DEC 31 :: [another year passes] Well, 2003 will soon be over. Another year passes. I love new year's eve not just because it's one more reason to party (not that I need any encouragement from the calendar!) but also because it marks the beginning of something that's (hopefully) better. I am ever hopeful and dreaming of the possibilities ahead. I love new beginnings. But I do look back and long for days past. Life is a painful progress, isn't it?
I'll be jumping from one party to another tonight. Chris is in Palm Springs so I won't have him around this year to anchor me to a party. That won't stop be from being inebriated well before midnight. Be good, y'all. Party hard and Happy New Year! See you in 2004! It always gets better. I promise :)
DEC 29 :: [final stretch] Well, here we are... the final stretch of 2003. It's warm outside as the new year approaches. It was warm in Kansas City too. Kinda strange after last winter's freezing temperatures and abundance of snow. I caught a little bug while I was there. It's nothing too tragic... yet. I hope it doesn't explode into a full-blown infection. I don't need that for the new year!
So KC was fun. Went to church on Christmas Eve, Tony and his mom made a kick-ass turkey dinner for Christmas, watched Return of the King on Boxing Day, more family stuff on Saturday and a fun dinner outing on Saturday night. The flight home was insanely packed with screaming children (plus a total nutcase that kept kicking the back of my chair while her parents sat there and not only didn't care but were even more annoyingly loud than the child herself). I'm glad to be home. 10 more days before our trip to Asia. I'm gonna have to start digging out all my T-shirts and shorts. Ooh, I almost forgot... presents! I got some fun giftcards and I think I'm getting a Canon SD10 (in bronze!) so I'm plenty excited. Anyway, all this excitement is wearing me down. Gonna go get some rest to nurse my fever. BTW, Return of the King was phenomenal. I was confused by the ending but all good movies make you want to watch it again so I will!
[death of an actress] I was shocked to find out that canto-pop diva Anita Mui had passed away this morning in Hong Kong. This following Leslie Cheung's death in April this year is a tragic loss for HK's entertainment industry. I grew up listening to their music and watching their movies and their passing is another sign that I have definitely left my childhood behind - those good ol' days in Malaysia when life was so much simpler and far little made me happier. I'm nostalgic for times that I can never relive again. The nostalgia doesn't last though. Life moves relentlessly forward. It never skips a beat. And I don't want to get left behind. So, here's to Anita, Leslie and all those who have graced our better years with theirs.
DEC 25 :: [in your heart] Merry Christmas, everybody! Woo! We made it! Last holiday of the year before 2004. I'm in Kansas City now with the in-laws. They're already bugging me to hurry up so that we can all open presents. So in an effort at brevity (cue laughter), I'm gonna say that Christmas isn't Christmas till it happens in your heart. Happy Holidays!
DEC 22 :: [exhausted] Wow, has it been five days since I wrote? I've been to six parties since! And a few more tonight and tomorrow and then Wed, my liver goes on hiatus for a few days at the in-laws. Yes, Kansas City awaits. The State of Misery. Fun. Actually, I'm excited about having a few mellow days in KC coz I wanna go to the movies and watch Return of the King. Can't wait.
My hos at work (Nicole and Linda) and I did our gift exchange today. It was fun. I got a whole bunch of alcohol and accompaniments (who would've thought?). I spent all day yesterday fighting crazy mall crowds shopping for Nicole and ended up buying her half of Crate & Barrel. Oh, and Titanic was on NBC last night complete with hours of ads which turned it into a 4.5hr marathon! I still cry when I watch it. Yea, I'm silly that way.
OK, back to the previous week... So, there were Christmas parties on Thurs and Fri nights, farewell parties on Fri and Sat nights. Also on Fri night (it was a busy busy night!), I went to Tony's company Christmas Party at Sequoia's on the DC waterfront. It was absolutely amazing! Joan Rivers, Austin Powers, Jack Nicholson were all there (impersonators, of course) and Elvis was definitely in the building. The Hollywood theme included a red carpet and a life-size statue of an Oscar and there's a really embarassing story that goes with that but I won't be divulging too much (let's just say I thought it was fake and touched it). *GIGGLE* Symantec really knows how to throw a party - martini bar, free picture session, amazing food, live band, etc. What a great party.
Needless to say, I have been out partying till 2-3am every night since... November! I'm completely exhausted and just want to get the next couple of days over with before my trip. I'm so tired I'm falling asleep as I type thi... zzz
DEC 17 :: [parties and presents] Wow, how about that... a surprise snowfall while Shannon and I were out at lunch (Thai, of course). It has now snowed 6 days out of the past 13. Cool, huh?
