Sometimes machines don't work, plugs don't exactly fit, sugar isn't moved efficiently from the blood into the cells, cells starve, and muscles ache. We got a late start for many reasons, not excluding underestimating the amount of work and dust involved in moving. It takes some edge off, though, when you decide there's no time goal, but merely a goal of completion. Still more to do, but paced enough that there's time to sit for a moment and write.

A few things:

For a moment, it was thought all the kittens had homes. But as it turns out, Clyda's heart is bigger than her cat's. Still one left. (Ingo caved in and took the other.)

Yesterday I got my hair cut for the first time in two years.

This morning on my way to work, I drove past two house-sized lemons, a giant ice cream cone, and a tractor-trailer full of pigs, riding to their deaths.

I'm going to New York tomorrow morning, so I may be quiet this weekend.

I've submitted a ridiculous picture of Jane to My Cat Hates You Dot Com. I'm hoping she looks pissed off enough to be included.

I'm not sure how we started talking about it, but this weekend Marco and I got on the subject of motivational speech and inspirational quotes. Maybe I'm too cynical, but none of it does much for me. All of it reminds me of a horrible job I took a couple years ago, at which coworkers yelled encouragement at each other ("Juiced by you, man!") and pumped each other up with empty phrases. (I lasted two days.) A friend of mine's roommate, however, seems to go for this sort of thing. Though I haven't met him, I did happen to see his bathroom mirror, on which he had taped two letter-sized pieces of paper, each completely blank except for one word. One said "DISCIPLINE," and the other, "POWER." I wonder what that's like, waking up groggy each morning, stumbling into the bathroom, and the first things that you see are these signs. I asked my friend if his roommate was in the military or something, but he just answered, "No, he owns a tanning salon." Oh.

I'm trying to be quiet, as to not wake anyone in my house up. It's so much easier to be productive when it feels like you're the only person who's awake or alive, when you can actually focus on what you're doing and you forget about appealing distractions. I'm certain that's one of the main reasons I like night so much. Right now, however, it happens to be morning.

South Carolina tried to kidnap me this weekend. On Friday I drove down to Clemson, SC, which is deceivingly far from Raleigh—it's about the same distance to Clemson as it is to Washington DC, but Clemson's close to the NC border, so I forget about the length of the drive until I'm halfway there. Anyway, I went because my friend and occasional instructor Marco lives there, and he was offering to teach a complimentary Flash course. Apparently he gives up lots of his Saturdays to teach one Macromedia course or another, which is really cool for the people who live there, and almost as cool for me (minus the drive). So on Friday night I got a little Clemson orientation, and on Saturday, a reintroduction to Flash.

Saturday evening I tried to leave, but I only made it to a town somewhere near the NC-SC border. White smoke from my muffler and a concerned stranger at the Waffle House encouraged me to pull over long before I made it to Raleigh, as did the cracking noises of the red-hot catalytic converter by my right leg. I gave my car to the tow truck with 253,001 miles on it, waking up the quiet pest in my brain that knows my car's last miles are within reach. So I had no car but still had my ridiculous luggage, and I had three hours to kill until Martin arrived to take me back to Raleigh. Fortunately, I was able to find the local movie theater, though I wasn't very interested in anything that was playing. I ended up seeing Tomb Raider, partially, I guess, for personal reasons. Now I'm back in Raleigh; tomorrow, however, I have to make the 6-hour round trip to pick up my car.

I gave my car to the shop this morning, along with a long list of problems that needed to be fixed (OK, four things long, which is pretty long in car-terms). In fact, yesterday, when I told the attendant what I wanted done, he just wrote the word "list." I've been bringing my car to these people for about a year now, since developing a mild half-trust with them, the kind reserved for repair people and hairdressers and generally those that have the potential to mess up delicate things badly. They're very friendly, but sometimes latch on to some strange or traditionally taboo topics of conversation. Once I was there with Ingo when they asked him what he did for a living. He told them he is a scientist, and one guy immediately jumped in, (referring to the Big Bang theory) "So you think you can bang two rocks together and get all this? [motioning to things around him] We can go out in the parking lot right now and test it out, if you want." I don't remember Ingo's response in detail, but I remember it being quite eloquent and polite.

