Oddly, I feel at peace right now. I mean, I feel like I hit a zen-spot in the midst of a violent storm. Today was very nice. Work was pretty slow, and we got everything done. I was cooking the rice at work, and since I rarely Eat rice, I rarely Cook rice at home, so it was an experience. I let it boil a little long, so I had to add a little bit of water before I covered it, and it came out very nicely, al denté or however it's spelled. I went straight from work to hang out with Irina, in the city rather than way the heck out where she lives (which is way the heck out in nearly the opposite direction from me). We met at Crossroads, where we normally have tango. traffic was bad; there was a car-fire on the opposite side of the freeway from me that slowed us down forever. And Grace is going through some rough times, so I was wishing I could be with her instead of here. The next 12 days will seem excrutiatingly long. Anyway, Irina and I walked around looking at stores. The Gap sucked. Some other store sucked more. We then stopped in this little place for some wine, a chilean merlot, actually quite good, especially with the over-salted almonds we got. We walked some more and found this little smoking accessories place. I don't mean a cheap drug and sex store, I mean a nice place with wood pipes, humidores, flavored cut leaf tobacco, and a little isle of top-shelf alcohols. If I were going to start smoking, it would be amaretto tobacco; it smelled Sooooo good. [laughs] Anyway, Irina got some box thing with 2 glasses for her dad's birthday, and I got myself an italian amaretto cream liquer. It sounds good; I haven't opened it yet. We dropped them off at our cars, then headed over to a turkish restaurant for dinner. I had a big plate of lamb and beef with red sauce, parsley, baked bread cubes, and traditional yogurt sauce. Oh so good. She had a sampler plate, but it was really good. The green beans and carrots were boring, but there was an eggplant salad, a cous-cous salad (with just cous-cous, green onions, parsley and tomatoes), and something that looked like pico de gallo but got its spiciness from red pepper (the seasoning, not the veggie) rather than jalapenos; of course there was also the yogurt stuff, and real hummus. And their rice pudding tasted like regular pudding with rice thrown in just so they could call it rice pudding. It was very good, and very creamy, and slightly burnt on top [laughs]. Anyway, we proceeded to talk for several hours, sitting on a bench outside the coffee shop. About all kinds of stuff, including the guy she likes right now, and her grad school experience, and my relationship, and life and the universe and everything. [laughs] No, not that much, but it was a very nice long good conversation. I came away from it feeling like nothing had been resolved, a lot had been shared, and thinking about things that had slipped my mind for whatever reason. I got home, and sat down in front of my email, and found peace, which had eluded me all day, in fact all week, and up to that point I hadn't expected at all.

Are you happy? It's something that, for a good while, I would have answered ambiguously, or negatively. If you quantified it to apply to only particular parts of my life, it might even get to a "mostly yes". Right now, sitting here, at peace, still deep in thought, the path of which would look like the mathematical derivative of this conversation, the answer is yes, I am happy. It's interesting how giving advice to someone makes you look at yourself in terms of your own advice, and how getting advice that you already know still makes you reexamine yourself because it makes you bring it up again in this time, in this moment, rather than just holding the answer in front of you, reading it off a notecard you wrote a long time ago, no matter how or why you wrote that notecard back whenever. I'm not happy with a lot of things that are going on in life, in the world that relates to those I care about, or even about my own life. But right now, just in general, I'm happy, even with everything weighing on me. I pray that everyone might be able to find that zen spot in the storm. It's hard, and yet it's so easy. And, I am going to bed, so I can wake up tomorrow refreshed and talk to my love on the phone for a long time, and not yawn too much. [laughs] Good night, blogger, and be safe.