So last night was a complete blast. JR's Christmas party was fantabulous! The drag queen MC led a sing-a-long carolling session and there was a picture session with santa, Mrs. claus (in drag, of course) and their 2 wearing-only-socks-and-red-underwear elves! All for a good cause (Whitman-Walker), of course. To top it all off, the food and drinks were free! Allen is such a sweetie for getting us invites. Fun, fun, fun. It's gonna be quiet tonight (I think? - I hope to get the Christmas cards sent out... finally) and crazy from tomorrow night onwards. When did Christmas become all about parties and presents?
DEC 16 :: [a note so high] "The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word "free" to a note so high nobody can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on Earth sounds less like freedom to me." - Belize/Jeffrey Wright
"An angel is a belief with wings and arms that can carry you." - Hannah Pitt/Meryl Streep
"In the world, there's a kind of painful progress, longing for what we've left behind and dreaming ahead." - Harper Pitt/Mary-Louise Parker
"I'm almost done. The fountain's not flowing now. But in the summer it's a sight to see. I want to be around to see it. I plan to be. I hope to be. This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all, and the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living, and we are not going away. We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come. Bye now. You are fabulous creatures, each and every one. And I bless you: More Life." - Prior Walter/Justin Kirk
Angels in America is celestial - it still brings tears to my eyes - but sadly, the statistics are not. The play and the movie are just as wrenching as the facts of the disease which they portray. Today, 25 years later, half of the people living globally with AIDS are women. The devastating spread of AIDS among women has left 13 million orphans. There are now an estimated 42 million people infected worldwide. All that pales in comparison to the 31 million around the world who have died of AIDS in the past quarter century. That's thirty-one MILLION. And that, my friend, brings tears to my eyes.
"The Great Work begins" - The Angel/Emma Thompson. Indeed.
DEC 15 :: [winter storm #3] So we got a bunch of snow (3.6") early Sunday morning. Not surprisingly, we were walking home in the storm when it happened at 3am *giggle* - it was Saturday night after all. So DCA is officially at 6.2" for Dec so far. IAD is at 11.4"! That's halfway to the average annual snowfall and winter hasn't even begun! NYC is up to 20" already. What a start to the snow season...
So they found Saddam, huh? *yawn* The weekend was pretty much the same as all the ones before - happy hour on Fri followed by after-hours at the bar (oh yea, in between I left my credit card in Reston and had to drive all the way out there to retrieve it), Sat was the party to end all parties at Rob/Mikko's celebrating Rob's 39th and the Finnish Independence Day, Sunday was another Christmas party (across the street, thankfully) at Jon/John's. I drank enough champagne there to pee a grape this morning. And to top off the weekend, we watched Angels in America (Perestroika) last night. It was very good, though maybe not as intriguing as the first half (Millennium Approaches). I'll probably watch the second one again like I did the first one to really get what's going on. And today's Monday. I'm grumpy so I'm gonna say I hate work, I hate weekdays, and I hate being so tired after a crazy weekend of partying! Woo!
DEC 12 :: [unite, dammit!] From Bob Herbert of the NY Times in 'No Will to Win?' - "The Republicans are hijacking elections and redistricting the country and looting the Treasury and ignoring the Constitution and embittering our allies, while the Democrats are - let's see, fumbling their way through an incoherent primary season and freaking out over Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean."
"...To regain control of the White House, the Democrats need to give voters, who are frightened by terrorism and disoriented by the pace of 21st-century events, new reasons to hope. That can only be done by a thoughtful, united, energized and creative party. A party with a plan and a ferocious will to win."
Com'on, people. Where's the will?
It's been kinda quiet these past few days. Hung out at JR's with Ben and his loveslave on Tues night. Andy was there and Allen was working, as usual. I got my invitations to the private party at JR's next Tuesday. Had a few drinks at the post-dinner party at Chris' on Wed night. That was fun. There's a new PM in Canada and the Dow is above 10,000 again (yay!). What else... ohmigawd, did you hear about the earthquake? It's silly, actually. Anyhoo, this weekend is gonna be insane. I won't go into details but parties galore and you'll definitely hear about it on Monday! Weekend starts right here, right now.
DEC 9 :: [angels in america] I watched the gloriously named Angels in America on HBO for the second time last night. I thought it demanded a lot of focus and rewarded with thrilling and sensational performances built around a courageous play that I was (and still am) unfamiliar with. I am not a huge fan of Meryl Streep or Al Pacino but their stirring performances in this movie were truly remarkable (at least in the 3 hours I've seen so far). I am a huge fan of Emma Thompson but I felt that she was slipping somewhat in her role as the nurse. Prior's soaring performance as the guy dying of AIDS is searing. Together with Louis, and the other couple, Joe and Harper, they form the compelling core of the first half of this miniseries. Belize's performance is stunning. Perhaps (surprisingly) The Tennessean's own review of this epic by Kevin Nance sums it up the best, for me at least.
