She needs a name.
Suggestions?

There was a croquet game at the Lang's house this weekend where we could see our breath in the air. After the game we went and saw The Happening with Croquet Champion Rachel and her pole-dancing friend, and we were less than impressed.

I worried that I would tire quickly of the people and being outside with the people. But it was really, really good for me to get out of the apartment, even if I almost got hypothermia and sat through the stupidest movie ever.

Tonight I did some dishes, cooked dinner, and even watered my plants. Three things that I have not done since I got back home. I even have a green tomato growing on my tomato plant, and that made me smile.

The apartment is still too quiet, even with hamster arguments happening every hour on the hour. But I have a bit of Lacey sitting in a metal urn on the desk in front of me, and that comforts me.

I'm doing okay.

The apartment is so small and so quiet without her here.

The.
Worst.

And I can't convince anyone to scratch it for me.

We will be spending a bunch of days lounging on the beach in southern New Jersey, unless New Jersey thinks we would be more comfortable with thunderstorms and such; then we will spend a bunch of days lounging in our hotel room watching cable television and grumping.

We will also spend a few days in Philadelphia playing tourist and meeting up with internet friends like Lynne and Connor and seeing how many precious historical items we can lick.

I will be meeting the majority of Steve's family, but I've been told I'm not expected to like them. I can live up to those expectations, especially if/when it comes time for the Nightly Keller Risk Playoffs and Fart-a-Palooza.

And considering that I will be the one doing all of the driving (see: car rental, above), Steve might not be coming back.

I've never driven anywhere outside of Alaska. Anchorage is the largest city I've driven in, and that was stressful for the first 14 months I lived here. Terms like "interstate" and "I90" and "interchange" and "toll booth" and "speed limit" just go right over my head.

Plus we have had some pretty big miscommunication when it comes to my driving and him giving direction. I'm fully aware of the possibility of bursting into tears, stopping in the middle of some 17-lane freeway, and kicking him out.

But on the bright side, beach- and warm-weather-clothes for women are so small (shorts, skirts, tanks, sun dresses, bathing suits) that I can practically fit a whole person in my one piece of luggage with all of my clothes. I could kick Steve out and pick up Bruce Springsteen. I'm sure he wouldn't fart in the car.

Let's call that foreshadowing.

When my alarm went off this morning, sleep didn't want to let go of me. My dreams tangled with the waking world, and my blankets were made of zippers. Zippers sewed together in zigzag fashion, such that pulling the covers off of me was nearly insurmountable. Standing across the room in front of my now silent alarm, I was only slightly less convinced that my bed was full of zippers.

Lacey and I did the normal First Thing Pronto event of emptying our bladders, and then I decided that I really could use another half hour. So I reset my alarm and climbed back into bed.

When my alarm went off again at 7, my blankets were still made of zippers, though my previous experience with the zippers made it easier to get out of bed. Lacey didn't move under the blankets, even though the sound of my alarm is usually enough to make her start running in circles. I attributed this to having pumped her with doggie downers for last night's haircut, the drugs still affecting her.

I rushed through my routine, ran a straight iron through my hair as fast as possible with the misguided notion that it would be faster than wetting and diffusing it to make my curls happy. I couldn't hear any noise from the bedroom, no getting-up noises, no jingling of the collar, no Steve-stretching.

I ran back in and re-woke Steve, who was moving slower than I was. I was pretty annoying to make him get out of bed because we were running late. Up up up, everyone up! And dressed! Whee!

We left a few minutes late, but nothing that I couldn't make up by speeding (which I never, ever do, Mother, only a little and I'm hardly ever caught) a bit more than usual.

We laughed about the bed being full of zippers, and saw two cops at a stoplight. Steve wondered aloud if they were changing shifts, and I started to say that 7.30 was a stupid time for a shift change, when I saw the radio clock.

6.39.

I tapped it with my finger a few times. Is that right? Really? 6.30? It can't be, can it? I grabbed my purse from the back and verified the time with my cell phone. We stared at the clock, dumbfounded.

It explained why we felt like we had been hit with a truck.
It explained Lacey refusing to get out of bed.
It explained all of the zippers.

I guess it hadn't been 12.30 last night after all.

At the Downtown Market.

The problem with option #1 is that IT really, really frowns upon streaming internet radio, and the problem with option #2 is that while Jeff might have some okay taste in music, I've heard it all. Repeatedly. Because he likes to listen to one CD for about a month straight. Or until I threaten him by waving my rubber band gun in his face.

Muxtape is kind of like finding a stack of unlabled burned CD mixes. Instant music, you never know what you're going to get until you open one up. It's like magic.

Here the mixes I've enjoyed this workday:

• christopherware - a nice and mellow indie mix
• jodiwilldare - indie covers
• galaxia - I keep coming back to this one no matter how often it's changed
• peli - pop-rock
• robotlovekills - indie-rock and rock
• beforeindie - before everyone got self-conscious about indie being the Cool Thing
• matthewbaldwin - I've listened to this one at least three times and even made Rachel listen to it, however unenthused she was about the Sesame Street music

was getting to call John, still on the road to Homer from Anchorage, and brag that I had eaten one before him.

I found a different recipe and today decided to go for it; if this one failed like the last one, then I would toss the starter and begin from scratch.

But the consistency of the dough felt different, felt more like bread than the first attempt, so I was hopeful that I would be eating hot sourdough bread before bed.

I let it sit for two hours and it did a bit of rising, which was great. I let it sit for another two hours and it filled the bread pan. This was working! I was going to have hot bread! My starter wasn't bad! A whole world of sourdough possibilities were opening up to me!

The recipe I had found mentioned putting boiling water in the oven under the bread pan to help keep things moist, so I popped a Pyrex pan in the 450°F oven while I boiled water.

Boiling water is only about 212°F. And I dumped it into a glass pan at 450°F. You don't have to have a chemistry degree to know that that difference in temperature will make for some crazy bad things. If you can't imagine it, let me give you a better picture:

I really liked that Pyrex pan. But the kicker? The sourdough bread was in the oven at the time of the explosion. I have to throw it away.

At least the focaccia pizzas I made for dinner came out good and yummy.

1. Throwing rocks at seagulls on the beach
2. Wading in the ocean, convincing tourists to get into the cold water
3. Sky full of the aurora borealis on the evening of 9/11/01
4. Singing Sunday school songs at the top of my lungs on hour 9 or a road trip
5. My first niece on my arms, so tiny and attached to a heart monitor
6. Backing over my brother's mailbox, twice
7. Trying to communicate with German tourists in a Parisian hostel
8. Hot springs at -20°F, steam so thick I can't see the stars
9. Climbing on top of the Alyeska Pipeline despite the "no climbing" signs
10. Midnight baseball under a full Solstice sun
11. That first kiss
12. Teeny tiny puppy choosing my armpit as a bed for the night, afraid I'd crush him
13. Mixing chocolate chip cookie dough with my bare hands
14. Fresh, hot crepes from a corner stand in Paris
15. Bed time stories about an annoying, spoiled, bratty princess named Melissa
16. Standing on the Arctic Circle
17. The slip and slide in the front lawn on a summer afternoon
18. Apple core. Baltimore. Who's your friend?
19. Zip line on the beach
20. 3am giggle fits
21. Shared green tea ice cream
22. 7up and bendy straws
23. Being lulled to sleep by the sound of waves lapping against the boat
24. Giving a boy I barely knew a manicure on a trans-Atlantic flight
25. The smell of homemade bread

What things have you done that are worth doing?