Well, we are in the midst of packing for our long drive down to Georgia. There seem to be a million things to gather up and put in the car. I know I'm going to forget stuff, I guess I should just learn to live with that.

I am really looking forward to a week off work, and to seeing the families. We'll have a good time, I think. It has been so long since Marty and I drove a long way like this. We used to drive from Pennsylvania to Georgia -- years ago, when we first started grad school in the early 90s. It's been years since we did it -- and now we're going even farther.

I know Marty's back is going to be killing him though. Long car trips always do that, he's just like his mother that way.

I will try to update from time to time when we are on the road. Blogger makes it really easy to do that. You can write me, too, and I can pick it up when I get online.

Anyway, I don't know if I'll have another chance to write before we leave. We are headed out early tomorrow morning. So I'll catch you all later.

I am sure Sonal is too young to know about Body on Tap shampoo but I was tickled by her comments about this:

I've been washing my hair with beer shampoo lately ... I love it! I bought two bottles of it ("Black Cherry Stout" and "Honey Wheat Pilsner") just because of the novelty, and I actually like it! Cost me $1.49 a piece, and they're better than my $11 Origins shampoo!

I have to find some of this stuff! If only so I can hear people say, "Gee, your hair smells terrific!"

With friends who show you stuff like this, who needs enemies???

On Sunday Katynka and I ate at Don Pablo's, a Mexican restaurant in Altoona, PA. It's part of a chain, but I had never been there before.

The food was fine, your standard mass-market Mexican stuff, but the really notable thing was the decor. The eating area was wide open, kind of like they describe on their page, like a village plaza. It also had some touches of diner style and industrial architecture, which sounds like overload but it worked okay.

The only thing that was bad, though, was really bad. The bathroom doors and walls were decorated in this faux-distressed finish in lurid red and dirty-looking black. It was very disturbing. I think it was clean in there, but it looked like it could be really dirty and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Plus, the colors made me think of hell. That can't be a good thing in a restaurant bathroom. Somebody made a really bad mistake.

The funniest thing was, I went in there and noticed it, but didn't say anything to Katynka. Then she went in and thought the exact same thing I did. We both thought it was pretty creepy.

Sonal was talking about this Kabalarians site yesterday. Turns out this is where I found the "Pandaba" stuff last week, although I didn't know it at the time. I don't much believe in horoscopes and fortune telling, but it's fun to put names in here and see what comes out. Probably about 60% of "Susannah" was true for me, and probably only about 40% of "Susie."

Speaking of white bread . . . there are only two kinds of sandwich for which I must have white bread, and fresh tomato is one of them. If it's a tomato and cheese sandwich, any kind of bread is fine. But for the purist tomato/mayo sandwich, white bread is a must. (I actually stopped on the way home from work today and bought some specially.)

My other white bread sandwich is the thanksgiving night sandwich: sliced turkey breast, Hellmann's mayonnaise, and white bread. Maybe a piece of iceberg lettuce and some bread and butter pickles. It's divine.

I don't want to give the impression I'm picky about sandwiches. God knows I love them, they're probably my favorite food of all time. I love almost any type of sandwich, any type of bread. And despite the preponderance of mayonnaise in the two I mentioned above, I believe in the diversity of condiments. I love all kinds of mustards and dressings, pickles and peppers too.

But I am very, very happy when the summer tomatoes come in and there are fresh ripe ones to be had all over town. I live it up during this time, because it only lasts a few weeks and then it's all over until the next year. I usually eat tomatoes until I get mouth sores from the acidity and I have to stop. I simply love them.

Welcome to Tomato World!

Buffy's a rerun. I know you're all as relieved as I am.

Interesting site. This guy wrote and said he liked mine, which was a nice surprise.

I am happy after my tomato sandwich. Nothing compares to the joy of ripe tomatoes, Hellman's mayonnaise, and white bread.

Have to run check and see if I'm missing a new Buffy ep. I am sadly out of touch with my show these days!

I am feeling sooooo uninspired. But it's been way too long since an update. Let me just empty my brain and maybe that'll help.

