This is me.

I just had a fantastic Midwestern dinner tonight at this place.

Mmmm.... MEAT.





They also make a lovely martini. 

In case you haven't seen them... we have pics from our trip to Portland.... 7/27,  7/28, 7/29, & 7/30

 

I saw Amy Goodman last night, walking down the street at 2nd & Howard.   I am still totally starstruck.

Lately I've been feeling this general sense of wistfulness (or nostalgia, or something...) about the past. Not that I'm unhappy, or that I would want to go back and change it, but I've had several occasions recently where my personal history has presented itself, and I've been reflecting on it a lot.

I think it started a couple of weekends ago when I cleaned out my desk.  For 4 hours.  Yes, seriously.  It was a mess.  I sorted through one drawer that was filled with several years of random accumulation: concert tickets from shows going back to 2003, photos of people I haven't seen since I was a freshman in college, cards from relatives who are no longer living. I made a collage out of the concert tickets and framed it.... It makes me sad that there are shoeboxes & folders filling up my desk with all these memories, when they could be put to better use. If I had a little more motivation, I would make more art with it.  Until then, they'll sit in my desk until I rediscover them again.

I also found photos that I had completely forgotten about... myself and S. in the dorm back when I first started college. Before my first beer, before I'd kissed any boys, before i discovered activism... before I really started to figure out who I was. Of course, the first thing I did when I found these photos? I posted them on Myspace.   Why did I do this, you ask?  Because at the same time the whole desk-cleaning project was going on, I also heard from two separate long-lost friends from high school on myspace & facebook. People who since the last time we talked had started & graduated from college, moved away, got married, had kids, and in one case, got divorced. So much has happened. At one point we used to know each other pretty well, and now we're complete strangers.  But they'd probably be interested in seeing some old photos. :)

Not long after that, I had a conversation with a friend about a brief relationship I had the summer before my sophomore year of college. It was the first time I'd ever dated anyone, so it did have a significant impact on my life, but it still surprised me a little bit that I am still carrying around  a lot of bitterness weirdness about the relationship, 7 years after the fact.  It was only 3 months, for god's sake. 

So, I've been talking about the past with a lot of people.  I've been making collages about it, and organizing it into folders.  I've been writing private journal entries on paper, and now a public one on the internet.   Hopefully I'll get it out of my system & start spending more time thinking about productive things. :-)

Have any of you ever gone through a phase like this?  I feel like it hits me maybe every few years....

We're sick of being slobs, so we're throwing another party. There's nothing like having people over to motivate you to clean the house. Any of you in the bay area who read this & want to come... saturday night (2/17), 7pm. Arun's got a new beer ready to go, "Prevent Tripel" in honor of the release of the 3.0 version of his company's softare. :)

The other night Amy invited us to see Godzilla vs. King Kong at the El Cerrito theatre. It was the first time we'd been out of the city in quite a while, which was a nice change. And it was on a weeknight! I'd been starting to feel old, staying home & watching tv all week... we don't often get motivated enough to do anything particularly fun. The highlight of the night wasn't the movie itself, but the preceding fight between someone in a Godzilla suit vs. someone in a King Kong suit. Good times.

We finally finished Six Feet Under, which we've been watching instead of renting movies for the last few months... if you haven't seen it, I HIGHLY recommend it. I don't usually get attached to tv shows, but this series is really well done, and the characters feel really authentic. The last episode really moved me... partially because I really loved the characters, but also because it reminded me of how much you miss out on when you're far away from your family.

Anyway, watch the show.

Drinking lemon tea & doing pilates is almost as nice as eating a big fat slice of pepperoni pizza. Almost.

We're hiring new employees like mad at work. Okay, we're hiring 2 employees. But we've been really needing them lately -- right now there are only three of us, and I've been staying late far too often lately. It's a relief knowing that the end is in sight.

Also, I had a really good talk with my boss today, and apparently she doesn't want me to be an admin assistant forever (as I previously feared). This is very good news.


This weekend, we're going bowling for S's birthday, and I'm REALLY excited. I haven't been bowling since living in CU. I miss it, even though I pretty much suck at it. It's one of those great sports where you get to spend 80% of the time sitting around, drinking and chatting (and trash-talking).

The U of I alumni association keeps sending me mail addressed to "Jane E. Bhalla." Not exactly the best way to ask for money.

Ok, so I'm not going to take the time to write about the last half of our trip back in October. ( Here are some photo highlights )

Even more to come....

We're back from Spain & Italy... We saw Barcelona, Pisa, Florence, Rome, and a handful of other towns in between. I'm going to have to write about it in little bits... we did so much!

( Barcelona, Part I )

more to come....

My sister, the entrepreneur.... http://www.loneridgefarm.com

Sometimes it feels like we have opposite lives. I get up, he goes to bed. We're living in the same house, but in the last 3 days we've only seen each other (conscious, anyway) for an hour. Bizarre. We might not see each other tomorrow, either.

Of course, it's not as bad as it sounds. I think I'm slightly more depressed than usual because I have a cold. And because I poured water on my laptop last night and I'm afraid it's completely fried. I won't know for sure until it dries out a bit more. For now, I'm typing on arun251's computer.

On to happier things... Work is going well. I'm always stressed out, but I like that there are always lots of puzzles to be solved. Surprisingly complicated, stressful, unnecessarily time-consuming puzzles. But interesting puzzles. I'm also constantly fascinated by our customers... maybe I'm just fascinated by people in general. But every day I get to meet someone new, and I get to hear their life story.

I'm also counting down the days until we leave for Europe. Last weekend we bought travel books, and this weekend we're booking our hotel in Rome. Todd, you still need to tell me about your travel adventures....

It's official... We bought tickets tonight for our trip to Europe with some of the old crew from Champaign. Arun and I are flying to Barcelona on October 1, taking the train to Florence/Pisa a few days later, and then going on to Rome for a few days before flying back home.

Anyone been to any of these places? What should we try to see?

John A. was here this week for a conference. We didn't get to spend a whole lot of time with him, but when we did it was a great time. Arun and I really need to do a better job keeping in touch with John... it sounds like it won't be hard to get him to come back out for another visit. :)

Even with houseguests here, Arun's been working 70 hours a week for the last month or so. I hate seeing him sleep deprived and stressed out, and I hate that he doesn't have much time for fun. We've been working extra hard to spend some time together, but there are some days when we don't see each other at all. It's tough, but there's an end in sight... his first major deadline is coming up in a little over a week.