One of my part-time DJs just came in to say hi and pick up the new Springsteen album.

He's dreamy.

I say this grudgingly, but it's true. He's 22 or something, and he comes in my office in shorts and an '81 Stones tour shirt on and two days' of stubble and he's really hot.

Plus he's the lead guitarist in my favorite local band. They're really, really good.

Did you get the part where I said he's 22 and he's wearing an '81 Stones shirt? This one. A repro, of course, he didn't just grow into it from the freaking age of three!

I'm a bad boss.

Browsing through NYC real estate listings is really depressing. It's not just that they're expensive, it's that they're also tiny. If I was single I'd be all over it, though. I am teeny too. The boyfriend, however, is more on the big manly side and would go claustrophobicrazy. Silly suburban boy. Who needs a yard? Or a living room? Or a wall between your kitchen and your toilet?

Oh wait.

Where is my bloggery goodness rabbit and mister pants? It's not like there are thousands of blogs out there to read.

Oh wait.

The chiropractor was awesome.

My a/c broke over the weekend and there was a lot of horrible wrangling with the landlord that I'm not going to go into. It's fixed now.

I just got an advance on the new Steve Earle album. Review later, once I've soaked it in a little. I'm loving it so far, though.

I wish I had the guts/competence to hack my Tivo, 'cause this sure looks fun.

I finally got a chiropractor appointment. This is totally the highlight of my week.

You know how everybody with a freaky interest just loves the internet because they get to share their passions with those who, well, share their passions? I don't get romantically involved with plush animals, I don't impersonate Abe or Mary Todd Lincoln, and I don't collect beer steins. But I do looooove fonts. This is pure brilliance.

It's not nice to make fun of people. Unless it's really funny, of course. Band glossies never, never, never help. I speak from experience. When I get a package from a band, sometimes I save the bio, but usually I just read it and throw it away. Usually only local bands send glossies. Local bands, I say to you: You will only be made fun of. And made fun of by dorky DJs, no less! I just throw glossies in the trash to spare everyone the karmic burden. Here is my favorite but you have to slog through the rest yourself. It's worth it for the bad hair.

I hate the little grocery saver cards that they con you into using. My mom hates them too. She says (and I echo), "At the bottom of the receipt where it says you saved $14.06 today, it should say we didn't screw you out of $14.06 today." But you save $14.06, so you use them. The boyfriend signed up for one as Jack Onassis, so I guess I should be doing that. But since I always pay with my credit card, it would be pretty easy to trace back to me. I know they're only used for aggregate data collection and all that or whatever, but it still bugs me.

The Village Voice this week has an article on some marketing goon at some unnamed grocery chain who, unprovoked, volunteered a whole bunch of grocery information to the Feds. I'm hoping they're not looking for people who buy a lot of hummous, because dude, I buy a lot of hummous.

(I would actually hate to look at my grocery purchases over the past year because I just don't have a great diet and it would be pretty humiliating. Every time I go, I buy the same thing: Beer, frozen waffles, and half-and-half. How do I live? Sometimes I add such healthy items as wine, coffee, and Ben & Jerrys'. Damn. What do I eat? Oh, soy chicken patties and pasta. I forgot. Must be the beer. Mmm. Beer.)

Now really. No one has ever written "I don't wanna work; I wanna bang on the blog all day"?

I find this hard to believe.

I will not be particularly blogtacular this week, and maybe next as well. My morning show partner is on vacation, and running the show by myself sucks all kinds of energy from me. I just want to eat a big meal and sleep now, but I have soooo much to do.

Sex and the City had its season premiere last night--quite good. A nice love letter to the city kind of episode, with some good belly laughs. The boyfriend totally squicked out when Miranda breast-fed her new baby in front of Carrie. He's a bit squeamish. Heh heh.

The boots are gone. Which one of you bastards is responsible?

Wow. Lookee that Dow go. I just figured I've lost 11% of my 401k since my last statement, and I'm not sure that counts today's losses. 'Sokay with me since I plan to sacrifice my life fighting for liberty and punk rock against the forces of Emperor Ashcroft. So should I invest in the boots instead?

Short one today; need to run to the store to get beer and cake for the boyfriend's birthday get-together.

Prada black stretch leather over-the-knee boots. $199 marked down from $375. Only available in my size.

Hey, have you ever had Chinese food? It's really good. You should try it.

