I could never run a company. I’m too idealistic.

If I did, it would have to be the kind of place where everyone eats gourmet lunches for free. There would be no dress code, and everyone that worked there would be creative and intense and passionate about her job. She would also be very well paid. It would be humanitarian, and enviornmentally friendly, and open source, and all of our products would be beautifully designed and perfectly calibrated. Everyone would feel a part of the big picture, and there would be a trampoline in the employee lounge. It would be like some strange combination of Apple, Google, and elementary school.

When you do a keyword search for “brave new world” at the Barnes & Noble website, the SparkNotes are listed before the real book.

That is so depressing.

As a vegetarian, I have decided that I cannot in good conscience refer to this day as “Turkey Day,” as so many do. Instead, I have dubbed it “Cranberry Sauce Day.” It makes more sense anyway. People eat turkey on sandwiches all the time, but how often do you eat cranberry sauce? We only have it on Thanksgiving.

My Thanksgiving was pretty good. At dinner we did that weird, cliche, “let’s all go around the table and say what we’re thankful for” thing. I was thankful that high school will soon be over. I’ve begun compiling a mental list of my parents’ CD’s that I want to rip onto my laptop-to-be to take to college with me. My mind is always at least 33.3% college, with the other 66.6% dedicated to boys and homework/family/website/etc. How much of which depends on the time of month.

When I was young I, like all little kids, thought that the world revolved around me. Then I grew up and realized it didn’t. But yesterday I was shocked to find that it really does!

Here’s the deal. Eighteen years ago, when my mother was very, very pregnant (a few days overdue, even) with me, the Red Sox were in the World Series. She hoped that she wouldn’t go into labor during a game, because she didn’t think my father would be able to tear himself away from the TV to drive her to the hospital. But the Red Sox were in the World Series in 1986 within a week of my birth - that’s important.

This year, I’m turning 18 - a very important birthday - and what? The Red Sox are in the World Series AGAIN? I swear it’s fate. Really, it is. But this time they’ll win.

Actually, I don’t believe in fate. It’s just a funny coincidence.

And yes, I am thrilled that we finally beat the Yankess and are going to the World Series. We rock so hard. I love Boston. I love the Red Sox.

I’m going to be one of the judges for Ore Ha Wufei!, a fanfiction challenge over at The Ventilation Shaft, so if you write Gundam Wing fanfiction and like chocolate, submit a fic! I promise on behalf of KD that no one will be mocked for poor writing, though I would be careful about how you treat Wufei. The challenge ends on October 16, so hurry up and get your fics in! There are only two so far, and if we don’t get at least one more I won’t get to judge anything. And you know I want to judge things.

I apologize for the lack of real content around here lately, but school’s just started and I have a lot of homework. Quite a lot. I guess that’s not actually an excuse, though, since I still spend way too much time sitting in front of the computer.

I have six five zero (sorry, guys) Gmail invites. I haven’t been able to give them away, since everyone who wants Gmail seems to have it already. If you’d like an invite, leave me your email address and a math joke and I’ll bounce one over to you.

Okay, it doesn’t have to be a math joke. But it has to be a joke of some sort. I would prefer math jokes.

You’ve heard of apple pie. You’ve heard of chocolate pie. You’ve even heard of key lime pie. But have you ever heard of cake pie?

We celebrated my sister’s fifteenth birthday today. Since she is one of the most pie-obsessed people you could ever meet, she wanted a pie. However, she was hesitant to completely abandon the idea of birthday cake. What to do? She finally decided to combine them. My parents and I thought that her idea would turn out very badly.

We cooked both a pie crust and a chocolate cake, then spread frosting on the pie crust. The cake was broken into pieces and placed in the pie shell. Three candles were stuck on top and told to multiply themselves by five. And you know what? When accompanied by bacon-flavored coffee ice cream, cake pie is actually pretty good. I couldn’t resist taking pictures.

When I get a digital camera, I’m going to bring it with me on trips in to Boston/Cambridge and photopraph all the interesting signs I see. Yesterday, I would have taken pictures of the sign by the hot-air hand dryers (you know, the ones that blow hot air onto your hands but don’t actually dry them) in the bathroom of the Kendall Square cinema:

Yeah, we don’t like them either, but we’ve found these hair dryers to be the most enviornmentally friendly and cost efficient option.

That’s not an exact quote, but it was along those lines.

I also would have gotten a picture of the signs on Beech Street, in Chinatown. Two identical computer printouts on regular 8.5x11 paper, taped onto a telephone pole one above the other:

She loves you.

(yeah, yeah, yeah)

I love used book stores. What can be better than rooms full of weird, cheap books? Every once in a while, you even get a book with a personal history.

I was vacationing in Maine years ago, and ended up at a used book sale in a church. I bought the second and third books in the Griffin & Sabine trilogy by Nick Bantock. The books are about Griffin, an artist living a lonely life in London and running his own greeting card company, and Sabine, a woman living on one of the Soloman Islands- also an artist. They share a strange mental bond, and communicate with postcards and letters. The books are fancy- they consist of the actual correspondence. You can take letters out of envelopes and such.

Inscribed in the front of the second book in red rollerball pen was the following note:

Christmas ‘93
My Dearest “Sabine,”

I give this book with the full awareness that possibly one similar might be winging its way westward. Nonetheless, its light is still treasured. But are you real or is it just an illusion.

With deepest devotion,
“Griffin”

And in the front of the third one in the same handwriting, this time in red marker:

Rebecca,

The final chapter . . . or is it? A mirror held to our collective faces? Reflections? Images? The Trilogy Ends.

Merry Christmas.

The Griffinesque One,
Rick

I love those inscriptions, though they never fail to make me a little sad. Assuming that they’re genuine, I can’t help but think about the man that wrote them and the woman he loved. More than anything else, I wonder what happened to them- why are these books being sold in a church instead of sitting happily on Rebecca’s bookshelf?

Maybe they had a messy breakup, and Rebecca donated the books to the sale as a way of showing how little she cared for her memories of Rick. Maybe he died, and they were too painful a reminder. Maybe she died. Maybe Rick and Rebecca are living a pleasant life together right now, but they’ve left behind the sentimentality that made them hold on to old gifts.

I don’t like the possibilities that involve their love fading, or never really existing in the first place. I like to think that love lasts forever, that people never change and grow apart- but it isn’t true. These books are testament to that. It makes me love them.

I would like to say that my favorite things to see in other people’s blogs are links to pertinent news articles and clever analysis of The World Around Us. However, this is untrue. In reality, my favorite thing to read about is other people’s love lives. If I come across a blog that looks interesting and they archive by category, I immediately look for a category called “Love” or “Women” or “Men,” or named after the blogger’s signifigant other.

Posts about the people themselves usually more interesting than anything else. I don’t know if this is a universal opinion or not, but I’d definitely like to see more personal details in blogs. I suppose people are entitled to their privacy, though. If was involved with someone, I wouldn’t post every detail. I probably wouldn’t post any details at all. Not here, at least, where I wouldn’t have control over who could read them.

So, to everyone out there who has someone to write about- do it! Everyone’s interested.