Begun on Wednesday, 10 July 2003 and finished on Saturday, 12 July…

Well, it’s a lovely Wednesday morning in which I am writing – from my lovely Ford Contour, somewhere in downtown Manhattan. Apparently there was some confusion about who was to do what today and I am waiting for my squad leader, who left to bring a coworker to the airport, to come back to his apartment. I am feeling very much like a stalker. Good times.

So. I’ve managed to miss yet another month in which I should have written more and wasted less time. Unfortunately, I don’t even have the excuse that I was out of the country. I spent most of my time at work, investigating my criminal caseload. There’s nothing quite like invading the homes of those less fortunate and more cockroach-ridden than you, and telling them that they’ve committed a federal crime and they better fess up so you can throw them in jail. I mean really, the fun times never end.

This guy, Doug, with whom I’ve been working a lot lately, even saved me from getting a cockroach in my hair on a recent case. I was leaning against the wall, the cockroach was busy walking down the wall, and inches before the two of us meeting, Doug sends out the warning. I am eternally grateful. In fact, Doug even went one step further and got on his hands and knees in the kitchen to go through the trash in search of evidence for my case. All in a days work, baby, yeah.

In the life o’ Ryan outside of work, Vince and I have been keeping busy. On June 14, Vince formally graduated from Drexel University with a Masters Degree in Software Engineering. Of course, we didn’t attend the ceremony, but we reminisced about it on June 15th when we attended his cousin Bruno’s graduation party – he just finished up at the naval academy. Vince’s favorite part? The jealousy that comes from wishing you too could be paid for flying planes for a living. My favorite part? The MUMMERS!!!! They came, umbrellas and all, from our old stomping ground of South Philadelphia. For those of you who wonder – what the hell is a Mummer?! – I have the following for you: http://mummers.com/. They have links for all the Mummers clubs.

Well, we spent that Sunday afternoon with Vince’s Mom, Joe, Grandmom, Grandpop, and we even saw his sister Nicole and her husband Christian for a few seconds (before they quickly departed to “go take care of their new puppy”).

Oh shoot, I just figured out that I got the dates all wrong…not that you care, but Vince did officially graduate on June 14, but Bruno’s graduation was the Sunday before, on the 8th. Now don’t you all feel better knowing the right dates – but even more so that Ryan is losing her mind at such an early age?

The day before Bruno’s party, we were scheduled to attend Field Day Fest here in NY – an all day music festival held at Giants Stadium. The headliner was Radiohead, but also scheduled were Beth Orton, Beastie Boys, Elliott Smith, Blur, Underworld, Liz Phair and Beck. Originally it was supposed to be a two-day camping event in a huge field in Calverton, NY, but there were problems with permits at the last minute and they changed the venue to Giants Stadium and reduced to festival to one day.

To make matters worse, god cried all over us all day. In other words, it poured. So Vincent and I decided to attend the show later in the day, in an effort to stay out of the weather but still see the bands we wanted to see. I saw about ten minutes of Elliott Smith, who really did not impress me at the time, and then we went to our seats in the stadium to wait for Beck to come on.

Oh yes, I waited and I waited. Vince went out to buy me a hot dog. And then I waited again. After about a half hour of thinking the stage crew was setting up for Beck, the girl next to me says, “You know Beck isn’t playing right? He went to the hospital.” And it was true. Beck was accidentally hit by a stage crew member who was carrying something while watching Blur play and suffered from some minor rib damage – although nothing was broken. Eventually the Beastie Boys came on – now, I’ve seen the Beastie Boys play before and I know they are absolutely brilliant when it comes to producing their records. They make sounds and harmonies nobody else would even consider that end up sounding fabulous. All that aside, they suck. More than Hoover, they suck. They cannot sing. They do not dance. I am not entertained.

After about twenty minutes of deliberating, Vince and I went home, missing our chance to see Radiohead. We just could not wait the two hours until they came on stage.

So now I am actually ready to talk about Vince’s graduation weekend. We went to the Shore and staid at his father’s house in Margate. We rode bikes and shopped for the apartment on the Bay in Ventor – Vince’s father had some work done on the apartment and threw everything out so we had to buy a new couch, table, chairs, mattress and spring box, and bed frame. Vince and I even had the pleasure of digging through all the “wonderful” piles of god-knows-what that were still in the apartment. We were supposed to pick out things to throw away, but it turned into a case of us picking out things to keep. There was almost nothing we needed. Sometimes I laugh at how similar Vincent and his father are: they both like to collect things and then, even though they don’t even remember they have it, they don’t want to throw anything away. Personally, I think that your belongings mean more to you the fewer you have. It’s like that law in economics of diminishing returns. The more you have of something, the less you appreciate it. Know what I mean, jellybean?

