Bach toccatas and fugues on the stereo today; thoroughly appropriate for the rain. I do feel a bit like I'm trapped within Phantom of the Opera. :-)
rainsong
rather than tell you how i love you,again, let me simply and softly whisper
in your ear -- the rain makes me long to be
near you, long to be against your skin,
surrounding you, long to be kissing your neck,
over and over and over again. rain knows that
none of my other lovers cry out so sweetly
gorgeous, under an assault of wet kisses...
Tonight is Kaylie's last night with us -- she'll be going down to live
with her dad and sister for the next year, while Lydia finishes her
degree. Lyd knows she's doing the right thing, but it's clearly wrenching
her apart, the thought of being without her girls for a whole year...poor
chica. This is not what she was planning for when she got married...or
probably when she got divorced. I wonder how stable any of those plans
really are. We so badly want something we can count on in this life;
someone we can rely on...
I got a wedding invitation in the mail this morning, from my friend Kathy
S. I haven't talked to Kathy in a few years, so I'm not sure how she
found my address, but I'm very glad she did, even though I can't afford to
attend the wedding. Kath is my oldest friend. In kindergarten, the
tallest girl in the class (Kathy eventually grew to be 6 foot something,
and play center on the basketball team) befriended the weirdo Asian kid
who even then spent most of her time reading. I was the only South Asian
in the whole school until my sisters came along, five and nine years
later; I grew up in a predominantly Polish Catholic neighborhood (my
family is Catholic, which is why I was in the school to begin with),
surrounded by a sea of white faces. I even studied Polish with the rest
of them for four years in grammar school; it's unfortunate that all I
remember is the sign of the cross, and counting to one hundred, and a few
Christmas carols. I *was* semi-fluent once; my second lost language (I've
mostly forgotten Tamil at this point, though I still understand my parents
when they speak it, and my Spanish is rapidly disappearing...sigh). If it
hadn't been for Kathy (and later on Marta and Karen and David), I could
have easily been the most miserable, picked-on kid in the school. I
didn't figure out how lucky I was in that regard until much later,
though...
I'm really glad Kathy's getting married, though I don't know this Robert
boy she's marrying, and so reserve the right to come and beat him if he
doesn't treat her right. There were times in late grammar school when she
thought no boy would want to date a 'beanpole', but I always had a feeling
that she'd end up living happily ever after. Her wedding invitation had
a castle on it, and a carriage pulling up to it, and the words, "Dreams
do come true..." *smile* Very Kathy. I think marriage will suit
her...
One of these days I'll probably type up a long rant about marriage, but
not today; I'm in too good a mood.
I wanted to write *something* about Heather's latest journal entry, but I
can't think what to say. Oh well; at least she knows I'm thinking about
it. :-)
Talk to y'all later...
11:30. Y'know, I really lost track of the dates. My Mills account dies
on Sunday, which means that I need to scramble to get a new primary email
account. It'll probably be mohanraj@lmi.net -- I'll let you know when
that's confirmed. In the interim, urgent mail can reach me at
moh2@rainbow.uchicago.edu.
Now, can someone remind me what UNIX command does a search and replace
through all my files here? I need to replace maryanne@mamohanraj.com with
moh2@rainbow.uchicago.edu -- and will need to do it again once the new
account is active.
If you can also remind me how to use tar to compress and save my entire
account at Mills, so I can ftp it to the new account and uncompress it,
that would help. Kevin left me instructions, but they don't seem to be
working. :( When I tried:
(tar -cvf ella *) it seemed to work fine, but (tar -xvf ella *) gave me
error messages. :(
Kev's away at a conference; meep.
5:00 - Okay, John and Brian have figured out what I was doing wrong with
the tar stuff; they're still figuring out how to do the search and replace
in a C shell. I know y'all were dying to know that. :-)
Making cheesecake and cake for Kayie's going away party -- must get back
to it!
1:15 a.m. -- Okay, technically it's probably Saturday, but since I haven't
gone to sleep yet, we'll stay here for now.
Raucous party. Take one small child (age 8), six adults intent on making
sure she has a good time, one frosted cake, two cheesecakes, some fruit
and chocolate, ice cream, sorbet, and soda (and a little port), many
balloons and the cushions from the couch (ideal for starting pillow
fights), and you can have a really good time. :-) It was fairly tame for
the first chunk of it, until Kaylie started agitating for a party game.
Well, no one indulged her right away, but a little later, she was sitting
on her mom's lap while Lydia talked to Ian and El, and well, once I
thought of it, I *had* to do it, right? Right?
So I ran over, tagged Lydia's knee, and shouted, "You're It!" Lydia just
gave me this *look*...and then she was moving the small child and moving
herself, fast! I was dragging off my socks so I wouldn't slip on the
hardwood floor, and then I took off into the back yard with Kaylie right
behind me, and rampaging chaos in the living room. David mostly stayed
out of it (in fact, the one time I remember him being tagged, he just
stood there until Ian came up to him and said, 'okay, okay, tag *me*'),
but the rest of us shrieked and ran and made up rules to games we didn't
quite remember (Freeze Tag; TV Tag; etc.) until we were utterly exhausted.
Kaylie had more energy than any of us (and honestly, I think she had less
sugar than any of us).
Other highlights of the evening including David as weary old horse (I
think he eventually died under a disappointed Kaylie) and Ian as bucking
bronco -- she held on really tight! Oh, and later there was a pillow
fight, and a game of Statues (make the other person laugh) and after I
awarded Kaylie the keychain water pistol award (functional!) for longest
as a statue, she and Ian got into a rather messy waterfight, with many
soaked innocent bystanders (I think El got it the worst). Eventually the
munchkin fell asleep on the couch, after Heather and I sang a couple songs
to her, but she wore us out first!
I'm still oddly awake (I kind of fell asleep on her shoulder for a bit,
actually), which is why I'm writing this now, but I should probably go to
sleep. 'Night, everyone.