Now and Later

I couldn't eat the perfectly heart-shaped tomato from the farmer's market. It was too pretty, and anyway it was a gift. So I lovingly arranged it among the cluster of pumpkins and fresh flowers currently serving as my dining table centerpiece. I knew it was going to rot, so eventually I moved it to the granite countertop in the kitchen where it would not destroy the tablecloth. Now it has officially rotted—but I haven't yet tossed it.

If there is a message here, it might be similar to the one contained in those email forwards, in which so and so was killed in a car accident, and when her daughter was going through her belongings afterward, the daughter discovered some of her mom's most beloved possessions—some kind of unburned candles or unused fancy soaps or something—that the mother never got to enjoy in her lifetime because she was too precious and was saving them for a special time, but never determined a time to be special or perfect enough as a consequence of always planning for the future and not living in the present, and so the daughter uses them in tribute or something.

The blue-eyed boy told me recently: "I have watched you sometimes waiting for a fabulous time to pass to that you can tenderly memorialize it, and then safely enjoy the memories." That was pretty astute; I do do that. I adore my memories, but I like to think that I am also wont to exclaim how wonderful a wonderful thing is while it is happening. Like college, for instance, and Coachella, and my Caribbean travels.

Really though, I don't like tomatoes except in other things.

Everything in Moderation

I covered a party last night that featured an M.I.A. performance that began at 11:30 p.m. This was a) pretty good, since I'm totally obsessed with M.I.A. since the blue-eyed boy brought her CD on our Yucatan trip and we logged 1,100 kilometers in the Tsuru listening to it, and since I rocked out to her at Coachella with the girls. But also it was b) pretty lousy because I had an 8:30 a.m. meeting this morning. So today I dragged. And dragged. And...zzz..zzz..z. Wait, what? I'm up.

After work, I went to the gym intending to make my own workout, probably 60 to 65 minutes on the elliptical with three-pound hand weights for light but sustained upper-body work, while watching some trashy reality show along the lines of Tila Tequila: Shot at Love. And then, instead, I guilted myself into taking the super-hard Body Design class. The instructor is great but instead of saying stuff like, "You can modify this one if you need to," he says things like, "You must keep up or you must leave. What's the point if you do it wrong?"

I felt every excruciating moment of that hour, but as I was leaving, I was feeling really smug, really proud of myself for undertaking the challenge when I could have fully justifiably gone easier on myself. I was busily making sweeping proclamations in my head about how important it is to continually take oneself out of one's comfort zone to gain rewards....

...when, as I was putting my weights away after class, my gymfriend said to me, "So, Alice, you staying for Ab Lab?" No. Shoot.

Damn. And the girl thought she had an angle.

Coachella Weekend 2008: Seen and Heard

A glut of dust
A naked man doing a cannonball
Hella. many. Uggs.
A tortilla being used as a coaster for a popsicle
Two grown men riding a six-foot-tall donkey-shaped piñata off a roof into a pool (N.B.: donkey piñatas apparently sink snout last in dramatic slow-mo)
A live donkey
Bangs in spades
Snow-covered mountaintops rising above 100-degree desert valleys
The entire Cathedral City police department being brought to bear on a harmless little pool party [halo]
A girl eating a popsicle while pumping gas in a bikini (come to think of it, that was me)
"Stars are just like Us! They pump gas!"
Many swimsuits cut rather shockingly high or low, many worn with fanny packs
"You're leaving? You're Ghandi?"
Acres of tents in which I was very glad not to be sleeping
Superlative lighting and art installations
Portishead and Prince
Mustaches transcending irony into another category I can't even name
Something about gladiator man-sandals paired with a Speedo?
A giant-size Gold's Gym T-shirt with rolled-up sleeves worn by a woman in a look that so poignantly and freakishly evoked my junior-high years it nearly made me turn into a pillar of salt to gaze upon
A lawn turned entirely to mud that will need to be resodded for sure
Copious beans and rice
Churros
Only one small puddle of barf, surprisingly
"It doesn't make sense to set up an ancillary towel camp poolside, when we have our base camp here on the grass." (Not my words in this case, but words I would have said because, hello, it's strategic.)
A man covered in paint and neck tattoos wielding a mallet
"This dive is called 'Call 911.'"
"This dive is called 'How We All End Up in Tomorrow's Paper.'"
My odometer flipping to 10,000 miles
Insane amounts of good clean fun

Thanks for the memories, Coachella 2008!

Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

It's on like Donkey Kong.

Yucatan trip officially booked yesterday...check! 28 days and counting. (--->OK so I stole that image from the Web, sorry, but I will take lots of my own pics next month!) Coachella pool parties, get ready for us at the end of April! Grand Canyon hike happening in late June!

It's shaping up to be just the kind of spring/summer season I like. The vacation-packed, friend-filled, swimsuit-shopping-spree kind. Yes! Don't sleep on spring break, y'all. (The difference between now and college is that these days I actually deserve a vacation.)

Stay tuned. Last summer's going to be hard to beat, but I'm up for the challenge. Ladies, are ya with me?

Thanks For the Memories, Coachella 2007!

Sis: where exactly were you guys staying?
me: we stayed at the quality inn in indio
in a king smoking room with a pullout sofa bed
very glamorous
Sis: whoa, so it smelled like smoking and air conditioner and stuff?
me: yeah
it was kinda ghett
or "bust out" as [my Brooklyn-by-way-of-Youngstown-Ohio friend] would say
but everything was crazy sold out
Sis: "bust out" means ghet?
me: even our room was $224/night with our AAA discount!
and it was kind of a coup to even get it
yeah
bust out is good, right? i'm trying to implement
Sis: wait: 2 things
me: k
shoot
Sis: 1) 224 a night????
even with the three As?
me: yes. for a smoking room at the quality inn with one bed and a AAA discount. and a small bug problem.
Sis: because of coachella, right? i mean, not normally
me: because all the cool kids with bangs flock to town and grab the rooms
right
totally because of coachella
Sis: ok also, you're trying to implement bust out - is bust out an adjective? That's so bust out?
me: yes
like: "our room at the quality inn was bust out, but at least it was close to the concerts."
or for another example:
it was so hot that [the Mexican architect] was fanning herself with her dirty-ass flip-flop. that was hella bust out
Sis: ok
me: or we saw a girl on sunday night walking out of the venue with a plastic bag tied to one foot because she apparently had lost a shoe. that was mad bust out
yeah
Sis: ok whatev you say but it's not totally intuitive