You know what I am?

I am on episode 21. Of season 1. Of the OC.

You know what I am not?

Proud. Efficient. Outside.

But seriously. I love Seth and Summer. I love Ryan's corner-eye glances and the way Sandy eat bagels all day. I love Tate Donovan's forehead wrinkles. I love Misha Barton's acting skills and the way she says, "whaaat's wrong?" like English is her 9th language. Why why why am I so late?

And P.S. Sean's on episode 15. My love thrives, affirmed and healthy! And I know he's only pretending to hate that I sing the theme song at the top of my lungs when? Not only at the beginning of the show, but also when we are cooking breakfast in the mornings, walking to the store, playing frisbee or when he's saying sweet things to me. I also know that Sean got jealous when I praised Seth's wit; he said, "Really though? I mean, sure, the writers give him funny things to say, but it's not like he's THAT hilarious or quick...I mean other people, like, if you wanted to use me as an example, for instance, are quick and witty without writers, right?" Oh it's just like the episode where Seth is jealous of Summer's new boyfriend and how she thinks he's so funny.

ah da na na na na da na na na na da na na na na na na California here we come right back we started from...
CALIFORNIAAAAAA, CALIFORNIAAAA, HERE WE COOOOOME.

The lost Bloomsday pictures

Some more deferred pleasure. Only for me and like 3 other people, though.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, B!

This funny, awesome lady was born 18 years ago today.


Unless you're a guy checking out her school picture on my bulletin board, in which case she is still a mature-looking 12.

Bloomsday

Ulysses is all about deferred pleasure, so it makes sense that this post is 5 days late, right? Actually, the soundness of this rationalization rests on the assumption that pictures of nerds romping around in celebration of Ulysses will please you. It may not and you may give up and x out of the page as this is a long post. Unduly long. A journey, one might say. Of great mental strength. I'm just saying, there are comparisons...

Our Ithacan day:

Should we celebrate this man?

All the time. Every day. By making up new words and thinking revolutionarily, making people laugh and feeling sensitive towards underdogs.


If Jess and Gid were at the door of 7 Eccles street, what would they do?

Pose, show each other their underwear, drink, joke about poop and stick their fingers in the mail slot imagining letters.


What is Jessica's philosophy on picture taking?


That following every posed shot of faces smiling to a camera should come another blatantly posed shot of faces looking into the distance.


Are Sean and Alicia deep thinkers?

Obviously.


Does John envy me my main squeeze?

Who doesn't?
Nobody.


Did Senator David Norris hug me and call me wild and Irish?

You bet your fancy ass he did.


Did Alicia say that the Molly's from last year were better, or at least that they didn't look like they were actually around on June 16, 1904?

She did, that funny lady.


Does Alicia like Ulysses?

Sure looks like it.


Does Marilyn Monroe?

Of course. Sexy things belong together.


How could one describe this Bloom's body language?

Theatrical.

Perfect.

Amusing, enviable.

If Jess could give Joyce a gift to thank him for all he's done, one that would move him, one that would show him she's for real, in love, limitless, what would it be?

It's true.

Moriah.

We walked the Wicklow Way and mused philosophical musings, for example, how much does your knee hurt? And also, my toenail is coming off as we speak. Then the things we saw and imagined behind the fog (Mo's suggestion) took our minds off the pain.









We drank beer and celebrated Irish writers until Mo passed out on the rug of the Writers' Museum.







Aaand we waited for buses,


visited castles,


got embarrassed,


took a moment from talking our quadrillion words for a picture.


And now I miss her again like I always do.

Tonight, great things happened. I went out to eat with friends and we had the entire Georgian restaurant to ourselves.

Then we heard our friend Jeremy play the piano while a soprano sang along to songs from Joyce's work

Then this man hugged me and called me a wild Irish lass.

And now, I will wake up in about 4 hours to get one of my very favorite people from the airport.

This is my hundred and one.

This blog is about 10 days away from being a year old and I just passed my 100 post mark. I'd like to commemorate with a favorites list.

Favorites list June 3-10, 2007
1. Sean and me playing each other our favorite songs circa age 6- his, "Born in the USA" and "Johnny 99" by Springsteen, mine, "The Nights the Lights Went out in Georgia" by Vicki Lawrence and "Roll on" by Alabama.
2. Leslie Mann's performance in Knocked Up. She is my living Madeleine Khan.
3. Mangetout and hummus.
4. James is gone. No more grunting/ yelling/ howling/ singing/ tin whistles.
5. Frisbee
6. 2 euro white sunglasses from an old hardware store
7. My paper. It's almost finished!
8. My paper-writing softest fleece. Ridiculous, yes, but also inspirational.
9. The Dettol that's kept me from getting Sean's sickness. Also, it says right on the back that it kills Rhinovirus...so in case I wake up from a coma (a la 28 weeks) and everyone has turned into a rhino, this shit is my savior.
10. The picture Sean took of the last 4 favorites from this list.



