So beautiful...big clouds, misty water breaking on the rocks... 

Aruba is also crawling with iguanas. Who knew they could read? 

Aruba is crawling with cactus! I guess that's what happens when there is no rainfall. 

A lovely view of Palm Beach from our hotel room. 

Basically, diets don't work. If they worked, everyone would be thin.--Mireille Guiliano

Aruba! Aruba!

This is what I remember about my trip: walking into a lamp post while reading a map, which was not totally my fault because the lamp post was right in the middle of the sidewalk and who ever heard of such a thing? There were so many cactus everywhere; I felt like I was in the wild, wild west. [I decided I don't like the word cacti, so I'm going to use cactus as the singular and plural, much like fish and sheep. Ha, try and stop me!] I had so many frozen drinks and none were as good as the razz-berri mudslide at the Surf Club. A stray dog followed us home from dinner and it was like a quarter-mile walk. He was so cute and I wished I had a bone in my purse, but Snowman said if I had a bone in my purse he would wonder why. I named the dog Floppy. He wasn't full-grown and had a scar over his left eye. I wished I could pet him, but you can't touch a stray dog because if he bit you he would have to be put down or if you couldn't catch him, you would have to get rabies shots just in case and who wants to do that while they're on vacation? When we got to the hotel, we couldn't let him inside but he kept walking around the patio like he was looking for us and it was really, really sad. I also won $80 on the penny slots, which I think is really, really good. I would like to play cards, but I'm just a big chicken. I don't have the kind of disposable income where I could sit at a table for an hour and lose all sorts of money. Which is why I play the penny slots. I actually won $100, but the last day I played some more and lost $20 quite mercilessly. My favorite game was Mayan Princess. Snowman and I also met a girl and her uncle on the way to Aruba and she has the same name as me. Then we met her again on the way back to NYC. We also went mountain biking and it was really hard! I couldn't make it up all the hills, so our guide Nestor helped me sometimes. Once I walked up the hill and Nestor biked up pushing my bike too! He also pushed me up another hill while I was on the bike. He was in really good shape. He also teaches the mambo and plays guitar in a band. Snowman did good and could bike up all the hills by himself. I feel a little bad, like I'm not in good shape, but I really tried and you can't feel too bad if you try hard and still can't do it. There are five Dunkin' Donuts on Aruba and we drove by all of them. They also have Sbarro's (they say Mama's in the kitchen cooking, but I saw in the kitchen and it was fat man with a mole on his nose), Little Caesars, Pizza Hut, McDonald's and Taco Bell, but no Starbucks or Papa John's. I won't talk about the flight home because it was bad and it sucks when the last thing about your trip is bad, so I'm going to pretend it didn't even happen. Pictures coming soon.

Diary of a dog in the night-time

I'm just back from a lovely trip to Aruba, but before I go into that, first things first. I finished two books! First was E.M. Delafield's Diary of a Provincial Lady. I stumbled across Delafield at work and after reading an exerpt of Diary online decided to check it out. Easy, fun to read, sort of the turn-of-the-century equivalent of...ah, I really want to put something here that it's the turn-of-the-century equivalent of, but I can't think of anything.

Favorite quote: That may be all very well, but if they could have got husbands they wouldn’t be feminists.

Second was the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon. Also a very quick read. Maybe this book doesn't totally accurately represent what an autistic teenager is like, but I don't really think anything can fully represent anything else. I mean, it just a book. Still it's funny and touching and even includes maths!

Favorite quote: ...a thing is interesting because of thinking about it and not because of being new.

Get out there and read people!

How bummed am I that Martha Stewart is closing down the catalog part of her business? The answer is very sad! I have a lot of her craft kits and kitchen supplies and they're really, really great. Now I'll have to rely on KMart/Sears for my Martha fix...black day!

I just saw the best episode of The Ellen Degeneres Show. First was Don Cheadle, whom I sort of might have a crush on and who was very charming. Then Betty White, whom I also might have a crush on because I love Golden Girls and she's 83 and also very charming. Then she had on the Kratt Brothers, whom I'd never even heard of but they had baby tigers and porcupines! I so want a porcupine! But first I want a chinchilla. But first I want a Scottie. Scottie, chinchilla, porcupine. Yup.