Okay, really, I haven't had Chinese food in forever because the boyfriend doesn't like it, and I never splurge on takeout lunch. But today I heard vegetable lo mein calling to me, and I answered. It was surprisingly more-than-adequate-although-not-stupendous. Noodles were just right, vegetables could have been better, correct amount of oil in the noodles. The best -- the absolute best -- part was the two times I bit into a little chunk of completely unexpected ginger. I had written the first one off as chance, the cosmic counterbalance to all those times I get a vegetarian dish and bite into a piece of unidentifiable meat. The first one was delighful but transient, and now gone. Then I got the second chunk of ginger and I realized that they had planned my delight all along. It was a beautiful feeling.

I can't express to you how much I like ginger. I think it would be good to throw some sugar and butter into a pan with some white peaches and ginger chunks until the sugar carmelizes, then wait for it to cool a bit and then pour it all over vanilla ice cream.

(blatantly stolen from YLD) One Thousand Blank White Cards! What a fun idea. The boyfriend always has a million notecards scattered about. We could even use his old language flashcards for the extra challenge of working ancient Greek, Latin, German, etc. into a clever card. Semper ubi sub ubi, -500 if going commando.

Happy birthday boyfriend. Sorry I made fun of you on the radio this morning. Kinda.

I just drove back from lunch and one of my djs was playing Talking Heads' "Lifetime Piling Up." I think it's such an interesting song. From a song structure standpoint, it falls into some of the cliches of the era...it's the only Heads song that I can think of that sounds like it could have come from someone else. But it's still brilliant, and I'm sure it's using that structure and twisting it around in a clever way to say something else. It made me really want to listen to a Heads album, so I went in the studio and grabbed Speaking In Tounges. Took me a while to decide, though...they're all so good. But I can't resist "Naive Melody." Coincidentally I am wearing my Luaka Bop shirt today.

Sleater-Kinney's going to have a new one soon! I read the review in Interview but I don't remember what it said. Doesn't matter really.

I'm a compulsive blogreader. I love how when you find a new one, you read the most recent entry, and if it's interesting, you continue backwards through time, and the blog opens up like a flower. This one totally got me today. Who knows if it's real, but it's compelling, and good writing. Here's a permalink if you want to start reading from where I started. Give it about seven entries and it starts making heartbreaking sense.

Tivo has the worst on-hold muzak ever.

Two pieces of randomness for you:

Tinyenvelope.com. Your 24-hour source for tiny envelopes.

Global Network of Dreams, or GNOD. They have a book and website section, but check out the music section first. Type in three artists you like and it'll give you more that it thinks you'd like. We've seen this before but it's always fun, and this interface is nice.

And yes, I've started titling all my links for extra fun. Try not to get too excited.

Mm. Just found this via the NYC Bloggers page. The attacks are still on people's minds in the midwest to a degree, but they're very real and very much on people's minds in NYC. At least that was my impression back in February.

I guess the market recovered. Whatever. I'm still more delighted over my Italian player than I am worried about my nest egg.

Horribly frustrating day at work. I didn't get hardly anything acomplished that I wanted to. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Over the weekend we went to visit the boyfriend's family, specifically his little brother, who just had a baby. The even littler brother is having a baby soon. Yikes. On the way up, we talked a little about the future. Very rare for us to do that. But he says he doesn't want to move to New York.

Now, it isn't my goal to move to NYC. But I don't really want anyone ruling it out either. He doesn't want to lose friends and have to make new ones, and be far away from family. I think that's ridiculous, but making friends has never been a big priority for me. He's social, though, and that's great, because he brings that into my life when I want it. He makes friends so easily, though...he's ridiculously charismatic. Anyway, I hadn't eaten and I got all emotional and cried and we had to stop at an IHOP so I could eat blintzes. (Whew. I've been dying to use that acronym tag.) But it was essentially a non-argument. I'm glad to know his thoughts, now we can move on.

And then, on the way back, we had the baby talk. I refer to all these discussions about the future as 'elephant talks' because I much prefer to ignore the big elephant in the room. I told the boyfriend this and he high-fived me. So I told him that it wasn't important to me at all to have a baby, but if it was super important to him, he could probably talk me into it. Which is the truth. But I hope he heard the 'probably.' Since I just turned 27, I want him to know that that's the age at which I take my first fertility hit, and ten years from now may well be too late. He hates the whole idea of diapers, so I'll just tell him he has to change them if he wants to reproduce so badly.