[LINK] "'History is about to crack wide open,' someone mutters in Angels in America, Tony Kushner's sprawling play about AIDS, gays, Jews, Mormons and politics in the Reagan era. That millennial sense of apocalypse - a dread-inducing yet somehow exhilarating conviction that the AIDS crisis constituted a unique test of the limits of human compassion, and for American culture in particular, as the 21st century approached - soaks and stokes this high-powered TV version."
"Kushner adapted the two-part work... from his Broadway epic of a decade ago. Thrillingly directed by Mike Nichols and vacuum-packed with bravura acting by a starry cast that includes Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson and Al Pacino (as Roy Cohn, the real-life lawyer, right-wing political icon and closeted homosexual who died from AIDS), Angels in America is like nothing ever seen on American television."
"...History, after all, continues to crack open, over and over. Another conservative president is in the White House. AIDS, though it has largely fallen from the headlines, continues its grim rampage. And the place of homosexuals in American society is, if anything, more controversial than it has ever been."
"We need angels wherever we can find them." - Kevin Nance, The Tennessean
[$200 and counting] So, former Vice President Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean for the Democratic Party presidential nomination today. This was a huge surprise to me but very, very timely and pleasant. I promptly jumped online to www.deanforamerica.com and donated $100 to thank Al Gore. So now we're at $200 and counting. Texas columnist Molly Ivins sums up nicely how I feel in one sentence: "I'm for Howard Dean - because he's going to win."
DEC 7 :: [never again] Hehe.. I got massively trashed at my company's Christmas party last night and I don't remember a thing! It all started with Cosmos at the house followed by a pre-party at the hotel that involved champagne and by the time the cocktail reception started, I was hammered. More vodka cranberries followed and we ended up at JR's for Rob's unofficial birthday party (the official one is this coming Sat) and then Cobalt for some more crazy fun. By the time we got home at 3, I was completely obliterated. And the company Christmas party? It was absolutely horrible. I didn't wanna go this year but was kinda sorta guilted into it (by Nic.. *giggle*) so I dragged Chris and Tony along. Two words: Never Again.
So the first nor'easter/blizzard/winter storm of the year buried Philly, NYC, Boston with more than a foot of snow! Things look pretty bad in New England. The funny thing is this storm came exactly one year after last year's early winter snowstorm surprise in the Northeast. And we all know now that that was a prelude to a killer, one-for-the-record-books, winter to remember. Anyhoo, we got a paltry 2.6" (combination of both storms) at DCA, 7.8" at IAD and 6.8" at BWI. Check out the Dec 5th and Dec 6th snow maps. Some Montgomery County suburbs (like where Nicole is) got buried by 14 inches. It was pretty much a non-event in the DC area. Kinda pretty, very fluffy, no major problems and not much shoveling - just the way I like it!
DEC 6 :: [winter storm #2] Well, I was wrong. Giggle. The second winter storm that rolled in last night dumped more snow and this time it didn't miss us. Here I was last night happily drinking at the bars with Chris (who was totally drunk) and we were musing (at around 1am) that the meteorologists were on crack coz there was not a flake of snow to be seen! Well, guess what. I get up this morning, and voila, SNOW everywhere! I just called Nicole and they have even MORE snow now. I know, I sound apocalyptic but I've got my nail appointment in 90 minutes and I want to, no wait, I NEED to go! It's a 30mi drive up to where Nicole is and it's gonna be a not-so-fun one. Winter storm part deux is winding down but my day is only just beginning! More storm stories coming up...
[i feel pretty, oh so pretty] Yes! Chris, Nicole and I had an awesome manicure/pedicure session with paraffin. A sushi lunch capped off the adventure to the snowy hinterlands of Montgomery County. The journey there was not bad at all. The roads were plowed to the pavement (even in DC!) and no traffic to speak of. I'm back now and just wanted to share this little tidbit from Dick Gephardt:-
"Everything that you care about ... is vanishing. Our good jobs are vanishing. Our civil rights are vanishing. Our clean air and clean water is vanishing. Osama bin Laden has vanished. Saddam Hussein has vanished. There is only one way to fix the problem: We've got to make George Bush vanish."
DEC 5 :: [winter storm #1] Our first winter storm of the year was... a little disappointing. At least for us in DC. We had a miserable 0.9" of snow overnight which was washed out by dawn. It's raining now and will continue to rain all day before the big one hits tonight. They're saying 3-5"? I'm thinking about another inch or two. Meteorologists have the best job in the world - they're wrong most of the time and yet they still get to keep their jobs!
