Quotidiana


Karen told me today that I need to "step things up" on my dissertation. I think that means I'm working too slowly. One chapter per term.

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Today's cloudy and 48 Fahrenheit listening at Radio Tony:

1. Tom Petty - Wildflowers
2. Marvin Gaye - Let's Get It On
3. Bob Mould - Black Sheets Of Rain
4. Al Green - Take Me To The River (a greatest hits type collection)
5. John Lennon - The John Lennon Collection (more great hits)
6. Van Morrison - Into The Music
7. 2Pac - Greatest Hits

I'm in a greatest hits sort of mood today, I suppose.

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My Greatest Hits:

1. Brian and Jessica's bong, circa 2000. Nearly passed out. No, did pass out for a minute. Gave up herbs. For a minute.

2. Nine-course or so Afghan feast, Summer 1996. The late Dan Ring (RIP) brought wine and glasses. I wore an American Girls T-Shirt. Erik and I are sitting on the couch in one photo, happy as all get-out. Kristin and I link arms and drink from Champagne flutes in one photo. Julia and I in another.

3. Beatrice. Talk about near-misses. We near-missed half a dozen times. But it was all gorgeous, drunken, a little dirty, a few broken nails, broken hearts, snuffed out menthol smokes in an empty wine jug.

4. Finally putting a poem in ZYZZYVA. It's not even my best work. I'm just so happy that I pleased Howard Junker. I seek approval.

5. Winning $3000 dollars in an undergraduate writing competition, taking 1st place in both fiction and poetry. The fiction prize was for the only short story I ever wrote. It was contract work: write story, get paid money.

6. Getting caught in the Splawn's hot tub, circa 1989. Naked. Old Man Splawn took our clothes inside the house. We had to run nude back to my house, get new clothes, and return to the scene of the crime, where Greg Schapp menacingly brandished a three wood at Mr. Splawn until he gave us our clothes back.

7. Violent Femmes concert, 1994. Snoop Darrell Darrell, Erik, and me. Kitsap County fairgrounds. Mid-August. Muddy moshpit. Snoop loses his wedding ring. Finds it later in another pile of mud.

8. Getting out of the Navy.

9. Kissing both Jeff Iak and Nancy Gazda at the Whittier Christmas Party.

10. Rediscovering Julia. I don't know what I'd do without her. Best friend.