I’m a wee bit too tired today to focus on recounting the wedding experience… suffice it to say (for the present) that the bride and groom had a blissful day (this was just confirmed via telephone) and I think fun was had by all in attendance.

My back hurts today (in heels, on my feet for 12 hours) but I’ll be fine by tomorrow. A nice hot bath will do the trick.

In the meantime, check out the INTERNATIONAL trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In re-reading books #5 and 6 a few weeks ago, I realized why I’m getting more and more excited about the final book and the next movie; the increasing darkness of the story is right up my alley.

Must get to sleep.

You know, I try to keep some things a little quiet… like exactly WHERE I live, WHERE I work, WHAT I do, etc. Everything else is a bit less private since, truly, my life holds little mystery.

But I’m thinking that I can toot the horn a bit. Especially since my name now appears on another blog. In relation to another blog I did for work.

That’s pretty cool. Actually, it’s really cool. I will embrace this coolness.

But you’re not getting my social security number or mother’s maiden name.

Incredibly, I managed to awaken bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 6 a.m. today - even before the alarm went off.

I shall skip the incidentals and move right to the fact that massages are wonderful. I had an hour long “stress reliever” massage; while I’m not obviously stressed, my back and neck muscles tell quite a different story. The massage therapist confirmed that my rhomboids were in knots.

Here are your rhomboids (and if you look like this, dude - lay off the roids):

But a massage is good.

I get to meet a new arrival tonight - my friend Michelle’s 3 month old daughter, Juliette. She’s beyond adorable. I won’t post a photo since I don’t think her parents would appreciate their infant out on the Internets at the tender age of not-quite-FOUR MONTHS, but look at that cute pink baby foot.

No, no tinglings of maternal longing. I’ll enjoy holding her and talking like my brain has disappeared, but there’s no tugging in the pit of my stomach or heart. I will gladly admit that her parentals are quite justified in being proud and happy and smitten with their wee infanta.

I’m going to take a lesson from the little one and try to catch a quick nap before I head over to meet her.

My endeavor is to keep this short since I have to wake up at 6:45 so I can leave the house by 7:30 tomorrow morning. Grrr. I failed miserably at keeping this short. Good luck.

After work tonight, I went into Manhattan with a co-worker to meet up with some of her friends and her boyfriend. The occasion?

Well, about a month ago, Neil Gaiman posted about the PEN World Voices Festival in NYC and mentioned that he would be there and feeling rather nervous in his tummy about doing a reading with Salman Rushdie, Don DeLillo, Steve Martin, Kiran Desai, Nadine Gordimer and others. I was excited and bought a ticket, then emailed my co-worker to see if she was interested. She was and a plan was in place.

So, it was raining, we met up at a bar which was apparently far too much of a hot spot to give us a place to sit, so we crossed the street and went to Blue Bar, where they do have a $10,000 martini on the menu (”price varies with quality of diamond”). I went for a $15 signature cocktail - a Grapefruit Clarity, which was a grapefruit martini, very nice and sour, with a frozen cranberry thrown in for garnish and good measure. I enjoyed that.

And that martini, ladies and gentlemen, is all I’ve had to eat/drink since 1:00. Luckily, one martini + empty stomach at 7:00 didn’t leave me trashed (which is a risk when you’re taking medication).

The event was part of the Town Hall Readings, and the topic/theme was “Writing Home.” It was fantastic and wonderful - funny at times (a lot), somber, poignant, and just terrific and inspiring. I whipped out my Moleskine journal (as did several other people around me) and jotted down a few things I wanted to remember.

First, though, here’s the order in which the writers appeared and what they read - in case anyone is looking for what they read:

Intro by Salman Rushdie, during which he commented on the youth of the audience (as a good thing) and berated one gentlemen in particular (albeit in jocular fashion) for not turning off his cellphone.

