dr. atomic

Life is funny. There you are, feeling blue because your relationship is busting up, and people come out of the woodwork to cheer you up.

Example: My friend Greg calls out of the blue yesterday. He's in town visiting from Baltimore. We plan to get together tonight, then I say, hey, there's this opera I really want to see and there are only two showings left and what do you know, they're both sold out. Today, an acquaintence of Greg's phones to get advice on contracting. He works for the opera. So tonight, we're sitting in center Orchestra box, grossly underdressed, and I'm enjoying my very first modern opera, gratis. The libretto was a bit of a surprise, but once you get used to that, Dr. Atomic is quite a spectacular mix of passages from Baudelaire and John Donne; opera, dance, and staging. I wish my parents could see it. My grandfather did two stints at Los Alamos. Amazing to see years of history dramatized in 3 hours. Dang.

Got home tonight: Kathy is visiting from Austin. So it looks like I have plans tomorrow night too. Then off to Santa Cruz for the weekend to check out the surf contest, and avoid my neighbors party on Saturday night, which tends to come right through the walls into my bedroom. Should be a nice time, all around. Maybe I'll even stop in Half Moon Bay, carve a pumpkin at the pumpkin fair.

Strangely, life is quite good. Is that odd?

behold the chub

It's finally happened: I've gotten fat. The great thing about being fat(ter) is the momentum: the eating, the drinking, the not-working-out. It's sort of a nice cycle of predictability. I've even gotten new clothes to fit the bigger me.

The only downside, as I learned when someone unexpectedly grabbed me around the waist last night, is how much of me moves. There's only one solution I can think of for that: The Belly Bra. Yet another million-dollar invention whose time (and place) has definitely come.

Besides the chunk about my midriff, all is well. My boyfriend ditched me to go write his book. And I've sortof ditched him back, since he has no immediate plans to return to the city where I live. Still trying to figure out if I mean it...

Strangely, I've been having a great deal of fun while in relationship limbo. I attended the Pumpkin Smash 400 and Sppoky Demolition Derby at the Altamont Raceway. It was Nascar with old cop cars and pumpkins on a well-soaped track. There was much sliding about and, somewhere in there, two 200-lap car races. Crazy. Hypnotic. Oddly wholesome family entertainment.

I got to run around my favorite city last night and show her off. Beers at the Toronado, dinner at Indian Oven (mmm, garlic nan), and then a visit to Crissy Field in the full moon, waking up the egrets and wading out to the beach, looking up at the GG Bridge. One of my new friends from Brooklyn sang me her song about corn. It goes something like this:

Corn-y, corn-y
I love you
Salt and butter
make you yummier

I added my own line:
If I dry you
You pop too

It was a good night.