It's time for my annual office relocation. This morning we packed up our computers and what not and moved across campus to the Towers. OOOOOOHHH. Sounds scary. The Twin Towers. The Two Towers. More like Fawlty Towers. But I am most definitely NOT complaining. From my new desk I can see Biscayne Bay and the skyline of South Beach. Hell, I can see. Period. My last uh, one, two, three offices were bunkers with no windows at all. I'd leave work and see puddles and feel like Sherlock Holmes: It must have rained.

Now I have carpet and windows. And a kitchen. And my own bathroom that I don't have to share with the sort of riff raff a public hospital is prone to. Answer me this: Have YOU ever seen shoe prints on the seat of the toilet where YOU work? I have. I don't like to think about why.

I'm in training. Training to write code. The first question they asked us was what our expectations were for the class. So I said I expected to be reduced to tears at least twice. Half the class are members of a team that already use ColdFusion and just need to learn the ins and outs of the latest version. Another three are developers and then there is me: a graphic designer who was taken by the sucking black hole that is the world wide web.

One of my fellow trainees has decided to hijack the class. She is needy and demanding. And whiny. And she has a stoopid name: Tonda. Yesterday the instructor offered to skip the lab modules and cover more information at the end of the three day class. Since half the class already knows the program and since the optional material is the most valuable to the rest of us we all went YIPEE!

At 11:30 as we were rolling into the next module, Tonda announced that it was lunch time. "This is a big retail area and it's a very busy retail season so if you want us to be back in one hour, you need to let us out now." So our teacher let us out. When we came back, Tonda demanded that we take another vote about the class format because she wanted to do the labs. "I could be getting the same knowledge from a $50 book in front of my laptop at home."

Yeah? Then do us all a favor and go home with the book. There was much eye rolling and hemming and hawing as nobody ever wants to confront a bully. But we all know how charming I am and how much I love a fight, so I finally said, "Look, you're being selfish. The rest of us need the information from the end of the class. You want to do the labs, do them at home."

So we hit a compromise: if she wanted to do the labs with the instructor at the end of the day, he'd stay with her and the rest of us could attempt to beat rush hour traffic. That led to the rest of the day's acting out activities: constant questions, interuptions, and demands that the instructor not click his freaking mouse so fast. I was ready to bitch slap her into the next class room.

Today she's sucking up and trying to take the instructor to lunch so she can have some private face time. He keeps dodging the bullet, but we'll see how it plays out.

Yesterday my husband treated me to the most wonderful birthday. He let me sleep in. He made me coffee. He took me to an afternoon movie (Star Trek: Nemesis, the best part of which was the lights coming on in the theater when it was over), and then out to dinner at Les Halles with a few of my best girlfriends. We drank, we smoked, we yapped like lap dogs and we ate divine food. And I got presents. It just doesn't get any better.

One of my presents was getting the koi pond finished and filled with water and fish. Another was a watch with Charles Demuth's "I Saw the Figure Five in Gold" as its face. And band. Only my favorite painting in the world.

I received several books yesterday. Nina gave me a Dr. Suess 4-pack which included another one of my favorite things: The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. Marc gave me two books, the latest one by Christopher Moore, and David Hockney's essay on Optics and Art in the Renaissance. Fabulous.

Yep. It was a great birthday. Wish me luck in my attempt to survive till the next one.

This is the perfect time to test out the commenting software. With the story of how it came to be on the page. I found a cool site that hosts blog commenting. They are free and have a link down there on the right. Their site has an automated cut and paste feature to write the code into your page. I copied. I cut. I pasted. I ran the code and reran it and it just wouldn't work. I checked for bad nesting. I checked, but did not see. I whined to the help desk, with a final question: Am I too blonde to blog? The reply was short and to the point: You nested your code incorrectly. Here's what it should look like. And then they had the correct code. Very sweet.

The short answer to my question was yes. But they were too polite to say it.

So here's a big shout out to the 1 or two people who actually are reading this.....

And then there are days like this. It's warm out, even for Miami. There is a tacky little vendor fair in the park in the middle of the hospital campus. Sunglasses, beads, orchids, cheap cell phones, and food. I am sitting in my office now, with a cold green coconut. It has had its little top punctured and a straw stuck in it. The spanish word for this delight is Coco Frio. Cold coconut. Now, where else could you do that in the middle of December?

I missed out on the steamed pork buns from the Korean guy two tents down.

There was a poll on the front page of Excite.com today asking if people approved of the use of nuclear weapons as an American response to, well, here's the question and the answers:

The United States issued a warning yesterday to Iraq and other hostile countries, saying it is prepared to use ?overwhelming force? ? including nuclear weapons ? in retaliation to any biological or chemical attack on the U.S., its forces abroad or its allies. (AP)

Do you support the use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. in response to a chemical or biological attack?

