Mary Bellamy

I just wandered through Fred Meyer because I needed to get some cream to finish making a cheesecake for the auction tomorrow. Normally, not so newsworthy, right? But I was wearing insulated overalls, a giant purple Cookie Monster fleece and ski boots, since I had just come from a ski with my friends. This is what I love about Fairbanks: I can wander through the grocery store (which essentially serves as the town social center) dressed like that and no one bats an eye. I like it here.

Today I finally emptied a can of air freshener. Why do I deem this ordinary event to be blog-worthy? I bought that can of air freshener at KMart when I moved to Alaska six years ago. This makes me realize that:

a) I've been here for six years!
b) I'm getting old.
c) My roommates were still in high school when I bought that air freshener.

This weekend will be another busy one: a reading tonight, seeing one of Tom's plays tomorrow and hopefully some skiing on Sunday. Sunday is also the Ester Library Lallapalooza. I'm going to be bringing an item for the dessert auction. I put it out for some votes, and it looks like I'll be making Salted Caramel and Pecan Cheesecake. I have a thing for salted caramel lately.

Let's recap. 5K yesterday. 60 minutes of ATS dance yesterday. 60 minutes of hip hop today. 90 minutes of ATS dance today. 120 minutes of tribal fusion dance tomorrow. To say nothing of the 200 or so situps each day. I promise I won't run another 5K in the morning.

I was making plans to go skiing with a friend this weekend when I realized that I have not been skiing yet this year. It's a tragedy. One of my roommates saved my skis during the flood, but it looks as though my ski poles may have floated down the Chena to Nenana. Crap. And Play It Again Sports does not have any ski poles in my size. Double crap. And I refuse to shop at Beaver Sports because of their new towing policy for patrons of the Marlin. Triple crap. I think Tom has my old, a-little-too-short ski poles. Otherwise I'm heading out to Goldstream to search for ski poles. This makes me nervous to look around and try to guess what else might have floated away. I don't remember seeing my snowshoes anywhere recently....

I decided to be all goal-oriented this morning. Instead of running for a certain amount of time, I just decided to do a 5K. I have a feeling I'm going to regret this tomorrow. Everyone says that if you stretch after exercising, you won't be as sore. The problem I run into is that most stretches do nothing for me. It's the curse of being super bendy. I can get something out of my hamstrings, but my quads just yawn no matter what I'm doing.

I went to Joyce's house after work to practice improv. We'll be performing at Fruitcake's wedding in a few weeks, and need to get our improv skills up to speed. If you don't already know, I'm studying American Tribal Style bellydance, which is cued group improvisation. That means that one person leads and gives cues or signals to indicate the next move. When it's done well, it looks like choreography. Ours does not look like choreography, plus there's lots of swearing.

After I got home, I decided to make bread because, well, why not? It was chappati, a kind of Indian flat bread, which should go well with an Indian lentil stew I made on Sunday. Tom and I are trying to share some of our food, since we both cook big batches to eat throughout the week. I get bored eating the same thing all the time, so we are arranging for a little swap tomorrow.

Work is kind of sucky right now. We've got some big stuff coming up which means there is a lot of stuff to be done and not enough people to do it. It's just manageable as it is, but I know that someone will have a last-minute NEED. I don't think I'll be able to do much to help them. Debra and I worked out a good game plan to get everything we need ready in time. There's just not wiggle room to help people who didn't stop to consider that we might be otherwise occupied. Soon the panels will be over and I will be able to focus on the magazine and the web redesign again.

I'm tired and want to watch an episode of Big Love before I go to sleep. I'm happy that modern technology allows me to watch all sorts of TV without actually watching TV. I think if I had cable, I'd end up spending a lot of time just searching for something to watch. Without it, I only seek out things I specifically want to see, like polygamist drama, or post-apocalyptic sci fi, or bizarrely fucked up shows like Lost.

