Still reading A Woman In Berlin should be done tommorrow, its astonishing to me what people can survive and still be sharp and witty at times, but I guess a woman's work is never done. I am listening to lots of Sinead O'Connor, but the greatest hits is not really what I am interested in, her voice is exquisite and for some reason more so when she sings and screams in Gaelic. Been listening to the new Blue October cd with boy best freind too. I really would never have thought twice about that band honestly, it strikes me as somewhat watered down "angry white boy" music, but the lyrics are really intense and who does not want to hear a man whine for his one true love to electic guitar? But "one true love"? I dont know about all that.......
I think its kind of silly and all too tragic honestly. I just think you can truely love whatever, first boyfreinds, former spouses, ice cream, lamp, its all the same. And I do think that one can stop loving anyone and anything they choose to "true love" or not. Who would we be if we didnt? Me, I would stil be kissing posters of Donnie Wahlberg. Oh man thats sad! Oh we went to see Pirates of the Caribean today obviously my crush on Johnny Depp has happily endured since my younger years. It was not as good as the first but it he was funny and good ofcourse. I am knitting a new purse from a pattern I thought up last night and its going to be adorable.

I have been tremendously busy lately, I am starting to knit a large book bag purse, and I am reading alote lately. I am working on A Woman In Berlin. It is fantastic, its interesting and heartbreaking and amusing. Its about the Red Armys victory in Berlin and its shocking and sweet. It was written as a diary by a reporter who wished to keep her identity hidden. I think everyone should read it honestly! I am so into Project Runway but have been somewhat dismayed by who has been eliminated and who has been allowed to stay despite lack of talent and vision. Been going swimming and petted a huge horse not much else.

I finished my dress and I totally love it! It is no great feat for anyone else but for me its a huge accomplishment and I am very proud! Its kind of boho or casual chic a little too much so for me but I will wear it proudly. I worked hard on the straps and I did not have enough spare material so I resorted to making them out of some really pretty hemming fabric I found and you would never know that it wasnt intentionally made that way. Perhaps I will wear it to my party this weekend if it is very hot outside, it is after all long enough to cover my unfortunate legs!

The Svengali of Old Brooklyn
This is a long and rambly but wellworth it story of the yogic mind reader who lives nearby.
Years ago ofcourse when I was under 21 I frequented a local bar that did not card minors. I was in the mindst of a stupid and angsty break up and had went to see a local band scream along to cover songs by The Cranberries and Ks Choice. During the show, an older very bearded long haired man was rocking out near me and my friend Chachigirl. He was clearly drunk and middle aged. This man who looked very much like Gordon from Violent Femmes abruptly sat down with us with no invitation and started to speak. I must say this mans voice was high and feminine, on the phone he must very regularly be mistaken for a girl. The first words we heard from him were "hiiiiiiii I look like Gordon from The Violent Femmes, my name is Fred." He asked our names and made some small talk like, "I love to get high and I know you are not 21 but I won't tell."

He was something very different than all the others at the bar. I refused to walk alone with him that night to go to his home. But I did remember the directions he gave me and the next day my friend Sponge and I made plans to go visit with him.

On the way there we both agree to not get into anything that would make us vulnerable or skew reality since he was older and very weird. Fred came to the door and looked very thrilled to see us. He invited us in and we immediatly renigged on our agreement not to do anything dumb. After getting really chewed Fred told us he could read our minds. Me I just laughed on the outside but secretly wondered if it was all real. He told Sponge some pretty weird and mean things about herself and she left the room to weep in her hazey sadness. Fred proceeded to nag me into trying to chew tobacco which I did with gusto for about ten seconds then quickly vommitted in the kitchen. Sponge returned and gave me some eye contact to get the hell out of there. We agreed he was nuts and vowed never to return to him and his awesome party favors again! Ofcourseeveryday we went over there and every night we promised to never do it again. His house was neat but dusty and there were posters everwhere of Barb Wire and Tori Amos and any other female under the sun. Another odd thing about Fred was he must have had every cd by every female recording artist from now until way back in the sixties but he did not own any by any males. No Beatles, no Pink Floyd nothing like that at all.

Fred was incredibly peculiar and while we overlooked it in our baked out states once sober we very concerned. Fred continued with the ruse that he could read our minds and we continued to go back and forth over believing and not believing until around Christmas time.

Once when we stopped over to watch the Wizard of Oz and get retarded Fred handed me a small box and told me "happy holidays" while giving Spongey a dirty look. I opened the box and to my horror it contained diamond earrings! I was shocked I did not want to have any romance with Fred and if he had infact read my mind like the guru he thought he was, well he would have known not only that but also that I do have pierced ears and never will. Sponge laughed heartily and snapped a picture, then icomanded me to put them on right then knowing I could not! I explained that I could not do that and Fred looked crestfallen. He did tell me to keep them and if I ever needed money I could pawn them in a pinch. I felt sad for Fred until a half hour later when he tried repeatedly to get us to go down to his basement for the first time. We were to scared! I imagine hairy drooling monsters that would devore us. Sponge said later she thought we would be held captive perhaps. It was truely frightening and we then agreed and mean it when we said we could not go back to that house! Ofcourse we did once more but only to return some Tijuana books we had taken home to look through.

Years later we saw him clearly drunk and high at a Tori concert, our party days were long gone and we quickly ran the other way and hope to never ever see this man again! Dear Lord Please help Fred to live a good life and be happy but keep him far from us!

Ok so I have only had four views on my blogs to those four you are in for a real treat but if no one ever checks my blog I have to document a few funny things that happened to me long ago in my youth for my own sakes if nothings else.
Years and years ago I was a foolish and wreckless girl. I was drinking lots and doing other dumb things. By day I was a Bridget Jones type office worker, you know the type chubby, inkstains on the clothes and dressed like a prostitute at work. Oh the shame!! By night I was out partying and meeting creepy people. I went to lots of concerts and hung around strangers in parking lots and smoked obscene amounts of dope. I am not proud of this but here is a long and amusing narrative of one of those instances.
Myself and my younger and way more innocent sister went to Lillith Faire with my former best friend who I will call Sponge. Just a week prior to this I had introduced my sister to smoking weed by laughingly holding out a joint and saying things like "youre going to do it." So I stuck my lighter and my bag into my bra and off the three of us went. We met up with Sponges straight edge friend who was nice and actually had a future ahead of her that she didnt care to blow. So Sponges friend quickly went off alone. No sooner had we gotten through security I whipped out my set and we headed for some bushes and smoked up like dirty hippies. In the matter of time it took for the shopping booths to get set up we were pretty well in the bag. Giggling and being stupid on a picnic table. A European man came over with some type of crazy camera and asked if he could film us "having fun" for a documentary. We said sure and pretended to be in control of ourselves. The man and his crew set up quite far away and kept on watching us. In my paranoid mind things started to seem much differently. Smiling a big fake smile I was now sweating and whispering............"this was stupid we are going to get in big trouble, they know they can tell, oh man what is going to happen?? dont look oh man oh fuck...." The three of us spent quite some time mulling over running into the woods suddenly while laughing long fake laughs for the camera. Finally after sweating it out and almost losing our bowles over it the man came closer with his camera. It looked no camera I have ever seen and he turned a crank on it and pulled out some awful looking black and white photo of us that we could keep. Sponge stuffed it down her top and off we went to sleep through the Dixie Chicks performance.

Upon waking up on our blanket we found ourselves not at all sober but hungry and cranky when we spotted a man selling giant bubble wands nearby. He was a homely little thing and was making large almost human being sized bubbles. This upset and scared us and we became enraged. One of us started to scream "fuck off" and the like and the others joined in til everyone around us looked on in shock and bubbleman sauntered away.

We found ourselves binging on cookies and brownies during some other terrible sets and smoking evermore through the day. We ran into a girl I knew around town who was in a lesbian relationship. My friend screamed at her to come over and she did with her family. My freind spent the next five minutes asking her about her gay lover all the while this poor girl with mom in tow tried to deny the whole scandal. My friend suddenly snapped, "you are gay and we all know it we are not all lying, God stop denying it what the fuck is wrong with you? Everyone knows you are gay." Oh again the shame! We ran from there!
I found myself dancing the night away in a state of hazy gless tempered with mild paranoia and some hostility but over all a good time was had by all.

The next morning when I arrived to work two hours late with some bullshit story of what had happened to me to make me so late, the supervisor from the other department came by my desk. This man was young like me but highly succesful to do sucking ass and nepitism. He smirked at me over his coffee cup and whispered...."I saw you at Lillith Faire you know....." I gasped and I could feel my face turning crimson...."Oh really?" He asked if I recalled him saying hi and when I informed him I did not infact remember that at all he laughed and said he came by my blanket once when I was sleeping between two girls he said hi and asked if I was alright, apparantly I said, "Im fine just tired....go to hell." I feared my job for a few hours then just up all that embarrassment out of my head for a long time.

