My webhost was having trouble (filer problems) yesterday so I was unable to login anywhere or access my email or anything. It was most upsetting.

Anyway, here I am. I painted my nails black yesterday and they look pretty jazzy and not really “goth.” I just overlaid them with a coat of Nars “Pussy Galore” which is an iridescent golden pink. The end result it not unlike gasoline on asphalt. I dig it.

It continues to be f’ing hot here in NJ. At work, we had a video conference with our San Francisco offices and they got a big kick out of the fact that it was 65 degrees and lovely there, and it was 98 degrees, and humid enough to make it feel (with the heat index) like it was over 100 degrees here. Icky. Icky icky icky.

I found out that I can make an appointment to bring my car in for service via the Toyota service center’s website, so I filled out the form today requesting Thurs or Friday morning drop off. That way, I will have air conditioning sometime early next week. It will be a bit too late to help me this week, but I will have to have a family member (all of whom have working air conditioning) drive me to and from the train station for the few days the cars in the shop.

Since I wanted to look for some new sandals/work appropriate shoes, I went to Marshall’s after work. I found a cute pair of Lilly Pulitzer flats - bright pink suede with brown flower accent. However, while the price was tempting ($48) I don’t have enough brown in my wardrobe (or at all) to justify the purchase. So I put them back. I tried on some skirts and was instantly upset that I’m not 5′8″ or 100 pounds. The one thing that could cure my broken heart was a trip to Staples. Office supplies have an almost magical way of making me feel better. They feed right into my love of organization, cute things, and paper goods.

$20 later, I have a 2006-2007 pocket-size planner (with hour blocks, week spreads and month spreads), a Post-It magnetic notepad (with a cute blue leaf pattern) and two die-cut decorative Post-It notepads. I use Post-Its a lot at work, and this will make me a happy little worker. Not that I’m not a happy little worker already - but if a $2.99 adhesive notepad will make things cheerier for me, that’s not a bad thing at all.

I got my order from Amazon on Monday and started reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s story collection, “Interpreter of Maladies“, on the train this morning. I waited a long time to read it - basically until the hype surrounding it died down a bit. Waiting until all the press and media attention pass allows me to read a book (or see a movie or listen to an album) unfettered by other peoples’ opinions. With movies, it’s not as difficult to ignore other opinions - perhaps because the text (I use that word in the liberal arts college sense) is shorter and contained to a certain formula. When books are the text in question, there’s a greater commitment of time required to finish it, and you can be affected by things more often during the reading of the book - a night of sleep, a day of work, reading something else, hearing something about it, etc. More distractions → more opportunities to have your opinions influenced and altered.

Anyway - I’m about to start the last story in the collection, and I have enjoyed it very very much. It’s good stuff. I have a fondness for Asian literature - both East Asian and South Asian - and also stories that address living with the influence of two cultures in your life. The stories in “Interpreter of Maladies” capture all that goodness.

This weekend, I really have to get cracking on completing this site redesign. I have this nice template all ready. I just have to transfer all the data into the new style sheet format since the classes and whatnot are different or non-existent in some cases.

Right now, it’s getting very loud and thundery. The heat today is giving way to a cold front and resulting in lots of lightning and thunder… and it’s just started to rain lightly. I’m sure it will get a lot heavier before the night is through.

Anyway… off I go to read some more and then get to sleep.