have you seen mr. winkle yet? funny looking dog. he had an appearance on sex and the city a few weeks ago..but i thought it was just a stuffed animal cartoon character. guess which one is the real dog in the picture.

fred and i decided to subscribe to the symphony---listener's choice. wahoo!

i guess i'll take a stab at commenting on one of eugene's recent posts, which essentially reflects on how boring it is to hang out with friends that are in relationships because their whole world revolves around their significant other. in a lot of ways, I agree with it..but i think it depends on how long your friend has been in their relationship. for example, phoebe is practically like another single girlfriend, but she's been dating ray now for practically 9 years and they're married now. for friends in the first year or so of a relationship, the tendency tends to lean towards the type of behavior that eugene writes about..but eventually it eases up. a lot of my friends have gotten into relationships in this last year and i just never see them. ever. and as couples like to hang out with couples...they still hang out with each other..but i'm the odd singleton left behind. the easiest people to hang out with are my single friends and the ones that have been in their relationship for awhile. of course, i'm single myself and probably notice this a lot more. i will disagree with eugene regarding topic of conversation...as friends in relationships are still fun to hang out with..it's just not very often. as for me..god, i don't know what i'm like at all. i certainly don't think i completely disappear from my friends' lives...but I don't see how things can just carry on the same way when you've got a boyfriend suddenly. honest opinions welcome.

yay! susan is back! welcome home sweetheart!



man, it's fun having HBO...now i can watch the Sopranos and all sorts of movies.

work is starting to get to me. i hate frustrating meetings. i hate seeing good people get frustrated and leave. i'm getting to a point in my career here where i don't necessarily trust all of our business decisions anymore. now, i'm not a "biz person" at all...but i just feel like i see more people frustrated than excited nowadays. perhaps i'm just getting more cynical. i am happy with my career and my job. I'm definitely learning a lot and appreciate it. maybe i'm just tired and need to go home.



i wonder how my brother is doing . i should call him.

i woke up at 6:30am this morning to get ready to attend the rolling requiem at safeco field. i picked up rachel, drove to pacmed, took the shuttle down to uwajimaya, got some chai at tully's and walked over. it was weird standing in line at the stadium as i looked at the crowd around me. since the whole thing was around 8am, most people had planned on going to work right after the ceremony...so i saw a lot of people in business suits...and overall, more dressed up than your typical baseball crowd. the whole event was simple with a short speech (i thought it was neat that the idea came out of seattle), a sing-a-long of the star spangled banner, and then mozart's requiem. i haven't heard that piece in awhile and i forgot how moving it is. anyhow, it was nice.



otherwise, it's just another usual day at work...sitting in my office by myself. oh yeah--i lost my officemate last week, quite sadly. so now i've got this huge office to myself (which i don't mind..heh heh) but i think that i might get a new officemate in about a week with one of the new hires in the group.



an old friend from kansas created a 'how well do you know me?' quiz and sent it to me recently, to which i failed miserably by answering only, like, 3 out of 10 questions right. it was really interesting so i created one for myself and sent it off to about 20 people. it's been fascinating seeing people's answers. the hardest was how many apartments i've lived in and where i was born. surprisingly, it was hard to guess my middle name...and my major and minor were flipped. ha ha.

the buzz this week: will it be kelly or justin? i'll admit that i've gotten caught up with american idol...but of course, my biggest guilty pleasure is any sort of reality tv/competition. my vote: kelly. she just has such a rock star voice and has been the most consistent out of all the contestants so far. her performance last night completely blew justin away. justin was FLAT even! she definitely sang those original songs much better. what a controversy it would be if justin won though. overall, i think everyone knows that kelly has the more phenomenal voice..let's just hope. oh--and last night, they brought in the winner of the british version of this show (pop idol)--Will Young..and he performed..and eeks, he sucked. his voice was weak and the song he sang was just cheezy and weird. kelly rocks.



had a wonderful weekend attending phoebe and ray's wedding in vermont...i'll just highlight the best parts:

hanging out with megan all weekend!

watching the iguanas at the iron horse in northampton friday evening...then getting coffee at the haymarket..and ice cream at herrell's

beautiful drive up to shrewsbury/rutland, vt

seeing the love ray has for phoebe as tears streamed down his face

yummy breakfast at the maple crest farm b&b sunday morning

hanging out with a bunch of smithies at the picnic the next day

grabbing a sandwich at pappa charlie's in williamstown (i got the blythe danner)

seeing the dave brubeck quartet at tanglewood sunday evening

having brunch with anne ward in her apartment in pittsfield, ma---haven't seen her since we graduated!

seeing the classroom where megan teaches at darrow