just got back to new mexico.

Just got back to New Mexico, after a twelve-hour ride beginning at 3 AM with my middle school friend Valerie and her boyfriend (fiancé?) in a VW bug. He and I talked about promiscuity after he said that he was celibate for four years, which was after Valerie nostalgized of the time I was complaining about my tail bone hurting several summers ago when Val and I went to the zoo and I brought this guy I was seeing whom I had just spent the night with. I always make a concerted effort to date and get to know someone before sex, but I don't live up to the no-sex-until-marriage model which prompted Valerie's boo to invoke the p-word at me, which seemed a bit unfair after one anecdote. I don't think there's anything wrong with libertinism, but despite my dating a lot and tendency for full disclosure (like on this blog), I'm often mulling over wedding locations and names for children. Plus he and Val were blasting metal music, plus Val's man also thinks his LA-suburb hometown of Cerritos has a population of 1.2 million, a fact which in itself kept me from sleeping for most of the twelve hours. Nor were the circumstances conducive to sleeping when I got home and discovered cat pee stains on my bed and mouse poop on the floor. Nor were the circumstances conducive to sleeping earlier this week when I dreaded the idea that I'd be in the back seat of a car for twelve hours instead of my bed, and so I stayed up late searching the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of books on tape (in case I'd be driving myself) and not sleeping.

Went last Friday to Alex O's house for an oversize-Christmas-sweaters and no-pants birthday party. I brought writing friend Sam, her roommate Zach (I dated him — sex included —until the fact of his long-distance/distanced boyfriend finally took a toll) and Kelly (girl whom Sam might be seeing? She told her a story about how she decided to break up with ex-g/f, an older woman/professor from Italy, because she sent her a text message saying something like "if I find some fresh basil, will you try my delicious pesto?"). Alex O is the girl you may have read about with whom Tod wrestled drunkenly which caused a great chain of unnecessary dramatic events (see November 2007 entry). She told us about her new job as a vet tech, and how on the day of her actual birthday she had to assist in fixing a cat's inverted anus which she said looked like a giant brain. Her boss the vet said it was her birthday present. Alex O also told us she has a friend who works at a funeral home who stole Charleton Hesston's hip replacements and sprinkled the residual ashes into a cake that he dyed green and served at a party. At the part Alex O had a Christmas tree covered in porn photos of the singer of Type-O-Negative. On Sunday I went to the Christmas party at the Museum of Jurassic Technology and ran into people who couldn't remember me or whom I couldn't remember.

I love customer service representatives. I talked to a guy named Marcus in Sacramento who gave me $30 off my next Verizon bill. I can't figure out which one he is on MySpace, because there are six of them. There's something exhilarating about finding out what these people look like, especially after being put in a position to completely dehumanize them: interchangeable with talking machines, they recite memorized lines about how to serve you better. Once I talked to a lady in West Virginia for two hours after we both said we wanted goats. She said she could use the goat to pull her uphill, because she can't get her car up the hill in the snow. She said her house is at the top of a really tall hill and sometimes it snows on that hill even though it never snows anywhere else in the whole town. I wish I could MySpace-stalk her, too. Did I already tell that story in a previous entry? My (bad) memory makes repetition more enjoyable in life, though one doesn't get the full enjoyment of observing the slow changes the way a computer's memory could, if only it could enjoy its own ironies.

My father visited me over Thanksgiving. I can't help but focus on his racial commentary, even though it's an early 20th-Century insensitivity, and I've noticed others his age of all races seem unoffended. While in the cafeteria, he turned to the black girl next to him in line and asked how she liked our new president. On the way to my cousins' for Thanksgiving dinner, he told me and Katie how he thinks Indians from India are selfish people because they have to deal with so many of each other. In October, when I went back to Albuquerque to visit, vote and pick up my new (used) car, I brought my father to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in search of authentic Native American food. It was unsuccessful; did Navajos invent portobello mushroom sandwiches? When we entered the building, my father went up to a tall Native American man and asked if he was going to scalp us. I darted out of the room upon hearing the word "scalp," but watched from a distance: the man paused for a few seconds, then laughed and said "not yet." My father noticed a younger woman in the room who looked really perturbed. In the gift shop, I contemplated buying some New Mexico stickers, but settled for a booklet of cowboy-themed temporary tattoos. Now I'm here in "Clausteppte" again, or so my phone's autotext feature likes to call it.