So I trudged my way to work this morning, driving 20+ miles west and the further I drove outside the beltway, the more worried I got. By the time I got to Reston, several roads were impassable and there was like 4 inches of snow on the ground! I now know that far north and west suburbs (Damascus, MD - where Nicole lives - and Ashburn, VA) got 8 inches!! Dulles officially recorded 6.8". BWI had only 3". What a difference 30 miles makes. Almost zero snow in Alexandria and the southerrn/eastern suburbs. Well, needless to say, Nicole's not at work today and I think I'm just gonna head out and have lunch with Tony-boney. Free day! Wait till you hear about tomorrow... I'm still dreading the thought that my mani/pedi appointment might get snow-balled. *sigh*
[soapbox] I couldn't bear the thought of Friday traffic compounded by unmelted snow and more rain/sleet/ice so I took the rest of the day off. Had lunch with Tony at Majestic Cafe. Nice. And since I have lots of free time, I'm gonna get on my soapbox :)
Have I told you how much I love Paul Krugman? You have to read Looting the Future. On a similar note, check out E. J. Dionne Jr.'s The Politics of Payoff. I quote: "Building transit, roads and schools, and helping the young and the poor buy health insurance and get a better education - these might justify deficits to finance investments for the next generation. Sending us into a hole to buy an election and to help well-connected interest groups just doesn't seem worth it."
Man, the Washington Post is on a roll! Check out David Ignatius' Fiddling While The Dollar Drops. "To prevent a full-blown crisis, the administration must take prompt action. It should pledge to cut the deficit; it should stop playing politics with free trade; and it should signal that it will intervene in currency markets when necessary to protect the dollar's value." Amen.
From Medicare giveaways to botched nation-building exercises, this Administration is trying to bankrupt the current generation and let the future one fix it; all in the name of winning re-election.
Finally, (OK, OK, I'm almost done) have I told you what an idiot Charles Krauthammer is? We need to petition the WP to can him. As if a warmongering editorial is not enough, they hire this delusional and somewhat deranged columnist to be a pom-pom girl for war? His columns are fixated on justifying war and conflict which, to me, is the antithesis of civilization. What a load of crap spewed by an uncivilized maniac.
Phew, I feel better now that I got that out of my chest. Have fun in the snow!!
DEC 4 :: [juvenile] OK, I admit. Last night was juvenile. Allen and I met up for sushi happy hour at Thai Chef (good deal!) and had two cosmos each before lounging at Rob/Mikko's for some yummy tequila (herradura anejo from Mexico!). Chris joined us and we all headed to Duplex where Allen and I proceed to down two killer Grey Goose Cosmos compliments of the bartender. I almost passed out. I couldn't think/walk straight. I got home, cooked some noodles and watched OC on TiVo. Oh yea, in between, I threw up. How juvenile was that? And all this on a Wed night!! My liver is fucked.
So OC on Fox is like my new drug. I'm absolutely hooked on this show. The acting is great and the storylines are so melodramatic, yet they always have happy endings. I'm just a dreamer. So guess what?? Our first snow of the season! Yay! It's flaking already and changing to rain tomorrow and then to snow on Saturday. Nothing's gonna stop me from four-wheel-driving up to Maryland for my nail appointment. Some things are just too important. Snow and party updates as the weekend kicks off tomorrow night!!
[snow!] Yay! It finally started snowing in DC at 10pm (it was flurrying in Reston at about 5pm). Our first snow of the 2003/04 season!
DEC 3 :: [brrrr] Well, the in-laws left yesterday morning. All's back to normal. Well, as normal as December can be. It's absolutely freezing today (30s all day) and getting colder. They're calling for snow tomorrow night into Sunday. I hope it doesn't screw up my plans to get a manicure/pedicure in Maryland with Nicole on Sat morning. Also, my company's Christmas party is Sat evening. I think a cab is in order seeing that it's 8 blocks away. I'm actually kinda looking forward to partying. I've been kinda tired and melancholy lately so a little jolt would be good for my system. Job interview today in Rockville went well. Don't think I'm gonna take the job though coz it's still quite a hike from DC. *sigh* When will my perfect job appear? Meanwhile, it's COLD and I want Mother Nature to turn up the heat! I know, bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch...
31 :: another year passes
29 :: final stretch
29 :: death of an actress
25 :: in your heart
22 :: exhausted
17 :: parties and presents
16 :: a note so high
15 :: winter storm #3
12 :: unite, dammit
09 :: angels in america
09 :: $200 and counting
07 :: never again
06 :: winter storm #2
06 :: i feel pretty, oh so pretty
05 :: winter storm #1
05 :: soapbox
04 :: juvenile
04 :: snow!
03 :: brrrr