So how do you blog about your dating life when you know some of the people you are dating read your blog? I've been mulling this recently. That is the disadvantage of having a blog - it makes my life an open book.

I don't want to make this blog hidden, as its purpose is to be read by my friends and family (and some strangers). But I also don't want to give anyone any insights into what I think of them. Isn't the point of dating to discover all those things on your own? Sure, I Google stalk my dates to make sure they're not crazy, and I expect many of them to do the same to me. But I would run screaming if someone had me over for dinner and then served me Twinkie sushi for dessert because they saw it on my blog. Somehow I've got to figure out a balance.

In completely unrelated news, I've moved into new baking frontiers. We're talking rolled and cut cookies. I'm more of a drop cookie person (and I lovelovelove my new cookie dough scoop. Yes, you can live without one. But now that I have one, I don't want to.), but I've now rolled dough twice. It's a lot easier to do on a Silpat, though I still have to flour it to keep it from sticking. I may try my hand at some chappati later today.

My baking obsession will only increase because I gave my sister and brother-in-law a year of baked goods for Christmas. To make matter worse, I put a similar offer into a fundraising auction we had at work. Someone paid $180 for 11 months of baked goods. For those keeping track, that means I single-handedly brought in about 15% of the total for the auction. So now I have to bake at least once a month. I don't ever want to bake for a living, but I wish more people would just give me money and let me cook them random things.

On February 13 (several weeks early), Rachel introduced us to Clare Lohr Heilman. We shall continue to call her Jam.
The bow indicates that the baby is a girl. Because, frankly, you really can't tell at this point.

I now present you with baby pictures and video. Lots of it.



In my defense, I'm posting all this baby paraphernalia for the sake of Glenmore, who will meet his daughter in a few weeks. We wanted him to be able to see her ASAP! Good work with the genetics, G!



Had I known the baby was on her way out that morning, I might not have worn a cashmere sweater to work. Thank you, Jam, for not puking on it. Good baby!



Lest you think I have gone soft and changed my stance on babies (good for giving sugary treats, great for giving back to their parents), I offer photographic evidence that I am not afraid to back myself up on Joyce while holding another woman's baby.


And yes, I did get the hair clips from the baby section at Fred Meyer when I was supposed to be picking up little mittens for Jam.

Sickness. It's back. Soon I shall be proclaiming to the world that I am dying. For now, though, I'm just tired and have a Demi Moore voice.

Against my wishes, I will be skipping the gym today in favor of getting to work a bit early and therefore getting out of work a bit early. Last night I went to bed around 8 p.m., thinking that I would wake up extra early. I even ended a chat session to do this. Not so much. I slept until the alarm went off at 6:30. I still haven't mustered the energy to do more than put my contacts in, though. Maybe I'll make a nice, big breakfast and get the latest episode of Big Love downloading before I head off to work.

I'm sure this person didn't mean to describe their rental property as "specious."

I tried for a quiet weekend in. I only partially succeeded. On Friday I had dinner with a few friends, then one friend and I retired to my place to watch a movie and eat cupcakes. Saturday meant Sci Fi Saturday and BSG at Joyce's house. Afterward, I fell prey to the logic of going to the Marlin. In truth, I was hoping to run into a particular person who has a lovely vocabulary, but he was not there. But the band was rocking and I danced with many boys.

I threw a baby shower on Saturday. What? Just because I don't like babies doesn't mean I don't like a party. I attended a baby shower with Dara a few years ago, but it was one of those that was all baby-centric. We guzzled one bottle of champagne and went outside. That was where we found a mom cleaning up the mess from where her baby had shit on the porch. Seriously. On it. We took the other bottle of champagne and went back to the commune to drink alone.

But back to the shower....it was the very best kind of baby shower. It was baby-less (except for the one in Rachel's womb). Georgeanne of Cloud 9 Doula came out and gave us all fantastic henna tattoos.


My new art. I have been contemplating a new tattoo on this part of my body for a while now. I like to get henna as a placeholder to get used to the idea.


