Google Earth is the greatest. Really! I spent a bunch of time looking at the satellite images of Brisbane and was enthralled.

Why is it that drinking 3 20oz bottles of water/liquid (e.g. bottle of vitamin water, standard dasani or other bottled water bottle) seems perfectly reasonable and possible, but drinking two 1-liter bottles of water seems utterly and hopelessly impossible?

I can quite happily sit at my desk or at home drinking away at my 3 bottles of very diluted Vitamin water (the stuff’s too sweet undiluted) but when I look at a 1-liter bottle of water and tell myself I should be a good girl and drink two of those per day, I feel overwhelmed and hopeless and make no headway at all!

We had a great time in San Diego. Well, I did: I’m not sure how excited Zaubi was about his conference. I spent most of the time lying out on the beach and turning a lovely shade of brown (have been cursed anew with freckles, though, ugh ugh! I wish there were some way to obliterate them). It was annoyingly cool, but it was sunny almost the entire time — no June Gloom, hurray!  The water was perfect and warm. Went nude beaching and had a long conversation with a naked hippie while watching the Torrey Pines gliders soaring overhead. My ass is still white, alas!

I have this theory about becoming tan: I think your body has to be used to getting tan for it to react properly. When I was in college, I never ever lie out in the sun in a bikini. So a couple years ago, when I started wearing bikinis and going outdoors, all of me would tan except my stomach which stayed a bizarre white and was painfully slow to react like a proper stomach should. Now, a couple years later, my stomach tans brilliantly, just as fast as my arms and legs do. Yet when I lie out naked, the white parts of me (like my lily-colored ass) act exactly like my stomach did and do not appear to react to the sun at all, remaining eye-blindingly bright white. Therefore I believe that if I spent a summer lying out bareassed, I would eventually get tan, and then next year were I to try it again my ass, having been trained a bit, would react to the sun in a quicker and more satisfying way.

Saturday we took the cute little red train down to the end of the line and hiked over the border into Mexico. When I lived in San Diego I never bothered going there — mainly because I didn’t want to go alone (I didn’t know a single soul in San Diego when I went there), or maybe because Harlequin didn’t want me to go alone, and I never bothered going with him because we always had something more entertaining to do when he was around.  It was unspeakably depressing, Tijuana. It wasn’t even so much the obvious poverty as the vile materialistic feel of the whole place. Everyone getting in your face, offering you cheap booze, music, and sex — it just made me ill. The horrid American tourists were the worst: supercilious blond frat boys stinking of self-indulgence and conceit, and sloppily plump teat-breasted female equivalents with whore shirts and excessively made up faces, wandering around and thinking they are sexy and squealing girlishly and looking for somewhere to get drunk cheap.

Ugh.

Anyway. It amuses me that Harvard Dental on hold plays swing music. Speaking of dentists, I think my dentist was offended the other day when I called her Dr. Osama instead of Dr. Ohyama. Whoops.

Would anyone like a cake? Over this weekend, I have acquired 4 birthday cakes and 2 birthday mini fruit tarts.

It was, almost wholly, an excellent birthday (and weekend). Zaubi and I and his work buddies went to the air show in R.I. on Saturday — it looked like it was going to be a grim day, but the weather managed to be good enough that they didn’t have to put off any of the show, though the planes couldn’t fly as high as usual. The aero acrobatics were absolutely brilliant. It was fun to see the  Blue Angels do their thing, and the Canadian team did some nice synchronized flying, and the F18 and F15 demos were impressive (and painfully loud), but what I loved best were the prop plane acrobatics. The prop planes go slow, so they never dash out of vision and then you wait around twiddling your thumbs for them to show up again, like you do with the fighter planes. Those acrobatic pilots are absolutely incredible. They did all sots of amazing tricks — vertical climbs and dives, spins and loops and cartwheels, super low flying, and — this is my favorite — flying upside down extensively. The planes are so CUTE flying upside down: since none of them have retractable landing gear, their little wheels stick up into the air looking exactly like legs on some adorable cartoon ladybug. I was in fits.

They also had the fastest truck in the world. It was the cab of an 18 wheeler to which 3 jet engines had been attached. It lined up on the runway underneath one of the planes that was flying around. The plane took off on a straight trajectory right above the runway; the truck waited a bit for the plane to get a head start and then gave all three engines full. It took off down the runway at 350 mph, shooting a 60 foot long pillar of fire out behind it. I’ve never seen anything like it. The cloud of black smoke that came out of that truck and its pillar of flam was so expansive that it covered not only the entire crowd of thousands of people so that we all clapped our hands over our faces, it filled the sky so completely you could not see anything, let alone the plane doing tricks above it. Must have been rather dangerous for the trick pilot.

