fire and night

so san diego has been on fire. and all we have been doing the last few days is sitting at home and watching the fire news. and calling friends and family to see if they are okay. and calling them again. and figuring out new friends to call, and watching fire news. yesterday was the first night that any normal tv programming was on. it was 7pm and susan taylor of nbc miraculously cut to Wheel of Fortune, which, as jennifer recently pointed out, is a staple, a symbol of comfort and alls-wellness in the Hartle household.

today is thursday and is the first day i have been able to come into work. and frankly, it's sort of a nice change from having been cooped up in the house. and my insane natural optimism even made me enumerate all the positive things about going in to work. like the fact that the fires are being contained, i get to see my coworkers and return to normalcy, and the air at the office would probably be better than at home. i was shockingly wrong on that last score and i actually ended up having a total coughing attack on the stairs.

so, i'm listening to Night by Elie Wiesel. question: if you were forced to work in the crematorium, do you kill yourself, or do you throw people in the kiln and commit whatever atrocities you have to do to try to live and testify to what happened?

yay, hygienic modernity!

Maybe some of you are like me; you aren't actively appreciating on a daily basis that you don't live in the middle ages or early 14th century. But I've been listening to this book (oh yes, my whole life is books on CD) Brunelleschi's dome by ross king, about the dome on the santa maria del fiore in florence (preparation for our trip to Italy) and i have to say, I am very aware of how craptacular life was then. Let's discuss the black plague. don't want it, killed 4/5 of the florentine population. glad it's mostly eradicated. let's discuss water: wasn't clean, had to drink wine instead...which might not be so bad if you didnt get tanked after 3 glasses(that might just be me). let's discuss work hours. do you actively appreciate the Socialists who helped bring you the 8 hour work day? well, take a moment to do so, because apparently back then you worked sun up to sun down...and in the summer that meant 14 hour days in scorching heat. and on days when the weather was bad you just didnt get paid.

So artists have always been known for being a little "off". Ross King has been telling me that artists were known for being extremely ugly and smelly in italy in the 1400s. In fact, apparently people marveled that Raphael could be so talented because he was moderately handsome. And Michelangelo who would go for months without changing his dogskin undies. YES. FOUL!!!

Hey speaking of having a sucky life, here's Stephen Colbert and a few little friends helping explain why our Christian president vetoed a children's health care bill overwhelmingly passed by Congress.

holy God, do all the Argentinians have to smell so fabulously mantastic? their cologne is distracting me. i work in a veritable UN, and may i say that i wish other cultures would learn from the argentine example...because contrary to popular belief, b.o. is NOT like perfume, and yes everyone is susceptible to b.o., even Asians.

if i were ethan hawk in gattaca and i had bought jude law's identity but was trying to keep it secret from the oppressive genetic hierarchy of the day, i would fail parlessly. yesterday i cleaned up a veritable treasure trove of genetic ID in the form of my eyelashes, eyebrow hairs, and lustrous red hair from my computer area. all i could think was that they would have no trouble whatsoever identifying that, i, indeed, am not jude law, but very much julie hartle.

The pumpkin precious

I need someone to stage an intervention. I honestly believe that if my last shred of self control and health concern left me, I would eat Starbucks pumpkin scones for every meal for the rest of my life. I have been eating them for breakfast nearly every day for two weeks. I thought I would get sick of them. I have not. Much like, I suspect, crack addicts don't get sick of crack. I arrange my daily caloric intake AROUND the pumpkin scone. What's worse is that today's pumpkin scone was the best one yet. They are INCREASING in deliciousness.

so, sometimes....i scrapbook. i know, it's an identity crisis. i not only scrapbook, but i have even done so with others, as in with many others (30), some of whom were coworkers (secretly hoping that in some alternate universe there are men who are thinking of taking up scrapbooking to impress their female bosses--i.e. the golf of the future). In a room for 6 hours, with prizes. i know. i know, do you even know me anymore? do i know myself? well, i can tell you that i know a hell of a lot more about how much memorabilia crap i have laying around that needs to either be 86ed or somehow lovingly preserved. apparently they should be preserved in some acid-free way. as opposed to the many comments i heard last night on top chef on which the judges kept commenting on the need for acid in the food. apparently they werent high enough off the wine, was my conclusion.

so, i was also coerced into joining myspace and facebook, so if you would like to contact me through either of those mediums, you just let me know. I felt like i was losing part of my soul, though i do fit in better at my new kiddy smallgroup now.

where have i been? working. that is the answer to all your questions. and when not working? shamelessly indulging in watching So You Think You Can Dance before going to sleep and starting it all over again...okay that's not entirely true. i did actually start attending a new small group in which i am depressingly older than EVERYONE in the group. I'm trying to let their naive optimism rub off on me rather than letting my jaded, world-worn perspective rub off on them. They seem to be able to utter sentences and be confident that what they say is true, right, not subject to change or difference after years of life. This is something I have not been able to do for a great while.

speaking of which, wanna be depressed and ashamed of the american government (if you werent already)? Go see No End In Sight or rent it on video. It's a documentary on the iraq war and transition government setup. horrific. explain to me why i shouldn't get nauseated every time i think of it.