Yeah, baby. There is nothing I like better than taking part in a random survey. This one is being run by MIT's Media Lab, and any time I can be part of their science, I am one happy puppy.

My sistergirl sent me an article about Mars being closer to Earth this August than any time since the Neanderthals looked up, but it turns out it was one of those web things that circulates and circulates and circulates. The actual time of the Mars event was two summers ago. Still and all, I suppose that looking up is a good thing to do anyway.

And if you're looking up and out in mid to late August, you'll be seeing the Perseid Meteor Showers. So how bad could it be, if you get to see a few shooting stars?

So I have this friend, a very dear and wonderful friend. She's been a mentor to me professionally for years, but also a true girlfriend. A soul sister. To be honest, she scares me a little, but only a little, and considering that she can, if she tries, make men in business suits wet themselves, being only a little bit scared of her is fine.
But she is my friend, and I hers. She's a military brat, and like all military brats, has a hard time making friendships. She is self-contained, and the fact that we are close is a treasure I do not take lightly. I know how hard it is for her to give me as much of herself as she does, and I aprreciate her for it, and the friendship we share.

Of course, these are not things I could say to her face, because the sheer emotion of it, the bare exposure of self, would embarrass both of us. But sometimes, you have to put things out in the universe, so that, like the butterfly's wing beat in China, that causes a hurricane in the Gulf, the reverberations and vibrations can be felt where they should be.

I have another friend, my sistergirl. She and I have known each other since before we were born, quite literally, as our mothers were friends and pregnant at the same time. We truly are the Petit Ya-yas. She and I can pick up the phone at any time, and continue a conversation that began 40 years ago, even if we haven't spoken in weeks or months, or even years. We share a knowledge of each other that is bone-deep. My fairy garden, that is part of my koi pond, is an homage to the moss gardens we built together when we were ten or younger.

For years and years, I had a friend from college. He, too, had scared the piss out of me when we met, and then became close. We were hanging out buddies, go to movie buddies, mooch dinner off of me buddies. We were not an item, not ever, not even thinking about it. We kept in touch off and on, more off than on in some years. Then one day, after not having seen each other for about five years, we got together for an art opening and dinner. By the time I said goodnight, I knew that I was going to marry him. He's now my husband, and you all know him as the RLA.

And then there is the Coolest Person In The World. We can, and have, gone years without talking to each other. Then the phone rings, and it's like: Hi. Howyadoin? I'm going to be in your part of the world next week. Want to get together? And of course we do.

On the flip side of this is the friends who have gone and can't be regained. Not through arguments or fallings out, although there are a gracious plenty of those in my life, as well. I'm thinking specifically of Leapin' Larry. He was another college friend, and someone I spoke to once every ten years or so, and swapped outrageous e-mails with with a greater frequency. He was killed in a helicopter crash over the Gulf of Bahrain several years ago. Not a week goes by, that I don't think of him, or how I miss knowing that he's around in the world, making award-winning news videos and just being the unique and wild man he was. I can't bear to think of how much his wife and sons miss him.

Next week or so Reecie is going to be here on my turf. We've met face to face once before and totally enjoyed one another's company. I'm looking forward to face time with a person I consider a friend, although we only "know" each other through our blogs and on-line correspondence.

Is this a cool world, or what?

But I'm holding on. We're here on the left coast of Florida, and there is a red tide holding us hostage in the room. First of all, you don't want to swim in anything that kills fish, secondly, you don't want to sit on the beach and smell the rotting fish, and thirdly, the wind and waves and general evapotransporation puts the deadly red algae in the soft sea breezes, leading to a hacking cough.
All of which is fine with me, anyway, because to me a vacation entails a lot of naps, and if I can't take them on the beach while toasting myself to a crisp, then I'll do it in air-conditioning with no problem.

The other vacation staples: drinking and shopping, can be done at leisure, sun, red tides or rainstorms notwithstanding.

As far as I'm concerned, this is a fine vacation.

Add to that that I can access my blog account and there is nothing at all wrong in the world.

Excuse me, gentle readers, but there is a fresh mango margarita upstairs with my name on it.