Steve Martin read from an upcoming book about his beginnings in stand-up comedy called Born Standing Up. There was a particularly hilarious bit about his first gig in a bar/cafe in California which was a sort of hangout spot for bikers and hippies, and how part of his act was to sing a song that he claimed he learned from his grandmother. It started off innocently enough with lines like “Be kind to your neighbor…” etc. - and then verse two contained gems like, “Be obsequious and purple… be oblong and cut off your knees.” (I might be misquoting, but “obsequious” and “purple” and “oblong” were definitely in there).

Next, Pia Tafdrup, a Danish poet, read a few poems from one of her collections (though I’m uncertain of which one it was - possibly Queen’s Gate. There was a poem about growing up, a poem about her mother and a poem about her father, which she read in Danish and English. The poem about her father was especially lovely, and contained a line that I had to jot down — “Milky ways of morphine…” as she wove metaphors for his death in a hospital bed from astronomical terms. Her poem about learning the alphabet from her mother took its tropes from marine life; she described the letters as various forms of sea life - anemone angles, starfish points, etc. Lovely stuff.

Next up was Don DeLillo who, quite honestly, lost my readership a bit with Underworld. But I always like White Noise and I might give the new book he read from a try, loathe as I am to read a book about September 11th. It’s called Falling Man. He read a very powerful passage wherein the character is trying to get down to his apartment to feed his cats in the aftermath of the attack and has to move past various checkpoints in the city. On his way, he observes rescue workers, residents and others… one of them being a guy who gets out his cell phone to call a loved one and says, “I’m standing here,” and has to repeat himself since the person on the other end didn’t here him, “I’m standing here.” This line comes back once again at the end of the segment when the character says to himself, “I am standing here.” You don’t need a highlighter to figure that one out. There was also a great bit in there where the same guy talks about walking across the Brooklyn Bridge - “I don’t live in Brooklyn - I live down there, but everyone was going to the bridge, so I went too.” Which made me smirk a bit - for (hopefully) obvious reasons. Because if everyone jumped off a bridge…. maybe not. But if everyone crossed a bridge, I’m sure we all would too, given the circumstances.

Tatyana Tolstaya read from her novel, The Slynx , wherein a dystopian future Moscow has been destroyed by an explosion of some sort and people are living in desolation, guarding and hiding their warm socks as if they were the most valuable things on the planet… which, in that situation, they are.

Next up was Saadi Youssef, who read from (I think) a memoir or essay of some sort, though I don’t see one in print in English currently. It was also quite powerful and he had one line that struck me: “Exile includes the idea of abrogation.” He has lived almost his entire life in exile from Iraq, and his reading was about living over 50 years wandering the world, and what home means to him.

Kiran Desai was next and started off by saying that she was going to try to keep things short and NOT become the stereotypical “Indian behind a microphone.” (I was not aware this was a stereotype). She read a section from her most recent novel, The Inheritance of Loss, and it honestly gave me a whole different view of the book, hearing it with her inflection and personality. I read it and felt rather lukewarm about since it seemed quite somber in tone and left me unfulfilled with the ending. However, hearing her read it actually helped me find humor that I thought was bitter commentary when I read it in my “voice.” I will re-read. She was great.

Then, Alain Mabanckou read a really beautiful poem in French (which, amazingly enough, I understood enough of in the original language to both understand the tone and subject and perhaps get chose to appreciating a poem in a language I don’t speak fluently myself). Another reader read the translated version for him (which I find strange now that I see that Mr. Mabanckou is a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor). I’m not sure what collection this poem came from since I cannot find a collection listing the translator the reader mentioned - a John Keene/Keane/Kean/Keenan? I’ll keep hunting. It was a beautiful poem in English as well… about leaving home in the Congo, about finding a home elsewhere, dancing with one leg (implication being that a land mine was responsible for the loss of the other) but always having his true home back where his mother is buried. His newest book of poems is African Psycho

Following that was Neil Gaiman… who was truly the high point for me just because his voice is hypnotic. He appeared to be at ease (but having your hair in your face and being several hundred feet away from people can help convey this impression) and was the only author (that I remember) who said “Thank you” to the audience after applause had subsided between pieces and not just as an aside when walking off the stage. Neil read the epilogue to American Gods where the protagonist of the novel, Shadow, is in Reykjavik, pondering the meaning of going home and settling down… since it’s not something he’s ever done. It leads to a few questions - “what is home? Is it something you build and make, or a place you find or just settle into?”