Joyce got a back piece done.


As did Jessica L.


Jennie has also been contemplating a tattoo. I think she wants hers on this part of her wrist. Maybe not so much curling down around her finger, though.


Rachel, the baby-momma, got an elaborate hand piece that conveniently kept her from helping with the food. I can't complain too much (too much more than I just did, that is) because she made me a batch of paneer the night before.


Last time we got henna, Georgeanne didn't want to do Liz's face. So after she left, I drank some more and then drew on her face with the extra henna. This time Georgeanne did it, and it looks much better.


As it turns out, we can all work together and make an Indian meal. This is a relief, as I loooove Indian food but don't like having to do all the cooking (and ingredient purchasing) by myself. Ellen has the gift of bread, and tackled the naan, which were fantastic. I made paneer curry, spinach chicken, ginger scallion raita and tamarind peanut chutney. Next time I really need to convince everyone of how easy it is to make the chutney and raita, and then I will only have to do entrees.


Liz chipped in with the dessert, and use my leftover rice to make kheer.

After dinner, we rounded out the baby shower with the presentation of a diaper cake and then all took turns coming up with names for the baby. Just kidding! We watch a Bollywood movie. As is so often the case, Joyce and I opened a bottle of rum at the start of the night and finished it by the end. Sorry, Glenmore! I hear you didn't like that rum anyway.

I'll give you two guesses as to which one was me.

I've been a Shakespeare slacker this year. I still haven't been to any of the Bardathon. I am going tonight for the midnight reading, which means I am going to spend the night at a friend's house and will be very tired at work tomorrow. Bardathon was much easier when I worked until 1 a.m. at the newspaper and could just wander over and join the late-night/early-morning readings without worrying about being at work for 9 a.m.

I'll also be going back on Saturday when they will take a brief break from Shakespeare and focus on one of the masters of modern playwriting, Tom Moran. (Tom, you owe me $2 for that.) He wrote Friar with a Crowbar last year, and I'm going to be ditching a baby shower I'm hosting in order to attend.

OK, I'm not really ditching the shower, just taking a break for Tom's play. And it's not so much a shower as it is a henna party with a whole lot of Indian food and a Bollywood. Because I'm not so much a baby person as I am an "I love Rachel and Bollywood and henna" person.

First I lapsed on the posting front, and then apparently my blog had a meltdown. Apologies. Everything should be right as rain now.

I was at brunch a few weeks ago and a friend started asking me what I had on the line. It seems that as the token single person at the event, I was expected to regale them with stories of wild nights. For obvious reasons, I can't post all my sordid tales here (Hi Mom!), but I can share this: I have a personal ad online. In that personal ad, I make it clear that my dates need to be capable of intelligent discourse. I go so far as to put the phrase "Spelling counts" in the headline. And in response I get e-mails like this:

ok im [name] lol no i have no idea what bollywood is but did you mean dollywood i know what that is lol anyway i like you profile and agery with you on a lot of things you have in there i dont think this massage is to clever but o well i cant spell ether but i do hope to here back from you evin if its a no i dont think your my tipe at lest i will no than so thats enuf now hope to here from you soon.........oh and sorry about the bad spelling and tipeing

Words fail me.

Friday was the Snow Ball at the Marlin, hosted by Sweating Honey. There is nothing better than a band playing in white tuxes in a basement bar. Except getting dressed up to go to the ball!

I finally found a man who can break my will on the dance floor. I have a touch of a dominant streak, and I tend to try to lead. Tristan just took control and spun me until I gave up. I like to think he was just clearing the path for all the men I danced with afterward, as I finally let them lead.

On Saturday, I stopped back in at the Marlin where the band was playing once again, but this time not in tuxes. As per usual, I was still dressed up. After a quick martini, Dara and I headed out to Garrison's house for Portia's goodbye party. She is heading to Texas for a year to attend midwife school. The party was one of those bizarre series of people and events that cannot be fully explained, but suffice it to say that by the end of the night we were throwing ping pong balls, there was a potato in the refrigerator with a phone number written on it, and I kept singing Dio every time someone mentioned the Chili Driver.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to make up my sleep deficit and still manage to attend some of Bardathon, which started this weekend.

