I am surprisingly good at the game Two Truths and a Lie, more because I know how to invent good lies than because I am good at lying. My classic trio is this:

1) My parents met at a leprosy hospital.
2) I once watched "Melrose Place" with Drew Barrymore at her house.
3) In sixth grade, I wrote a musical about the New Kids on the Block.

My parents did meet at a leprosy hospital in Thailand -- they were employees, not patients. My dad was working with the children of the patients and my mom worked in the office (administrative work is in my blood). On my first trip toThailand, I visited the hospital, which now focuses on AIDS patients, and saw the little white house on stilts that was their first.

In high school, I did somehow end up at Drew Barrymore's house, watching "Melrose Place" with her and a handful of other people, all at least ten years older than me. It was during my fleeting affair with this guy who was 26 to my 16 and who was best friends with the owner of a club I always went to, a club that Drew also went to. I remember that she gave me a glass of iced tea and there were about a million records strewn across her living room floor that she said she had bought that day at Aron's Records and she was a lot nicer than I expected her to be. Maybe she felt bad for me with my 16-year-old awkwardness and creepy older man friend.

Alas, I never did write a musical about the NKOTB. I didn't even like them very much. This is true. Even at the tender age of eleven, I found their squeaky voices and habit of wearing overalls with nothing underneath vaguely disturbing. I did, however, write a long play about a group of friends who snub the soft-spoken, bookwormish member of their group, even though she is in the right. Eventually they admit their folly and beg for her forgiveness. This was written one weekend after fighting with my friends and I made them perform it on Monday. Strangely, it didn't garner the rave reviews I expected.

If I was going to tell two truths and a lie about the last couple weeks, they would be:

1) I joined an all-girl roller derby league that practices on a rooftop track in Chinatown.
2) I started seeing a therapist.
3) I saw The Village last night and really, really liked it.

Well, the Derby Dolls do exist and I now only answer to Babe Ruthless. And I am weirdly proud of my second foray into the world of therapy -- the first was when I was in eighth grade and dealing with my parents' divorce. I'm tired of shameful secrets. I'm ready to live with all the doors open.

(So yeah, I found The Village strange and sucky. I did like Joaquin though and I usually don't.)

Twice in the past week, I've been told that my ethnic background "looks good" on me, like it's a new dress or a particularly flattering pair of pants. I don't know how to respond to this. "Thanks" seems to suffice, but I have the urge to add something like, "I found it at a thrift store for a song!" or "This old thing? I've worn it my whole life!"

Lying between the sheets, I whisper to you, "Don't run away with me. I don't want to run from things anymore. Let's just run toward things." You love this.

I'm so scared I don't impress you anymore.

I feel like a skinless chicken breast cutlet, naked and pale and open as a wound. But that's okay -- that's the only part of the chicken you eat anyway. "It's flavorless," I used to say to you. "Flavorless and dry." You would dutifully eat a bit of drumstick, but half of it would be left in a sad little pile on your plate and I would protest, feeling like my parents. I'd tell you stories about eating chicken cartilage, just to gross you out. It's like eating plastic, kind of. Chicken-flavored plastic.

And now I feel as plain and wobbly as a stupid chicken breast. I've never felt like this before. I used to be the one who ran the kitchen. You cooked, but always the same things, boy things: pasta and BLTs and Tasty Bite curried potatoes. You complained of feeling boring, but you never tried out new recipes, even when I bought you an Indian cookbook. So I cooked from it instead.

But my books are closed, the knives are down. None of the old recipes will work for whatever it is we are cooking up. We are starting from scratch, standing here together in the kitchen. I'm ready to start from scratch: a smooth and naked surface, waiting.

Strange things have been happening.

Yesterday the whole office building had to evacuate to the parking lot because the fire alarms went off and we all stood around in the afternoon sun feeling giddy and full of that weird sort of excitement and promise that always accompanied fire drills in school. In the end, nothing was wrong and we filed back into the building past the smiling firefighters and the abashed building engineers who, it turns out, accidentally triggered the alarms.

While driving home last night, I drove around a police blockade that was surrounding an overturned and smashed SUV. This morning, I witnessed a man and his two kids almost get flattened by a maniacal right-turner. The rest of my commute was filled with thoughts of gruesome alternate endings to what I had seen. Then on Crenshaw, without explanation, there was a huge truck blocking three lanes of traffic.

My friend Jon would attribute this to Mercury in retrograde. The stars are telling us to lie low, regroup, gather our wits. It is August. We need it.

I don't believe in Mercury in retrograde or astrology in general. But I do believe in the August blues. It is nearing the end of the summer and if we were in elementary school we would be inutterably depressed by the impending end of our sunny, lazy days. As it is, we almost don't believe that another summer has passed us by, tossing only a handful of sunny, lazy days our way. We marvel at the way the seasons blur when spent in an air-conditioned building under fluorescent lights with the same twenty people day after day after day. Today feels like one year ago today, which feels like two years ago today, which feels like that long-ago November day when we started this job and, fuck, haven't we been laying low for way too long already?

Last night I bought the camera I have been eyeing for awhile, the lovely and affordable Canon PowerShot A80. Why are electronics salesmen the most skeevy people on the planet? Especially if you are a girl. Even though I walked in knowing exactly what I wanted, even though I knew I wasn't going to buy any of the extras, even though I probably know more about my camera than Ryan, the slack-jawed Best Buy associate, because I spent a month scouring Digital Photography Review (not the most scintillating reading, I assure you) -- all of this and I STILL had a moment of doubt when he thrust the 4-year warranty in my face.

"These Canons were made in China. They've had some complaints." His eyes looked blank and dead, but he was talking fast. I wanted to wrestle my camera out of his hands. "I mean, if you use the Canon warranty, you'll have to send the camera to them. And wait for them to send it back. Think how long that'll take." We were at the registers. I thought, I don't even plan on being in this country in a year. Screw you, Best Buy. Especially you, Ryan. And said no.

Here are some pictures that I took around the house today....

Wow. I just spent waaaaay too much time on Catster. That's right, CAT-ster. And you can find Ginger's profile right here.

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Someone just sent Ginger the following message:
"Ginger,
I think you are about the prettiest kitty on catster! I really hope you get to go home to your mom soon. Would you like to be friends?
Smudge"

This is amazing.

I am somewhat ashamed to admit that the only Korean dish I have ever liked (besides Korean BBQ, which doesn't seem to count) is bibimbap, which my man Jonathan Gold describes as "a dish of rice mixed at the table with vegetables, chile paste and perhaps a fried egg...reputed to be the Korean staple most suited to the Western palate, the dish that may someday be as popular among Californians as the pizza or the teriyaki stick." Pizza? Teriyaki stick? Surely my tastebuds are more daring than that!

Ho hum. At least I like kimchee. And I rather enjoyed the pile of tiny, silvery fried fish that looked like little minnows and tasted like the dried shrimp I used to eat as a kid. See? I'm hardcore. I swear!

Jeon Jun is at 2716 W. Olympic Blvd. in Los Angeles if you are interested. And Jonathan Gold's book is the best guide to restaurants in L.A. He once ate at every restaurant along Pico, from Koreatown to the Westside! Every one! He's my idol.

I am apartment- and cat-sitting for my friends in Westwood. It's fun and strange to live in someone else's house with someone else's pets, cook with someone else's pots, park in someone else's parking spot. It's like staying at a weird hotel. Where, instead of getting a bland room with zero personality, you get a room with a strong personality that isn't yours at all.

Damning evidence: my latest addictions are Catster (as you know), white wine and my earplugs. I don't care about the first two -- much like my obsession with knitting and libraries, they seem nerd-rock enough to be cool, especially in my neighborhood of bespectacled old-people wannabes.

But earplugs? There is nothing sexy about earplugs.

My love affair began one weeknight when I was living at my old house with my old roommate, who worked freelance jobs and regularly slept in until 11. This left him the evenings free to watch loud movies and clomp around the house while shouting into the phone. He was nice enough to warn me one day that he was going to be shooting a commercial in the house that week and it would probably run into the wee hours. (In retrospect, I feel slightly guilty for being such a grumpster. But I do wake up at 5:30 AM, so there.) Pondering the problem on the way to work, I came up with the perfect solution: earplugs.

My first pair were made of white wax, the cheapest thing I could find at the drugstore. It was a two-pack: I gave the other pair to my boyfriend, a sad sort of friendship bracelet. But the next morning we turned to each other, our awed eyes bright and unbruised.

"Did you hear anything?"

"No. Did you?"

"No."

We loved earplugs! They kept out the loud, scary neighbor. They kept out the hour-long beeping alarm clock in the apartment next door. They kept out the roommate's loud movies. They kept me happy and grump-free.

I wore those earplugs until they were grey and faintly fuzzy with dust. Not every night, but knowing they were there somehow made me feel better, like having fire insurance or a cupboard full of canned food. Luckily, by the time they had gotten to that level of grossness, I found another pair, bright green and made of foam, with their own protective carrying case. I started off wearing them only sporadically, on nights when my new roommates (equally nocturnal) got drunk and blasted Indian sitar techno from the crappy boombox in the kitchen or mornings when my new scary, loud neighbor yelled at her autistic child.

But for I don't know how long -- at least the last week straight -- I have been wearing them every single night. I even brought them with me to the place I was house-sitting. I go to bed every night without them, thinking, Tonight will be different, but every night I toss and turn until I finally give up and slip them in.

I'm addicted to earplugs. Could there be anything less glamorous than that?

Despite the fact that the alley around it smells overwhelmingly like boo-boo, I really like The Smell. After a dinner of udon and oyakodon and Kirin in Little Tokyo, Cecil and I walked a few blocks to the club and watched a couple bands and I took surreptitious pictures of people. (My camera is perfect for this because you can hold it at your hip and flip the screen up so you can see what you're shooting, but it doesn't look like you are taking a picture. Cecil seemed a little TOO excited about this feature. Cute girls of the world, beware!) We didn't even like the bands, but it was fun nonetheless. Especially when we stopped at House of Pies afterward and I had the fresh strawberry pie. Yum.