almost as good as spain

Tracy Lynn had a post the other day about how she hates taking a shower because she might miss out on something really great while she’s lathering, rinsing and repeating. While I’m pretty sure not much exciting goes on at 7:20 a.m., I do sympathize in general. In college, I didn’t study abroad because I was having such a good time at UCLA and I didn’t want to miss a whole year of Bruin life, during which time I was sure my friends would forget about me.

They might have, actually, but I’m still not sure if seeing Rent 14 ½ times and attending such cultural events as International Vodka Night at Trinh Bui’s apartment were better than a year in Spain.

So I should be excited to go to New York for work next week. Isn’t New York the Spain of America? I am excited that our national office is in Soho and not, like, Kansas City, and that there is talk of an office field trip to Avenue Q. But I also know that I’ll be missing out on some great happenings here in town:

1) Literary Cocktail Urban Lit Lounge: My friend and former boss Ryan Tranquilla will be reading his smart, lush-but-not-too-lush poetry along with Jawanza Dumisani of much-deserved World Stage fame and a couple of other poets whose work I don’t know and won’t get to discover because I’ll be out of town, damnit. (March 4, 7 p.m., Space at Fountain’s End, 3929 Fountain Ave., Silver Lake.)
2) Carnival of the Mundane V at Citizen of the Month. The freak show begins March 3. Get your submission in now to neilochka at yahoo [.] com.
3) The Oscars. I know, I know, it’s TV, which my hotel room (unlike my apartment) will most likely have. But all the good parties are happening in LA. What will Vanity Fair do without me?

P.S. Tracy Lynn also challenged us to out our own freakish neuroses on our respective blogs. I have many to choose from, one of them being that I give a shit what other people think, so I’ll save my weirdest habits for my therapist, thank you. But here are some appetizers:

• I hate leaving lip prints on multiple areas of a cup’s rim. If I drink out of the spot just above the Starbucks mermaid’s head on the first sip, I have to take every subsequent sip from the same spot.
• I have a little code in my day planner to keep track of how many hours I spend writing and exercising each week. I don’t have a code to keep track of how many hours I spend stuck in traffic or surfing the internet. Oddly enough.
• I will not let anyone else fold my laundry. Ever. Not because I don’t want anyone handling my underwear (although I don’t), but because they would do it wrong. No one has ever fought me too hard on this one.

Hasta la semana proxima, amigos. (If I’d gone to Spain, I would know if that was grammatically correct.)