it's his birthday tonight. the two of us are eating dinner here. friday night, we're having a get together here. saturday we have some sort of all-day autumn party out in the countryside. and sunday we have another party, called Yom-Toberfest. it's thrown by a couple i went to college with. he's Jewish. she's German. they throw a tongue-in-cheek celebration of supposedly irreconcilable cultures (think, Manischewitz and Heffeweisen as the main beverages, along with latkas and sauerkraut)...

did a good 40 minutes of cardio, even did a bench press (and it's kind of dramatic how much strength i've lost), and then i went down to the pool and could barely do 10 laps.

i just felt so uncomfortable. not panicky, not freaky, not nervous. just creeped-out and uncomfortable.

so i went to the gym today. did 20 minutes on the bike, 15 on the elliptical, and then went to the pool and jumped in. i tried very hard not to think too much, to just go into autopilot and get my butt in the pool and start swimming, and i was mostly successful. i was expecting to have flashbacks to the incident itself, but instead, i my mind kept producing little snapshots of working out at the old pool -- the showers there, the suit dryer, the feel of the plastic mats, the set of unchanging...

i'm going to do laps at my NEW gym.

am really excited to jump back in the pool. if it were a movie, i'm sure there'd be some sort of inspirational music.

and am sorry i've sort of abandoned this journal of late. got very, very busy with work these past few weeks, and other things have given me the space to vent and explore and write.

but i'll try to get back to it.

and the CAT scan was clear. my lungs are, amazingly, pretty much back to normal. the doctor was even surprised, and thrilled.

now, the hard part begins -- getting back into shape.

but, no doubt:

yes, 30 is an arbitrary number, but why not just choose that as a point to take a bit of a life inventory and realize what's most important to you. beyond certain poeple in my life, as well as the obvious food and shelter and being able to have my books and see my friends, i think the biggest priority in my life, the way in which i will choose to spend my money will be thorugh travel.

i was put in a wistful mood by the candlelight that we have to use in our bathroom since some...

guess who has two thumbs and just got Springsteen tickets for DC on November 11th?

THIS GUY.

more to come. been quite a week or so.

i'm totes serial. for real. if you somehow wind up in Washington DC tomorrow, come hang with us at Nellie's Sports Bar at 9th and U. it's a gay sports bar. it's new. has a rooftop deck. and people seem to like it. we'll be there sometime around 9. i'm not at all a sports nut, but guys who tend to be into sports make for nice wallpaper.

after that, we're going to go to Blow Off at the legendary 9:30 Club. if you liked Husker Du, you'll be pleased to know that Bob Mould...

there's not a ton of time to write right now, but things are fine. i've been working my butt off all week on my first "real" script and just passed it in for some tearing apart by the EP. i've been working 9:30--8:30 pretty much all week, but we're all going to duck out today at 5 for a happy hour and then Memphis is taking me out to a surprise birthday dinner somewhere in Dupont, he hasn't told me where, and that's fine. surprises are nice.

i'm totally okay working...

1503 - Michelangelo begins work on his statue of David.
1788 - The United States' Philadelphia Convention sets the date for the country's first presidential election, and New York City becomes the temporary capital of the U.S..
1899 - Henry Bliss is the first person in the United States to be killed in an automobile accident.
1906 - First fixed-wing aircraft flight in Europe.
1922 - The temperature (in the shade) at Al 'Aziziyah, Libya reaches a world record 57.7°C (135.9°F)....

it's humid. and rainy. and that's a good thing since we're in the midst of a drought, and a cooler, breezier day is on tap for tomorrow.

but you know you're in a tender state when you're waiting for your bean-and-cheese burrito at Baja Fresh and the syrupy, Spanish language ballads that you can't undestand a word of (because you took French in high school) are making you sigh and raise your heavy eyes to stare wistfully out the window at the gentle rain.

i went to...

this says all that i could ever say:

this, to me, is what matters:

[q]These are final conversations that were recorded on cell phones, recorded on voice mail. They seem to me to be incredible texts, because they were at the moment of confronting life or death. They're so pure about the expression of love between husband and wife, between mother and child. ... When I read them, I just felt they were texts as sacred as the text that we end up having recorded, that we...

sorry i haven't written more, but i've been writing. and i'm quite happy about that. today i handed in my shooting script for my first episode, and i am actually kind of pleased with it. and what's more important is that it was a far more enjoyable way to work through a week than doing the logistical stuff that i used to have to do. writing is quite a thing -- it's very solitary, and what my semi-evil, semi-heroic thesis advisor used to say is resoundingly true: there is no thinking, except...

we had an awkward sunday morning where we laid on the bed a few feet apart staring at the ceiling and not touching, muted light coming in through the drawn drapes, and talked some more. he was devastated because he felt that the comment can never be retracted, and that it will be forever connected to him, and i kept insisting that he cannot claim responsibility for the breathtaking emotional chain reaction that exploded inside me and created our most awkward (and, bluntly, tearful) dinner and drive...

Memphis and i had our 2 year anniversary on friday. we exchanged cards and had a truffle or two (and, not to be too graphic, but i discovered just how, erm, effective Massive Attack can be if you're looking for mood music -- and am so happy that's still going as strong as ever after 2 years) before going out to the same restaurant where we had our first date, an uppity Mexican restaurant that, as opposed to most upscale restaurants, has actually gotten better over the past few years. i had a delicious...