That night we went over to T.’s. She had asked a bunch of people over for book club on kafka’s Metamorphosis (ugh, I hate Kafka!) and we ended up cooking a whole bunch of lobsters, which upset me horribly as the lobsters had been ALIVE crawling around the fridge all day and then the pot wasn’t big enough to boil them properly so at least one of them had a lingering and horrible death. T. tried to force some lobster down my throat but I was obliged to spit it into my napkin. We gave up talking about Kafka pretty quickly and started learning to disco dance from this ancient and ridiculous LP that she had dug up from somewhere. All the salsa boys were over — there were about 8 of us trying to dance in her 8×8 living room which didn’t leave a hell of a lot of room but it was ridiculously fun. Both T. and her friend produced cakes — there was some misunderstanding that led to there being 2 cakes not just one!

We started all horsing around practicing fireman carries (no idea how it started) — not a good idea after all the lobster and cake. T. and I took turns swinging each other around like mad. I managed to fireman carry Zaubi but had to put him down rather suddenly. His body is so much larger (not to mention heavier) than mine that it just doesn’t drape over my shoulders properly. But I could do T. I could even dance around while holding T. in my arms! It was fun.

I stayed up till 4 that night playing with my new iPod toy, now grafted to my hip, courtesy of my awesome Zaubi (who also produced fruit tarts with candles in them — mrtee is jealous, I’m sure!). Then yesterday went to hang out with my mom and siblings (the first time the 5 of us have been together other than the wedding in literally years) and obtained cake #3 (which had kangaroos all over it, incidentally — my little sister made that request). We had a very nice lunch, the sun came out beautifully, Zaubi and I went to the beach and played lacrosse, and it was all utterly peaceful and good. Went back to our place at about 6 to play D&D with G. and the Russians and it turned out that G. had also made me a cake! Covered with little crunchy candy fishes (???). Cake #4. I love G.

Consequence is of all this that I feel rather lethargic  ill today and I still have the better part of all these cakes. We are heading out to San Diego tomorrow and I don’t know what to do with all the cake remains! It seems a shame to let them go to waste…

An awful lot of people die in the harvard medical society. The flag is at half-mast almost every day.

I just went to pee (guzzled down a bottle of Fruit 2 O in no time flat) and as I was passing through the 9th floor glass bridge, I saw that the SUN HAS COME OUT!!!!

This bodes well for the air show tomorrow! And for my birthday Sunday! It’s still chilly (the temperature has edged up to about 55 at this point) but when there is sun there is hope!!!!!!!

We are meeting Zaubi’s work buddies at 8AM tomorrow morning to set off for the air show. Gah! Sleep has not been going well lately. Last night I spent half the night dreaming I was flying and kept crashing my plane (this is probably because I did a couple hours on the sim last night, and there was a bug, such that the controller guy had me fly literally into the side of a mountain in CA) and the other half dreaming that I was having a huge fight with my mother about religion and the number of anti-Satan emails she sends me and I was crying and throwing kitchen utensils at her.

Go figure.

In certain places in India they are actually *restocking* estuarine crocodiles! Why would you ever want one?!?!?!?

Anyway. I got into work at 7:30 this morning. That was quite an achievement for me, and one I hope not to repeat. It’s cold and shitty again. 50 degrees and raining and dark lumpy grey. WHY???

Big airshow this weekend in R.I. – we are going; my flight instructor has to be there both days (and Sunday is my birthday anyway so I won’t be around) so I don’t get to fly this weekend. Nor next weekend, as Zaubi and I are going to be in San Diego all next week. He has a conference to go to, but I get to bum around and lie on the beach!! I cannot WAIT. I’m dying to go jetskiing around all the aircraft carriers in Coronado Bay again. I haven’t been since that last time I went with I. the Bulgarian. Or perhaps I should call him… Harlequin. I think I shall.

Anyway, we have an extremely dubious hotel as Zaubi didn’t make reservations in the conference hotel quick enough but we don’t plan to spend any time in there anyway. I was thinking of dropping into my old favorite, Black’s Beach, where I can lie around in my altogether with troops of gay men and intimidate little pansy Hispanic boys that ask me what time it is.

But I don’t know how Zaubi would feel about me going nude beaching without him while he’s stuck indoors in a suit!

Last flight lesson it was extremely dubious for VFR so I did a bunch of instrument flying. My first instrument flying ever. For those of you that don’t know, this means that you put on a “hood” — a plastic visor thing that prevents you from seeing out the window. So you have to fly by looking at the control panel thing only (No peeking!). It was difficult, but I think if I do it a couple more times I will get the hang of it. I have since practiced a couple times on the sim too. I’m even getting the hang of the steering by differential braking. Ha Ha Ha!

Here’s a brilliant gem of information from another site: “Saltwater Crocodiles are not known to make docile pets as a general rule.”

I’m going to BED!!!!!!!