oh dear.

I just realized that I had slept with earrings in, and immediately felt a flash of wicked glee, as though I had gotten away with murder.

How do you know when it's time to ratchet up the excitement in your life?

as if apartment-hunting weren't hard enough...

I'm putting together a kinda professional website. And I expect that to a lot of people who aren't familiar with the area, the difference between:

Lore & Ipsum is an editor and writing consultant in Cambridge, Massachusetts
and
Lore & Ipsum is an editor and writing consultant in Somerville, Massachusetts

is marked.

That's not the case, right? That people would think that?

interesting.

If you mistype “theoreticians” as “theoretians,” spell check suggests “tearstains.”

ugh

I've been apartment-hunting for Sept 1, and haven't had much luck. Yesterday I went to see this ridiculously amazing house in Inman Square for $3200 (I'm primarily looking with 3 out-of-state people), and I was the first to see it, and was bonding with the owner, but because I couldn't immediately plonk down $3200 and 4 signed leases, she rented it to the next person. But called and told me that I was a lovely person and that she'd love to stay in touch!

So, I'm starting to freak out. Please send positive apartment-finding energy my way and/or beseech the universe on my behalf. And if you don't believe in that sort of thing (M), well, then tell me a great joke.

Now I think I might actually do a shot of vodka before heading off to work.

(I'm going through old papers and things)

Coincidentally enough, that original FAAR person had volunteered early on that he had a blog, but wouldn't tell me what it was. My friend L. and I were at the Starbucks at the corner of Forbes and Murray (it was the summer I was obsessed w/their chocolate-chip banana cake) when I mentioned the secret blog. A most resourceful researcher, L. had it on up on the screen of her laptop within minutes, um, before I...had time to...object....on moral grounds... Anyway, the blog was quite unintentionally funny, and she and I discussed blog references to which I might airily refer, and proprietary phrasing I could use just enough to make him a bit freaked out, but not enough to give it away.

I should mention that this was when it was beginning to become clear that he wasn't a very good guy. I never did the subtle references, but I think I eventually told him about the discovery and the subtle reference plan, which looking back seems considerably more malevolent.

anaphoric *

Several years ago, I had just begun dating someone whom I met online, and I forwarded my friend S. the link to his profile. Of the pictures, the only one that was at all clear was one of him rock climbing. S's comment was that he looked good flat against a rock.

It slowly dawned on us, as we drank together, over the phone, almost 600 miles apart, that looking good flat against a rock is actually an excellent and very desirable quality in a mate. We pitied girls who didn't know what their swains looked like FAAR, and imagined a service whereby women would send us photographs of their men from behind, and we would use Photoshop to render them FAAR. And then there was someone in particular whom I wanted to see FAAR, and S. suggested that we break into this person's apartment and replace his mattress with a giant slab of granite, and then hide in his closet. When he returned, and got into bed, we would jump out from the closet, dressed as old-timey paparazzi with old-timey cameras, and take a bunch of pictures.

At that point on our lives, we had more than a few scenarios that involved dressing as old-timey paparazzi and jumping out from behind lampposts and popping out from behind bushes, etc.

The horror, the horror!

The good news is that I’ve met the FMCG. Tall, beautiful, seemingly kind, Indian, elegant British accent, working on a PhD at Harvard. The bad news is

> I “met” him when a realtor showed me the house he is living in. I don’t know his name or what he’s studying or what he looks like from behind* or anything.

> He is almost certain to have a knockout girlfriend who looks good in scarves, is quiet but never, ever self-conscious, wears jewel tones and interesting jewelry, and whose impressively-populated academic web page has a link to photos of her being outdoorsy, probably standing by a huge rock in some obviously foreign land or northern California.

> Every time I try to picture him now, my fickle mind conjures up Mohinder from Heroes, who is pretty much the most fey character ever created.


I suppose the good news is also, creepily enough,

> I know where he lives.

I could stop by and be like, “oh, hey, I lost my MacArthur award the other day, and I’m just retracing my steps…” Or I could stop by dressed as a sexy electrician. Or! A sexy electrician who lost her MacArthur award! Eh, he’d suspect something.