Then, he read a poem that was part of his most recent collection, Fragile Things. The poem was the one called “Instructions.” He introduced it by saying, “This poem is about what to do if you find yourself in a fairy tale. It’s called ‘Instructions’.” I turned to my friend and said, “This one is GREAT!”

Afterwards, she told me she really liked that piece, and the bit from American Gods as well.

Nadine Gordimer was next, and she spoke about refugees (both political and economical) and specifically about refugees from Mozambique crossing into South Africa. The piece she read was from her collection, Jump. It’s written from the point of view of an 11-year old African girl whose family has been forced to flee to South Africa to escape the threat of rebels in their homeland - who have already, we infer, killed both the girl’s parents. Along the way, the girl, her sibling and grandmother must leave behind their old, weak grandfather and continue on. When they arrive in South Africa, they live in a refugee camp and the piece closed with a white woman reporter asking them if they want to go back home after the war ends; the grandmother replied that there was no such place.

Last was Salman Rushdie, who read sections from The Ground Beneath Her Feet which dealt with music, rebellion, exile and a thinly veiled commentary on his own political dealings, the fatwa against him for his perceived betrayal, etc. He was good - and he seemed to be quite aware of that fact. That didn’t detract from my enjoyment of his reading, but it was a little distracting (which I think are two different things.)

Finally, I didn’t know that they were signing books afterwards. Had I known, I would’ve brought some of my Rushdie, Steve Martin’s “Picasso at the Lapin Agile”, my entire Gaiman library, my favorite DeLillo and the Desai title (since I have all of them already). As it was, the line to buy books was ridiculous and I decided to get another copy of a Gaiman book I already had - American Gods - and ask him to sign it. Why JUST Gaiman?

Several reasons…

Rushdie left early, Martin wasn’t able to stay and DeLillo wasn’t signing at all. Gaiman stayed until the bitter bitter end so anyone who wanted him to sign a book got it signed. He signed people’s posters and old beat-up copies of books (which I recall him writing that he likes signing better than shiny new ones… had I known they were going to be signing, I’d have dragged along my much-loved but still fairly pristine copy of “Neverwhere.”)

He was the one I wanted to meet a bit more than the others since I can say that I ENJOY reading his books more than the others. The others may be “important” books and “great” books - and I don’t put them in quotes to denigrate them. I don’t want to feel like I’m one of 400,000 people who fawn over Rushdie and tell him how great he is and how brave and courageous his writing is - I just enjoy reading him because he’s funny and wacky, but he seems to be highly aware of his status… which is fine, but keeps me from thinking, “Now here’s someone I’d want to chat over tea with.”

But Neil Gaiman? I love reading his online journal, I love reading his books - and his fiction ‘voice’ is great. Absolutely charming. I’ve got a big old brain crush (and, well, I’m a sucker for the accent). I walked upstairs, got on line and was allowed ahead by some apparently hardcore fans who shared with me (in quasi-creepy form) how they could listen to his voice forever… (I enjoy it too, but forever is an obsessively long time). They were about 15 years older than I and had the sort of detailed knowledge that groupies possess… “He always brings a quill…” “He wrote that when he was still a journalist, you know…”

I walked up and said it was lovely to meet him. “Well, it’s lovely to be met” came the reply. Then he signed the book in a suitably funky fashion (the E was three horizontal bars and not an actual letter), wrote “Believe!” and signed his name. I thanked him kindly and went on my way. No fawning or blubbering - it was just nice to make eye contact, smile sincerely and walk off feeling a bit happier to have spoken to someone whose work is such a joy to me.

