It's not the heat, it's the humidity...

I ran across this photo today and I thought to myself that I would sell my soul for it to be cool enough to merit having to wear a jacket and hat. It is an unnaturally hot day in Cleveland. The air is thick and heavy and even though I am sitting in what they claim is an air conditioned office, I am miserable and warm and all around grumpy. I thought about not posting today since I am not in my normal, merry mood, but then I thought that perhaps this would indeed put me back in my normal, merry mood, and voila, I think it's working.

So, what to discuss today? Aside from this heat that is suffocating and I might add, boring me, I am currently obsessed with the idea of my having to mow the lawn. This is, as you can imagine, a weekly event in my life and it something most people jut go out and do. Not me. I begin to obsess about it after three or four days after the last mowing. I start watching the grass get higher and thicker and I start getting this horrible feeling in my stomach about my impending need to mow. This summer has been so incredibly rainy that the grass just keeps growing and growing - in past years it hit a dormant stage and you could just mow it and mulch it. I haven't been able to even do away with the bag yet there has been so much grass. I attempted to mow it yesterday, but the heat was so bad and I just couldn't face it. I have been thinking about it all day now and trying to come up with some sort of excuse to keep me from having to mow today. Unfortunately, the sun is out, I have my health and I really haven't anything else that I need to do so I really haven't got an excuse. I am sitting in my office dreading the notion so badly that I actually exhausted myself from worry and fell asleep. My colleauge, Judy, came in and found me passed out on my desk with my head lolling to and fro. This is not Judy's first encounter with me asleep at my desk, so she did what she always did which is to clap her hands loudly and scare me half to death. If I didn't adore Judy, I'd loathe her.

Other things that I am obsessed with at the moment: my photo printer was sent back to Kodak for repair. I will not rest easy until it is back. I need to get an e-check on my car. I am paralyzed about this as I just can't face the idea of waiting in that line and driving out to the station and etc. I have to renew my license plate tags (this in tandem with the e-check). My birthday is coming up and I just don't feel like celebrating turning 37. It's hardly an accomplishment. The heat consumes me and makes me worried that my central air unit will collapse under the strain and I will be found dead in my bed from heat exposure. Im obsessed with the idea that my boss thinks I am obsessive compulsive (how's that for really looking for something to be worried about). I am worried about Israel and Lebanon, about Iraq and Syria and Iran and North Korea. I am worried that I am getting heavy again after I had lost a good deal of weight. I am obsessed with the notion that at my next doctor's appointment they will discover I have some incurable illness. In short, gentle readers, I worry.

Am I eating right? Am I taking in enough fluids? Am I a nice enough person? Is there life after death? All of this nonsense, all of this worry, all related to the fact that is so damn hot outside. It plays with my brain. It makes me weak and tired and I just hate it. This is getting very whiney, I know, but I feel like whining. I try not to do it often but sometimes it just slips out.

So, thanks for reading. Thanks for listening. Wherever you, I hope you are cool and comfortable

Why didn't God let me look like this?

My first question is if you merely read a blog but don't actually add to a blog, which makes you a blogger, are you a bloggist? Just a question.

The second question on my mind is how is it that one person is born and looks like Bryan, who is pictured here on the left, while others are born and look like me (see photos above). It's just grossly unfair.

It's raining like mad tonight and I am sitting in front of the computer convinced that my basement will flood and wash the house down the street. It's highly doubtful that this will happen and what is really strange is that I think that on some level it would be pretty cool if it actually did. I am envisioning this whole raining for 40 days and 40 nights thing with Bryan and me floating around the midwest in my house. It wouldn't be so bad if we still had electricity and food and the dog learned to never ever go to the bathroom again......but oh well.

As far as biblical catastrophes go, I don't think the flood thing is the worse. I wouldn't mind being trapped in a floating house as long as I landed somehwere nice. My luck being what it is I would probably land somewhere in Michigan - and for those of you know how I feel about Michigan, this is not a good thing. It would be beautiful, though, if the house took float and followed some mystical path to a whole other world. Im not talking about munchkins or hobbits or anything like that - and to this point don't you think it's strange that when other people fantasize about other worlds everyone is so damn short - in my fantasy world the house lands somewhere near Sweden and it is populated by very tall good looking men resembling Jude Law.

So, you see, the house is floating away down the street and I am sitting on the sofa and I look outside and I see all these things passing me by and I don't even care. I would make a few phone calls though. I'd call Rachel and tell her that the end was near and that we would now really find out what happens to Jewish people when they die. I might possibly call my mother who would categorically deny that my house was floating away all the while she'd be treading water in her living room as the flood waters consumed her, my father and all of the religous artifacts that decorate their home (where's your messiah now?).

Now we've floated east, past downtown (where, oddly, no one is doing anything to stem the flood. In fact, people are cheering as the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame slowly disappears from view and the Browns stadium collapses) and the flood waters pick up some speed and we past Erie and Buffalo and start a course for New York. Bryan asks as we round the bend near Albany, do we have enough chocoalte to last the voyage to which I snidely reply, cram it.

