shouted "Hey Alexandra!"  I said hey and asked about how he was doing and what his plans were for after he graduated this Spring and part way through a very rambling law school statement of purpose, right about when he also succumbed to hiccups, his eyes got very wide as I imagine he realized how sloshed he was, and, well, he mumbled some overly polite farewell and ran away.  There is something so charming about these Mississippi kids.  I find it amusing to watch them tie themselves up in knots trying to balance the proper southern manners they've been raised on with the familiarity they reserve for people their age (or that look their age, id est, me).  Ah, shucks.  Run along now, you cute little scamps.

*I'm trying to get this phrase to catch on.  I like that it's folksy in a covered-suburban-mall-and/or-Hampton-Inn kind of way.

I am right now planning for the first day of class tomorrow and am looking through some first-day-of-class notes from a few years ago.  I apparently asserted that science was "knowledge-making on the edge of the metaphysical abyss."

Yeah, I was all talk in those days.

And speaking of metaphysical abyss - you'd be surprised how often I'm able to use that as a segueway - there's no way John Adam's "Hallelujah Junction I" ever gets old.  I'm listening to it on repeat right now.  Pianos rarely transcend spacetime.  I should know.  I stood next to the people that moved my piano for me. 

I spent about twelve minutes today thinking it was Cinco de Mayo.

Weird.

The winner!

Let's hear it for Hartford Bradley International Airport!

Terminal A is now, officially, my very favorite airport.  Not that there are really any others in the running (I suppose Berlin Tegel is up there too but mostly because, while ugly, it is so brilliantly efficient; all function, no form).  I absolutely hate air travel.  It's such an exercise in frustration.  So to rank airports in order of how little I want to scream when standing in line at them doesn't really count as a list of favorites at all.  

The highlights of Hartford Bradley:

(First, full disclosure: our original directions to "Hartford airport" provided by Google maps actually misdirected us to the sorrowful little Hartford-Brainford regional airport in what I'm guessing is the industrial section of the greater Hartford metropolitan area.  There were all these old people dragging empty shopping carts in the middle of the busy street.  And our directions dead-ended on a road full of muddy slush that had maybe 30 crows milling about in it.  Really weird and creepy.  I'm saying all of this because my enthusiasm may be colored by the fact that I thought we'd never find our way back out of Brainford, that I'd resign myself to a smoky, sunless existence dragging a shopping cart around, collecting crows from the slush.)

1. A huge wall of glass looking out on the runway lined (the wall of glass, not the runway) with wooden rocking chairs!  It's like the porch of the future!

2. Largish bathroom stalls that don't require you to dangle your bags over the toilet as you try to close the stall door.

3. Security and boarding announcements only (no muzak, tv volume, or airport concessions advertisements) = moments of precious quiet.

4. Not Atlanta.

5. No trace of that guy seated next to me on the first leg of the flight that spent a good 45 minutes scratching his elbow - scabes?  do I have scabes now?

6. Reasonable TSA officials that: a) let my 11 oz. of lotion through with only a scolding and b) chanted "chug! chug! chug!" as I held up the security line trying to drink the entire contents of my Sigg bottle so they wouldn't confiscate it.  Hilarious.

7. To the kind-looking, Patagonia-granola New Englander sitting across from me in the waiting area reading Murakami:  I haven't seen your kind in so long.  I miss you like I miss sunshine.  Please be my facebook friend.

And... Happy New Year my darling friends!