I had a nice weekend, went to Pennsylvania to visit Katynka (of Odin fame). The weather was absolutely gorgeous, probably two of the nicest days ever in August in Central PA. We ate at my favorite restaurant, went to a local arts festival, made dinner, played with the cat. I sold a bunch of books to the used bookstore for $80, which was nice and enabled a little trip to Value City before I came home. On the way home my car broke down and I killed two hours in a gas station in Nowhere, Pennsylvania. I made it home the same night though.

In other news, I feel like I'm getting a UTI. It was so bad I called the doctor and they had me go to the lab for a test. I guess we'll have the results tomorrow (I hope). In the meantime I've drunk about 1/3 gallon of cranberry juice in the last 2 hours and it seems to be helping. I hate feeling like this but I think I know why it happened.

Sonal bought a bunch of great CDs. I am so psyched. It makes me want to go to Florida and hit this store she went to.

I won't quite get all the way to Tampa, but I am going south next week. Saturday morning Marty and I are leaving to drive down to Georgia. We're going to see our families and pick up some furniture to bring back. It's going to be great to be home even if it's just for a couple of days. I can't say I'm looking forward to the 50 hours or so in the car, but it will be nice to have a week off work.

Work is okay. I am now a department of one. In some ways it's lonesome, but in other ways it's just fine.

I'm still listening to Stone Temple Pilots, although in the last couple of days I have needed the low-key sounds of Bob Dylan to keep me calm and mellow. It's just been a kind of harried time. My CD burner is not functioning properly and I need to fix it, but I'm scared to do anything to the computer when I'm feeling so frazzled.

Maria is seeing kd lang in concert tonight in Michigan and I am jealous. :-) I love her new CD. It sounds like she's in love.

Tomorrow I am getting something that could open up a whole new world for my web site. We'll see.

What else? The neighbors have given us a basket of ripe tomatoes and I plan to have tomato sandwiches for dinner. YUM.

Pandaba rocks!!! Like the owner of the "Pandaba rocks!!!" page, I have come to love Pandaba too. Her facial expressions are great.

Still, I don't think I would name my baby after her.

This is lifted right from the big empty.

08.14.00 -- NY Post | Dan Aquilante

NOT-SO-HOT PEPPERS & NAKED PILOT

IT could have been the drizzle, a tide so high that it was splashing into the seaside theater or wet speakers. But whatever it was, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were less than sizzling at the Jones Beach Theater.

At the first of a two-night engagement Saturday, the Peppers were totally outperformed by co-headliners the Stone Temple Pilots.

Not only outperformed, but upstaged as well, by angry STP leader Scott Weiland, who stripped naked at the end of the show. More on that later.

While the Peppers were OK, the Pilots were inspired - as if they knew they had something to prove and one chance to prove it. Yet the predominantly male, knucklehead frat-boy audience was there to see and hear the RHCP and, for some reason, was reluctant to show any appreciation for the whopper of a show the Pilots played.

Since his release from the slammer for drug possession, STP singer Weiland has been offering no-holds-barred performances. The band's show at Irving Plaza last spring still ranks as one of the year's best.

Saturday, the Pilots were at max power toward the end of their career-spanning set, highlighted by "Sour Girl" and other tunes from their nearly year-old album "No. 4." Weiland, in disbelief that audience members weren't reacting, commented from the stage about how he felt the Pilots were being disrespected.

After STP finished its set, in a flash Weiland did the unexpected. Already performing barechested, he dropped his trousers and took his final encore bows naked, cupping his privates with a hand for modesty - or to stay out of the Nassau County hoosegow for indecent exposure.

STP's act, especially with Weiland's nature-boy antics, was an impossible one to follow, and the Chili Peppers seemed to know it.

The band's thrash, rock/funk, electro hip-hop hybrid was intact, yet offered with little heart.

Singer Anthony Kiedis seemed unable to take command of the stage, and his voice was uneven. His fast, bombastic raps were on and nimble, his thrash punk shout-alongs were all right, but the man had trouble delivering RHCP's famed power ballads.