It's 5:30 p.m. The work day is over. I just noticed that my shirt is on inside out. I'm going to go to the gym and see if I can put those clothes on properly.

And on a side note, it is FINALLY warming up. I try not to kvetch about the weather too much, because I do voluntarily live in Alaska. But just so you know, today was the first day since December 27 that it has risen above -30.
Yesterday: -40
Today: -4

When I hit the gym after work yesterday, it was uncharacteristically crowded. I have always been a morning gym person, so I kind of wondered if it's normally that busy. Then I realized that I was surrounded by New Year's Resolution type people. There were certain cues.

Step one when going to the gym is wearing the proper attire. The woman on the elliptical wearing woven cotton pajama bottoms and one of those spaghetti strap tanks that touts built-in support? The guy running laps in over-the-ankle hiking boots? These are not the normal denizens of the gym.

Step two is, of course, proper gym behavior. Go in the same direction as everyone else on the track, even if it is 15 steps shorter to go the other way to get to the stairs. If you are walking, use the walk lane. If you are walking with a friend, you'd damn well better be walking close to each other, not spreading across 2 lanes.

And for the love of God, leave your kids at home. I get it: They're precious and babysitters are expensive. But while you are well adjusted to the rhythm of life with a child, I am not. I do not like your abrupt stops in the middle of the track to let the child climb out of the baby stroller and walk all by itself! While you may be able to stretch in a state of zen while your child runs in a circle around you, that child is actually physically running into me, and it's pissing me off. And if you do bring your whole family to the gym, please use a locker room. Do not leave your coats and boots in a massive pile upstairs. The dance floor is closed for refinishing, so there is only a tiny, tiny space for everyone to stretch upstairs. Your outwear is not cool.

Rant over.

Turns out it was just an issue with Blogger. I couldn't make any changes to the XML without getting an error message, but I now have dates. Well, I have dates for one post per day. If there's more than one post, only the top one gets a date and the rest are left blank. So there's still something to work on.

The first step to throwing a successful party is to select a theme. Initially I was drawn to A Very Jewish Christmas, mostly because I wanted to make latkes. But then I remembered how yummy moussaka is, and so it became My Big Fat Greek Christmas.

Tom had already created some festive art a few days before.

And the holidays wouldn't be fun without friends.



Before we gorged, we saunaed. It's both a verb and a tradition.

And after the meal, we kept up another sacred holiday tradition - the anti-Christmas movie. In this case, Top Gun with RiffTrax.

And of course I lit a fire. This will be a common theme.


Since Christmas is one of the Seven Major Holidays, I can once again treat you to images of James at a high level of drunkenness.


It gets better.



The day after Christmas, I went to visit with Rachel and Glenmore before he headed off to Iraq. On the way home, I stopped at the store for some supplies. This would prove key in the days to come.

First up: I needed to make some gifts for Tom. And what better says "I used to love you but now we're just friends" than Skittles vodka?


Actually, I lied. The Skittles vodka, while clever, was not the best possible gift.

Remember how I said that fire would be a prevalent theme and that it was fortunate I went to the store? On December 27 my car stopped starting. Or maybe is started stopping. I'm not quite sure, but one thing was clear: I was going nowhere fast.

To be fair, Fairbanks had fallen into a bit of a cold snap. If one considers -40 cold. Personally, I consider it to be the magical moment when Fahrenheit and Celsius collide. I brought my battery inside overnight to try to warm it up, and put it back in the car the next day. No dice. I resumed my work of starting fires, keeping fires going, running space heaters to try to thaw the pipes, etc.

