Doing: Korean dumplings and The Incredibles (tonight), joining the Tribe to help a friend move (tomorrow morning), cheering at the Marathon’s oft-neglected Queens section and celebrating Stuart’s one-month-in-NYC by going up the Empire State Building (Sunday).
Reading: Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town, as well as Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events: Books the First, Second, and Third, and New York Magazine.
Planning to: clean the house this weekend, learn how to make hot cocoa from scratch, paint our office a cheery bright red, knit a hat, throw a Christmas party, and figure out how to make a toga look sexy for someone’s upcoming Fall of the Empire Party.
What are you up to, dearlings?

I walked out of my building at 6:30, two hours earlier than yesterday’s departure, and it must have shown on my face.
“Hey, lady, don’t frown! You got that nice marriage to go home to!”
That was Leslie. He’s the friendliest guard in my building and a few weeks ago, he saw the new glint of gold on my left hand. I smiled, a little buoyed.
But the niggling rain between the office and the subway dragged the corners of my mouth down, like it dipped my head nearly to my collarbone to avoid the umbrella warfare and the cold. I ran down into the station, thinking I’d picked a bad day to wear three inch stiletto boots. I stopped to get chocolate from my subway vendor because I firmly agree with Lupin – chocolate solves almost everything.
The vendor, he knows I only buy chocolate at the end of very long days. “Hey,” he says in that great Indian accent, “you gotta smile. I saw you with husband, that’s good thing! You got lots to smile about!” I laughed and smiled – and I meant it.
As I trudged home through the shining droplets now coating the hairs on my wool coat, I saw Vibert, outside Dominic’s Liquors, having a smoke break. I said, “Hi, Vibert,” like I always do, because Vibert knows which wines I like and he always finds me the least expensive bottle of whatever is grabbing my fancy.
“Hey, there, girl. Rushing home to that husband?” And again. I smiled. I laughed, even. Because rain can be pretty annoying. And spending overtime in the office can really get a girl down. But I got a warm hug, a couch rundown of the day, a lot of kisses, and a Trivial Pursuit game to look forward to. Suddenly the rain is cozy.
And whoever said New Yorkers are rude, unfriendly strangers … well, they never walked a few rainy blocks in these three-inch stilettos.

Here at petit hiboux, in this hour of Concession, we offer to our Comrades, the Consolation of a Cupcake. And we offer, with Class, to our Competitors, the Congratulations of a Cosmopolitan.
Consume whatever you need to get through today. And remember we love you.

It seems ____________ turned out to mean:
mirth·less (adj): a. lacking mirth b. devoid of gladness and gaiety. “Around midnight, Democrats all over the country were rapt with mirthless attention, watching the once-near tally slide further and further apart like so many continental drifts.”
de·ject·ed (adj): cast down in spirits, see: depressed. “Even the litter on the streets of Brooklyn looked dejected, lazily sliding under the wheels of passing traffic as the wind kicked it around. “
in·con·sol·able (adj): incapable of being consoled. “It was with an inconsolable heart that I finally dragged myself to bed at two AM.”
asjdhf·iwurfn·lzdkfd·sdjkfdf (adj): used to describe anything that is too painful or complicated to enunciate into words, see: babbling incoherency. “After last night’s asjdhfiwurfnlzdkfdsdjkfdf election and this asjdhfiwurfnlzdkfdsdjkfdf day, i’m going home to have some asjdhfiwurfnlzdkfdsdjkfdf hot cocoa and asjdhfiwurfnlzdkfdsdjkfdf* my husband.” *slang: anything else you want it to mean.

or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Election Night
Take:
3 (three) good friends
+
1 relative newcomer to the process
Gather in same room. Mix with:
1 bottle of Vodka + 1 bottle of Jameson’s + 1 bottle of red wine + several packs of cigarettes + 1 huge TV showing Jon Stewart + 1 couch named Klaus + 1 cat named Nellie
When sufficiently stirred and baked, send to:
1 bar to watch California roll in.
Top with: held hands, buried faces in necks, shrieks of joy/sorrow, suggested drinking games involving Hated CNN Anchors And Their Hideous Ties/Hairdos, and/or celebratory/condolence kisses.
Send home to bed, drunk and ____________.

Everyone’s blogging about the vote. So, since I’m apparently SO contrarian (thanks, Seastreet) I’m not going to. I will say, however, that for every ten blogs that simply (albeit somewhat justifiably) rails against Bush for being 1. evil 2. made of robot parts and/or 3. actually missing a frontal lobe, there will always be a few that carefully dissect, level-headedly, the choice presented to us, and pen their opinions with the kind of straightforward integrity I often find lacking in “real” journalism.
I’ve said it before – it’s the majority of political rants that stop me from reading political blogs. But it’s small minority of bloggers like Bryan Adams that remind me how well-crafted the written opinion can be. So for your Vote Day kicks…
Go read Why You Cannot Vote for Bush*. And then go vote. For whichever candidate you think most fit to run this country.
And I mean that. Whichever. Just vote.
*I link to Bryan’s entry because I think for all the Bush-bashing going around the web (of which there is a fair amount), it’s one of the better-written endeavors. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t Kerry-bashing going around the web. I just don’t regularly read it (again, due to my usual lack of interest in political blogs) so I don’t have anything to show you. This appreciation of Bryan’s writing is strictly my personal opinion and in no way indicates that you should vote for Kerry or thus be condemned by me. I give this caveat because I am sick to the back teeth of getting slammed in my own comment box for expressing political views so please read this as merely a nod to a fellow writer, and if you hate it, and me, don’t bloody fucking read it. Thanks!

Look, I took the Geek Test, okay? And I scored a meagre 18.9%. I realize that I was very proud of having redesigned this site all on my own.
But there comes a time in every girl’s life when she admits… I don’t understand why Safari hates me. When the redesign first went up, Safari didn’t recognize a change in the text-body template. Now, it doesn’t recognize a background block of white. Simply put, all my text is twice the normal size, on a striped background, and aligned left. Simply put, it’s making me crazy.
Biscuit and I keep meaning to take a good, hard look at why. It works in Mozilla. It works in IE. But it won’t work in Safari. Until we have the chance, in our busy social schedules, to gather around the warming glow of a Mac screen and tinker with Safari…
any of you super-smart eggheads have a good idea why? If you’re in Safari and you know your 1s from your 0s, please have a squint at my source code. If you can solve it before Biscuit and I do, I’ll enlist the aide of my Newly Minted Husband to make a splendiferously indie-geek mix for you, and drop it in the mail.
Thanks, peaches!