Even the well-worn radio favorite "Under the Bridge" was less than sterling. He and the band did play a fine version of the edgy lust song "Suck My Kiss" and the ethereal "Californication" (performed while the video screens filled with psychedelic animation). But neither was so powerful that it could carry the concert.

Flea, the band's very loved, very talented bassist, can't sing - even a little bit - but he was allowed to. Ouch.

Drummer Chad Smith did much to further the band's anti-beat box cause with top-shelf drumming and guitarist/vocalist John Frusciante played some simple, straightforward leads that lacked fire, yet were still pretty.

So. Marty got home last Thursday, hooray. Ziggy and I were glad to have him back.

Friday night a big limb fell from a tree in our front yard. If you are looking at a picture of the house, it's the big tree that stands on the right. It's a silver maple. It was weird -- we didn't even know it fell until our neighbor came over and said something. We couldn't see it from inside the house. We had the tree surgeon (ie "arborist") out to check it out. He said the tree could be saved, so today he came back and cleaned up the break and some other messed-up places. It looks different. Tomorrow he is coming to take a tree down in the back -- it's an ash and it has some kind of disease. So we'll use it for firewood. We would try to take it down ourselves, but it's just a huuuuuge tree. I think it would fall on the house if we took it down across the yard.

What else . . . got my hair colored and now I don't look quite so old. Ha ha.

Oh god. Today I was at the gynecologist for the first time in about 3 years. This is the first one I've been to since I moved to Connecticut. So he's this very nice man, very professional, about my age, and we're making conversation (this is already after I'm in the paper gown). He asks me where I'm from and when I tell him Valdosta, Georgia he gets all excited and starts saying, "No way! Get out of here!" Turns out his best friend from med school is from Valdosta. So then he tells me the guy's name, and I know him. I went to high school with him. How weird. It was all made more surreal by the fact that I was on the table wearing a paper dress. Very strange.

I had to bail on the poetry slam. I'm just too tired.

Here's a cool article about the Stone Temple Pilots from the Detroit Free Press: STP gets back to the music. Oh and don't miss the review of the actual show! This reviewer says some cool things about Scott Weiland.

Did I mention how I got a huge blister on my thumb when I mowed the grass yesterday?

I got ribbed for complaining about the grass-mowing. Maria says I'm not an outdoor kind of wife. "She's declawed, better keep her in the house!" Hee hee. I appreciate that.

For an eBay addict like me, this gallery is a real hoot.

Tonight I am going to watch my first poetry slam. My friend is competing in the national poetry slam championships and I'm driving up to Providence after work to watch her compete. I am so tired, though. I wish I could figure out a way to fit another 5 hours or so into this day for a nap.

Well, better get to work.

Mowed the grass. Just had time to do the front before it got dark, but it definitely looks better.

Does anyone know how to get the smell of gasoline off your hands?

I am trying to make myself get up off my ass and go outside and mow the lawn . . . it's just so hot out there still. But the grass is growin'. And I'm not going to be around tomorrow night, probably. I better just bite the bullet . . .

Marty may be back from Germany on Friday. Somehow it doesn't seem like it would be fair to save the lawn for him. ;-)

After work today I was greeted at the door by two boxes from Lillian Vernon catalog. I ordered some new dishes a week or so ago and they're here! I love them already. I got 2 sets, which is 8 plates, 8 bowls, 8 salad plates, and 8 mugs.

I know Lillian Vernon is a very grandmotherly kind of catalog to shop from, but they have such pretty dishes. I got some for a friend awhile back that had the cutest ladybug, bee, dragonfly and butterfly pattern. They were the kind of gift you buy for someone else and end up coveting. Then I knew I would have to have LV dishes of my own.

The other good thing about LV is that they have great customer service. When I opened my boxes today, 2 of the mugs had broken in transit. So I called up the toll-free number and now they are sending me 2 more mugs. I don't even have to send back the others.

They do have a web site but they're not really very well-equipped to do business online. Besides, it's really funny when you call, and you get the message "Hello, this is Lillian. Thank you for calling." Hee hee.