Back to work.

Wha?

Have you guys thought recently about how weird kangaroos are? We all know they carry their joeys in a skin pouch, but I couldn't really remember anything else from the 4th grade lessons plans. Nothing like writing page 16 of a paper at 8:39 PM to send you off typing "kangaroo life cycle" into Google.

It all happened as I read through my last page and realized I'd written "joey" instead of "lost". The quote reads, "...as though he were the man lying warm in bed listening and the joey creature down below howling his woes against the elements." I've been looking at my keyboard trying to figure out how I did that and all I can think is that my center was moved a little to the left for that brief moment. So because I'm crazy I thought of kangaroos and because my brain is on a delving paper-writing overdrive and I love procrastinating I became wildly, insanely! curious to learn about joeys and this is what I found.

Kangaroos sometimes have three joeys at different stages of development--one developing inside their body, one chillaxin inside their pouch and one hopping around outside but still sticking its face in the mother's pouch for some milk from time to time like this dude.

In severe conditions, the mother may not have enough energy to feed the older young, so it's left to its own devices. If conditions deteriorate, the mother will remove the pouch young (AH!). This means that the embryo in the body develops and soon occupies the vacant pouch.

Kangaroos are marsupials, which doesn't just mean "carries a baby in a pouch," but that they give birth to undeveloped young. Wallabies, wallaroos, wombats, possums and koala bears are all marsupials.

Now, when the joey enters the pouch it's is a weird looking pink thing,

only 2 cm long and less that one gram. It actually knows (not nothing at all because it has no brain, as you would assume from the picture) that it will be warm and fed if it crawls up the mother's body to her pouch. AMAZING FACT!: Uniquely, the kangaroo embryo has the ability to stop and restart its development, almost entering a state of dormancy. Scientists are studying what "turns these signals in the embryo off and on from the point of view of manipulating embryos during in vitro fertilization and for contraception." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3604045.stm)

Over the weeks, the joey starts looking more like a kangaroo


and eventually gets the hair and and the cute, as we can see here.

It becomes more active and gradually spends most of its time outside the pouch, still popping in if it's tired or scared.

The joey then leaves the pouch completely between 7 and 10 months of age. My guess is this guy's 10 months and a day.


As Sean would say, "Wouldn't you agree that kangaroos are both interesting and amazing?"

We would, Sean, we would.


That is totally an A paper. For a 9-year-old assigned to write on kangaroos instead of a 24-year-old supposed to be writing on gender in Irish writing. Back to work.

This is sometimes what it's like to talk to my mom on Skype.

Karen Farris 6/5/07 7:32 PM
triple half caf nonfat
Karen Farris 6/5/07 7:32 PM
regular iced coffee in chicago has miclk and sugar and is disgusting
Karen Farris 6/5/07 7:33 PM
the mind wanders
Karen Farris 6/5/07 7:33 PM
anyway
Jessica Farris 6/5/07 7:33 PM
anyway
Karen Farris 6/5/07 7:34 PM
i saw a truck with this on it
Karen Farris 6/5/07 7:34 PM
1 800 888-POOP

So you know, we were talking about a friend who didn't invite us to his wedding presumably because his wife hates us. We were not talking about coffee or Chicago or poop.

Sunshine

Yes, my dwindling time here paints Ireland in bright, happy hues. Now that I'm leaving soon I want to eat this island whole and lick up any crumbs. I already feel the missing of it sometimes when I wake up at 11:30 after reading in bed until 3; I think, I should have savored this Irish morning! gone to bed sooner and read outside at 8. I'm starting to touch my Ireland friends more, although I guess I've always touched them an above-average amount of times--that's a problem of mine. I'm space invasive and I love your perfume and probably your soft shirt too!

HOWEVER

Despite missing here already, there are times lately when, if I could, I would fly home immediately or better yet, take a time machine back a few weeks even because I'm missing so much there, namely, my sister, B. Entire proms and boyfriends are passing me by! I know that handsome kid's name down there, but I've never heard his voice or tested his seemliness for B in a series of timed physical fitness maneuvers or a bad joke to see if he'll laugh anyway.

Summer will pass without a sisters' weekend away.

College will come without me to help pack for it; I never thought it would be like that.

It all makes me feel so whiny.

But I do look at Lindsay's dress and feel a bit sunnier. You know? She's a ball of it. Sunshine I mean. Which I'm not there to see. And now I feel whiny again.


But that yellow! It's so happy!

But it's so far away.

But look how happy that other dude is! Yeah other dude! Yeah!

But who the f is that guy?

This is a vicious cycle.