Adam's spending an extra day in San Diego for what he describes as "festivities." I am so green with jealousy, I can barely see straight. He's basking in the warm California sun, Pacific air in his face in the land of friggin' PANDAS and I'm in Albu-friggin'-qurque, still bogged down in revisions.

I want to know how he scammed the whole karma thing for this, because it's killing me.

And if he does end up going to Disneyland (as was previously discussed), it will be the absolute end.

Last year, my friend Jordan house sat for us while we went on the storied USGP roadtrip. When we came back, he confessed that every day he came over, he was always half-expecting to find the cat randomly ablaze and torching the rest of the house.

So, with that in mind and knowing that I'm one of those insane people who always thinks the stove's on, imagine my reaction when I got home today to find a fire truck parked in front of my house. A fire truck with its lights blazing. Parked. In front of my house.

Like any rational adult, I freaked the fuck out. However in the two seconds of freaking the fuck out, my brain realized there weren't any strapping firemen draping themselves across my sidewalk or throwing themselves into my burning house to save Kitty the Feline Pyromaniac (I was also tipped off by a lack of billowing black smoke, but really? I was looking for the beefcakes). Obviously, they weren't there for me. Or Kitty.

The next moment, the new next door neighbor came out to report his middle son had suffered a severe allergy attack and had stopped breathing briefly. They called 911. Instead of sending an ambulance, the dispatcher sent a fire truck chock-a-block with EMT-trained firemen.

Lucky kid.

I know I'm in deep when iPoddy's playlists look less like album titles and more like character lists, or fragmented chapter titles. When "Fountains of Wayne/Fountains of Wayne/Fountains of Wayne/Fountains of Wayne/The Shins/The Shins/U2/U2/U2/U2/U2/U2/U2/U2" are pushed down for the likes of "General Harriet/Harriet in a Mood/Lacy's Standars/Montoya's Big Guns" I know that a happy Saturday afternoon lays far in my future, where I pull these insipid song strings out of iPoddy's memory and return the playlists to equalibrium.

I've heard real (meaning published) authors will listen to music before they write to get a feel for certain characters, plot points or scenes, but they insist upon working in silence. I am so the opposite. I've got to have music at the very least, but Adam can fill you in on my DVD-box-set-in-the-background habit.

(I'll give you a hint: it drives him NUTS.)

Until then, I'm rocking out to AC/DC followed by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs followed by Annie Lennox followed by more Fountains of Wayne than is healthy.

This revision cannot be over soon enough.

Ah. The weekend. We didn't do damn much, but it was so much fun, considering how much of it was spent with us crashed out in the living room, me in the big chair, Adam on the couch, both prone, with some mindless flick playing on the telly.

We were somewhat productive, I should admit. I got more done on the revisions (shut it), we did some shopping, visited some parents, cooked, and I did slip in a book in between everything else.

And then, this morning, about an hour ago, as a matter of fact, Adam got up and drove to the airport. San Diego on business until Thursday. Aw, isn't it cute, I said. It's like you're a real grownup. All you need now is a flannel suit and a felt fedora.

Oh, I've got the fedora, baby, he said.

I told him no donkey shows, he told me no delivery boys and we kissed each other good-bye. I've been sitting bleary-eyed in the living room with Headline News turned on for company since. I'll probably go up to bed in a couple of minutes and sleep until the middle of the morning, or until he calls from sunny San Diego to announce he's looking at giant pandas and I'm not.

It's the little things like that which keep us together.

"Now is the winter of our discontent" has been following me around all week, like the ghost of majors past, popping up in the oddest places (Ethan Hawke answering a telephone in "Reality Bites," Guardian-sponsored Harry Potter Fanfic fallout).

It's kind of like the SNL booker/face girl Carrie kept running into in that one eppie of SatC ("No, no, no, it was a FACE and run"), only you can't take out a restraining order on a line from Richard III.

Can you?

Cookie if you get the title reference.

Thank you for proving me right, Rupert Murdoch.

The bottom story's also a real winner. Only in Albuquerque: A black heart surgeon from New York came out to perform surgery for underprivledged Navajos, decided to give the ABQ a whirl, went to a bar downtown, couldn't get served, tapped (or grabbed, accounts differ) a bartender on the arm, got thrown out of the bar, argued with the manager outside, APD showed up and things escalated to such a pointed the heart surgeon from New York ended up at University Hospital with a separated shoulder and now there's a question as to his ability to operate ever again. He alleges the cops threw around some racial slurs while he was being arrested and GOD, people!

The enlightened types around here are all red in the face. Really, we're above this kind of crap. Honest.

So now comes word that Jude Law is suffering from Eric Benet Syndrome, that is, the need to screw around on a famously beautiful partner (see: Eric Benet, David Beckham, Hugh Grant).