Now I say all this because when we got back to the apartment a few weeks later, the Senator hadn’t allowed Ruth to throw away half as much as we wanted to. I was amused.

So that was my weekend.

The following weekend, or the last weekend in June, Vince and I spent our first weekend on the town. Saturday found us at Café Gitame for brunch, a quaint little French shop down in the West Village. We walked around window shopping for a short while before attending our first Broadway show: Baz Luhrman’s La Boheme, adapted from the opera and set in the 1950s. Vince adored it, as he adores the opera of the same title, but I loathed it. It was incredibly difficult for me to stay in my seat and not walk out on it like Starr and I did when we went to the ballet. If it weren’t for the fact that Vincent was so enthralled, I would have run, not walked, to the nearest exit (which just so happened to be directly to my left – not that I was looking for one, mind you).

So then we window-shopped some more and ended up meeting my friend Andrew for dinner. Down from Massachusetts for the weekend, Andrew was visiting with his old high school buddies who now live in NYC. We even brought him back to my apartment for a drink before he returned to his gallivanting with the boys. Andrew says, and I quote, “You have a very nice apartment, I must say. One of the best that I've seen out of all my friends, and certainly the one with the most posters/photos of breasts on the wall.” Now if that isn’t an advertisement that will pull all the customers in, I don’t know what is!

That Sunday we devoted to museums. Lucky for us, we made it to only one. The Museum of Sex. It certainly was an adventure just getting there. Apparently, the Museum of Sex is on the Gay Pride parade route. Vince and I had to cut off some transvestites and boys in drag to run across the street without being run down by a float! It was a scream! We only took a few photos, but there we were: in the midst of gay boy heaven.

The museum was incredibly interesting. And that means a lot coming from someone who really hates museums. I can go through something like the Met, or the Louvre for that matter, in about 30 minutes. I am too bored to do anything but yawn and run through the exhibits. But there, at MoSex, I read every last article on the wall and watched every last porn (and yes, there was porn – all the classics, I’ll have you know!). It was very educational. (Did I mention that was the first time I’d ever seen porn in public? I just can’t get over it!!!)

We must have finished with MoSex sometime around 6PM, and we spent another half hour or so with the tarot card reader sitting in the lobby, right by the packets of “Dicklets” and the Betty Paige cut-out dolls. Much like La Boheme, Vince was enthralled and I was skeptical. Every time the tarot lady tried to figure me out, I gave her a blank look. Vince, on the other hand, kept nodding and grinning. Her readings were quite good, if not somewhat general, but her numerology was WAY off. And she even calculated the wrong number for Vince, and then told us about it. It was like, blah blah blah for ten minutes and then, “Oh, that’s the wrong number, but you’re still… and the same still holds true.” Excuse me?

So Vince and I hit a boutique somewhere on Fifth Avenue, near to the Museum, and then it was off to an Irish Pub, across the street from the Empire State Building. And so we ended our weekend.

Finally, the 4th of July. Starr, Vince and I were off to the Shore – this time to the apartment in Ventnor. Lucky for us, they were just finishing up painting and we could move in. A quick stop to Bed, Bath and Beyond for the much needed bedding and we were in like Flynn. Starr and I spent the entirety of the 3rd cleaning the house. Remember how I said the Senator refused to throw everything out? Well, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Of course, we are not mean, ill-tempered harlots, but rather the kind of girls who throw away the broken fish statue and keep the old photo albums. So we scrubbed and disinfected, washed and put away.

Then we celebrated with a little party of steamed clams and corn on the cob, on the deck by the bay. Beer, wine and everything fine…

Vince and Starr’s friend, Kara, joined us from Philly on the 4th. She brought her boyfriend Angel, and two friends: Rob and Eddie. They called themselves “New York Ricans” and added all the spice we needed to our little party of seven. Most of the day was spent on the beach, drinking fresh-squeezed orange juice and vodka (Starr’s tip of the day: As long as it is fresh-squeezed, you can’t taste the alcohol – and it’s true!). Then we joined the huge 4th of July BBQ, held by the Ruth and Mitchell, the Senator’s head staff members who have a condo in the same building as Vince’s apartment.

