I hear it's sunny in London today. I expect all that will change when I pass through.

Rolling the closing costs into the loan seems to be an option.

Normally an enjoyable ride, Amtrak home from Syracuse yesterday:

-1.5 hours late arriving from Buffalo

-2 hours delayed between Utica and Albany for track repairs

-2 hours delayed due to a tree across the tracks near Rhinecliff

-and, icing on the cake, 1000 feet from Penn Station, the engine died. 45 minutes waiting for a tow.

Conductors explained that the freight company, CSX, schedules the track maintenance. They tell Amtrak, but Amtrak doesn't tell the passengers. Work on this stretch has been going on for a month or more, and is expected to continue for at least another month, all without passing the information along.

Ate enough drek from the cafe car to disgust myself.

woke up nauseous in the middle of the night--drank some water and eventually went back to sleep. felt fine when i woke up this morning, but now the nausea is returning.

The Tribeca Film Festival's skill at scheduling any films I would like to see at the most bizarre times of day and night, and only once or twice. Not to mention, screening them inconveniently in bloody Tribeca.

Excruciating postsurgical, postanesthetic dental pain. I'm hoping the codeine I took kicks in soon.

We registered yesterday at Bloomies; we were selecting everyday flatware when a couple approached. The woman said loudly: "This is what people buy who can't afford what we got at Tiffany's." She then repeated that 4 minutes later. She then proceeded to mention Tiffany's again 2 minutes later as they examined various patterns. Gatham and I looked at each other--we were the only people around. Gautham and I then started saying Tiffany's every 3rd word... while giggling. I think someone got the hint because they left. So tacky.

Went to the theatre Thursday night to see Glengarry, Glen Ross (awful, not even worth starting a thread about....I loved the movie , I know it intimately, this version was pathetic) but anyway.....the rows are close together, there's maybe 4" between my knees and the seat in front of me. A woman enters the row in front, stops, turns around, takes her coat, folds it in half and throws 3/4 of it over her seat so that half of it is actually laying on my lap. She looks over the situation and then turns around and sits down. I am incredulous. After closing my gaping jaw I tap her on the shoulder and say "would you please get your coat off my lap" She looks at me with daggers in her eyes and in a giant huff she grabs her coat and whips it away as if I had some nerve.

ALSO, we had two laughing hyenas behing us. Next time I go to the theatre, I'm bringing hyena poison in spray form.

If I was David Mamet, I'd be hiding in the nearest closet. The opening is tomorrow.

I got an e-mail today from the people I worked with at my previous position photographing the farm dinners. They pointed me to an article in a newspaper in SanLuisObispo (I am deliberately writing in UnGoogle-able code here) about a certain chef. This chef, in imitation of these dinners, has begun to stage his own meals in the field©, so to speak.

The problem? He calls them "a restaurant without walls," a phrase I coined over five years ago. It's been picked up by the press in many articles about the original farm dinners, and it's been on the website I created for years now. I can prove it's been in use in relation to the dinners I was associated with.

I think it's blatant plagiarism, and I''m steaming hot.

It IS plagiarism, isn't it?

The guy looks like a cheeseball (without the nuts).

Can someone (or several someones) please advise? Tanks. Or maybe just a bazooka.

Grrrr.

I think that at most it could be a trademark violation.

If anything it might be an infringement on your trademark (perhaps service mark-don't know)--if you have a right to such trademark or service mark. Rights to a mark are gained not only by inscribing the mark but also by earlier use of the mark.

Let me know Tana if you have any questions.

1). My landlord is a crackhead.

2). My downstairs neighbors (the delightful girls previously mentioned on this thread) broke my next-door neighbors' decorative chimney stove, which he had courteously allowed us all to use as a nice firepit, and they refuse to admit to it.

Everyone knows it was them. How do we know? Let's see: stove not broken, and then they use it one night when they're out in the yard, screamingly wasted with their pseudo hippie "let's pretend we're not from wealthy families!" friends, who drink 40s because they think 40s are some sort of broke-college-student status symbol, and who break 40s in the driveway because they think that is what one does with glass, and who jump around stove yelling "Kumbaya" in drunken chorus, and who keep running into stove with drunken elbows, and then next day, stove broken!

But, just like they can't admit to absolutely SUCKING ASS as neighbors for the past year, they can't admit they even used the stove that night (when there are several of us who saw them do it). So now our next-door neighbor wants us all to give him money for it.

I like him, but I'm not giving him shit.

Holy shit, your neighbors must be related to my neighbors. My building is located close to the University. The condos in my building are owned primarily by young professionals. Last year a couple decided that they would buy one of the condos for their daughter to live in while she attended the University. Within a month her entire sorority basically moved into our building. Cigarette butts everywhere, broken beer bottles, their 18 year old frat-boy boyfriends pissing off the balcony onto my neighbors patio furniture. They have given our door code to the entire student body, they are loud, drunk, and obnoxious. They are also republicans.
They pushed one of my terracotta planters off of my deck and shattered it. We have called her parents several times to no avail.

This morning while dressing I managed to put a hole in my favorite pants with the heel of my boot

Navigate an overcrowded bus, an express train which might have been moving backwards, the morning commuter crowds, a vast building site thick with dust and the smell of burning, to find my doctor's new office, then he takes my blood pressure. What does he expect? He should take it after I have been lying on a beach for a week.

It was a late night, but did not approach the level of debauchery you are suggesting.

The boots are snug stretch suede. Unless I am planning on wearing jeans I always put them on first--it's easier.

My primary contact at Company X is the poster child for ADD. I'm trying to complete a first draft of a very large book that needs to be complete complete complete by end of July, and today my colleague has sent me two sets of revisions – one each for books that were complete complete complete in February.

i'm already dreaming constantly about my new job, and i've only been to work six times.

How about medmares. Medical nightmares.

Of course there are good ones like milliomares

Doctors who keep you waiting for hours. I had to leave before seeing the bastard as I had another meeting. He won't be seeing any of my money (or my insurer's).

Find out if the chairman keeps his/her patients waiting just as long. I bet yes. Managed care is hell on the practices, but there are those that somehow still manage to run on time. So if that's true, it can be done, and I give my business to those who respect my time. There are enough of good physicians to choose from.

I often say that the health care system is designed to weed out out people, if you get my meaning.

An hour is unacceptable, but I can appreciate that doctors cannot know in advance, with absolute reliability, how long they will need to spend with each patient. It can only be an estimate.

They know by experience, more or less...certainly an average which would allow them to catch up pretty quickly....and when a practice does the late thing with regularity, and with barely an apology...fuggedaboutit.

It wasn't just that I had to wait (these things sometimes happen). But no one told me that there might be a delay, or when I might be seen. And when I eventually said that I'd have to go, I wasn't offered any explanation or apology. His assistant just flounced in to give me back my insurance card and then flounced out again.

It is highly annoying that at 7:45 a.m. the New York Times has yet to land in front of my door.

And my eyes are itchy. Time to take a Zyrtec.

Shaving. I hate it. Right now it feels like someone took a power sander to my neck.

can men get their faces waxed or would it cause too much redness?