So the damage is going to cost me one week's salary, which (un)fortunately(?) isn't much.

Also: I've put up some pictures from a trip I took to the U.K. in 1998.

As of Saturday, these people will have full control over the lives of two kittens. That's two I have left, in case you haven't been counting and are remotely interested.

I've probably had a total of three plants in my lifetime that have been under my sole supervision. I found out early on that I have trouble taking care of living things that don't remind me to feed them, things that just quietly die in a corner, wilting or drowning. Of course I have killer's guilt, and I feel even worse to know that something suffered because I simply forgot about it and later tried to overcompensate. As a result, I've opted to have few plants in my life or to have roommates who have (and take care of) plants.

Right now, however, is an exception. A couple months ago, Martin gave me a jade plant to keep in my office. It has mysteriously puffy leaves, and I was a little restless until one fell off and I was able to break it open and see inside. Since then no more leaves have fallen off, and I think my plant is relatively healthy, apart from last month's emergency trip home to receive a week of experienced care. But even though I've probably learned something about caring for a plant, I think that I've lost the point of the whole exercise. Sure, my job is to keep it alive, but I should also enjoy its aesthetic value, clean off its plump leaves and spot the formation of new ones, and arrange it so that it sits in the afternoon sunlight. Instead, worry drives me more than enjoyment, and I figure that it's only a matter of time before I watch another one die.

This weekend I've given myself a little break from computers and focused on other projects. For one, I made a mixed tape for an old friend in Scotland, who just called to tell me he's a father, as of last week. I guess I could congratulate him here, but I'm not sure he'll read this. (When I told him the URL of my site, he asked me, "So 'dot' is spelled d-o-t?" Um…full-stop com, then. A good reminder that the Internet isn't an essential part of life…) I also began sewing a little something at my parents' house, but it so happens that I am not at all a talented seamstress, and I left my half-finished project in Buies Creek until I'm able to spend more time with it. (My mom was still wrestling with the machine when I left.)

Yesterday I bought myself a voyeuristic camera lens. It's a little mirrored attachment that fits on the end of the lens and shoots pictures at a 90-degree angle, which means I can discreetly take pictures of unsuspecting people to either side of me. I don't really know when I'll actually get to use it, or if it's really all that inconspicuous, but it was cheap and insane and it exists, so I bought it. If I take anything worth showing, I'll post it.

For the past week I've had my alarm set to a station that wakes me up with the news headlines. It's not NPR—I'm not sure what it is, actually; I sort of found it by accident, when I was trying to replace the random station I'd been waking up with prior to that. I used to think my only requirement in an alarm-radio station was that there couldn't be any obnoxious DJs on it (because DJs are the best way to simultaneously wake me up and put me in a bad mood). So when I set my alarm clock at night, I just choose a station that plays classical music, which is generally pretty safe (though sometimes with this method you land a station that plays morning hymns, which might just be worse than the DJs). Maybe I'm too malleable, but this new station is affecting my morning demeanor as well, but in a different way. They're protesting in Sweden against Bush's stance on the Kyoto Accord? Good mood. Conservatives attribute the protests to Europeans' jealousy of American strength? Bad mood. It's not really that extreme or that black-and-white, but it goes something like that. It might be time to switch to the traditional beep, something that's a little more predictable.

Unrelated: be sure to check out my friend Michael's I Threw Up campaign.

SUVs, tractor trailers, Beetles ordered off the Internet, El Caminos, pickup trucks, each carrying a lonely passenger, were ushered into a single stressed exit this morning on my way to work. It was clear from the pile of metal that lay ahead and from the helicopters circling above that we were side-stepping a bad accident, one that spread across three lanes. Add twenty minutes and a stagnant mental image to the already tiresome commute. On the way home it was the rain that brought the cars to a standstill. There's usually a reason for it, but it doesn't make it much more bearable to know what it is.