Now, I had already broken my wireless router before Christmas. Since the house was hovering around 50 degrees but my bedroom was considerably warmer, I decided to bring the modem up there. Big mistake. That is when the entire Internet went bye-bye. Fortunately Bob left me with a lot of TV. I have now seen all of Heroes. I can see how it might be addictive, though when you watch it all back to back, it gets tiring to see certain characters continually flop between two positions.

By December 31, the situation was starting to get a little dire. I was running a little low on food and a lot low on morale. Even though it was his birthday, Tom agreed to go buy me food, get me movies and come over to my house. The cupboards were getting empty, but I was not without a few tricks.
Tom graciously brought over burgers from Brewsters. We hooked my thawed battery up to his car and left it jumping for a while, then tried reinstalling it in my car. No dice. The car was frozen solid.

Back inside, we decided to take a culinary journey to India. Or at least drink some Indian sodas I had in the cupboard.

First up: Spice soda. The label seemed to have cumin seeds on it, but we didn't let that deter us.


We should have.

Tom, being an optimist, noted that we hadn't actually puked yet. I realized that this stuff was worse than Unicum.


Next stop: Masala Soda.


And our third stop was me desperately swigging water. Tom couldn't believe it was worse. It tasted like cumin, with cardamom - but not enough to be tasty - and ginger - but not enough to settle my stomach.


It's worth noting that Tom Moran refused to finish the drink. And that man will eat anything.

Finally, on Jan. 1, the temperature rose to a balmy -26. I spent about 3 hours rotating pans of hot coals underneath my car, then reinstalled the battery and finally achieved success. The temperature is back down in the -40 range, with no hope of warmth anytime soon.

The kinks are not all worked out. Namely, I cannot for the life of me get the date to show up on my posts - only the time. What good does the time do? I want dates! If I can't get it working, I may revert to my old template and go back to the drawing board.

Sigh. I just wanted to finally have valid XML code.

I broke the Internet. My failed attempt to change the settings on my wireless router earlier this week has resulted in a nonfunctional wireless router. Oh, sure, the little lights come on, which is very festive and pretty this time of year. I can ping the router, and my computer says it is working. But the damn thing will not connect to the Internet. I currently suffer the great indignity of having to compute in a single location. Two, if I count the outlet in my bedroom. I can only use one computer at a time. Surely this is hell.

Christmas was really something this year. When I take the time to download pictures to my other computer, format them, put them on a drive, download them to this computer and then upload them to the Internet, you'll get to see just how fun. Yesterday I went to visit Rachel and Glenmore. G is leaving tonight for Iraq, so I wanted to get a little quality time with him. I also got cookies and fudge, so the trip was a success.

The gym cheated me on Christmas eve. They had sent out an e-mail to all UAF employees with the holiday schedule. I woke up on Dec. 24, baked cookies, braved the grocery store (and felt a rage I've not felt since my last trip to Bad Feng Shui Fred Meyer), and then grabbed my gym bag from my office and went to the SRC. My first thought was "Great! Almost no cars! I'll have the gym to myself!" My second thought was "Wait, why are the lights on inside the gym, but off in the office?" Someone had crossed out the 7 p.m. closing time on the sign on the door and wrote in 2 p.m. It was 4:45. They owe me.

I would go work out today, but it's currently -25 outside. I know it's not as cold as, say, -50, but it's still cold enough for me to decide not to drive into town if the only purpose of my trip is to exercise. I'm going to pretend that I'll exercise at home. I may dance or hoop a bit later on, perhaps even some yoga. But I'm not setting foot outside unless it's to grab more firewood.

I'm running low on reading material, but Bob left me with a lot of TV. I've started watching season 1 of The Big Bang Theory. I'm enjoying it, and I understand why other people find the show funny, but frankly I relate to the geeks. Plus, I think that if I had geeky neighbors, my Internet wouldn't be broken.

Given my latest computer woes, it's probably not the right time for me to undertake a new web project, and yet I feel the urge. Details to come.