I admit that Sienna Whozit has done absolutely zip for me; unlike Keira Knightly or Scarlet Johanson (prior to her skeevy encounter with skeevy del Torro) Sienna strikes me as a blank canvas with perfectly distressed dishwater blonde hair. But still, she's so very It right now, mostly for being Jude's arm candy, I think.

But this isn't a screed about her. No. This is me being outraged that he offered her a public apology. Where was the apology to the nanny? Where was the "I'm sorry, I'm a git all the way around?"

A quick Google search turned up a picture of the nanny — one Daisy Wright, 26 — and her gossipy counterpoint as told to a British tabloid. The picture is telling. She's positioned in a gauzy dress number that shows off her cleavage, but hides her tummy and her bare arms speak volumes: they are a far cry from the skin-covered bones Sienna rocks. She is, in short, a real woman, curves and all.

I'm giving it three days before Fleet Street villifies her for the cardinal sin of being "fat" and still bedding a star. God forbid they give Jude any flack for being a chubby chaser, no, no. He must patch up his relationship with the model, right? He's So Beautiful, he can't possibly want a girl who eats and then doesn't bother to throw up afterwards. She'll be branded the Evil Strumpet and fade into oblivion while Jude and Sienna do a Posh and Becks publicity tour, smiling through their teeth and praying Tom Cruise marries Katie within the week to take the heat off.

God.

I just finished "Half Blood Prince."

Wow. Just. Wow. Just. No. Wow.

*~*~*~*~*

In other news, I fulfilled a life-long dream of having blue hair. Sort of.

It rained, finally. A good, cleansing, oh-my-god-it's-the-end-of-the-world monsoon downpour. When the skies first opened up, it was so fierce, it sounded like hail. That was enough to get me up out of my desk and outside with all the smokers to see if Bucky was getting the shit pounded out of him. But, nope. Just rain. Drops the size of, oh, watermellons.

It's calmed down for the time being, downgraded from deluge to gentle downpour. Adam's gone out in search of Allsup's chimichangas instead of a balanced dinner and I've got "Big Fish" playing on HBO.

Oh, yeah. We Wolfs know how to party.

So, the wind's blowing out of the east right now, which is so damn wrong for this state, I don't even know where to begin.

On a basic, cellular, doofus level, my first instinct is "it can't blow from east to west because them mountains should be durn blocking!" Riiiiiiight. Because 5,000 feet (give or take) of granite jutting into the sky should be more than enough to thwart the entire atmosphere.

My second instinct is to blame the wind on my bad mood; it'd be akin to teachers in LA blaming their kids' ADD on the Santa Anas, I guess. I've been right pissy all day, but it mostly has to do with A) revisions and B) the distinct lack of Pad Thai in my immeadiate vicinity than meteorlogical conditions in the 87114.

Because I'm a big nerd, I know that the east-to-west wind thing is thanks to a shift in the upper atmosphere patterns due to Dennis with help from a high pressure system sitting over the Four Corners and oh my god, could I be any more lame?

Yes, because now I can segue into my High Pressue rant.

Okay, I grew up in this small town in the south central mountains and a good chunk of our economy (and school morale) depended upon snowfall. By the time I was eight or nine, I'd become an avid weather junkie, watching the nightly forecast and praying for snow. I quickly learned that the arctic jet stream and all the moisture from the gulf could get together to make beautiful snowflake babies, but if there was a high sitting over Farmington, we were going to get jack.

And let me tell you, that big ol' H liked to park over the Four Corners for most of the winter. Oh, sure. We'd catch a few breaks every season and get six inches here, eighteen there. Once in a blue moon, we'd get three feet and the schools would FINALLY shut down. But really? Those damn high pressure systems ruined a lot of perfectly good winters by not delivering on the snow.

Even as an adult, I scream at the jolly weather guy when there's a high pressure system hanging out over Farmington and I'm hoping for little snow. I mean, okay, I'm a big dork when it actually does snow, but I can't shake those wistful wants for snow days.

*~*~*~*

It probably wasn't Sir Bob's intent, but my iPod's a little less in the memory department after Live 8.

Tracks I was inspired to download after seeing performances on VH1:

The Verve: Bittersweet Symphony
Eurythmics: Sweet Dreams are Made of This

Tracks I was inspired to download after downloading the Eurythimics:
Soft Cell: Tainted Love
Deee-Lite: Groove is in the Heart

Current on-the-go playlist:
George Michaels: Freedom 90
Low Fidelity All-Stars: Battleflag
Rilo Kiley: Portions for Foxes
The Verve: Bittersweet Symphony
Eurythmics: Sweet Dreams are Made of This
Soft Cell: Tainted Love
Snap: The Power
Deee-Lite: Groove is in the Heart
Fountains of Wayne: Denise
FoW: Survival Car
FoW: Sick Day
Ben Folds Five: Underground
Guster: Fa Fa
Refreshments: Banditos
The Postal Service: Such Great Heights
Jem: Save Me

*~*~*~*

My class reunion is this weekend. I'm not going, because, y'know, revisions.