Now we're somewhere in the Atlantic and I think maybe we can hit Italy in a few days, so I call my aunts in Rome and ask them if they are flooded too. They laugh and tell me that no, it isn't flooded and even if it were it would be Roman water and there's no water in the world like Roman water. So, cool, we're headed to Italy. Will I need my passport or will the sight of a floating cape cod style house washing up on the shores of Ostia be odd enough for the Italians to just say come on in.

The rain has let up for real outside and I don't think the house will float away tonight. Which, sadly enough, means I have to go to work tomorrow. But really, if your house could float away, where would you want to go?

Have you ever had one of those moments when you just wish you were somewhere else? That would be today. I stumbled across this photo today - yes, it's Rachel again. For those of you who are wondering, Rachel is my boon companion, my Girl Friday, my Boswell, etc. She, much like myself, is not fit for human consumption. We are friends with each other because, basically, no one understands me quite like her. We are kindred spirits of a sort.

This photo comes from the first time we ever traveled together. We didn't start out small - we went to Rome together. It was for neither of us our first trip there. I had been there many, many times as my mother was born and raised there and met my father (who, incidentally, is from Croatia) and married him there.

So, anyway, we're actually sitting in a bar called The Bandana Republic. My cousin took us there and we quaffed a few pints and Alessio, my cousin, snapped this photo. So, as I said, I stumbled onto this photo and I just wished....with all my heart....that I was in Rome and not in a sweltering office in Cleveland, Ohio. For those of you not familiar with Cleveland, you are in a good place. Cleveland, for those of us born and raised here, is one of those love-hate things. But, as I grow older and get more or less resigned to the idea that I will probably die here (but let's hope not - I hold onto hope - I always am holding onto hope), I have grown to loathe and despise Cleveland. But that is all for another blog entry - right now, the point...

I wish I were any where but here. I wish I were in Rome....I wish I was drinking a lukewarm beer at the Bandana Republic (which, for any Rome bound travelers out there, is on the Via Ancona near the Piazza Porta Pia) - I wish I was walking down the Via del Corso crowded by tourtists and gypsies and roasted chestnut salesmen....and I wish I could just drift over to the Via Fratina to the American bookstore and buy over priced used copies of books in English and just walk until I'm spent and pull out the dog-eared copy of Flaubert's Madame Bovary that I just bought for an outrageous amount of money and sit at a table on a strange, curvey medieval Roman street, sipping black, acidic coffee and dreaming of a time and place that never was nor never could be mine.

So, the long and short of it is....I wish I were in Rome. Where do you wish you were?

Today, I am a Geek

It is a Wednesday afternoon - hot and unpleasant - here in Cleveland, Ohio. My office is a sauna, I have a mountain of work to do and I am, despite what I have to do, terribly bored. My friend and I have spent a good deal of the afternoon instant messaging each other links to webistes regarding Lord of the Rings. Stop here for a moment to assure yourselves that I am no L.O.T.R. fanatic - I read the evil books and I saw the very pleasant and engaging movies. My fascination comes from the crazy people out there who have dedicated their lives to Tolkien, hobbits and all the related nonsense. We today found a page of haikus dedicated to L.O.T.R. This got me thinking...... I am in constant search of more time in my life. More time for the things I love to do and, believe me, my list is long and varied. I really haven't the right to sit here and be sanctimonious about people who are so enthralled by Tolkien, etc. that they would create webpages such as: http://quizilla.com/users/Tinuviel/quizzes/LOTR%20-%20Which%20Helm's%20deep%20Soldier%20are%20you%3F/
http://www.jackflannel.org/lotr/

I get just as obsessed and into things and in some strange, strange way I almost admire them their dedication and conviction. So, rather than feeling catty and superior to them, I figured, let's give it a whirl. Here's my haiku: first light on fifth day Gandalf coming; fear no more Helm's deep safe again

Not too bad, huh?

I like geeks. I am, I think, proudly one of their numbers. We were talking about STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION today at lunch. Again, I need to unequivocally state, I am no Star Trek fan. I have friends who are enthralled by this program (not to mention a colleague of mine who had dedicated his entire office with T.N.G. ephemera....) and because I genuinely like to know what the hell people are talking about, I have seen many of the episodes. As much as I laughed about the devotees and their never ending fascinating with what, at best, is a badly acted and poorly produced science fiction series, I realized I am no different. I adore the Harry Potter series, both books and films. Although I find Tolkien as an author UNBEARABLE, the movies, as stated, were fun, engaging and worth the price of the ticket and I secretly enjoying talking to L.O.T.R. fanatics about the movies----and I like to listen to computer geeks wax poetic about hard drives and bytes and the like even though I have no idea what they are talking about. I work at a place that deals with a highly defined speciality and even though I don't share my colleagues passion or interest for the subject, I love to hear them talk about it because they are so incredibly into it.

This is my friend, Rachel, who has been Instant Messaging me. She'll back me up on my ultimate point which is...

Geeks are interesting people who really care about things.

So, today, let's hear it for the Geeks. Geeks of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

So I am trying this again, this, this blog thing everyone is talking about. I am not quite sure exactly what it is I will be discussing here, but my life is rather funny and I am most amused by it, so, perhaps, you will be too. So, stay tuned, live life beautifully and let the games begin.