Happy Earth Day!

I'm celebrating Earth Day much like any Sunday --- cleaning up the apartment and wondering if I can manage another couple days before going to the grocery store. I don’t feel like going down to any of the big celebrations or rallies, especially since it’s drizzling (water dropping from the sky in California? It must be some sort of terrorist attack!) I did walk down to my local coffee place and read the paper with my bagel and mocha, but I’d walk there anyways --- a coffee place every block and terrible parking; it actually works to promote pedestrian travel! That and obnoxious yuppie-wielded SUV accidents in tiny parking lots, but whatever. I even brought a travel mug today --- I bought several over break since I lost the old one, and now I can carry caffeine to class for 10 cents cheaper, and not have the cup self-destruct and deluge me in front of an audience.

So since I have very little in terms of important news to report today (don’t worry, I’ll run away to join the circus next week and have lots of interesting copy for you all. Or maybe get out another library book instead.) I thought I’d make a list of wishes and peeves. I updated it as petty wishes 'cause of course if I had unlimited wishing potential I’d wish for an end to the Iraq war, world peace, renewable energy and all the big stuff, which is laudable but not as fun to make little lists about. Consider yourself tagged if you wish.

Five trivial wishes:

• I wish I was taller. (Anyone remember that one-hit wonder rapper, the guy whose video was a takeoff on Forrest Gump? “I wish I was a little bit taller / I wish I was a ‘baller / I wish I had a girl and a phone so I could call her.” Ok, cheesy, but I totally understood him. Really, I’m not asking to be a tall ---- 5' 3" would be nice. Of course that would be adding almost five inches to my frame. It would just be nice sometime to see some of the stuff you all are talking about behind the wall of your shoulders. I console myself with the fact that I can see up your noses when you talk to me, and that’s hardly dignified.
• I wish I could whistle, those big loud calls with two fingers to your mouth –type of whistles. It would probably come in handy for rousing a class from loud and talkative group work.
• I wish I had a maid. 'Course, not a real person maid --- I would feel too bad about the exploitation and employer relationship and all that crap, and I believe firmly in the notion that you should clean up your own shit, but I still want one. Maybe a robot maid or something. Or maybe someone could train my cats to clean for me. Hah.
• I wish I could juggle. I know people who have taught themselves this and it doesn’t seem too hard. I don’t know why I never actually got up off my ass to learn this. Plus it would be helpful for my circus ambitions mentioned above.
• I wish I could teleport. I wouldn’t even use it most of the time, just when it rained and everyone around here gets completely clueless about the notion of driving while liquid is on the roads. It doesn’t help that whoever planned and graded my town assumed that it never rains in California, so there are no gutters and little drainage. It floods on almost every street, almost immediately, with only the speed bumps rising up like little sandbars at high tide.

That's all I've got today. Now, toread a library book for my research, or the new copy I just bought of Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake? (I have a minor story about buying the book as well.)