19 February 2002 - 12:25 a.m.

Today's Yiddish word (fished out of the magnetic poetry kit on my desk): "oyb." It means "if."

So tempting to burrow through the box in search of "ven" ("when").

I'm going to miss the cute Google graphics when the Olympics are over...

Went to a bar tonight for an arts group meeting, where I didn't find the people who organized the get-together, but instead spent a very agreeable hour chatting with a graphic designer - her job, my job, music venues, pets, children, cell phones, car troubles, neighborhood restaurants, the excuses we find not to paint... and then I went home and mixed some more green and wrote out a couple of verses in the most consistent hand I've managed so far this year. Which is not to claim it was sufficiently consistent (and what did I do with my exacto knife? I need to start practicing how to correct my mistakes instead of just throwing them out, and yes, that could be a metaphor if I wanted to make more out of it), but I'm a hairline closer to mastery than I was yesterday, and that's a fine feeling. (Yesterday I wondered who I was kidding and why was I wasting paper and time.)

1.) When are you spending time frivolously on the internet?

When I visit Television Without Pity to read summaries of shows I don't even watch. Which would be all of them (I caught three Buffy episodes last fall, but in general, 7 p.m. just feels too bloody early for me to sit captive to the cathode-ray casket).

2.) Would you describe yourself as an east coast or west coast personality type?

Third coast, actually. (I've spent the bulk of my adult life around the Great Lakes.) Not as edgy as your stereotypical easterners, but far too earnest for California culture.

3.) It makes me really nervous when I...?

...am anywhere around bees. Picnicking is overrated.