(dc) "God will help you"

today i had to do some storage space shuffling of stuff that i inherited a month ago while trying to help a family who is new to town and has nothing. the story is long and convoluted, but today when i started wondering aloud whether i'd been too nice, the manager of the storage place said "God will help you."

this i count on, but it's always strangely comforting to hear it from another human.

(dc) it's the little moments

you know you have a fun life when you get a call from a brilliant and well-known nasa scientist who says, "kelly - we've got a new mars mission that we really need your help with. i think you'll love it. call me first thing tomorrow morning."

this is what keeps me at nasa.

(stamford -> dc) NEBY!

praise the conference gods for youth with cameras. there are some good ones here.

maybe kat will send me more links from NEBY (the NorthEast Baha'i Youth festival).

good times.

(dc -> stamford) road trip!

oh, how i love courtney and amy!

*(dc) hearts and flowers and...

ro-bunny.

*(dc) snow-robber

someone broke into my car sometime between saturday and monday (during the big snowstorm of '06 (we had snow-thunder!)). i discovered this on monday morning when i went down to go to work. i opened the back door to look for the scraper, since there were still several inches of snow all over the car. i thought it was strange that the back seats were up, when i distinctly remembered leaving them down. then i noticed all the stuff (junk) that had been on the floor was on the seats. i tried to open the front door, but it was frozen shut. i brushed off some snow and noticed that the glumphampartment (glove compartment - inaccurately named, and everybody knows it) was open and everything that had been inside was strewn about. i couldn't see or think of anything that they might have taken. i doubt they found much of what they were looking for. you'd think that they might be looking for something warm. they left the fleece jacket and mylar emergency blanket. they left the only things of value (the phone charger and jumper cables). and apparently, they weren't looking to start a fire cuz they left the gasoline can. i suspect they might have found about $0.42 in pennies, nickles and dimes, but they missed a whole quarter amongst the rubble under the gas pedal. pfft. amateurs.

in the end, i gave up on the inch of solid ice coating the windshield and took the metro/bus to work.

(dc) where are you?

what am i missing?

(dc) keep feelin' fascination

so i have this fascination with peeling. my mom says i've been this way since i came of peeling age. i would peel everything that could be peeled if it sported any imperfection from which to start. paint, plastic coatings, sunburned skin, paper labels, window tinting. it's just so satisfying. especially plastic. there must be some kind of weird psychological reason for the satisfaction i find in it.

ripping along lines of weakness is a close second to peeling. like the back of the front studebaker seat when we were little. there it was. everytime i got in the car. the little dog-eared rip in the vinyl, just taunting me, BEGGING me to pull on it. how could i possibly resist? i DID resist, many many many days. but sometimes i gave in. how could i not? i'm sure my sisters can think of other things i gleefully destroyed.

one positive use of this impulse was to rip out all of the stiff paper ads along their perforations (oh, did i LOVE perforations) inside reader's digest. a new issue would arrive, and i would (literally) tear through the magazine looking for anything i could fold and remove. at doctor's offices (which i was in alot, it seemed), instead of playing with the dolls, i would rummage through all the magazines, looking for perforations.

just to be clear, there's no satisfaction in ripping or peeling, per se. an ugly jagged rip has no merit. it's only when it's ASKING to be ripped or peeled - when it rips or peels readily and easily and cleanly. then it's like you're beating entropy to the punch. or something.

(dc) weird cat

i discovered last night that south likes raisins. she has liked all sorts of weird things before, but i'd never tried giving her a raisin. she sat there and licked it and licked it for what seemed like an hour. she didn't chew it.

speaking of weird cats, when are we going to get to see some new episodes of making fiends?