Monday

The tree that was decapitated during a recent windstorm is getting a little more room to stretch its roots. The work crew is down there now, with a Kubota excavator thingie that keeps dropping large slabs of concrete on the asphalt while the workers cringe.

Am way too hungry for it not to be noon already.

1.21 jigowatts

I can’t remember the last time I was so involved with a book. I looked forward to going home and reading some more. Two nights in a row, I passed up watching Diff’rent Strokes DVDs with Rob. I read a short story during my lunch break the other day, and I like, missed the characters in my book.

My copy of “The Time Traveler’s Wife” is hardcover, so I’d been leaving it at home, except for Wednesday when I took it with me to Rob’s class to read during the second half, which I don’t participate in.

My mom got it for me for Christmas 2003, I believe. I hadn’t cracked it yet because there was always something else on my list, and also, it’s pretty bulky to carry, so like, I didn’t want to take it with me on a trip or anything.

When I read “Atlas Shrugged,” I was jealous of Ayn Rand’s ability to structure a novel of that length so tightly, and with a cohesive theme. It all fits together like a wonderful puzzle. Now, I’m jealous of Audrey Niffenegger’s imagination. Even after finishing it, I can’t stop marveling at how original the premise is.

There’s no time machine. The time traveler has a chemical imbalance or genetic disorder, or something, that makes him disappear and reappear somewhere else in time. It’s painful and he can’t control it. He has watched himself as a child and as a grown man. In his 30s and 40s, he visits his future wife from the time she is 6 until she is 18, but in his own chronology, he first meets her when he is 28.

I loved it.

That’s not to say that I can’t find a single bone to pick. There are certain moments of dialogue I don’t quite believe, and I think it’s pretentious how the two main characters spout off in French or German with no translation.

Plus, I think it’s a mistake of the author to go into detail (any detail) about paper making. The author herself is an artist, and she uses terms I don’t know – that don’t mean anything to me – to describe the process. It’s not like throwing in a word here or there for authenticity, where it doesn’t matter whether I know its definition or not. It’s a couple of pages that might as well be in French or German.

Next, I had planned to read the mystery written by my creative writing teacher, but I just got a free copy of “Persepolis,” a graphic novel, in campus mail the other day. It’s the 2006 group reading selection and it’s very pretty. Maybe I’ll read my teacher’s book at home and the graphic novel on lunch breaks.


Evidence

Take back my PETA membership, I’ve experimented on animals.

Using Jellyfish genes to make glow-in-the-dark bacteria, if you must know.

Then Rob and I took this portrait.

Next stop, mensa

I took this while we stood in a sunbeam in order to stay warm while waiting for the light rail in downtown San Jose.

I was like, what the hell is that black square?

Rob said, “That’s your camera, you doof.”

This was taken March 10:

Getaway

On Friday, Rob and I are going to San Jose during a rare 48-hour period during which neither one of us has to work. We going to the historic, first-ever, state-sanctioned Mixed Martial Arts fight in California. Rob has trained with Frank Shamrock and he’s a helluva nice guy. Sportsmanlike.

I’ve been looking forward to our trip, because the day-to-day has started feeling a little like a grind. Weekdays go by very quickly, with most of my hours spent behind a desk and at the martial arts club. And then it’s the weekend, which should be playtime, but that’s when Rob works, so it’s mostly laundry and reading and writing and yoga for me. And then it’s Monday again.

But I know I’m damn lucky, if this is my grind, because it has bay views and evergreen trees, intellectually stimulating tasks and a generally cheerful atmosphere.

Treatment

Have self-diagnosed and decided that my lower back pain is in my sacroiliac joint. I’ve got some bum joints. (Oh, hey, that was kind of a pun!)

It didn’t bother me much over the weekend but as soon as I sat butt in chair on Monday morn, it was killing me. Even with my little Swedish inflatable seat cushion/lumbar thingie.

So I decided to take the advice that I’ve been ignoring thus far. OTC painkillers (generic Aleve: two in the a.m., two in the p.m.) and alternating heat and ice. I’m told the heat stimulates circulation and the ice flushes toxins. If you were wondering.

After two days, I guess it’s a little better.

In household news, I may have started to become something of a nag. S’morn, after stepping over a trampoline and a microwave (yes, our microwave is on the kitchen floor) to get to my hairdryer, which is plugged in near the treadmill in the kitchen (we have some three-prong outlet issues), I said to Rob, “It’s getting a little hard to walk around the apartment.”

I said it sweetly, at least. He’d already promised to investigate the smell in the refrigerator. Seriously. I threw everything out. I don’t know what it can be. And I sniffed the baking soda and the ice, in case they were retaining the odor from something else. It’s a mystery.

Information delivery system

Yesterday, the chief of large city bureau for an elite newspaper held up a tattered album cover of a Beatles record in one hand and the current issue of said newspaper in the other.

He called them both relics.

Nobody buys Beatles albums on vinyl anymore, and hardly anyone listens to it that way. But we’re still listening to the music.

The newspaper will be obsolete in 50 years, he said. But people still will be reading the news.

I’m no longer subscribing to a local paper, because I no longer work for one and because I spend 75 percent of my day reading news online. On the days I have to physically page through a hard copy, I tell you, I really hate getting newsprint on my hands.

People read these things on their way to work? How do they not get newsprint all over their crisp white shirts?