After tasting the food and swilling some beer, we seven packed up an Igloo of Rolling Rock and headed out on “Friends,” one of the Senator’s boats. We headed for the ocean to see the fireworks…and that, my friends, is that.

So the rest of the time at the Shore was more sun, bike riding every morning, more fresh-squeezed and vodka on the beach, and a ticket for Vincent for having a headlight out on his car (ha ha!).

And so, you can now consider yourselves basically caught up on my life and history. We are spending another weekend in the wonderful world of Inwood, where we intend to catch up, clean up, and ride our bikes. Good times, my friends, good times…

So I forgot a few things! First of all, I completely failed to mention who it was that I was in Egypt protecting. As you may have noticed, had you tuned into CNN once in a while, both President Bush and Colin Powell were in Egypt for some Middle East negotiating this past week. Well, I was there, making sure Powell got an undisturbed night’s slumber. Yes, yes, that is the excitement that is a midnight shift!

However, it may delight you to know that he hardly ever sleeps (damn those military boys!) and neither does his staff. Everyone is up during all hours of the night – and here I was thinking we were the only people crazy enough to do that!

In other news, Prince Bandhar was also staying at the Hyatt where we were. We were in a villa on one side of the resort, and he was in a villa on the other side. Apparently there were a few more important people staying there as well, but I didn’t pay enough attention to catch their names. I was too busy with my own protectee.

Also, the other thing I forgot to mention was that on the way home I had a nine hour layover in Cairo. What that meant for us was that we had nine hours to explore Cairo. So we rented a van, and finagled our way onto some horses at 3AM. The horses led us to the Sahara, and the Sahara led us to the pyramids. Yes folks, your little country bumpkin has seen the pyramids! And I wasn’t even self-righteous until after the whole affair, when one of my fellow DS guys informed me that the only reason I wasn’t allowed to have the reins of my horse was because I am female. The nerve!

Of course, you don’t want to hear about that. You want to hear about the Sphinx, which could probably fit into a New York closet. I was disappointed that it is only a mere stone when viewed next to the pyramids. It’s a strange, strange thing. The sphinx is actually bigger on Looney Toons…

So, with the little extra time we had after our journey into the Sahara, we went to this little club at the Hilton Cairo. We got a few drinks, danced a little, and got our partying tushies back to the plane. It wasn’t until later that the guys realized they had been in a gay bar and began to regret their adventure! Ah, but I laughed!

Okay, so that’s really all that I left out. You don’t need to hear about the part where I flew for seventeen hours or so…

Hey everyone! I want you all to know that I am NOT in Egypt anymore. I have been home since last Thursday, after a long, hard week in the Middle East. So yes, Yael, I was only a stone’s throw away from where you now live, but I didn’t have an inch of wiggle room in which to meet up with you in your home town. Sorry, my dear…

As for the rest of my trip in Egypt, I spent two days flying out to Sharm El Sheikh, three days working, and then two days flying back to New York. The first night we arrived, we all met up and went out on the town. That meant that we got ripped off by the taxi driver, who then ripped us off again by sending us to his friend’s/brother’s/cousin’s restaurant. The food was sub-par, but I did learn about 7 words of Arabic from one of the waiters. Of course, we sat outside on the rug-covered chairs, where people were smoking hookahs and the like (I thought I had seen the last of those at my last party at Pi Lamb!). More of our group joined us later and we went drinking until the wee hours of the morn.

That is when the brilliant idea hit a few of us to go swimming in the Red Sea. Many, many gouges later – thanks to the coral – we were kicked out of the water by the local Navy and allowed to spend the rest of our morning in the swimming pools. Which is precisely where we watched the sun rise. Then, before our coworkers could awaken and find us out, we ran back to our rooms!

Somewhere around Tuesday of last week, I went snorkeling for the first time. Yes, I donned a wet suit, goggles and flippers. Stop laughing. No, really. I mean it. Did I mention I have a gun?

