Roundup

A few years ago my friend went to England. My dream. My "if I were gonna die tomorrow the one thing that would kill me most is that I've never seen England" dream."

And she brought me back a present. She walked in the door, opened a small overnight bag, and pulled out a plastic shopping bag with my present in it.

I held the bag in my hands. It had snaps on top to keep it closed. I stared at it. I asked, "Have you opened this since you left England?"

"No."

I got a ridiculously beatific smile on my face. I felt it. She looked at me like I was demented. I opened the bag and raised it to my face and inhaled. Deeply. Several times.

She said, "What are you doing???"

"It's English air. I'm breathing it, to know what England smells like, to have England flowing through my blood, the oxygen in my veins."

England smelled like flowers. (She claimed it was the sachet she'd kept in her overnight bag, but I didn't accept that explanation.)

And I don't have the slightest idea what she gave me. I don't remember. But I do remember the English air.

And I wasn't tiny.

Happy new year.

Pooks

For some reason, this tale of hers comforted me immensely. Like I'm not the only one who attaches some kind of sentiment to the most abstract things.

Yesterday, on New Year's, Carole and Steve came back from visiting Mitch up north.

Our big excitement for the day was going out to look for new living room furniture--the couch and chair we have in there now are not right for the look. (And they'll go much better in the den downstairs.) So I paged through a couple of house fashion magazines (Elle Decor, Met Home) and wrote down the names of furniture stores and their addresses.

Darin, Carole, and I started at the Pacific Design Center, which is a big showcase of furniture and interior design houses "to the trade." Which means that normal mortals can look but not buy. The PDC was open, but almost none of the houses that reside in there were open. So we did a lot of window shopping.

We walked down Robertson to Beverly to the next couple of stores I had listed, Expressions and Diva. I think Diva was closed; I don't know, because we never got there.

Expressions had a big "40% off" sign in their window. At Expressions, you choose the make of sofa and the decide how you want them to make it up--big fluffy pillows, straight back, tweed covering or silk? We walked around the showroom floor, hemming and hawing about various styles and what not. Then Darin saw "it" and I knew one piece of furniture we were getting.

"It" is an armchair done in three colors of ultrasuede (which is a very durable and (sob!) very expensive fabric). The chair was gorgeous. And comfy. I could imagine many happy hours in this chair.

After lunch at The Newsroom--very tasty "healthy" food, with sunflower seeds and everything on the bun, across the street from The Ivy--we went back to Expressions and began working out what we were going to get. We got an L-shaped deep blue ultrasuede couch and two of the multicolored armchairs, with a slightly different color combination.

I don't know how long it's going to take to get this furniture, but it's going to be great.

After returning home, Darin and I and Darin's parents had dinner with Fernando and Nancy. We almost didn't have dinner with Nancy because she has this big project at work and doesn't want to give up any free time--including sleep--in order to get it done. Fernando told her to relax and have a good time.

I understand Nancy's anxiety: I'm always like that when I have a big project. "I must spend all my time on it!" I was going to do that this vacation. Hahahahahaha. Oh well.

Darin called 10 restaurants; 2 were open. On New Year's Day. Hello? We went to The Great Greek and ate ourselves silly. The restaurant also filled up to capacity, because it was one of the few places open.

Today we started the clean-up-the-house half of the juggernaut. Darin says he likes having his parents come visit because they do projects around the house and spur him on to the projects he should be doing but hasn't been.

We went down to the storage area, where we had tossed every box we couldn't otherwise deal with, took them all out, and started seeing what was in there. The primary thing in there was all of our framed pictures and posters. We haven't hung up a damn thing on the walls since we moved in, and the white walls were beginning to get to us.

We emptied 6 or 7 cardboard picture boxes and freed up most of the space in the storage area. We divided up which pictures we wanted to keep and which ones would go to Goodwill. All of my Will Clark posters--gone. My Lair of the White Worm and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown posters (neither of which I've seen since I moved in with Darin some, uh, 6 years ago): gone. My Art Deco posters from the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art: kept (and hung).

We have so far hung up two pictures: two hooks were all that were left on the walls from the previous tenants. It's a little disconcerting: why are there suddenly colors and shapes over there? We have to decide where all the ocean-themed pictures--an art photo of a whale, a glass-framed poster of types of whales--go. Maybe in a guest room.

On the Homicide front: Hey, how 'bout that Tim Bayliss, eh?

        DIANE
     I felt like a corrupt European.
     
         FERNANDO
     That's the best way to feel.

All of a sudden, Internet Explorer has taken to crashing continuously. No, even more than usual. To the point where I feel as though I should reboot every 4 to 5 crashes. There are some pages I can't even open any more, at least via Nero.