And one more funny incident involving a concert, friend Sponge and some dope once more. Years ago Sponge, myself the current best friend and this Parma girl went to a show at Nautica. When we left the car a large scary man strolled up and said he would give us some weed for a cigarrette ofcourse we obliged and then expected free dope. He then told us it was going to cost us. I didnt really know what was happening but we were dumb enough to follow him far back into a ditch and do some business with him. He wanted fifty bucks. I wanted the dope so did everyone else. I only had a bank card though and no cash so Sponge agreed to pick up the tab for this after a short pow wow. He then pulled something from his pocket and put it in Sponges hand. It looked like poop and as the man ran off I asked her if it was in fact shit. She sniffed it and said it didnt smell like shit but she had no clue what it was. She placed it in her pocket and off we went to the show. Parma girl informed us that she was a drug dealer and was totally ghetto and from the poverty stricken west side. She also told us we had totally been scammed and she had just sat back and let it happen to us becuase we deserved it for being so dumb. Current best freind shrugged and suggested we just forget about it for now. We had a great time and on the way home Parma girl kept insisting it was oregano and nothing but. Sponge got really pissed and thew it out the window, cursing all the way. Current Best Friend and I just laughed and felt stupid but not too mad about it.

A few months later current best freind came home from her summer trip to the UK and invited us over. She asked if we still talked to Parma Girl and we rolled our eyes, "no way that girl was trouble she was a liar and she was crazy", we said. Best friend laughed her ass off then said "I knew she was no drug dealer, when we were at that show she said to dump that stuff and it was oregano, bullshit girls, cause I got some of that same stuff when I was away and it was hashish, yeah that stuff she told you to dump was pure hashish and it was awesome!" OOOOH damn that stupid Param girl!!!!!

Jogging my memory today thinking about a concert and tried to remember all the concerts I have been to. Thought of making a list of those I could recall for now
Ramones (more than once)
Sex Pistols (this was the Filthy Lucre Live tour and I did sneak out to this show)
Ani Difranco (atleast five times)
Violent Femmes (many times)
Radiohead
Type O Negative (ha ha I know!)
The Butthole Surfers
Belly
SuperChunk
Stabbing Westward
Bob Dylan
Bruce Springstein
BareNaked Ladies
Blues Traveler
Smashing Pumpkins
Nine Inch Nails
Tori Amos (many times)
Sarah Mclaughlin
Natalie Merchant
Rancid
Dropkick Murphys
Tiger Army
Queens of the Stone Age
Holly Golighty
Kids In The Hall ( got to meet them!)
The Posies
My Chemical Romance
Oh God writing this made me think of something super funny that I will write about later oh God I am laughing now!

Oooh today was a good shopping day! Lots of junk on sale at Bath and Body had to stock up on the smelly lotions for five bucks! I love the black currant I swear it makes my mouth water when I smell it its just so fragrant and juicy! Pigged out on orange creamsicles yum! and I am almost done with my new dress just need to add the straps! However I dont have any extra left from the hem to do straps so I will have to be innovative I guess as Tim Gunn would say "make it work" well Project Runway starts Wednesday and I just can't wait! I love it! I hope it will be awesome like the first two seasons! Have to cook quite a few dishes for the party this week looking forward to finding a good dessert I can make that will be tasty on a hot day but I am not sure what I can afford to make for around thirty people and that kids will like as well. This should be interesting for sure. We made lots of good mixed cds with fun obscure early 90s songs like Big Chair by Reacharound and some Local H. Next month we are going to some amusement parks. This is a good summer so far but it is almost over honestly, and I am thrilled but nervous to go back to work this fall. I guess we'll see what happens?

We went to see the Devil Wears Prada last weekend. It was ok. It was fluffy and funny. However the movies paled in comparison to the book. The book was fantastic and moved along quickly with a great sassy ending the movie just did not measure up. I hope The Nanny Diaries will be closer to the book I am really looking forward to that movie.
This weekend we invited our new hot friend over, he brought over a great comedy tape made a by a local Cleveland man and we laughed all night over it! It was really different and reminded me of an older and less manic Andy Kauffman. I loved My Breakfast with Blassie by the way and saw it at the Cleveland Cimetech years ago. We had some really good Malibu Mango at the end of the evening and unwound ourselves with hair dying and looking through the best freind's England photos. She is so lucky who gets to England and Scotland for the summer? She got to at age 19 all by herself and meet her family for the first time in years. She also once took off to NYC alone, she is so much braver than me!
We also had a nice Fourth of July here and ate lots of good food. The ribs we had were actually better than the ones the cowboys made for us at the Ranch out in Montana in February.
New cosmetics I tried this week are The Satin Hands Collection from Mary Kay. I love it! The lotion stays on your hands for several washings and smells nice too. The exfoliator is great too I used it in the shower tonight and its great for buffy any rough elbows and feet. I am buying new cosmetics constantly right now in my quest to not only "put on my sexy" ha ha but to try to improve my older more uneven skin. I really love products from L'Occitane. You can get them from Sephora and it is well worth it! I also love love love my Urband Decay Big Fatty Lip Plumper! I use it daily and it is shiny and pretty and really does deliver on the big fatty pouty lips!
I found some really good expensive yarns I had laying around the house this week that I had picked up on clearence months ago. I am starting a blanket very soon. But it wont be anything compared to the gigantic blanket that I worked on last summer. That was a masterpiece!