In any case, I went snorkeling. At first, my mask didn’t fit me properly and all this water came into my eyes, temporarily blinding me as the copious amounts of salt burned my very corneas. But I got over that when Ari gave me his mask. Then I had to master the whole snorkel concept. Let me tell you how TERRIBLE the Red Sea tastes. Just when I began to be able to open my eyes without pain…

Finally, I got the gear working properly and I started swimming around. And around. And over the coral. I saw one big blue fish, half my size, and Ari made me touch a jellyfish, but other than that, I think I could find better things to do with my time. Under the sea is no place for me! Especially when you have to swim over coral that is only a foot away – after gouging my feet all to heck that first night, I was not looking forward to scraping my underbelly all along the coral! No, Sam I am, I do not like green eggs and ham…

Did I mention how annoying the hotel staff was? I mean, helpful? Since I was working midnight shifts, I slept during the day. Of course, that meant that the housekeeping staff was obliged to call me at least six times to schedule a time when they could come in and clean. You see, they noticed that I had turned on the privacy light…. Hurumph!

But I am not bitter. I think it is because I am the only one who returned from our trip completely hydrated and without a burn. There’s something about men that makes them stupid – they drink, they sit in 100+ degree weather, and they burn to a crisp….all rather humorous really.

And so I am home again. Back to the grindstone, and incidentally, back to a city that hasn’t seen the sun in months. What a change!

Here’s to sunnier times…

[06/01/03 4:08:00 AM (local time) | Ryan Janda]
I am writing from Egypt and thought I’d start off the month with all of my friends and family, even if I won’t have a chance to post until I return to the states. Again, or for the very first time, I am writing from Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, which is a little old resort town on the Red Sea, and I am terribly homesick.

The place is, of course, beautiful. We are staying at the Hyatt and you can view pictures and the like on the internet at www.sharm.hyatt.com. Then you will know the kind of “hell” in which I am trapped.

But for those of you who are not willing to explore the place on your own, I will describe it for you. Imagine the desert. Stretches of sand for as far as the eye can see. In the distance are red mountains. There is only one road that runs through the entire city. And it isn’t until you step inside the lobby of the Hyatt that you can even see water. And there it lays, at the bottom of a perfectly manicured hill with several layers of pools and a waterslide – a field of blue that stretches out to the horizon: the Red Sea.

Apparently this place is really popular with divers and snorklers. We are right on a reef – which has already managed to cut up the bottom of my feet when we were swimming in the Red Sea (like high schoolers playing hookey) during the wee hours of Saturday morn.

Other than the water though, this place isn’t really on my list of things to do. There is no indigenous population of Sharm, everyone working here having been trucked in from outlaying villages and the like every morning. The whole city was built to cater to Western, particularly European, sensibilities and there isn’t much to do beyond visiting the local Hard Rock Café – which inexplicably becomes a night club late at night – and a few casinos and bars.

I have been amusing myself by learning a few words in Arabic and wandering around the resort. But that is honestly where the fun ends for me. I am still at work, and I still work with some of the most unenlightened men on the face of the planet. It’s not really because they’re terrible people, but they sure do know how to make a girl feel incredibly left out of the party. I am feeling a bit dissociated and all I want is my Vincent!

Maybe by the time I leave I will have sampled the fun of the on-site spa and health club, and perhaps snorkled, so then I will have more to speak at long length about. But, as it is, I am working midnight shifts, which are just as exciting as they sound, and I am still suffering from the two days of flying that it took to get here (yes, I left on Thursday and arrived on Saturday). I will have to get back to you on the excitement and enthusiasm.

So, without further ado, I take my leave. I curtsey, I blow kisses, and I pirouette off stage left…

My apartment is beginning to look more lived in than a homeless person’s cardboard box. And that’s the good news.

Right now I am sitting at the largest desk I have ever owned, ruminating on what to say to all of you. I have let yet another month pass me by without writing anything on my blog. I am sure you all missed me immensely (and if you didn’t, don’t feel like you need to inform me – okay, Nishchay? Oh wait, Nishchay never reads anything over three lines…)

So I’ve started my career as a Special Agent. It has taken me all over the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens – even downtown Manhattan – but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you where I’ve been. This city is monstrously huge. Suffice to say that I’ve been to neighborhoods where English isn’t spoken, and already fingerprinted several lawbreakers. I even attempted to speak Spanish, which I am convinced isn’t as bad as I thought once. Of course, none of this has worked for any of my cases, which are going to take more work to close than it takes to bring my cats to the vet.

The good news is that I get to start next week by completely abandoning my casework. I am going on my first protection detail, just in time for Michelle’s visit to the Big Apple. My timing is amazing!

I must admit that I am more than a little nervous to head out and do protection. The butterflies in my stomach all but kept me awake last night. Despite the fact that I do not know how long I will last in this job, I don’t want to screw up. I am sure things will turn out to be easier than I currently think, but it is the waiting and anticipation that always screws with your mind, isn’t it?