Yes: 58% => 3405 votes

No: 31% => 1808 votes

I'm not sure: 9% => 547 votes

I don?t care: 0% => 20 votes

Oh, yeah. That's a fucking cheery statistic to look at. FIFTYEIGHT percent of the respondents think that America should use nukes. Who are these people? What fucking planet do they come from? Have they no concept of the repercussions? Political, physical, biological? Who are they? Is this the Christian fundamentalists looking for Armageddon? I, for one, do not wish to go out with a bang or a freaking whimper. Am I the only person who is frightened by our "president" and his gang of war mongering henchmen in Washington?

Oh, I need a cigarette and a stiff fucking martini. And it isn't even noon.

I added a little something to my desktop the other day. Under the section where the web tells me what the weather is like outside here in Miami (where, due to the fact that I work in a bunker, I never see daylight) I also added a few other cities. I added New York, because, as my old pal Jayne's dad used to say: New York is where people live: everywhere else is just camping out. I added Paris because a person has to dream, and even if France is anti-semitic to the nth degree, it's still the center of culture on this planet. Or at least fashion and food. Then I added Iasi, the town in Romania from whence my father's family emigrated. Jesus Christ! No wonder they turned left at Ellis Island and kept going till they hit south Florida. All this week in Iasi it's been hazy, sleety, icy, snowy and with a mean temperature of about 12 degrees Farenheit. Here in Miami it's been cool with a high near, but not quite 80.

In the original Men In Black Linda Fiorentino delivers that line when an EMT leaves her with a dead body and a live cat. It's just so true. And every day, I get more disheartened and jaded, and it becomes truer and truer.

Human beings are highly over-rated as a species. We are blessed with self awareness, and then waste it on an unlimited capacity to be fascinated with ourselves. Our own, petty, individual selves. Why, even this blog is an excuse to find myself entertaining. As if I need an excuse.

People hate the holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas because it forces them to be with their families of origin. Take my family for example. I love my father's side of the family. They are a sprawling, outrageous bunch. Every single one of them can tell a story. And will, whether you ask or not. Being with that side of my family is like being in a Woody Allen movie. My mother's side of the family is very buttoned down. More like being in a Phillip Roth novel. Undercurrents. Witty, but genteel, reparte. I love being with them, too.

There is nothing I like better than being with these people. Either side of the family. Of course, it took about 10 years of heavy therapy for me to be able to embrace them so uncritically.

I do. I miss them terribly. I didn't enjoy the show when it first came out because I was living on the New Mexico/Texas border and too many of my husband's students looked and acted like Beavis and Butthead. But then one night I saw the show where Butthead is sitting in class, bouncing his pencil on his desk by dropping it eraser end first and catching it as it rebounds. Then he missed, and the pencil stuck in his eye and he just laughed and said "Cool. It really does happen."

I can't tell you why that struck me so funny, except that I have probably spent hours bouncing pencils off of desks during meetings and classes and what not.

But of all the pithy and profound things B&B ever said, the one thing that resonates more and more as I get older is this:

"Wow. This sucks in ways that things have never sucked before."

Like when my friend Gary died of colon cancer. Or when my friend's brother died. Or her other brother died. Or the Homeland Security Department was signed into law, with the evil Admiral Pointdexter in charge of legal wiretapping of all citizens. Or even the making of the president in the last "election". Yep, as the 21st century grinds along, things are starting to suck in ways that they have never sucked before.

I took communion on Saturday night with a few friends... few thousand friends. It was the High Holy Day of the Church of Rock & Roll, and we were there to see the Highest of the High Priests: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. My husband has endured our religious difference with amazing tolerance for the past 12 years, and allowed me to drag him to previous tours.

Bruce & the NOT the E Street Band
Him: That was a good show.
Me: No, it was a good rock and roll show, but it was a lousy Bruce show.

Bruce solo on the Ghost of Tom Joad Tour
Him: That was an OK show.
Me: That was a good Bruce solo accoustic show, but it wasn't a BRUCE show.

The Reunion Tour of 2000
Him (day 1 of 2 shows): How come everybody knows all the words to all the songs? How do they know when to put their hands in the air like that?
Me: (Screaming in unison with a few thousand others) IT AIN'T NO SIN TO BE GLAD YOU'RE ALIVE!!!

Him (day 2 of 2): OOOOOhhhh, I think I get it.
Me: OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHmigod, they're playing Thunder Road.

