i'm not very good at holding grudges or perpetuating vendettas. but, as i believe that every well-rounded girl should have at least one (so that she might expound deviously over a bottle of whiskey and a map of tucson), i do my best to cultivate a few. but, using the same logic that says a cow is easier to shoot than a fruitfly, i tend to aim high. none of this soft-touch single person vendetta action. oh no. i have vendettas against full years, against entire landmasses. so greenland and 2003 had better watch out. as soon as they've let their guard down, i'm so going to fuck their shit right up, yo.

word.

the good: mangoes and pineapples on new year's day. alias saturday. dinner and a movie on friday. digging out the awful truth on sunday night. using the kissy mix for the powers of good. bonding with the pod. beso brunch.

the bad missing the astoria brunch. being back at work. running out of socks, so i had to wash some in the sink.

the quote of the day: "it's too early to be human, forget pretty."

more to follow. still waking up. and sifting through thousands and thousands of emails. who would have thought that two weeks of neglect would cause an inbox to fester so?

happy new year, everyone. may the champagne flow freely, the object of your desire be within arm's reach for a good snogging and the next 366 days (don't forget, 2004 is a leap year!) be full of bright, shiny loveliness.

hello, kids! it's that time of year again, time to shout 'out with the old and in with the new!' time to symbolically start again. and you know what that means...resolutions!

i have spent many years making those big traditional resolutions--you know, quit smoking, go to the gym, give up...whatever. and i've never really been able to adhere to them. so this year, i'm taking a different approach. on the advice of a good friend, i'm regarding my resolutions more as a to do list, full of things that i would really help make the year a better one. so, here they are, in all their glory:

1. drink a glass of cranberry juice every morning.
2. listen to more al green.
3. leave the city at least once every six weeks, even if this just means taking the metro north commuter rail to some little hamlet in westchester county.
4. worry less, or at least try and keep things in perspective.
5. make another attempt to plow through 'gravity's rainbow'

and that's what's on the table at the moment. suggestions for additions, augmentations and substitutions are welcomed.

what's on your to-do list?

i wanted to write something incisive and brilliant about how nice it is to be home (which it really is), about how excited i am to see everyone and how good it feels to be back in my nice cozy apartment...but that will have to wait. for now let's just say this: getting picked up at the airport is the best thing in the world, particularly when the one waiting at the end of the arrival chute looks at you as though christmas has finally arrived, in your big red suitcase and four days late. 

so, while i've learned my lesson about making idle boasts (note to self: never agree to enter tournaments built on random fluke victories), i am pleased to note that from time to time, i seem to be able to wield a shotgun with a decent amount of acuity.

which, of course, means i hit two clay pigeons the whole morning. little buggers didn't stand a chance.

yesterday was this family's equivalent of a reunion, with three of the five aunties in one place, several uncles, plenty of long lost cousins and even some of their children. having not seen any of them in quite a few years, it was wild. the thing is, despite the fact that we all looked a little different, and that most of the assembled company had eight million questions about my life in new york (i got to tell my september 11 story about six times), it was much the same as i remembered it. card tournaments, sherry trifle, free-flowing beer, racing pigeons, christmas crackers...really, the only major changes were that i was suddenly the tallest person in the room, but not the youngest.

refreshing.

joan is a family friend, and she is eighty if she is a day. here is an example of why i absolutely adore her:

joan: may you have a happy, healthy and loved christmas. and new year. with lots of sex.

apparently, i am even more dismal at pool than i previously thought. and let me tell you, that's pretty impressive! though, apparently i can twirl a cue like nobody's business, with plenty of menace and resolve.

but that is no matter, because despite all the hype of the infamous tournament, that wasn't really the point of the evening at all, was it? no no no. the point of the evening, at least as far as i was concerned, was that i got to meet this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one in the flesh, and see my darling girlies again for the first time in ages. there was whisky and chattering and giggling and of course plenty of tramping around camden town. and, of course, i have photos. i will post them as soon as i figure out how to extract them from the dratted camera (including, yes, some stellar photos of stuart wearing my cap at a jaunty angle).

the only thing missing, of course, was the lovely third member of the troika, who we missed very much, particularly during our 2am ritual feeding down on old compton street, where we cackled madly about accents and changed the subject very smoothly (look, i've got water!), even as the good mark tried vainly to teach us some cockney rhyming slang. though there was absolute fiesta of fierce fabulous femaleness about that table (with which mark coped gracefully), we missed our owlet. of course, the prevailing theory is that if she'd managed to actually be there with us, the sheer power of the troika plus two would have caused the planets to realign, the heavens to turn themselves inside out, and basically the end of the world as we know it.

that's right. we can do that, when you put us all together. make no mistake.

anyway. i'm not doing the scene any justice really, but suffice it to say that it was a smashup good time, and though by the end of it my throat was sore and i was pretty much exhausted, i can't wait to do it all over again. for real.

we interrupt this morning to inform you that there are bagpipers in the field next to my bedroom window.

bagpipers.

apparently, they tend to swarm this time of year.