when i was 13...

i had mariah carey's self-titled first album, and i fuggin LOVED that album. i'd almost forgotten how good down 'n dirty cheeseball that album is, until i was thinking of remodeling my bathroom this past spring and went to this bathroom fixture place in chinatown that played that entire album, accompanied by cheesy vietnamese karaoke videos. i was reminded of it again tonight while watching the 'american idol' auditions. some girl did a horrible rendition of 'without you' (different album). there's nothing like hearing a fucked-up version of a song to make you want to hear the real thing. i'm listening to 'all i want for christmas' right now. buy that for a dollah.

we are BOOKED for vietnam. i even booked the rock-climbing and trekking tours in da lat. i'm so proud of myself. and i am, this moment, backing up all the shit on my hard drive that matters on the new 2 gb usb data key that i bought today for $25 usd... and i got a 1 gig memory card for my camera (i hadn't realized i was using a 256 this whole time). and a ipod converter charger thing. all for less than $56 usd. back at home the usb alone would have been that much unless you were intrepid online relentless bargain hunter. i guess there are some good things about being here... hehe.

so i thought tonight would be the first day since saturday that i haven't been drinking, but me and cyn and ulf just split a bottle of prosecco. i'm trying to get to bed at a decent hour tonight, like before 4 am would be ideal. it's already 2 am, tho, so it's not looking good. i just feel so much more awake at night. my brain works better, more clearly. people who witness me trying to think before caffeine and at any hour before 11 am realize that i'm not fit to make decisions or even have relatively decent recall ability with either of these two factors involved. zzzzz....

so i talked to my parents yesterday. besides announcing they were refusing to celebrate christmas until one of their offspring produces their own procreated little bundle of screaming red-faced joy, my dad gave me a cat update. (for the uninitiated - my family will talk endlessly about two subjects - food and their pets.) my furry ball of allergens (i discovered 6 months after i got my kitty cat cat that i'm allergic and she triggers my asthma) has overcome a lot since she moved in with my folks - she developed a relationship with their rottweiler, she learned to go outside without freaking out and hiding in the compost bin, she worked her way into my mom's affection (as it were) and is allowed to sit on her desk, 'with her butt on my papers,' as my mom would so eloquently state. or huff. scarlett has also put on about 30% more body mass because my mom's solution to the cat rubbing on her ankles - which she views as harassment - is to dump food in her bowl for a moment's reprieve from the cardinal sin of affection. my cat is a pig, but she's not stupid, so she caught on to this rather quickly and i think her body mass ratio is quite alarming. when she runs, her belly swings violently from side to side. when i was home, we resumed our daily ritual of doing the humpty dance for visiting relatives or my grandmother's entertainment, but that didn't seem to suffice for additional cardiovascular activity to the extent that it would lead to weight loss.

the cat update consisted of the news that my grumpy little animal has made herself some 'cat friends,' as my dad says. they apparently sit in the garden, about a foot apart, and stare at each other. i'm told this goes on for hours. and i have to deduce that since scarlett isn't busy trying beat the holy shit out of these other cats (like mama, like kitty) that they are indeed friends and this is how cats socialize. i mean, i guess if you sleep 20 hours a day, going for lunch at the country club and maybe a bit of shopping on the avenue is just far too taxing. sitting amongst my dad's snow pea trellis and herb garden is probably far more appealing. maybe blinking once in a while, you know. wouldn't want to strain oneself.