Your help,please. I've been trying to come up with an "Overwrought" playlist for my iPod, but I need some suggestions. What constitutes an overwrought song? Well, it's pretty much song where the emotional level of the singing far outweighs the meat of the lyrics.

The rules are that only one song from an artist can be nominated. This eliminates the chance of people suggesting the discography of, say, Meatloaf. Or Tom Jones. Or Neil Diamond. Instead, you've got to say "I would do anything for love (but I won't do that)" or "Delilah" or "Captain of a shipwreck."

Here's what I've got so far:

• Bangles - Eternal Flame
• Martika - Toy Soldiers
• Aerosmith - What it takes
• Chris Isaak - Wicked Game
• Asia - Heat of the Moment
• Dio - Holy Diver
• Cyndi Lauper - All Through the Night
• Don Henley - The Boys of Summer
• Dusty Springfield - Son of a preacherman
• George Michael - Somebody Tell Me or maybe Teacher
• Glen Campbell - Rhinestone Cowboy
• Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown or If You COuld Read My Mind?
• the "Enterprise" theme song
• "Man in motion" from St. Elmo's Fire
• Journey - Don't stop believin'
• Poison - Every rose has its thorn
• Susan Tedeschi - It hurt so bad
• Europe - The final countdown
• Coolio - Gangster's paradise
• Kim Carnes - Bette Davis eyes
• Starship - Sara
• Frank Black - Los Angeles
• Jamie O'Neal - All by myself
• Jars of clay - Flood
• John Denver - Take me home, country roads
• Lee Greenwood - Proud to be an American
• Laura Branigan - Gloria
• Ozzy Osbourne and Lita Ford - If I close my eyes forever

So, suggestions for Bon Jovi, Winger, Damn Yankees, etc.?

edit to add suggestions:
Mama Caselli sez Night Ranger - Sister Christian
Tom sez Asia - Don't Cry; Journey - Separate Ways
Mr. Caselli sez Nazareth - Love Hurts
Archeobot sez Def Leopard - Love Bites; Guns N Roses - November Rain; Bon Jovi - Livin' On A Prayer; Winger - I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight

I can't believe that it took me until Dec. 22 to hear "Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses. That's my 80s Christmas song. Then again, I only listen to the radio if my iPod is in my bag. I don't understand why they always take one of the only decent radio stations and make it all Christmas music. We seriously only have about 7 radio stations. Can't they take the country one?

Nasty weather seems to be ensuring that most of the country will also have a white Christmas, but it's also been stranding a lot of people. James was supposed to fly to Dallas on Monday, but will not be leaving until after Christmas. I have demanded that he come to my dinner and sauna. I was briefly flirting with cooking A Very Jewish Christmas, but that was mostly because I wanted to make latkes.

Insomnia on Monday combined with waking up at 4 today to take Bob to the airport means I am very sleepy. I worked two 10-hour days, and thus will not be going in to work at all tomorrow. Instead I will bake and clean and go to the gym. I don't have to go to work again until Jan. 5, but don't get jealous. UAF closes down between Christmas and New Year's, but doesn't give all their employees vacation time. Only 4 days are covered, and you are required to use leave time for the other days. It could suck more - when I was a temporary hire (my first 16 months at UAF), I didn't accrue vacation time, and thus had to take unpaid leave.

I managed to break my wireless network tonight, and am currently connected to the modem. Oh, the indignity. And all because I decided it was time to require a password to get on my network. I brought my new iBook home and saw that it could locate another network, so it suddenly seemed wise to add a password. Bad idea. Now I'm torn between cooking and fixing.

One of my friends is settling down and buying a house. They accepted her offer and today was inspection day. In the basement, she noticed hinges along some of the pegboard wall, which pulled back to show a padlocked door. And beyond the door? A grow room. Another friend wants to know if the grow room increases the house's value. I love Fairbanks.

I've been up since 4:30, though I've been trying to deny it. Looks like I'll be going to the gym and work early today. Stupid insomnia.