English Richard wrote me today, reminding me that news and reactions are different where he lives. There, capital punishment is simply backward and outdated, regardless of your place in the political spectrum. Here, it's something else entirely.

***

I came across this alternative to declawing your cat today. It's too late for me... Getting my cat declawed was never an option, and, until today, I'd never heard of "nail caps," so my furniture was shredded at the edges long ago. But, man, what an alternative. I'm not sure what to think about the fashion colors, or whether cat humiliation is any more humane. (This was the last mention of cats for at least a week, I swear...)

Two of these have left my possession, and I feel relieved and a little sad and a little anxious. Not only am I part of the kitten-god triumverate (there are three of us deciding the fate of these monsters), but I am kitten marketer, and I'm afraid I'm not doing that part so well. I've still got four, and they're only getting bigger (i.e., less marketable). Where are they, the catless?

***

North Carolina has been covered in a thick, invisible blanket of wet, one that jumpstarts sweat glands and fills lungs; you can almost feel its weight as you move through it. You can't stir it with a fan or with open car windows…it just hangs there in its bulky mass and gives the heat square roots. It brings long hair up, makes straight hair curl and showering becomes an almost useless attack. Strangely, it almost becomes something you're proud to be able to endure, as if it leads to some sort of personal improvement. Other people from other places are the same way about cold.

I've been wanting a turntable for ages, and I have records that need one, but I never knew what to look for exactly, there were always more pressing things to spend my money on, blah, blah. Today, however, one found me. Earlier Martin and I were in some out-of-the-way thrift store, not looking for anything in particular, and there it was. I'd already noticed that we were in a particularly cheap thrift store (shirts were 35¢), but that didn't prepare me for the pricetag dangling from the turntable: $2.00. (And Martin thought his $7.00 turntable was a good deal.) I'm not sure I'm getting off so cheap, though, since of course this means I'm going to have to buy more records.

This morning I explored Skip's A/V Geeks films, and somehow ended up ordering five of them. But with film titles such as Danger is Your Companion, Never a Bride (for delinquent girls), ABC of Sex Education with Trainables, The Hippie Temptation, and Surviving Hostage Situations, how could I resist?

Yesterday I got a call from Richard, who gave me the task of filling in one of the last blanks in a song he's writing. I had to come up with a place in London that rhymes with ground or brown or something to that effect. Using the resources at my disposal—a tube map and a pillowcase with a map of London on it—I completed the song with the words "Camden Town." Granted, it's not a full line, or even a nice analogy or something like that—I just provided a name. Even still, it'll be nice hearing the song played Saturday night and seeing how those words fit in the larger context. (I haven't even heard the line it's being used in, which goes to show the amount of creative input I had.)

As promised, here are the pictures from Stef's and Michael's show There Goes the Neighborhood: Suburban Flag Appropriation.

Today marks the beginning of oppressive heat. In my old, uninsulated house, there are roughly two months of comfortable weather, when leaving the windows open regulates the temperature rather than mandates extremes. Of course with open windows comes the sounds of the street below, which, on my street, are often obnoxious yelps from nearby parties or the screaming tires of cars being driven in circles in the adjacant parking lot. Sometimes you can hear birds and squirrels and other unidentifiable creatures, and last night brought the music of a jazz band next door, the liquid saxophone wafting through the house. I climbed out of my window and sat on the roof listening until giant insects brought me back inside.

Stef and Matt are officially back in town, after spending more than a year in the desert. Friday night Stef showed us what the dry heat drove her to do: make twisted suburban flags. (Here is an example of a traditional suburban flag.) Her and Michael's project There Goes the Neighborhood: Suburban Flag Appropriation debuted Friday at Lump Gallery in downtown Raleigh. So of course I went opening night and I was pleased to find flags that looked convincingly suburban apart from the content: a butterfly with a skull head, a gas mask, a danger! electrocution illustration, a dog relieving itself, etc. If I can find some pictures, I'll be sure to post them.