And a relatively new one at that; I’ve only come to appreciate him through his novels, starting with “Coraline” which drew me in and never let me go (whereas I think a lot of people knew him from the Sandman graphic novels, and I picked up one to see what it was about… and learned that, generally speaking, I prefer my words surrounded by whitespace so I can picture things for myself.)

All righty roo. I’ve got 5 hours until I have to wake up (it’s 1:16) but I’d never have been able to fall asleep without typing this all up and OUT of my head. And I’ll be adding tons of stuff to my Amazon wishlist shortly.

Spa day. Wedding prep. Rock.

I’m having a spell of disenchantment. Not with anything in particular, but my life in general. Nothing seems right and I’m stressing out about stupid things… and have no appetite.

This, dear folks, is the beginning of a depressive episode. I have only myself to blame since I totally forgot to take my medication for four days last week; as much as the positive effects are cumulative and take effect over time, so do the negative effects. Four days off didn’t hit me right away… it took the weekend and BAM!

Here it is. The suck-fest begins.

… but the people commenting on YouTube seem to have never seen this technique used before…

Do we not remember that Coldplay did this several years ago with “The Scientist”?

You learn the song backwards, then do that action as you would and when the video is played backwards for strange-ass action effects, your backwards-speech looks like forward-speech. “I’m going back to the start.” So clever. I can’t say I dislike the song, but as time went on, Coldplay definitely got played out. Overplayed. Ah, well.

But here’s something I can REALLY be happy about… not working at Ernst and Young.

OK, it was 2001… but STILL.

It’s a prime example of corporate team-building going very very wrong.

Also, RIP Kurt Vonnegut. Your drawing of an asshole in Breakfast of Champions always made me chuckle.

… this one was awright.

Since my 11th or 12th birthday, I’ve greeted birthdays with a mixture of dread, fear, anticipation (which I know will be wasted) and hopes for something surprising? Fun? Happy?

Usually, my birthday ends up being none of these things and, instead, is an exercise in commemorating bullshit OR reminding me of how much I’ve fallen short of my own goals and expectations OR just another day. I am OK with the birthday being just another day, but I also feel that it’s important for my own mental wellbeing to do something semi-memorable around this time of year so I can look back at some point and go, “Yeah - I remember what was going on when I was 22… or 25… or 29.”

Today was good. I was the recipient of the cupcake ambush (which was, technically speaking, a tart swarm) wherein my co-workers deftly snuck up on my cubicle. This was easy for them to do since I was deeply engrossed in chatting away with my cubicle neighbor about my dislike for Gerber daisies and saw her look over my head. I asked, “There’s a crowd of people behind me, isn’t there?” And she nodded. I finished my sentence and turned around to see everyone standing there with a raspberry and almond tart (+ candles) and a card. The tart was delicious; the card was funny.

Probably the most unintentionally funny part of the card was the fact that one of the guys I work with didn’t get a chance to sign it and was asking if it was too late - just as I was about to open it. I said he could still sign it since I had not yet opened it, so he did - and then handed it to me, informing me that he didn’t know what to write so he just wrote that he hated me. I opened the card and - yeah - that’s what he wrote.

Understand that this is funny because a) if he actually does hate me, I think it’s quite awesome that he’d choose to share that in my friggin’ birthday card and b) if he doesn’t hate me, it’s awesome that this was sort of the default message that popped to mind. I mean, really - how often do you get a birthday card from a co-worker, especially in this day and age of political correctness and whatnot, that expresses something either a) this honest or b) this silly?

I have yet to discover who was responsible for printing up pictures of cupcakes and taping them to my chair and cubicle wall with the text, “it’s my birthday!” and “happy birthday eva!” I’ll interrogate tomorrow… but it will be a friendly interrogation. Much more of a “May I reward you with a lollipop?” than a “Hello, my name is Torquemada.”

