I am tense, and Im ready to chuck all this crap Ive been doing.

Today's horrorscope.

How much do you want success?
Once Saturn, planet of ambition, turns retrograde on Thursday, you'll have to decide just how much you're prepared to sacrifice to attain status and prosperity.

You're more likely to make the right choice if you don't compare what you have to what others have.

You're you; you're different from them.

JPennant: I just feel like I am moving in the right direction, but the tank is on empty.
Briyam: well, i hope sumthin breaks loose for ya soon :-)
JPennant: ppreciate the thought pa :-)

Interesting people want to share your world. Channel your emotions into creative activities. Feeling sorry for yourself is not the answer.

Awright, fine.. so I wont chuck it all. :-/

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On the headphones:

Loving You - Minnie Ripperton
Dont Ask My Neighbor - The Emotions
Be Alone Tonight - Tisha Campbell/Jasmine Guy (School Daze Soundtrack)

If this list seems familiar, its because I play these three songs in every playlist I have..

Minnie Ripperton's voice on Loving You is the purest voice Ive ever heard.
Dont Ask My Neighbor... the Emotions may have had a lot more hits, specially with their backup band (which just happens to be Earth Wind and Fire), but this one.. damn.
Be Alone Tonight. This song seems amateurish at first listen, until you realize the band knows EXACTLY what theyre doing as they drive what starts out be a ballad crescendoing to what becomes a woman's DEMAND. (Listen to the drums rise in subtle intensity as the song goes along..)

Add Dianne Schuur's Louisiana Sunday Afternoon, and I can listen to these all week long.
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Dori expounds on what it is to come to New York of your own volition, and why the people who do are they way they are...

...in a sense, andrew's right about a lot of things. new york is not a place you come to relax and have fun (unless you're on vacation). new york is a place you come when you're too neurotic to be anywhere else. it's a place you go to when you realize you have nothing in common with anyone else around you, that you'd rather just shut the fuck up and accomplish something. it's a place to make money, to expound on worldly ideas and actually have the resources to have an effect on them...

...it's definitely not an easy place to date. in fact, it's not an easy place to coordinate on *anything*, really - people here are way too self-absorbed... a sense of purpose, blown way out of proportion...

...we don't waste time here. we're the kind of people who know what we want, or we wouldn't be here... you can't last here otherwise.

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Being in a particularly pissy and peevish mood these last few days, I was ready to vent in the blog...

marsbird: you know...i haven't heard you talk much about getting your donuts from those italian ladies recently??
JPennant: i had a story about one of them too
marsbird: =) maybe you should tell it instead of venting then
marsbird: food always makes people happy. at least it does for me. =)
JPennant: heheh. see. you just helped. :-)
marsbird: ^_^

Lessee...

One of the sicilian ladies has a daughter who works for the Port Authority of NY/NJ, which had their headquarters in the WTC.

So that day, she was beyond frantic with worry, belying her normal calm and understatement.
Eventually, we found out her daughter did make make it out safely.

A few days later, I read a sad story in the Wall Street Journal of a rescuer searching in the rubble finding and giving a man the ID card of his common law wife.
In the story, the man said that the night before - she had asked him why he wouldnt just get married.
That next day was the last time he saw her alive.
Of course, now he said "Id marry her in a minute."

So, the other day when I walked into the bakery, she asked me if I had the local paper, The Jersey Journal.
As it happened, I had picked it up that day.. and then she told me to read page 6.
She hovered over me as I turned to that page..
I read a story of wedding announcement...

Me: *shrugging uncomprehendingly* "So, who's this 'Viggnolo'?"
Her: with the biggest grin Id ever seen on her face... "Thatsa mah daughta."

I turned back to the story, and it described how these two survivors of the WTC attack decided when they found each other to be alive, to just get married.

Me: "You have a copy of the paper?"
Her: "Heh. I gots six-a copies already."

And with that, with a little skip in her step and her grin going even wider, she went back to serving customers.

And the big sloppy grin on my face wasnt just because I got my coffee and donuts free that day. :-)
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Happy Birthday, Sho.

You finally managed to be legal.

Id send you a card, but you change e-mail addies too damned often, woman........

Heheh. Yeah, I was drunk on my 21st too, but NOT stoned - even when offered Birthday Blow...