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Wednesday, September 21, 2005
A Year in Review

Today is the anniversary of my first post--the day I entered the blogosphere. I've posted some good stuff. I've posted some crap. I've met a few fellow bloggers and made quite a few friends. I won a battle with Huyndai and one with Hotels.com. I lost a battle with 1800CheapSeats.com. I partied in Boston, Austin, and New York City. I drove across the country. I almost got promoted. I whined about my ex. I numerically rated a date. I had a brief but blazing love affair with mountain biking. I made numerous lists. I got shingles. I even wrote a sonnet.

And, since blogs are nothing if not self-indulgent, I've decided that for my anniversary I'd re-post excerpts from what I consider are some of my shining moments (either in the subject matter or the writing). Kind of like what all the news and entertainment review shows do at the end of the year, you know? Thanks to those of you who drop in frequently, it makes me feel important!

So without further ado:

"When I got home I sorted the books into piles according to genre and how much I want to read them. Then I sort of just sat on the couch and looked at the piles lovingly, and inhaled that wonderful old paper smell for a while. Then I re-arranged them according to length and if I'd read anything by that author before. More piles, but smaller. I looked at those for a while too, and pondered how good it is to be able to read any book I want to. Then I thought about how I actually miss dissecting the books with my classmates, doing research, and writing papers. I also thought about how much I detested it when I was doing it, and wondered if that was a real example of irony or just another Alanis Morrissette song. I pondered leaving all my books in piles on the floor since I'm running out of shelf space and I can't bear to get rid of any of them. Went to kitchen, got a drink, came back, tripped on pile of books."

"He made everything that I thought about my sensuality seem false. My appeal, I had always thought, was a certain gentle sweetness, a soft vulnerability that was not put on. I could be the aggressor though, and when I was, the fact that the night before I had sat next to him, closed my eyes, and tried to memorize his face with my hands made it even more exciting.In 'leaving' the way he did, he somehow stripped me of that sense of myself. And because I cannot stand naked in the mirror assured of any physical draw, that knowledge of which he robbed me was my most cherished possession--like a pearl I could hold in my hand and use to smooth away the roughness of my body."

"I arrived late, breathlessand wet, and was handed a clipboard with the exact same questions as were on the online survey that I took in order to qualify for the taste test. "How often would you say you buy potato salad?" "How do you feel about potato salad in general?" "If you were a potato, how many eyes would you have?" We were reminded that we could not taste the potatoes if we had on perfume, scented lipgloss, too much fabric softener, or deer pheromones."

"Left the club and went for a late night pizza. Dropped fishnets and peed behind the SUV in Fenway Park's parking lot next to a pimp, also peeing. Fell asleep HARD in the car, drooling all over the pimp. Somehow got up apartment stairs. Crashed. As you can see, this night is a bit less clear in my memory."

"As I exited my car and strode confidently across the parking lot, I garnered an admiring glance from a cable guy or a telephone repairman. As I approached the outer door to Dunkin' Donuts, two men vied to hold open the door for me. "Damn," I thought, "I'm good." So I gave them my best movie star smile and said "Good Morning, thanks so much!" Brilliant, Lori, brilliant. I proceeded to head toward the inner door, stepped off the mat, slid the 3 feet across the lobby, smashed my knuckle against the glass door, and ended with my face smeared across the plate glass, gripping the door handle like a drowning woman holds onto a life buoy. My vain hope that nobody saw my acrobatics was quashed when I hauled myself upright and noticed that everyone inside the store had turned their heads my way at the sound of flesh hitting glass at high a velocity."

"Oh, it's you. For the love of Howard, YES, I'm still bringing in the Deviled Eggs for the St. Patrick's Day Luncheon and of course I'm going to bring my own dish. What did you think I was going to do? Bring them in the chicken? Warned you."

"I wish I could make you feel that feeling...it was pretty intense, but I can't seem to get the right words down to convey it right now. It wasn't like an out-of-body experience, or anything that dramatic. It was just a certain clarity about where and how I fit into this big world, based on all the little things that make me Lori. Of course, I thought all this, then rolled out of bed and, in typical fashion, whacked my shin really hard on my vanity table, stumbled into the shower, and eventually wandered out into the 5-inches of snow to clear off my car, ending up at work with wet cuffs and a great need for coffee. So much for the moment of utter clarity."

"[Lori] 9.23 MT 'There's nothing like poking your cats to see if their [sic, ahhhh!] dead because they haven't peed in 24 hours.'"

"I see the world everyday through these eyes, filter it through this sarcastic, optimistic, idealistic brain. I automatically and immediately gauge how an event will effect me. I continuously, and often subconsciously, take steps to protect myself, improve myself, shelter myself, put myself forward. Of course we feel for people, love people, cry for someone else's pain, share in someone else's joy. Of course we care if an action we take will hurt someone else and try to avoid that situation if we can. But behind it all, aren't we doing all these things at least partly because they have consequences for us? Perhaps I'm simply revealing myself as an utterly selfish woman."

"The only bad thing is that being up there is a reminder of how--regardless of my intent and moderate success at trying to concentrate on living a good life and letting love find me--there's a deep spot of loneliness in my life. Staying up late at night to watch a movie snuggled next to Brad on the couch--I can realize all I want that Brad isn't the person who is going to be there for me, but there really is nothing to compare to that warm, safe, sleepy, loved feeling. There just isn't."

"**First I'd like to warn you all that I've been reading Henry James. Hence sentences like the ones from the previous post: 'Because it isn't, joyously, me anymore.' and 'Oh, it's nothing horrible; but it does, I hope, prove that I've come a long way in the past four years of my life.'"

"So I'm sitting at my desk at 4.30 trying to figure out if I want to be with people or by myself tonight. Somehow that train of thought leads to this: 'Maybe I should start keeping a journal again to write in and express those really personal feelings.' Then I thought, 'But what for, who would see it?'

Blogging has done this to me."


posted by LoRi~fLoWer
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