Do whatever you have to to listen to Doves' "Northenden."

I am halfway through a bottle of awful sangria and not really feeling buzzed. Thank goodness there's half a bottle left, right?

Ummm, what else did I want to blog about? Tivo, I guess.

In general, I think, men and women watch TV differently. Men are hunting the mammoth. They clutch the remote and hunt down worthwhile programming with a steely glint in their eye. Women tend the fire. We find something reasonably acceptable/inteteresting, then keep it on while we do something else. I can't stand to watch TV. I like having it on and listening to it, glancing up once in a while perhaps, but I'm always reading, or knitting, or cleaning, or something.

Tivo makes it a little different. You've got this big list of things to watch in front of you, things you picked out (or that Tivo picked for you in its infinite wisdom), and so for once, you actually want to watch TV. So I'm missing out on my quality reading because I'm having to pay more attention to TV, and thus, feeling like I'm not using my time as effectively. The live-pause/buffer feature is pretty useful, and it's great to be able to skip commercials. I Tivo big blocks of music videos overnight and then skip through them in later, looking for the ones I haven't seen yet. I get to see all the musical performances on Leno and Letterman that I missed before due to my early bedtime.

Oh, speaking of, the bottle is empty and I should go to bed. So there's a big fat blog for you. Say hello, won't you?

The market is tanking. Again. My 401k losses are really small, though. But I think that's because my 401k was already way down. Get down, get down. Jungle Boogie.

My beloved, be-suckin' Pacers might be signing an Italian league player named Fucka. Yes, that's right. Fucka.

Metafilter goes down; global productivity goes up.

I know you've already read about this, but it's so damn scary. I find it funny that the spy-on-your-neighbor site has a privacy policy, though.

Flaked out again! I swear, I'm so busy I just forget. Yesterday was one of those teeeeriffic 14-hour workdays, and today I'm scurrying to get out of here an hour early so I can leave town. Quick notes:

The Tivo is all that and more. I feel godlike in my, um, TV-watching powers. Um. Okay.

Must call your attention to new blog: The Search For Love In Manhattan. It's NYC, it's gay, it's clever. And it's updated semi-regularly.

Yikes! Must go!

Holy moses. The Tivo is in my city and out for delivery, says the UPS tracking system. I wasn't expecting it for seven days. I feel like it's prom night suddenly.

One bad thing about having a birthday is that it gives all the ex-boyfriends an excuse to drop into your life to say hi. I'm actually on good terms with all my exes, but it is a little weird. I just got a message from my h.s. b/f that was sent at five in the morning in the middle of a drinking binge. He says he's drinking to prevent himself from going out and getting high on crystal. Delightful. The guy has some mental problems and a weird family, and I always want to help him but I'm not sure how. He's always been this way, and it worked out when we were dating because I was a little unbalanced too. I think moving out of that small town/away from family will help him (since it helped me) but I can't apply my experience to him...I've got different tools in my emotional toolbox. Not to get all pop psychology on you. He's done some therapy and medicaton, and I think that may be the way to go if he can keep it up, but he's poor, so staying on a program may be problematic. Makes me feel pretty powerless.

Bluefly has been killing me. First they don't update for, I don't know, like, 72 hours or something, and then they give me five pages of new stuff all at once. But it's nearly all Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dresses. I don't know who these look good on. They're far too hippy-dippy for me. On second glance, I'm not sure they didn't just mix up the order of the new stuff so the Betsey Johnson dress at the top of the list I'd been staring at went to page five. Tricky fashion folk.

The Tivo is ordered. I'll be following it through UPS's tracking system for the next few days. That's great fun, a way to really maximize your shopping anticipation and the corresponding payoff when the item arrives.

Oh, yeah, did I mention I'm completely shallow? Yeah.

Most heartwarming story ever. Read this in the paper this morning and was compelled to track down the online edition so I could link to it. Thank you, gay penguins, for making my Monday better.

I'm buying a TiVo. Heaven help me. Unless I get distracted or chicken out, this time I'm really going to do it. Man, it's a lot of money.

The hair is good. All is well.

About an hour until my hair salon appointment. I'm right in the headlights of salon fear. No matter how many times you go through a major hair makeover (for me, many, many times), it's always a little scary. Something could go wrong, really wrong, and since you love and fear your hairdresser, you'll tell him you like it and give him a big tip.