Continuing to read this magazine I come across a quote and it sounds really familiar and then I realize it's Benjamin Franklin and I just finished reading his autobiography and this quote was actually one that I had written down myself as being particularly meaningful. Seriously, coincindence...I think it's what connects you to the rest of the world.

You're dying to know what the quote is, aren't you?

"Human felicity is produc’d not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur everyday."

This is the quote as it appears in the book, not as it appears in the magazine, which seems to have contemporized it and of which I do not approve (this may also explain why the quote did not seem immediately familiar).

What a coinkidink

I don't know why it surprises me when someone else is thinking the same thing as me. This is, after all, an increasingly small world with an increasingly large number of people on it. I suppose I've always thought of myself as a unique individual thinking extremely unique thoughts. Although it surprises me that someone else is thinking what I am, or that two disparate parts of my life but up against one another, it does not upset me. I actually find it extraordinarily comforting, a wonderful sense of being connected to others--friends and strangers.

Frinstince, today I was searching online for a long-ago friend from my theatre days. I was terribly fond of this person, spurred I suppose, by the fact that he was terribly fond of me (both in very unromantic ways). I clicked on a review of one of his plays and saw a picture of another friend from a totally different theatre experience. Okay, not totally crazy as theatre people are migratory folk anyway. It struck me, though, because I hadn't thought of that second friend in years and then there he was.

As it happens, I had met the second friend at summer stock, so seeing his picture made me look up lots of old acquaintances. Several hours later I'm reading a magazine and there is an article written by a woman who grew up in that same town where I had done summer stock. And we're not talking Chicago, we're talking about a town with a college and an ice cream shoppe and not much else.

I still don't know if I believe in God, but I totally believe in the unity of coincidence.

Where were you when you heard...

...that Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston have formally separated? I was in Chelsea eavesdropping on someone's phone conversation. She mentioned Brad and Jennifer by first name only (Why does everyone feel like they are on a first-name basis with this couple?) but I knew who she was talking about. And although she never said anything directly about them splitting, she kept saying, "Wow, that's so sad" which made me think "What else could it be?" (Why is it sad when two people whom you do not know, nor ever will know break up?)

At any rate, this has caused the Angry Dolphin and I to re-institute our celebrity break-up pool. Who ever correctly calls a celeb split up (married couples only) gets a free trip to the movie of her choice. My 4 choices are Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. (I don't really think they'll break up, but I was strapped for couples), J. Lo and Marc Anthony, Josh Brolin and Diane Lane, and Nick Cage and whoever that bartender is he married. Angry Dolphin picked Britney and Kevin Spears (please, God, do no let them procreate), Julia Roberts and Danny Moder, Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson (no way!), and Victoria and David Beckham.

aka

Is it just me or did last night's Alias season premiere kind of bite? Is it just me or was this show way better when SD-6 was alive and well and Irina Derevko was a thousand times cooler than Sydney would be if she were sitting naked on an igloo? Is it just me or is she kind of a petulant brat? Is it just me or was the best part of the show Marshall talking about having eggs with Sark? (Second best was Angela Bassett. Someone needs to put Sydney in her place even if it was just for show.)

I mean I'm watching this show and I can't quite remember some things because the show hasn't even frickin' been on for the past eight months, but I'm thinking "Didn't Sloane blow up Dixon's wife?" "Didn't Dixon shoot Sloane's wife?" (Let's nevermind that he's a fucking CIA op and can't shoot a 60-yr. old man running up a hill, killing Emily instead.) And now they're working together? Riiight. And what the fuck is Sydney so pissed off at her dad for? Didn't she used to hate mom? Didn't mom shoot her? Hasn't her dad always had her best interests at heart? Yes, yes and yes. I also don't believe that Nadia pops over for a visit one night, Sydney says, "Did you bring your passport?" and next thing you know they're off to Moscow. Don't they have to be at work the next day? This show better get good real quick-like.

I'm starting my own spy show called aka and it will be all about Marshall, yo!