The Gulf War never felt real to me. Sure I was scared when Bruce's older brother was deployed to Saudi Arabia, but to hear him tell it, he spent the entire war playing volleyball and buying bootleg Madonna cassettes with mistranslated liner notes. I was surprised when, years later, I saw movies like Courage Under Fire and Three Kings. It had been a real war after all, then? People died?

Also, at the time of that war, I was sixteen. The Army guys I was penpals with seemed like grown men, all of twenty-two and twenty-three years old. Now it occurs to me that at twenty-two, you're a fucking kid. You've got your whole life ahead of you-- or at least you should.

This war... well, it's a hell of a thing. It feels absolutely real to me, every death I read about, these are people approximately my own age. These are people I could know. In some cases, people I do know.

All I am really trying to say, and I know I'm saying it badly, is that I may write about things like my ugly mushroom hair and how much fun I had on my birthday, and I may do a good impression of my usual blithe self, but my heart is heavy.

I guess I just wanted to say that.

I really did have a great birthday (week) and it's not even over yet. I am going down to Los Angeles the weekend after next (a pilgrimage to Disneyland, among other things) and possibly the celebration will continue. (Or possibly the fun-filled events have nothing to do with my birthday. I prefer to pretend that they do.)

On my actual birthday, I went out for crepe breakfast with Jenfu, and then we went to see a traveling art exhibit at the Legion of Honor: "Leonardo da Vinci and the Splendors of Poland."

Like so many museum-goers, I wanted to go so I could see the da Vinci on display, "Lady with an Ermine." You know, da Vinci only produced a small number of finished paintings. And only three portraits of women. Seeing a da Vinci is a major deal, unlike (for instance) seeing a Picasso. God love Picasso, but there are about three million billion of his paintings floating around, enough for every city in Europe to have a Picasso museum it seems.

Anyway, I didn't know what to expect from the rest of the exhibit, but I learned so much about Polish history and culture. Did you know Poland disappeared from the map of Europe for like, a hundred years? Because I didn't. Did you know about the last Polish king, and how he was a really charming art-loving guy who watched his country crumble around him?

Setting all that aside (because "you'll learn about Poland's rich heritage" is not exactly a turn on, I'm sure) there are some truly magnificent paintings in the collection. Like this one. (I looked for some of my other favorites, but couldn't find them online.) I had to buy the catalog for myself as a birthday gift. It was wonderful, wonderful. And nice and peaceful on a Thursday.

Well, mostly. I skipped ahead a bit so that I could go see the da Vinci painting, and when I turned away from it to walk back across the gallery, an entire flock of people was descending on the painting-- a tour group led by a VERY LOUD LADY. She stood in the corner and expounded on the painting VERY LOUDLY, so that I had to turn up my audio tour to eleven to drown her out, and even that didn't work.

Eventually she took her LOUD VOICE elsewhere. I am reminded of that Will Ferrell skit. "I HAVE A CONDITION WHICH PREVENTS ME FROM BEING ABLE TO MODULATE THE TONE OF MY VOICE." That was the loud lady in a nutshell.

My next big idea was to go get a psychic reading. I take it all with a large grain of salt, of course, but it was quite an interesting reading. According to her I will meet with obstacles in applying for teaching jobs, I won't get my thesis published anytime soon, moving away would be a good thing for me, and I will definitely get the fellowship I applied for.

So either she's right on the money and I get my fellowship, or she's wrong about the fellowship and about all that bad stuff too. I almost hope she's right, though. I would much rather get the fellowship than any other option at this point.

Oh, by the way, there were protests all over the city on Thursday. We didn't run into any problems because of them, possibly because of our excellent navigational skills. (Read: dumb luck.) We did see about ten police cars drive by with their sirens blaring at one point. They just kept coming and coming. But that was the most excitement we had all day.

We had dinner at The Stinking Rose, and I got stinking drunk! (Okay, not really that drunk, but it had to be said.) I had toyed with the idea of inviting a whole buttload of random people (everyone from the Useless Shagging Bastard to people I hardly know) but decided to keep the group on the more intimate side and invited hardly anybody.

Megan got sick and had to bail (which is a shame, because all my other friends doubt her existence) so it was me, Jenfu, Jen Wade, Ian, Joey, and Laurie. A select group of excellent people. And some really good food. And wine. And garlic. And presents. And hamster stickers. What's not to love?

The party continued on and off all weekend, with phone calls, tulips, presents, visits, and cards. All that sweet birthday lovin'.

Tonight was my own mental unofficial "end of birthday week" event, when I got to watch the Oscars with Elizabeth herself (we had Oscar pool printouts, and she beat both Elise and I fair and square) whom I had never met before! Crazy, no?

Well, it was a really fun Oscar night. We ate yummy food, dished about the awards and the stars, applauded every time we saw Daniel Day-Lewis (okay, that was me), kept score on our Oscar ballots, rooted for our favorites, did bad impersonations of Sean Connery and Peter O'Toole, and decided to name Elise's unborn child Mercutio (okay, that was me again).

The downside of all this is that now I know what I'm missing out on, not getting to hang out with Elizabeth on a regular basis. I keep meeting all these fabulous and fun people who live thousands of miles away, and this is kind of a bad idea. Take heed, gentle readers.

In other news, this week is going to, in many ways, suck. I have to work a lot, and I have no days off at all. Welcome to the week before the SAT. I would like to fast-forward to next week, please. Or next weekend, my little road trip, my shiny beacon in the darkness.