The Rising Barnstorm Tour
Him (somewhere in the intro to the second song): BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN KICKS MAJOR ROCK AND ROLL ASS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Me: Well, duh. You finally got it.

And he does. He finally gets it. He'll never get it about BOB, but that's OK.

So here's the set list from Saturday night in Miami...

The Rising
Lonesome Day
Promised Land
The Fuse
Candy's Room
Empty Sky
You're Missing
Waiting on a Sunny Day
Out in the Street
Worlds Apart
Badlands
She's The One
Mary's Place (and yes, this is the barn burner live that I thought it would be when I heard the cd. Damn. Damn)
Then Bono (yes THAT Bono) and Dave Stewart (from the Eurythmics) came out and joined in on
Because The Night
For You (with Bruce solo on the piano)
Into the Fire

(First Encore)
So Young & In Love
Glory Days
If I Should Fall Behind (a duet with the great, great Dion -- Dion and the Belmonts, not Celine Dion)
Born To Run

(Second Encore)
My City in Ruins
Born in the USA (back to being something of a rocker, not the high lonesome sound of recent years, performed on a 12 string steel)
Land of Hopes and Dreams
Dancing in the Dark

and if the freaking Miami crowd had arrived on time, instead of late or 10 minutes to curtain, the show would have started on time and we could have had three encores, OK?

As it was, it was the cure I needed for these days of loathing and fear.

I've been reading my surrogate daughter's blog with scary regularity, ever since she started one (Bad Teenage Poetry). I am sooo proud of this girl/woman. Her writing is heart felt and crisp. She went off to college in August and has been feeling her way along, joining a wrestling club, feeding the hungry at the Krinsha Temple... But she all of a sudden hit the zone. She's quoting the beats and reading at poetry jams. Dancing mad at midnight to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Finding her new family. And I'm watching it all with my breath held, as the chrysalis thins and the magnificent wings start to show. What an unfurling this promises to be.

So my best friend's brother died in my hospital this morning. He had leukemia, had tried chemo in prep for bone marrow transplant, and instead of getting 10 good months extra, he crashed. Got about 10 good days. As if that doesn't just suck the big Lebowski, here's the part I really don't get. He had a DNR. He had a living will that said no machines, no drastic measures. For the past 10 days he's been in a coma: tubes, machines, pumps and drips. Because his wife couldn't accept it and wouldn't admit that Jimmy had made his choice about how to die.

Can you get any more selfish than this? I'm not ready, so I'm going to control your end. Promise me, when it comes to it, give me a major bolus of morphine and let me shuffle off this mortal coil. I am not so attached to life that I fear the next passage. I AM affraid of dragging it out.

When my grandmother died, she went at home. We all came around to say goodbye. I let her hold her diamond ring, one last time. Even put it on her tiny little bird-like finger. The weight spun it around. Then it wouldn't come off. "Ha Ha, Gramma, you can't take it with you. Dammit, give it back, you gave it to me!" And the nurse is looking at me like I'm nuts, but the ring would not BUDGE off her finger. Hey. The nurses here all tell stories about folks in comas can hear you. Tell stories about how the one guy woke up and said they remember hearing what the nurses were saying over their bodies.... more or less. So who's to say Gramma wasn't giving me the hose, one last time for old time's sake.

What's that old joke? When I die, I want to go like my grandfather, peacefully in my sleep, not screaming in terror like his passengers.

My fingers are numb from the cold. The truly sad thing is, I'm sitting in an office in Miami. It's the freaking air conditioner set to meat locker that has me in a sweater and polar fleece sox over my brogues. Red ones, for those of you who keep track of my shoes. With neon green sox.

Here's a rhetorical question: why do my coworkers insist on saying things to me like: "You need to tell your boss to do..." or "You need to make your boss do ..."

Hey! If he's my boss, then, by definition, I'm not the one doing the telling what to do. Get it? See, crap runs downhill. I'm downhill. From everyone it seems, some days.

Yep. Those are actually today's shoes. How come nobody seems to understand the concept of gridlock as it applies to traffic? If there's no room for your car, it isn't going to help matters to drive into the intersection and then block access for the next group of people. And since when did the law become 2X2 through a stop sign. Back in the dark ages, when I took driver's ed, it went like this: First person at the intersection goes first, and then everyone else goes through, one at a time, from the right to the left. Right of way, get it? Here in Miami, maybe because there are so many boaters, people seem to drive according to the laws of gross tonnage. The more tonnage you have, the more right of way you have. And since most people are in SUVs, pickup trucks and minivans, that leaves people like me in the dust. Literally and figuratively.