Lately I have been reading way too much Mimi Smartypants again, starting from the beginning and working [...]]]> “The aggressively kinked noodles form an aesthetically pleasing nest in cup or bowl, but when slurped, their sharp bends spray droplets of broth that settle uncomfortably about the lips and leave dots on your computer screen.” Thanks, Mr. Noodle.

Lately I have been reading way too much Mimi Smartypants again, starting from the beginning and working my way up to the present. I am not as good as she is so apologies for my disjointed rambly linkification, surely not as witty and intriguing as hers.
It was interesting, though, to read her posts from September 4 and then September 7 and then the 10th and she’s so funny and lighthearted and I know, but she doesn’t, that she is on the verge of this big awful thing.
That made me cry but now I am past that, into summer of 2002, and I am very curious about when she will mention that she adopts a kid, because it’s got to be coming up sometime soon here.

Mimi Smartypants always has lots of links. Unfortunately, as I am reading posts from 2002, most of her links are dead. But here is an interesting thing she showed me: hobo signs dictionary.

Marika came to visit not last weekend but the one before it, the one that contained New Year’s Eve. We ate good food (sushi down the street; delicious roast beef at home; Le Pichet for lunch; McMenamin’s cajun tater tots; fondue at Skip’s house on New Year’s) and we went to lots of museums. We went to the Bodies exhibit and also the Dead Sea Scrolls, whose site seems to be gone now, since the exhibit ended.
I found them both very interesting. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to make it through the Bodies exhibit, right at the beginning. I wish I could find a trustworthy source discussing the provenance of the bodies, though I might not like to know now that I have given them the money. I learned that the cause of cirrhosis, apparently, and PLEASE do not say “cirrhosis of the liver” because you cannot have cirrhosis of any other part of your body!!, is “the bad diet and lifestyle often associated with alcohol or drug abuse,” not the alcohol or drug abuse itself. Who knew?
The Dead Sea Scrolls was very full of people, including rude children. *shakes fish* I found myself surprisingly little moved by the documents themselves, especially considering their, well, documentality. I liked the rest of the exhibit, the archaeological parts and the language parts especially. Maybe it was because the scrolls are so small and the lights kept turning on and off — which I understand, of course, but they did seem to turn off on me more often than one might expect.

Last weekend I did laundry and read the internets. I have all kinds of half-formed grand plans about making everything in my life work — my house, my computer, my projects, my dog, my skin, my hips and arms and thighs, my hair, my sleep — but none of them have coalesced yet. But I am reading Open Secrets by Alice Munro and I find it to be extremely enjoyable. So I’ve got that.

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ETA: I just panicked that I have used the word “coalesce” far too many times in the recent past, but searching for it on this page returns nothing. Patient readers who might still be out there, sorry if I have abused you recently with too much coalescing. Coalescence.
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(Song: “Painting Her Fingernails,” Bobby Bare Jr.)