Back in September, I reviewed Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's second book, "Playing with Boys" for the Journal. Nothin' doing. Part of this whole quest to get published is to get the name out there.

And then, back in March, I found out I was blurbed for the book on Candy Covered Books.

Which in itself was pretty damn cool, because that gives me just another Google hit.

BUT NOW!

Now my words are the top blurb on the trade paperback release. My words trump the New York Post, USA Today and the Chicago Sun-Times. Yeeeeeeeah!

See?


I'm in the middle of revisions. Shut up.

Two minor news bits:

• I've started jogging again. Just came in from a mile jaunt, s'matter of fact. This bout of endurance and endorphines might last longer than previous attempts. This time, I've got an iPod, an iPod loaded with George Michaels crooning "Freedom" to shake my ass.Some mistakes were, indeed, built to last.
• Our friend Alex adopted a baby ferret today! A little gray boy, yet to be named. We're going to indulge in the fluffy baby cuteness this weekend and I'd expect pictures to follow. Buttercup, our baby, is put out that she is no longer the youngest of the extended ferret family. Alex reports that big brother Linus is thrilled. Lucy and Peanut had no comment at this time.
  

Eight years ago, I wrote a sarcastic piece for the college paper about how, in Albuquerque, "Independence Day" rougly translated to "blow shit up." I went on to postulate if you asked any rube standing in line at the fireworks stand just over the city limits on one of the pueblo reservations just as to why we blew up shit on July 4, he would answer, simply, "because."

At the time, I thought I was being adorably, precociously cynical.

Now? Just cynical.

Today, as I stood in line behind an endless parade of Anglo families with their grubby grubs and their flag shirts and their magnetic-yellow-get-r-done-dubya-ribboned minivans at a fast food eatery within the confines of our master-planned development of microsized McMansions, I wondered just how many of them could name a single person who had signed the Declaration of Independence or could even identify just which document that was. I wondered how many of them understood the significance of July 4, 1776, or, really, how many even cared.

Which is the point where I became truly depressed. From where I stand in suburbia, the climate is thus: A'mur'ca's A'mur'ca and God shed His grace on thee, end of story. As far as these people are concerned, on July 4, 1776, the patriotic Easter Bunny delivered us the whole chocolate basket: fifty United States (plus the territories of Guam and Puerto Rico), the star spangled banner, the second amendment, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Dubya; a country dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, unless they voted for the other guy, in which case, they're traitors. Ship 'em to Gitmo!

I don't suppose it helps that I spent the weekend devouring "Assassination Vacation" by Sarah Vowell and it's been a weekend-long walk down memory lane of the American History AP exam (which? Total pwnage on my part, thank you, thank you) from a decade ago.

The combined experience is enough to leave me reaching for the real estate classifieds. Moving won't solve the overreaching problems we're facing today as a nation, but at the very least it might cut down on my Tums intake and I'll take my victories where I can find them.

Happy Independence Day, you guys. I'm damn proud to be free.

You may recall I was ill a few weeks ago. Turned out to be a sinus infection. Got it cleared out with a short course of antibiotics, but it still gave me the impudence to write a scene for the new project that Adam called "surprisingly touching" because, doy, sick and yadda, yadda, yadda.

Sick.

Well, it never did clear all the way up, so today I trotted back to the doctor to see if there was any particular reason I was sporting a dry, hacking cough like the female half of TomKat and her pair of oversized Prada sunglasses.

The doctor hemmed and hawed and flipped through my chart, listened to my chest, listened to me cough, took a couple of lung function readings and wrote me prescriptions for inhalors and steroids in pill form and another round of antibiotics of the mucus turns green, but really, he thought it was just my asthma come back to play.

Greeeeeat. I thought I'd outgrown that along with my training bra.

Upside: I got lung function device, or as I like to think of it: the phantom spitballer. Big breath, blow, a little floaty ball shoots through the tube, but doesn't come out. Lots of spittle can be involved. It works.

Downside: I can't go out in the current haze (Arizona's burning and we've got all the smoke), I can't be around smokers (or go into smoke-filled bars), and I can't pass any IOC-sponsored drug tests. Bummer. My dream of winning the gold medal in ice dancing has gasped its last.

Oh, yes. I went there.

I also tooled around town with the top down and hung out with a co-worker while he finished his cigarette. I'm bad.