Oh, before I forget, here’s a great website for all of you who don’t really understand what I do for a living: http://ds.state.gov/faq/#q1

In other news, Vincent has kidney stones. Yup, and you thought I was the only one! We’ve been living through every last kidney cramp for the past week now and I sincerely hope we are through. I don’t know if I can handle a sick Vincent for very much longer. However, sick as he may be, we are driving out to Philadelphia today so we can attend his father’s Harry S. Truman Ball, a big fundraising event for Vince Sr.’s campaign. We were supposed to leave yesterday, but Vincent decided to completely pass the stone last night and we thought it best to stay put. Oh the things you didn’t want to know! (But how I delight in telling you…)

And that’s the long and short of that. Most of you missed my graduation ceremony, but da’ momma, Dan, Vince, and San did not. They were regaled with such uplifting commentary as, “Thanks for your patience while your loved ones were in training. Now we can send them to Syria and Iraq, and you will never see them again. Let me thank you in advance for your sacrifices.” It was truly motivational.

But then it was over. The whole ceremony was anti-climactic. I am always looking for more fulfillment, something more final that doesn’t sit in my stomach like a brick. That graduation certainly wasn’t it. My class didn’t even have one final soirée to kick off our new careers together. No matter what I’ve said about them before, I will miss them all (especially now that Herald is no longer a member of BSAC 72). They are the only people who will always know what I’m talking about when I mention those seven months of my life.

I spent the rest of graduation weekend with the movers and my mom. How soon my first on-my-own apartment was reduced to a place I can’t even recognize as mine. There were so many good things about living by myself that it was hard to witness. I almost didn’t believe that I was actually moving to New York. I know it is crazy to say this about an inanimate object, but I loved my apartment. I miss my apartment.

So I took my mom to the zoo. Armed with my Zen tea from the Starbucks across the street, I gallivanted, I named all the birds in the bird house, and I oohed and aaahed over everything. I love going to the zoo! Even if it did start raining. Of course, the rain began as soon as we were at the absolute furthest point from the entrance and, more importantly, our car. Not that it mattered. Vincent bought me an ice cream Snickers bar and we began the long, slow trek back in the rain. There is nothing like spending time in the rain with the ones you love. I even got another Zen tea as a treat for making it to the other side.

Then there was New York. Boxes everywhere, and I had to start work. You all know what transpired after that. I wrote it at the beginning of the email, just to ruin the chronology you all have come to cherish within my blogs.

And that’s that. I must now go shower, now that the Super has fixed the water heater and I can be clean again! Then it’s off to Philadelphia for Mommy’s Day weekend – remember to call your mommies!!!

Bet you’re beginning to wonder what I’ve been up to in the past, oh, I don’t know, two months! You see, it’s been nothing but excitement really. I won’t bore you too much with the details, but suffice to know that I am still in training, and will soon be done. Somehow the last six months seem to be more like six years, in regards to the amount of things we’ve incorporated into it and the amount of people who have been in and out of my life. Vince finished his graduate degree in software engineering and we are now in the process of unpacking our new home in New York. We attended Vince’s sister’s wedding in March and also his dad’s 60th birthday bash – all in the same weekend! And now I am in DC jumping through the last of the hoops required to get my badge and my gun. What a strange feeling….

Most of you will understand what I’m talking about when you remember our college days, and how after each year at school you felt like you lived through a decade. All those stories, all those experiences, and only a small set of people really understood what you were talking about half of the time. Then came graduation, and it didn’t seem real that we were all going our separate ways.

Well, I’m there again. All those months behind me, many more to come, but in three weeks I graduate. I don’t know what to say. I never thought I would come to appreciate these 21 people as much as I do at this point. We never would have met on the street, or in a bar, or anywhere else (I guess that has as much to do with location as anything else – the people in my class come from as far as California and the Phillipines) – but we all came together at the same point in our lives to take part in the whole wide wonderful world of Diplomatic Security training.

I must say that it has been more frustration than anything else, working for the government. Most days we feel like we’re working against the government, and that the government pushes back just as hard against us – however, we’ve made it this far and it is such an accomplishment. I still don’t know what I was thinking to sign up for this long strange trip (and I am sure Vince is still hoping I’ll change my mind), but I do know that I’m willing to wait it out and see.