What I really want is Run Lola Run/Miki Berenyi red, but will probably settle for something a little milder. The whole career thing gets in the way of the whole punk rock thing. Plus all the kids are dyeing their hair these days. Plus it's hard to maintain that vivid red. I'll probably go for a dark red with a black stripe, which I've done before, but it's been a while. I've been a blonde for a year and I'm sick of it. But tomorrow's my birthday, so I'm facing the possibility that I'll spend my birthday with brand new hair that I hate.

I read Daily Candy's review of this movie Me Without You, and they made it sound great. Best friends grow up in England through the 70s and 80s! The hair! The clothes! The love! Brilliant! Then I read the New York Times review and it sounded just terrible. It includes the information that this friendship is horribly twisted and poisonous. How awful.

Sometimes best friends are not the pretty one and the bookish one, the virgin and the whore, the career girl and the hausfrau. Sometimes you're equally beautiful, smart, stylish, and competent. You fight and cry with the knowledge that the other's always there and won't let you give up on the relationship. They're there for you when your hairdresser has led you horribly astray. My best girl has the most beautiful smile in the whole entire world, and I can't wait to hear how she's knockin' them dead at the reunion.

Ah. Flakey again. The day before a holiday is always busy at work is always busy. Usually the day after is too. Actually, I've been spending a lot of my break time posting on People Talk Too Loud. So what little clever I've got left is going in that direction. Well, not so much clever as mopey, as I've been posting about how Springsteen's "The River" always makes me cry, among other things.

All right. This is not going to become the Death Blog. (I hope. I mean, that sort of thing is kind of beyond my control, I realize.) Baaaaah! *starting over*

I've been listening to a lot of full-length albums lately. Usually I just listen to the radio, or to singles. (That's my job, or part of it anyway. "Is this song crap? Yes. Is this song crap? Yes. Is this song crap? No, but it's too weird for radio. Is this song crap? Yes." And so on.) Right now I'm listening to Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Of course. In my publicity shot, I'm wearing a Wilco shirt, to say to everyone, hey, I'm a cool chick, I'm representing for Wilco. Plus the bulls-eye design makes my boobs look bigger.

I've also listened to the most recent/upcoming releases from the Hives, the Vines, Uncle Tupelo's anthology, Dolly Parton, and Doves. Dolly's new one isn't as good as her last one, but it's still Dolly. She looks so good in the liner notes. I'd love to have her wardrobe. I totally recommend Little Sparrow, though. The Hives is fun, of course, but the Vines was disappointing after hearing the single. "Get Free" was a fun Bleach-era Nirvana blast, but the rest of the album reminds me of Stone Temple Pilots more than anything. It's okay. Doves' new album is even better than I expected. They do a really good job of creating space and motion in their songs. Two good songs are on radio right now, "There Goes The Fear" and "Caught By the River," but I really like this song "Northenden" that's on the four-song EP that comes with the album. It's got a terrible grey-sky ache to it.

I'm glad they released that Uncle Tupelo anthology. I would have picked a couple of different songs, maybe, but it's just incredible to listen to. They don't do a thing wrong. I don't know if anyone has captured that midwestern awfulness more perfectly. Come to think of it, I've also been listening to the new Neil Finn and something from this kid Alex Lloyd. Alex is kind of a shadow of Neil, but that still means it's not bad. I just love Neil Finn. The new album hasn't quite gotten me like Try Whistling This, though. Oh, and I just got the last two Faint records, which were immediately stolen by the boyfriend. You've got to watch this video for "Agenda Suicide."

Happy Independence Day. Here's hoping.

Of course since yesterday was my one-month bloggerversary, I flaked out on it. I've been a little down since my friend's death and the sheer randomness of it all. His funeral starts in an hour and of course I'm too chicken to go. I've never been to a funeral. I can think of two family members who have died in my life, a great-grandmother, and a cousin who was disabled and died as a child. I guess a few of my grandparents' siblings have passed in the last few years, too, but I have to go that far out into the extended family to find death. So I've been pretty lucky. I really want to tell his family how awesome he was, so maybe I'll write them a letter. I'm totally one of those people who cries when someone else cries, so I'd just be a wreck at a funeral. Not that it matters.

Nothing like a nice big existential crisis to throw off your whole worldview, huh?