For reasons I won't go into here (my brother, Biggus Dickus, bought it) I have in my possession a bottle of Grey Goose vodka. This would be just fine by me, except the tea-totaling bro bought vanilla-flavored vodka, which is practically undrinkable.

This, combined with the beginning of mango season, brought me to this morning's experiment. Can I make chicken salad out of chicken shit? Or, to be more exact, if I let most of a ripe Springfels mango steep in a mason jar of vanilla vodka for a while, will it be any more drinkable?

I'm thinking mango martinis. Mango martinis, or swill. It's got to be one or the other, and since I already have swill, what do I have to lose?

This is a day off for me, and it started out lamely enough with me waking up with a headache. Like, the kind of headache that feels like someone with a fifty-pound thumb is trying to press out your eye, from behind the eyeball.
Ignoring that, I went off to work out with Nic Cage (aka The Marquis de Steve). There was no parking at the gym within a three-block radius. I circled three times. I would have gone into a four-block radius, but the fourth block is Dixie Highway or residential areas and they frown on parking in either location.

I had to valet park. At the gym. Which is so against my religion. That religion being if you're going to work out, anything that makes it easier (i.e.: parking next to the door, valet parking) is prohibited. You're there to sweat, not take it easy. And yet, due to the fact that there was absolutely no place to put Zelda Bleu, I had to valet. Which I still would not have done, had all this circling around like a shark hunting blood not made me very late.

Got home and logged on to the i-tunes music store, because there were some things I wanted to download. I shopped until I had a cart full of obscurities, then went to download and check out. No can do. Need to update to i-tunes 4.8. Not a problem. Except, it was a problem. For some reason, I can't update because, although I'm an administrator on my own computer, the stupid Wintel device thinks I need to talk to a system administrator. I even tried creating a new account that was strictly admin with no customization at all. Still won't let me update. Fatal error.

Yeah, I'll say. The fatal error being it's a piece of shit Wintel computer that I had to buy because the hospital took away my Mac and wouldn't let me use one anymore, and then gave me such a load of work that I had to get a Windows machine on my own dime so I could work at/from home, too. Then the asshats laid me off and here I am with a stupid Windows machine that I'd never in a million years have bought of my own volition.

Except. Now I don't have to use a Wintel machine, do I? And if I wanted that sweet, sweet, sweet 15" PowerBook, I could get it. And you know what that means, don't you? This Windows machine would be a doorstop faster than than you could say reboot.

The day the RLA and I viewed this house, it was raining. The glass barn doors to the pool deck were open, and the house, with its dark Dade County Pine ceiling, was as cozy as a summer camp cabin. The rain misted through the screen over the pool deck, and it was almost like it was raining inside the house.

We were thoroughly charmed, and didn't see the other things like the do-it-yourself projects that had been done poorly. We bought the house.
To this day, thirteen years later, I love this little place in the rain. I woke up this morning at six, planning on driving up to Jupiter to meet with my brother and the estate lawyer. That plan soon ended when I discovered we were in the outer squall bands from Tropical Storm Arlene.

We did a conference call instead, and I was ensconced on the sofa, coffe mug in hand, cozy little house around me.

Good thing, too, because my brother is a greedy, grabby idiot and had I not been in the zen womb of my snug little cabin, I probably would have been leaning over the lawyer's desk slapping the cowboy hat off my brother's head.

Here's the deal. I want to buy his half of the family home, so that I can live in it. He wants to sell it to me, but either wait until Mummy dies and have the house appraised then, betting on the real estate bubble still inflating, or do it now, cash in his hand and the fact that I'm only semi-employed be damned. Or, he says, if I can't scrape the bucks together, maybe we should (read "You, little sister, should") empty the house and rent it out. We could put that money aside and when Mummy dies and I'm ready to leave Miami (where I brought her to live because he couldn't be counted on to take care of her) then I can let him have all the rent as part of the payment I make to him for the house.

Heaves a sigh. Contemplates the coziness of my little house. Sips coffee. Pets dog. Waits for blood pressure to lower.

He has a wife, you know.