January 25th, 2004
    
     
     

10:13pm

it's cold. 19 degrees but feels like 0 degrees. the wind is rattling my windows.
cleaned up a bit in case the fire dept has to come in to check my alarm as they are checking them in this building tomorrow.
all that cleaning woke me up a bit but i just took some sominex so i hope i can get tired enough to sleep asap.
i need to find some things to sell because i think i am going to be short for rent this month and i still have not paid my electric bill for the last 2 months. argh.

money spent today: $30.00 to jason for 4 movies i ordered on his cable and for a quiche lorraine for my dinner for the next few days.
$10 to to usama for his trip to iraq as he is making a documentary film:

"Filmmakers Usama and Kristie Alshaibi will visit Usama's place of birth at the end of January 2004
in order to document he and his father's return to a home they left more than 20 years ago. In addition to exploring Baghdad in it's current state of anarchy, the Alshaibi's have a house in Basra that they want to re-claim. It was appropriated by Ba’ath party leaders after the family fled during the Iraq/Iran war (the same house discussed in Studs Terkel's book, Hope Dies Last). Usama's Father is leaving on January 28 from Amman to Baghdad (and then on to Basra) and the filmmakers will be there with him as he enters the country for the first time in two decades.

With Saddam captured there is going to be a different Iraq, and with the US occupation, an uncertain future. Usama's father is Shi'a Muslim so this is especially important for him since the Shi'a were severely brutalized under Saddam.

Usama never imagined that he would be returning to Iraq this early in his life. The last time he saw his house in Basra he was in 4th grade and he had very mixed feelings about leaving. Usama still has friends and family there that he and his father have not seen in 24 years. This will be a deeply personal and intimate journey home."

http://www.livejournal.com/users/habibi/411957.html

i figure it good karma to help out other artists. 10 bucks isn't much but it can buy some kabob :)

8:43pm

we had dinner at paliminos which was a really posh place. it's so weird to wake up so late and then have a really rich meal for breakfast that is actually dinner and then we i get home it is night.
since i didn't get much sleep last night ( morning day) i hope to god i can get to bed early tonight. pleeeeease dearest universe let me able to get to bed by 10pm!
i had these scallops that had an almond crust all fried in butter, and a sam adams. yum! and i had pink grapefruit sorbet.

3:35pm

oh, so tired. painfully tired. cold out. wind rattles my windows.
diet coke for breakast. a hot bath waits. i won't want to get out. have to leave in an hour for jason's dad's birthday dinner. jason came over and woke me up. i need to wash my hair but it takes hours to dry and i don't want wet hair in th cold. brrr.
had a short dream that spalding gray was found alive. he was wearing a helmut with a butterfly on it. butterflies are symbolic for reincarnation.
i don't remember the rest of my dreams but i'm sure they weren't great because i woke up feeling very nervous, as usual. i wish i could snap my fingers or twinkle my nose like on bewitched and have my house be clean.
ok, off to the bath i go. i turned on the heater in my house when i woke up but it's still chilly in here.

5:20am

well i was all set to go to sleep but i was too worked up from having dinner at milo and susan's.
they are the older cool arty couple you want to be when you get older. milo would cringe to hear the word "arty" being applied to him...that isn't actually a good word for him but i can't think of another right now.
he is a free jazz musician and susan is a modern dancer and also a fiber artist. and she showed me these amazing books on shibori which is a type of very textural 3D fabric and it just made my mind explode with delight.
when i got home i had to look up shibori on the internet and then add a million more books on it to my amazon wish list and then that lead to me, somehow, to finding this online market in india for manufacturers of yarn and textiles and anything else you can imagine. which lead me back to thinking about seed beads and crocheting strings of sead beads and looking at beads which then sent me on a scavenger hunt for the beads i own. i did find some of my beads but not all of them. man, i need to clean and organize that thing room so i can find things when i need them.
but then i found all these other things...this string of plastic orange beads i have been hauling around for years but never knew what to do with and this string of steel beads that was for a project i never finished.
and i'm like "hey, i could crochet those..."
so now i have 5 billion more ideas and projects and i've dragged even more stuff into my bedroom and everything is such a mess but i HAVE to clean tomorrow because on monday the fire department is coming to my building to inspect everything. and i don't want to sleep now i just want to stay up forever and try out all my ideas. i'm just too curious to know what the orange beads or the steel beads look like crocheted and everything else inbetween.
i just want to blast music and drink coffee and get things done. but i can't , of course, i need to calm down and go to sleep.

oh wait! i totally forgot that tomorrow i am going out for jason's dad's birthday dinner. but ok, i just remembered that is at suppertime and not brunch, thank god!