It is my goal in life to be as cool as this man:

Seriously. Look at that mustache! That hat! the way his collar folds down so precisely over his debonair little bow tie! Never in my life have I ever looked this cool, even in my attempts at drawing on moustaches with eyeliner on Drag Ball. In my future sartorial attempts I will attempt to fashion myself after Hercule Poirot. Maybe without the mustache.

I just got done watching Death on the Nile with my godsister, who is about to move to Austin. Sad, sad clown. She is finishing up her thesis for her master's, in international community development (or something). She's going to be working at a costume shop in Austin, which is somehow quite fitting, since she's always been putting together her own clothes and remaking things. We are going to get together for an evening of Highlander tomorrow evening. I am quite excited about that.

I've also joined a book club- Eva D at the theater mentioned it at the cast dinner for Present Laughter, and the first meeting is on Wednesday. I guess technically the first meeting was last week, but nobody read the book. This week the book is The Geography of Bliss, so I've got to go get my hands on it. In the meantime I've got the newest of Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series, some wonderfully terrible vampire romance novels set in Louisiana. They're fabulous, and full of awesome vampire / human love triangles. Sookie Stackhouse is, herself, a psychic barmaid, admired by not one but TWO powerful vampires! She's got to fight the evil forces of the undead AND the vampire and human bureaucracies that conspire against her! It's seriously one of the most entertaining series of books I've gotten involved in in a long time.

Nothing new on the job front. No news from Exxon-Mobil, but it is the weekend so I might have to wait a bit. No news from Borders- but they did say that they'd be making calls this week. I've decided to apply for a Fullbright- Claire is going to help, because apparently her dad used to do a lot with the Fullbright people. I want to go back to China, hopefully Beijing.

I've also put in an application for a personal trainer at the Y. There's a request form! Not like the old days, when you'd just walk up to the desk and whoever was available would put you through your paces. Under "Reasons for wanting a personal trainer" I wrote "Weight loss- 50+ lbs." In all seriousness it's more like 75 lbs. Actually, probably 85. I want to be 150. God, I've let myself go. Still! There's no time like the present, and once I break some of my nastier habits I should be OK. Claire & I are going to start at Weight Watchers, and it'll be nice to have someone my age to do it with. Lord love her, but it's hard to deal with my mom. She has this disapproving look- this "Are you going to eat that? Really?" look that just drives me up the wall and makes me want to go consume my weight in lard. Well, maybe not lard, per se. Just the 99c tacos at Jack in the Box. SO GOOD.