Even now it sounds exciting to know that I have the potential to be sent overseas to be in charge of an embassy; to experience new cultures and meet new people; maybe even get in some language training along the way… These are the main reasons why I initially applied to this job, and the gun was just another added bonus to make me look cool while traveling.

It has just been so hard to do this without Vincent, and without my usual network of support. All my closest friends are always too far away to be around for those midnight drinking sessions, and Vince is stuck in New York starting a new job and settling in to a new place. The crowd of men with whom I work are just as likely to get me in trouble as not, and if I decide to make a career out of this I am going to have to watch what I do around them. After all, many of them are former military, uptight Republican types who all seem to condemn any kind of behavior I have and will dive into. So I am more of an oddity than anything else – not that my old comrades don’t find me odd, but at least they acknowledge their oddness too. Well, whatever. I don’t mean to discredit their character or complain about the people with whom I work. They really are a good bunch of guys, but a few sour grapes can ruin the whole bunch, and we cannot yet tell who are the friendlies and who is running to tell on us at every moment. Which wouldn’t normally matter, except that every little thing that goes onto your record ruins your chances of promotion…

Anyway, what am I babbling about??? I wanted to get a little somethin’-somethin’ out there for you guys to remind you that I am still alive and breathing. So yes, I am. Doing both.

Important dates for you guys: 11 April 2003, Ryan’s official swearing-in ceremony (to the foreign service); 24 April 2003, Ryan’s graduation from Basic Special Agent Training Class 72; 26 April 2003, Ryan officially moves to New York!!! And 28 April 2003, Ryan’s first day as a Special Agent… yay…!

Well, that’s all, folks! Gotta love me…

Today was a mix of I don’t know what. I assuaged my soul a little today by telling my supervisor what an unprofessional dolt that classmate of mine is (the one I mentioned in my 2/18/03 blog). Thankfully my supervisor took me seriously and I can take further measures at any time I wish. He appeared to be very supportive and that relieves a lot of the tension I felt over this problem. I didn’t want to acquire the wrong kind of reputation around the office because that could damage my career down the line, and I also wasn’t prepared to let this problem individual know who complained because I can’t be sure how he would react. So it is nice to know that I have the opportunity to take action at any time I wish. In the meantime, my supervisor offered to work it out so that this problem classmate and I are never paired together again during the rest of training. So far, so good.

Yet most of my day was wasted for no apparent reason. First we had to sit around from noon til 2PM just to be told that the rental cars we need for our practical examination on Monday through Wednesday are ready, and that we can invite five guests to our graduation. Oh, the government at work!

Then Todd and I were supposed to run some routes this afternoon and do some advance work on a site we’re visiting during the practical exercise. Well, the site is a cemetery. And guess what? You can’t even get in there because of all the snow!!! What a disaster!!! We tromped around in the snow in our suits for about a half hour, trying not to fall on our tushies and still find the gravestones. That didn’t work.

So then we start driving our routes. Whattya know? We get caught in rush hour traffic and somehow get trapped in downtown Washington. By our fifth try, we somehow managed to depart the city. And thus we gave up driving. I came home. And so there I remain.

I should be working on my “homework” right now, but I can’t seem to concentrate on it. It seems that every day after work I am destined to have a bone-crushing headache. Somehow that is not conducive to working on, well, work. Who knew?

At least yesterday I was able to enjoy a nice cold beer before the head rush began. And it was a delicious beer to boot. I was telling my coworkers that I haven’t had a beer that tasted SO good, or was SO needed as the one I drank last night. It wouldn’t have mattered if I was drinking sludge water tinged with vodka, it would have been fabulous! There was something so deep-in-the-bones relaxing about that beer that I think it may go down as one of the best things I’ve ever drunk in my entire life. Now if only they could bottle that feeling up and sell it in the mass market. I’d give up my firstborn, Rumplestilskin.

In other news, Vincent was in New York today. My papisan is now in place and I imagine that it looks quite at home in our empty living room. At least the guest bed is also in place so we don’t actually have to fight over who gets to sleep in the papisan. I think the only person who is frustrated by this new arrangement is our little baby, Daisy (our kitty cat). She thinks that we have gotten rid of her chair – which was the footrest for the papisan. Won’t she be surprised when we box her up and ship her out to New York!?? (Oh yeah, and she’ll also be more than a little pissed off.)

Anywho. I have now misplaced my desire to write any further. Email me if you want to talk – just don’t expect a response. It’s all about monologues, baby, monologues.

Talking to myself,
Ryan