saturday in brief

i have been wanting to write about the afternoon i spent with naomi_traveller since saturday evening, but i've been alternately too busy and too tired. so here is a summary:

• just around the corner from the Hotsy Totsy Club!
  
• soup. beet greens. who knew?
  
• guitars!
  
• naomi has a really lovely singing voice.
  
• i hadn't actually sung with another person for probably 15 years. it was great.
  
• PANTS!
  
• escargot.
  
• the lime of the ancient mariner
  
• must do it again soon.
  

also, the exhibit of illuminated manuscripts at the legion of honor will be there through August 30th. we must go!

while webworks slowly generates help files...

years ago back in virginia, the power used to go out a lot when it rained. my friend bill was -- and still is -- a huge collector and restorer of antique victrolas, sewing machines, etc. their apartment was packed with them, so full that you had to wind your way through a narrow path between all the nifty old objects.

i have fond memories of power outages when groups of people converged on bill and tracey's place. bill would crank up one of the victrolas and play old swing 78s, and tracey would make tea or hot cocoa (they had a gas stove), and we'd sit around among the antiques, watching the rain and listening to the music and conversing. i've wanted for years to have my own victrola, but out here in California they're rarer and more expensive than on the east coast, and a working, restored model is outrageously expensive.

bill has offered to ship me one of his tabletop victrolas at his expense. i am too thrilled to politely insist on waiting till i can pay for the shipping myself. thus, instead, i pay tribute nerdsholm style.

bill, have a bug. you ROCK! these people SUCK!

so tired.

for days i've been wandering around just muttering under my breath to myself about how tired i am. i've had a few moments of energy but mostly i'm just dragging. i'm almost completely out of clean clothes. i was making good progress at work but then around 3 this afternoon i got slammed by a sudden inexplicable wave of anxiety and my brain just shut down. i hung on till four, and then finally said i was taking things home to work on, but what i actually did was go to Chevy's (which i can't afford) for dinner and a margarita, because i couldn't face the idea of cooking. then i didn't feel like coming home so i took my car through a car wash. rented a video on the way, something that will require no brainpower at all to enjoy.

but now i'm at home. and i can't think. and i can't relax. and i don't want to start the video until it's dark. and i desperately need a massage that i also can't afford. and there's cat puke on the rug. and the kitchen and bathroom are both disaster areas. and through my mind, over and over again, is running an endless chorus of "everything sucks, i can't handle this, i'm so tired". just typing that phrase caused intense pains to shoot down my arms into my hands -- that happens to me when i'm thinking about something really upsetting.

it's hard to focus on anything good right now.

i'm so tired. everything sucks. i can't handle this. i'm so tired. everything sucks. i can't handle this. i'm so tired. etc.