The only potential drawback is that today in the mail I also got a catalog from Harriet Carter. And you KNOW she got my name from LV. I'm sure those two share address books. Not that I really mind getting the Harriet Carter catalog, as cheesy as it is, they really have some good stuff. But I know this is just the beginning, and the floodgates are about to open . . . soon I'll be coming home to stacks and stacks of old-lady catalogs falling out of my mailbox, most likely.

Wow, sonicnet.com has produced a killer series of investigative journalism articles on Woodstock '99. I can't recommend these highly enough.

The two main organizers of Woodstock '99, John Scher and Mark Lang, amaze me every time I read an interview with them or see them speak on TV. Whenever they're asked about anything at all that happened at the event, their standard answer is, "We didn't hear about that problem [rape, fire, assault, lack of water, overflowing toilets, huge mountains of trash, etc] until the day after the concert ended." Yet they were there the entire time, giving press conferences on a regular basis about how successful the event was turning out to be. I guess they had their heads up their asses the entire time.

I have been thinking a lot about violence at rock shows this weekend. After reading a long article about Roskilde in Rolling Stone and then all these sonicnet articles about Woodstock, I am just wondering what the hell can be done about this. It makes me feel totally helpless and angry.

One other very interesting resource for information on this stuff is Crowd Management Strategies, a company that specializes in concert safety.

So . . . Tj went to see Stone Temple Pilots in concert last week. I haven't had a chance yet to talk to her to find out how they were. Scott is clean and sober now (he just got out of prison and got married earlier this year) and I hear he's tearin' it up on this tour. I can't wait to get the details.

Marty's been in Germany since Wednesday on business. He called Saturday morning to ask me what size tablecloth I want, so I guess he was doing some shopping. We still don't know when he'll be coming home.

Celeste has been here for the weekend and we've had a good time. Drove through two tanks of gas in two days, listened to a bunch of music, all that stuff. :-)

The squirrels are out this morning doing a trapeze act, jumping from tree to tree. Ziggy is fascinated. He's staring out the study window.

Listening to a bunch of Stone Temple Pilots music this weekend. I picked up a couple more of their CDs used. The new one, "No. 4" and the first one, "Core." Both of them rock in a very big way. (I already had "Purple," which kicks ass too.)

I'm kinda sorta fascinated with the STP lead singer, Scott Weiland, these days. On the official STP Web site I discovered what seems to be his weblog or a kind of infrequent journal or something.

Good News . . . Connecticut is getting a Target store. It'll be located up by the airport in Windsor. I am psyched. :-)

Oh, yeah.

Oh, Morrissey:

Something horrendous has happened. I can't really explain it except to say the obvious - [pop music] has been infiltrated by idiots. I do get annoyed because there isn't enough hate in pop, there isn't enough anger. If there are signs of intelligence, they get tired very quickly and give up the fight. They are not properly encouraged.

From Wilde Child, an interview in Blitz magazine, April, 1988.

How would you like to have this printed on your business cards?

P.S. I did find my pictures from New Orleans, and some others too. Some pictures from Point Pelee, Canada, where Maria and I went last June (it's the southernmost point in Canada) and some from my family reunion in Mississippi last year. Happy happy days.

Marty's off to Germany today for a business trip. He'll be away for a week or two. So Ziggy and I are getting ready to be bachelors for a little while. I have all kinds of instructions about how to do stuff -- how to use the automatic bill paying service, how to start the lawn mower, etc.

My friend Celeste is coming for the weekend. She's flying up from Georgia tomorrow night. It will be a whirlwind visit for certain. So today after work I need to come home and clean the house, get the guest room ready, and all that stuff.

I have been putting photos in photo albums . . . I had about 3.5 years' worth to do. All was going well until I got to last summer, and now I can't find the vacation pictures anywhere. We went to New Orleans last June, and I know we took at least two rolls of film. I remember having the pictures last summer, but we moved last August and I guess they must have gotten stashed in some box of unnecessary stuff, because I sure can't find them now. This is so frustrating!!!

Okay, I fixed that last link. I hate it when that happens. That's what I get for being awake at such an awful hour.

This is a $100 fashion statement I think I can do without . . .