One of my other co-workers with whom I work pretty closely provided me with a gift that’s testimony to our respective office supply and paper goods fetishes. I’m a wee bit obsessed with the Paperchase goods sold by Borders and the striped pattern and calligraphic florals in particular. I received a notebook and business card case in the striped pattern (to match my totebag, train pass holder and cosmetics case) and a mini notepad in the floral - as well as a tin of colored pencils in a smiling monkey pattern. I’m really so easy to please… give me pretty things that I can write with/on/in or otherwise play with, and I am a happy clam.

After hearing about my scrapbooking success this weekend, my friend Krys hooked me up with some gift card action for A.C. Moore so I can get more crafty goodies, as well as some super cute mod graphic mini notecards… which, I feel, will be quite lovely as thank you notes

I left work a bit early so I could make it down to my dinner “date” with friends. There was motarded traffic on the way (I have such a rough time understanding rubber-necking. Really.) but I got there a bit after 6, then we went to dinner at a Thai restaurant nearby. I had a delicious shrimp curry (with pineapple and coconut milk and onion and peppers and tamarind and Massaman curry) and also got the special birthday treatment, which involved two candles in the dessert and a special CD of the birthday song sung by a Thai gentleman in a super hopped-up dance version. It was crazy… and Theresa was all dancing and clapping in her seat, so I was laughing and my eyes were watering and it was good.

The laughter continued as we discussed a variety of things including the Thundercats theme song, music inspired by the Mortal Kombat video game, the Mortal Kombat movie itself, DJ Kool’s “Let Me Clear My Throat” and Alanis Morrisette’s cover of the Black-Eye Peas, “My Humps” - which I had not yet seen. Just those few things managed to send me into fits of laughter unheard/unfelt for many many months. Upon returning to their home, I watched the video and continued to laugh because I now have new-found respect for Ms. Morrisette or, as I shall now call her, Her Canadianness.

I love it when people don’t take themselves too seriously, and I love parody. This combines a bit of both… and is a far cry from her serious jagged little pill of a chick days (when I couldn’t stand her at all.)

Anyway - I’m home. I had birthday flowers from the family waiting and promises that we’ll ‘celebrate’ my birth this weekend. If you remember back to earlier in the post, it might be as anti-climactic as it’s been in past years and leave me a little down… but I had a good day today and that’s a great help.

Now I’ll pick up at page 212 of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and see how far I can get before I succumb to slumber.

Between bridal showers and work, it’s been a wee bit crazy.
Wanna see something else I helped create?

It’s a knit-along blog site for Harry Potter-inspired knitted stuff… and we’re knitting for charity.

Now that I can step away from it for two minutes, I can set about purchasing lovely wool yarn so I can try my hand at knitting a hat for this knit-along. A co-worker inspired me to check out my local yarn store and see if they’re offering lessons of some kind since she’s taking some classes near her home; that could be a belated birthday gift to me in the coming weeks (since I don’t have anything to give myself tomorrow on my actual birfday).

I can knit and I’m still not terribly rusty, but my advancement into higher levels of knitting was hampered by this wrist thing and I am honestly a bit afraid to try more difficult techniques. Between additional difficulty and the speed with which my bum wrist gets exhausted these days, I could be so easily discouraged.

But I have also been inspired to re-read the latest Harry Potters. I know Sorceror’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Goblet of Fire pretty well thanks to the books and now the movies. I re-read Order of the Phoenix between Sunday night and the train ride home today, so I will start re-reading Half-Blood Prince tonight and should have that finished by Thursday - when “Volver” is scheduled to arrive from Netflix.

When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out in July, I’ll be all updated with the stories fresh in my head. Maybe I’ll take a long weekend before then and do nothing but sit in a park somewhere re-reading books one through six.

Now I am tired and want to sleep.