Let's play catch up, shall we?

OK, it's not that I've been all slacker with blogging.

Yes, life has been full and rich and fantastic (knock wood) the past month and a half since I last wrote, but most of it is because I still have not called for high speed Internet, and my computer is a persnickety little bitch sometimes that just refuses to let me onto to Blogger.

And I hate it and curse at it and come thisclose to hitting it with a hammer, but then, there are times like tonight when I actually had a rare burst of patience and it loads up just fine because I give it the time it needs to load because I'm doing Other Things Around the House.

It's win-win for both of us methinks.

Now let's bring Ramblings On up to speed:
- I'm still working two jobs, and while I enjoy the extra stipend, it's a pretty exhausting life I'm living, but I'm making it work. Or at least trying to.
{Pray that my dad wins the lotto one of these weeks, OK? Thanks.}

- I'm still struggling with the diet and exercise. It's hard dating a fellow foodie, but I'm happy, incandescently, stupidly happy with the boyfriend, so I take that, too, as a win-win. I just have to find that balancing act between the good eats together and the me doing Healthy Things in between. I'm getting there. Slowly but surely.

- We just got back from another romantic trip to New York City, where we walked the streets, saw the Tim Burton exhibit at MoMA (and an installation that included, but is not limited to, naked men humping a mountaintop, woman dancing in the rain nude and live naked people), ate cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery and CupcakeStop, took in an independent film ("When You're Strange," about The Doors)at the Angelika, shared a Monster Pizza and grew even closer to each other. I'm crazy about this man and I don't care who knows it.

Wow, a month and a half so neatly packaged into two paragraphs? Who knew?

Hope all's been well with you, if you're still out there and can bear with someone who still has dialup. I hope you can, because I feel like I'm getting into a really cool creative place again, so I hope you'll stay along for the ride.

A 'Fountainhead' of inspiration.

Not five minutes ago, I finished Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead."

When I got home tonight, I had 30 pages remaining, and it took me almost an hour to read them - a turtle's pace considering how swiftly I strode though this most amazing book.

I just had to read slowly, even going back to read aloud, some of those pages because I didn't want to reach page 694.
I didn't want finish.
I didn't want to have to think about how this book affected me.

I'm still digesting it.
I want to talk to an architect.
I want to have just finished this book in 1943 when it was first published, and not today, when so much is wrong in people.
I want to break free from the mold, from the steel beams that surround me and my mind sometimes.
I want to go to New York City right now, in this slow drizzle, and see it as Wynand saw it, as Roark saw it, as I've always seen it: one of the most beautiful, inspiring places I've ever seen.

Instead, I think.
I flip through the book because I don't want to part with it yet, going back to some of the many passages that moved me.
Not only moved, but changed me. Maybe.

Gail Wynand to Dominique Keating:
"Once you've felt what it means to love as you and I know it - the total passion for the total height - you're incapable of anything less."

Roark during his Cortlandt trial:
"Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unharmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plan his food or hunt it."

From Rand herself:
"Man - every man - is an end in himself, not a means to the end of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life."

and

"I am a Romantic in the sense that I present men as they ought to be. I am Realistic in the sense that I place them here and now and on this earth."

I feel empowered, but not in an annoying feminist bullshit kind of way, sakes alive no.
Just empowered in myself.
And knowing's half the battle right?

Where the hell am I?

I pride myself on having a pretty savvy inner compass.

I can bark directions to just about anyone as their First Mate in the Passenger's Seat (just as I learned by watching my beloved Mommalah). I can figure out how to get us out of wrong turns easily and I proudly can find my way around Manhattan as viciously as any NYC cabbie.

So what the hell was I doing getting lost on Thursday, not only on my way to an interview, but also on my way home?



I got all sorts of confused going up Interstate 81 and saw my exit pass by on the side of the median I should have been on. Ended up going to Jessup by way of Dickson City, Peckville and whatever other town Main Avenue takes you on.

Finally met interviewee at her house - after calling her twice to find out how to get there because I clearly did not write the directions down properly.

Two hours later, I left her house and proceeded up the road the way I could swear was to 81.

Like a desert oasis, 81 never appeared. Instead, I found myself driving with a nearly empty tank of gas. In a torrential downpour. On a desolate country road.

Finally, like a beacon of hope in the wet sheets pounding on the Bitch pod, a stoplight appeared out of nowhere.

In front of me, was the on ramp to Interstate 84 - the exact opposite of where I should be at this time. I looked left and recognized the remains of Joe's Market, where I used to go grocery shopping with my Pop-Pop as a child. I was damn close to Hamlin.

Sighing, and on the verge of tears, the Bitch pod and I trudged through the horrible storm homeward. The rain was terrible to drive in and if I wasn't so exhausted, ravenous and pissed, I would have pulled over to wait it out.

As I neared Campbell's Ledge, it was the weirdest thing: I drove out of the black storm and into the most beautiful sun I'd ever seen. It was like a welcome wagon.

Finally got on 81 South and breathed a sigh of relief.
To my left, just over DeNaple's Junkyard, was the most gorgeous rainbow - a double one in fact. So brilliantly ROYGBIV against the black background I had just left behind. I could see both ends of it - it was exquisite.
{I was almost tempted to stop to take a photo of its glory, but given the day's past incidents, I opted to not get out of my car until I got home, just in case.}

Near the airport was another double rainbow, and I felt like both of them were put there just for me.

I hope I don't give myself a nosebleed in excitement!

I have been so ugh all week - it's just been crazy busy.
{And I may or may not have been a teeny, tiny bit of a bitch today.}
But I am bursting at the seams in excitement for this weekend. I kind of resemble a 12-week-old Labrador puppy.

I'll be taking a gloriously rare day off on Friday and heading to the City of Brotherly Love - Philadelphia to non-Pennsylvanians.

I've only really been to the heart of the city twice, and for very short amounts of time, including one when I was in 8th grade.
I'm definitely much more of a New York City kinda girl. Don't hate.
{Speaking of hate, if I hear one person chant "E-A-G-L-E-S" I'll counter with a "S-T-E-E-L-E-R-S." We've got the six rings bitches!}

My weekend will consist of:
- The Dead at the Spectrum. I can feel so strongly that I'll hear my all-time favorite song "Sugar Magnolia" that my tooth hurts. And believe you me, I will dance like I'm dancing in a ring around the sun.

- A Philly cheesesteak. From Geno's because I will be ordering in English. And because it's been featured on every food show I've ever seen about Philly.
- A tequila bar - and its Southwestern wrap. {Of course I already cased the menu, what kind of foodie do you think I am?}
- Lewis & Clarke playing in a church which I am hoping I will have some sort of eye-opening transcendental epiphany that will change my life. If I don't, I think there may be no saving my soul. {Listen to them, you'll see what I mean: www.lewisandclarkemusic.com}

I hope it all plays out like I want it to.
I tend to have make events so much more spectacular in my head than they could ever be, meaning I expect a lot, and then kind of disappoint myself.
But knowing is half the battle, according to the old "G.I. Joe" cartoon I so loved as a tomboy.

If I get myself so excited, at least I have something(s) to be excited about, right? Some people don't let themselves look forward to anything.
I'm happy I can look forward to what I have planned - and what I don't.