Swedes are the perfect backdrop for solitary silliness. My iPod and I have gone skating everyday this week on the waterfront, zipping past old men and their dogs and determined runners. Whenever I hit a patch where I am out of eyesight my iPod and I begin a choreographed dance- backwards, sideways, turn, jump- and invariably it is when my bladed feet touch concrete that I notice someone is watching me, turn bright red, and skate away as quickly as possible.

Come skating with me. We can dance together.

The Best Feeling in the World: Stepping off the Subway escalator just as your train pulls up.

The Worst Feeling in the World: Running up to your train just as the doors snap shut and it starts to pull away.

Funny how the best feeling and the worst feeling are separated by a measly 30 seconds.

I spend a lot of time walking to the Seattle Public Library from campus and back, so I've been able to watch the evolution of this corner on Roosevelt and 50th.

Tubs WAS a creepy spa that was (or so I was told) shut down for being a front for a prostitution ring. Now that the hookers and VD is gone, the building had been slowly crumbling to pieces before it was condemned, and taken over by these guys.

There were a bunch of bearded people having a powwow in front of the building complete with crumpled Rainier cans at their feet, so I felt a little self conscious taking pictures. The most impressive graffiti, the stuff that is more art than braggadocio is on the front of the building. In a more talented life I would be right up there with them.

I've been falling down in public a lot lately. A couple of weeks ago, I toppled over walking up a staircase in the art building and a random person behind me told me not to worry, that these are m.c. escher stairs, and then just walked away.

I have had perpetually scabby knees since I started to walk. Someday I will grow out of it, though I am starting to fear that it will be when i am a septegenarian and bedridden.

So now I am sporting one broken toe, two skinned knees, and a very bruised ego. Anyone who loves me can buy me a new pair of grey tights cause I ripped them.

The Way I Do

"I know them other guys, they've been talking 'bout the way I do what I do,

They heard I was good, they wanna see if it's true"

frozen feet and muddy boots on a friday but redeemed by new discoveries of ziplines and spinny things (!) and a flashback to childhood, all the while with the persistant thought "I smoked 1 2 3 cigarettes today, doctor, am I going to die?"

PHRASEBOX 1

"Professor do you wear Reeboks in heaven?"

- Fujiya and Miyagi, question mark inserted by me, which I think makes all the difference.

Books I've Read in 2008

1. The Unbearable Lightness of Being... again.... twice
   
2. Icelander- Dustin Long
   
3. The Glass Castle- Jeanette Walls
   
4. The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and another Agatha Christie that I can't remember the title of
   
5. Little Women
6. Austenfest (Emma, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion)
7. Atonement
8. Never Let Me Go- Kazuo Ishiguro
9. Asimov's Foundation trilogy
10. The Road- Cormac McCarthy
11. The Winter of Our Discontent- Steinbeck
12. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
13. Shop Girl- Steve Martin (!)
14. Daughter of Fortune- Isabel allende
15. House of Leaves, though I don't know if it counts as reading it because I didn't really comprehend it
16. Ex Libris- Anne Fadiman
17. The Princess Bride- William Goldman (a perennial favorite)
18. Persepolis I and II, as well as Embroideries- Marjane Satrapi
19. Smilla's Sense of Snow- Peter Høeg

That's pretty good for a year, right?