come,. here,. enter,.

hotel room.
princeton.
i went out a little bit ago to Walmart down rte 1 to get a camera battery charger as mine decided to go belly up. arrival time, walmart: 10:02. They were locking up. Walmart employee shook his head mockingly at me as he gleefully turned the key in the lock.

what kinda godforsaken place doesn't keep Walmart open 24/7?? I guess peeps around here think that little college they got here's enough of a draw. Well. *I* for one won't be back!




i'm kidding of course. haha

i was buoyed to see, however, that the walmart crowd here in princeton appears to be every bit the products of inbreeding as those at any walmart in any corner of this great land.

a girl needs something she can count on when traveling.

before my walmart trip i was dancing around the room to the jason mraz. see below.
right before that i tried out new crazy/ugly faces in the mirror. i found a new one! my baboon face. i look JUST LIKE! if walmart had been open, i could show you.
i saw ricky gervais on conan obrien. he has a new hobby. trying to make the WORST picture of himself possible! he had some doozies. i thought that sounded like a grand hobby and am thinking of taking it up myself.

before that i ate dinner here at the hotel. ets-provides all meals, isn't doing the voucher thing this time. oh yeah i'm here for a four day grading/love fest---10,000 handwritten GRE essays from remote parts of the world without a computer testing center: places like Morocco, Tanzania, Ecuador, many many many from Vietnam and Iran.

it's exhausting.

we're at tables of seven. the woman next to me runs her pencil along the line of the essay as she reads. it's in my peripheral vision and at first isn't so bad, then it gets annoying. when I find myself waxing homicidal (half hour or so, i give it...), i get up and sit against the wall on the floor. which is more comfortable anyway. plus, she sometimes whispers what she's reading. HOW can people be so totally clueless? AND how can someone who reads essays for a living--and is probably an english teacher to boot--though not everyone at this reading is....but they teach something in college...have such backward reading habits? I mean, that sort of thing really slows you down....

but anyway. i'm in the best mood this evening! all hypered up and all. in a fine lather.

last night I went with ken (hi ken!) to see Arthur Miller's All My Sons. I'd give the play about a 7.5 out of 10. Had John Lithgow and Katie Holmes. Diane Wiest apparently had made other plans for the evening and didn't show. Supposedly there have been anti-Scientologist picketers protesting poor little brainwashed katie, but did i see them? ohhellno I was spun out of the theatre by the time-warp spider and missed any and everything in my path except the rain and every puddle in New York: dodging umbrellas,
taxis, fellow pedestrians,
cyclists, packages, mailboxes, sidewalk
cracks and paper boxes, kiosks,
vendors and gutters
and neon reflections in shiny wet streets..
why, God Himself could have stationed Himself outside the theatre and I'd've had to run him down. "oops-- Sorry, God, gotta make the train on time! could u let it wait on us? thx!"

oh and tonight i rode around in my crappy rented pathfinder with zero pick-up and a busted stereo speaker listening to simon and garfunkel. really happy. that inexplicable type that descends unbidden but welcomed and then takes off as suddenly as she came.

ach, the ache of happy and sad. sometimes. i don't know you apart.