happy birthday to jen! (that makes me want to sing a little song, something like "merry fucking birthday" a la south park...)

and happy birthday to me, tomorrow! whee! i will probably not get drunk--that will be done tonight or this weekend. but i'm sure i'll have lovely food. and my parents want to go see "road to perdition." written by an iowa native! woop!

so, my time in the UK was pretty good. i still don't know when i'm going to settle down and actually be myself instead of being so worried all the time. K and i fought less but we still did have a few major yelling matches. i think the friends-group is changing now that K is finally tired of talking to the wife of the guy that i'm tired of talking to. complicated. but i think when i go back i'm going to make my own damn friends so i'm not reliant upon talking to whomever happens to show up at the pub.

K has given me a birthday present and i don't know what it is yet! ooh, i love suspense. i also love that i know exactly what i want to get him for his birthday. which is a long 6 months away.

i was in NYC last weekend, for the first time in my life. i had a great time. mirandapanda met me at the airport and then we went to her apartment, which has a great view of the river and NJ. then we went to a kosher-vegetarian-"natural" pizza place. and then to sleep! tired! up early on sunday. went to jackson heights for indian food, but we were early, so we had coffee in a latino diner and talked about everything. indian food was great. all-you-can-eat. then we had to walk around for a while because we ate-all-we-could.

then to battery park. saw wall street (strange-looking when deserted, as it is on sunday) and the pub where dylan thomas died and talked to random people on the street in the process of finding said pub. the biggest thing about this morning is that we received many omens that we should find gregorio, so i am going to do so. many omens. creepy omens. including a 15-yr-old kid who looked just like him, whom we asked how to find the pub.

then we went on the staten island ferry and went to the statue of liberty, and laid on the grass looking up at her. then it was tired time, so we made the big trek back home, showered, rested, and went out for dinner. i picked out a restaurant called A from a magazine miranda had, and it's a good thing. the chef was super friendly and the food was really really really good, and it was inexpensive, and the whole restaurant was about the size of an average restaurant bathroom. i had a grilled avocado with spinach mousse where the pit normally is, and miranda had a honey-baked pear, and then we split a mushroom stew in a chewy bread bowl with this sort of coconut-ginger broth poured over. yum. and they had no liquor license so miranda kindly went across the street to buy us some beer. :)

then we walked home and went up on the roof of her apartment building to look at the skyline, drink beer, and smoke cigarettes. it was really a lovely end to the day, until i screamed like a little girl when i saw a roach! then we ran inside and went to bed. ahhhh.

traveling home was all right, i even got myself to the airport on time after bagel breakfast with miranda and a solo trip to the hungarian pastry shop she told me about. i took the bus to the airport, and now i have seen the langth of harlem and some of queens, but i would have missed my flight if i hadn't asked a delta pilot on the bus what terminal my airline flew out of (surprisingly NOT the terminal labeled "main terminal"). whew!

ok. enough now. must shower. have lunch with mom. and chat on the internet with K!