As of last night, I had been working for something like 48 hours straight. I mean it: proofreading until I fell asleep, getting up to work, driving from one job to the other without even time to eat until nine at night, coming home and proofreading...

Why do I do this to myself?

It's worse this time, because I can't cut down my Starbucks hours. In fact, I am working more hours than usual, because we're totally short-staffed. And tonight I am gong into the city for a party, even though I have to get up for work in the morning and all I want to do is sleep. But Joey is moving away in two days, and there's no way in hell I'll miss seeing her one last time (no matter how much denial I am in about her leaving). The schedule is killing me, though.

It's seriously bad. On Friday night, I taught an SAT class, then was up proofreading until eleven, when I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. I had to be in Hayward the following morning to administer an SAT test, and I was so nervous about oversleeping that I kept waking up in the middle of the night. After the three hours of the SAT test (during which I got the rest of my proofreading done, thankfully), I drove straight to a students' house, then to another students' house, by which time it was eight at night.

I realized later that I had gotten paid for six and a half hours of my time, but I was working from seven in the morning until eight at night and didn't even get a proper break. Clearly, I am doing something wrong. Clearly. Which most emphatically did not make me feel better, and in fact contributed to the semi-annual nervous breakdown.

I left the baby shower early (my friend's baby is due in one week, and I am so excited by the impeding babyness that I am beginning to be a little frightened of my own biological clock) to take a nap. Now that I have slightly unwound, I am going to take the aforementioned nap.

I'm terrible at napping, though. I never know when the nap is over.

My parents, who could not name a single Emmy nominee if their lives depended on it, got tickets to the Emmy awards tonight.

(Remember the only actors my mother could name were "Austin Powers" and "Jack Ritter." As it turns out, my mother went to high school with John Ritter. Same class and everything at Hollywood High-- they were born five days apart. She still thinks his name is Jack Ritter.)

As if this wasn't bad enough, my sister called to tell me what my father was wearing to the Emmys. Are you ready for this?

A fish tie.

I got my sister's message and heard "fish tie" and almost crashed my car laughing. Apparently his reasoning for the appropriateness of a fish tie was that it was "very modern." A fish tie! To the Emmy awards! I mean, of course, right? Of course.

I read Washington Square last week, back when I had time to read. I adore it; I adore Henry James.

(And now, two paragraphs which will interest maybe one person other than myself. Feel free to skip them if you are not that one person.)

I disagree with whomever wrote the introduction and says that Henry James is clearly superior to Edith Wharton if you read Washington Square side by side with The Age of Innocence. "For James," says Brian Lee, introduction-writer, "surfaces are only important inasmuch as they represent life, so that whereas in The Age of Innocence manners are an index to nothing beyond themselves, in Washington Square they are always tied to the moral climate in which they have their origins." Poppycock! The Age of Innocence is a richly imagined social satire. Washington Square is a character study set against only the vaguest of backdrops-society as a mechanism isn't explored at all, really. The two works are not even comparable; each has entirely different aims. Now I'm no knee-jerk feminist, but I respect Wharton and James so much and so equally that this ridiculous "James is better" crap is making me suspicious. Especially in comparing these two works specifically. Washington Square is wonderful, but it's no Portrait of a Lady.

Which makes it sound like I am disparaging Washington Square, and oh, I'm not. Brian Lee, that somewhat confused chap, praises the complexity of the characters, and the sense in which this novella is a warm-up to Portrait and an exercise of writerly skill, and I wholly agree. I also love the way Square begins as sort of a comedy and then as you begin to understand Catherine, it spirals into a tragedy in which you, the reader, are complicit! Basically Brian Lee's introduction is excellent, except he's wrong about Wharton...

Okay, nobody cares about this. Yet I thought about it all day. It's making me feel like an intellectual, all of a sudden. But don't feel intimidated; I still can't get through The Ambassadors. And D.H. Lawrence has officially driven me mad.

The end of an era tonight. Joey and Laurie and I, together again for the last time in who knows how long. It's hard enough for us to get together when we live in the same city--before tonight, we hadn't managed it since graduation in May.

I know I'm used to my friends living across the country, but I don't want her to go!

Somewhere,
a Billie Holiday CD plays.

Dozens of Joey's San Francisco friends turned up to buy her drinks and bid her farewell. We put on the jukebox and turned the bar into an impromptu dance club--"Lust For Life" and "Ain't Nothin' But A G Thing" and "Golden Years" and songs I don't know at all but danced to anyway because what the hell! Laurie did imaginary interviews as if I were a Solid Gold Dancer. "So, Monique. I noticed that your focus there was on rhythmic, sweeping hand motions. Can you tell us something about that?"

Then we had a group hug. And then we said goodbye.

I feel guilty that I didn't spend more time with them when I had the chance. I'm familiar with this feeling of guilt, because I have it often. I have so many friends I love, and I love spending time with them, and I never get to see a single one of them enough.

I made a list of people whom I consider to be my best, bosom, throw-myself-in-front-of-a-train-for-them, friends. There are at least twelve of them! I have a dozen best friends! Add in very good friends, long-distance friends, potential sexual partners, and Friendsters, and I have a rather intimidating social calendar.

Plus, there's napping. I need to factor in some napping.

Oh, speaking of the dirty dozen, here is the weird drink that Charlotte got when she came to visit me. It tasted like honeydew and had gummy balls at the bottom of the cup. The straw was cut diagonally, so when you sucked on the drink, the gummy balls would shoot up the straw and into your mouth. It was... a spectacular taste sensation. If you're ever in Chinatown and in the mood for culinary adventure, this is the experience for you.

Here it is: