over the course of the last few days, i've amassed through mail more money than i will make this month. some of it -- small increments, mostly -- is birthday money. the cheery danish $150 made me smile. but the unexpected $400 from swarthmore made me think i should invest in stock. when else will $400 buy you an entire corporation?

other happiness of the day included my father returning. this will in turn make becca happy, my dear readers will no longer be treated to vivid descriptions of my nights kept awake by the intuition that if i let down my guard, not only will i be got, i will deserve the being-gotten. also, i watched aimee and jaguar, at long last, which made me sob -- but in, of course, a happy way. lovely movie, that, if at times a little slow. and i finished revamping my 35 pages of screenplay. now i just need to proceed.
AND i got a sinfully-sweet birthday card from illinois. needless to say, illinois has never cared enough about me to send me a card before; i was overwhelmed. in its honor i will make every effort to refer to soda as "pop" tomorrow and ... well, gee, what else do ill. folks do? thanks again, miz sarah.

today was my last day to be 19. the ratio of childhood years spent wanting to be 19 as opposed to wanting to be 20, incidentally, was roughly 10:1. 19 seemed like a magic number to me. sure enough, during 19 i stayed romantically in one spot throughout while physically i spent a record amount of time hopping about. i learned not to be afraid of the kitchen or of children. i lived in an apartment for the first time. i befriended midwesterners, identified as a Feminist, co-directed a play in whose cast i was the minority, went skinny-dipping for the first time and dyed my hair, spent an awful amount of time online, met people IRL, read the satanic verses, drank my weight in chai 15 times over, got picked up by a middle aged danish government-worker ... a year of achievements. now if you'll excuse me, i think i'll go bake some oatmeal raisin cookies, watch the third man and continue to muse.