Borderline chilly wind blowing in my window this evening... fall cannot possibly be approaching. But if it is, it brings with it the demands of new fall clothes, a prospect that is even chillier. I need a mother-type (not my mother, who is so not typically motherly this way) to march in here, grab my hand and tell me we're going shopping for clothes and we're not coming home until I have a new pair of pants, new shoes, and a couple of pretty new dresses. And maybe a Trapper Keeper.

For the second time in a row, I wore a strapless dress to a Jewish wedding. Obviously it didn't get drilled into my head the first time around that when you've got people grabbing your hands and then you're all running/dancing around the room in a line swinging your hands up and down wildly, you don't want to be wearing something that's tenuously attached to your upper body. Way too many close calls. On the bright side, there was a mashed potato bar.

Here is the song I can't stop humming to myself.... unfortunately the lyrics don't lend themselves to bursting into song in the office....

The woman with the breast pumps in the bathroom at work (see earlier entry) is getting to be a regular fixture in my life. Go into bathroom around 7 p.m., apply lipstick, make small talk with woman with suction cups on her breasts. Speaking of which- babies, I mean, not breasts, though I know I wasn't directly speaking of them- I was totally into watching all these babies, well, more like toddlers on the beach the other day. Especially this one with a turquoise diaper (do they make them in colors, now?) who kept screaming at the top of his/her lungs. Like really happily. It looked like fun.

The beach today had nice-sized waves and sparse people (thanks, totally inaccurate weather forecasters!). Would have been perfect but for the herds of jellyfish floating around everywhere. Where did they all come from? Sure, they're not the sting-y kind. But still - having little balls of that squishy, snot-like substance bumping up against you in the water... it's enough to keep you on dry land. Well, almost enough, anyway. I perservered despite being totally grossed out by the jellyfish, but then got my foot sliced by who knows what down there on the ocean floor, and my friend got pinched by something, and then a helicopter flew by just low enough to make me think it was scouting for sharks.... the combination of all those sent us out for a couple of hours. In retrospect, though, I suppose it's a good sign that there are actually living organisms in the water. I just wish they weren't so creepy.

Best use of inappropriate quotation marks: deli at 62nd St. with a big sign outside inviting you to come in and Create "A" Salad.

Went to see "Hairspray," the John Waters movie turned Broadway musical, tonight and was seated next to some old guy with a younger girl who, at intermission, was warmly greeted by Jeffrey Lyons and then by some woman who excitedly asked for his autograph, and I was so curious, but somehow didn't think it would be appropriate to tap him on the shoulder and ask "so who ARE you, anyhow?" So I guess I'll never know. But the show was great. Especially Harvey Fierstein (who for a little while I confused with Harvey Weinstein, and thought, what a nice little side project for him) in the Divine role.

So I walk into the bathroom at work this evening and seated on the couch in the entryway is a woman with her shirt pulled up and breast pumps on. Breast pumps! Like these suction cup things attached to them and tubes going into this machine and it's making this machine-y noise. And I know I'm supposed to be OK with this because, I don't know, sisterhood and all, but yuck! I scooted out of there as quickly as humanly possible. And I can't help thinking, you know what, honey? If you're spending so much time at work that you are attaching suction cups to your tits instead of your INFANT, maybe it's time to take some maternity leave!

OK- I promise this is the last I will say about it- but I saw XXX this weekend and it did not disappoint. High point for me was the scene in which Vin is clad in only a lavish fur coat, long john bottoms and combat boots. You must admit, not a combo most men could pull off. But this is perhaps a greater example of the Diesel effect: the entire audience - and this is a Saturday night Times Square 10:00 show crowd - was oddly well-behaved. I mean watching them file in you would have thought you wouldn't be able to hear anything but a chorus of cell phones, beepers and unclever retorts to the characters onscreen, but the movie was so loud and everyone was so rooting for XXX that I got through it without one time wondering if I was going to have to throw my popcorn at someone (a response I have yet to actually use, but spend an inordinate amount of movie time fantasizing about). We all cheered at all the right places- like when Vin para-snowboarded down the mountain and started an avalanche with a bomb and stayed just enough ahead of it so that he could leap onto a radio tower and cling to it while the snow obliterated his enemies. Awesome. (Obviously, I need to go inundate myself with Wim Wenders films or something to get my head screwed on straight again....)

It seems I'm not the only one with a crush on Vin...

This morning the Jesus-esque guy who's always walking around the park (see earlier blog entry) smiled at me as I rode by on my bike. I swear he did. It was just a split second. But I feel like this is a big step forward for our relationship.

I never really understood the whole Russell Crowe phenomenon, but I have to admit something: I'm just crazy about that Vin Diesel. What a man! That giant bald head... those tree-trunk arms... the miles of tattoos.... I just want him to pick me up under his arm and carry me around. Kind of like that scene in the locker room in Sixteen Candles. How did I miss The Fast and the Furious? And that terrible sci-fi movie, Pitch Black I think it was? Nobody has ever exuded more testosterone than Vin. He is all action, no talk - or, well, sort of inarticulate talk anyway. He is a superhero without the dorky spandex outfit. He's dreamy.

Well I would just like to brattily say that as you are more likely than not reading this as you sit at your desk on Monday, I am frolicking in the waves on Long Island, as I have scored a three-day weekend... of course this three-day weekend means I have no health insurance, but who needs reliable medical care when you can have an uncrowded beach and a nice tan? Plus, what better place to come up with story ideas. Men in speedos: horrible trend, or enduring fashion faux pas? Fried dough stands: we sample ten of the best! Shark attack hysteria: so out it's in again!

Two things:

Firstly, a great reason given by a friend who didn't want to go into a greenhouse (at what point were you planning on going into a greenhouse, you ask? I can't remember. But that's beside the point):
"It smells like bees fucking."

Secondly: this is how hot it was today, and how spacey I became upon leaving the office, like one of those times when you really should just call it a night and go straight home, but you don't:
Was supposed to meet a friend (not the anti-greenhouse friend) in Union Square, simple enough, get on the F and transfer to the N/R/Q and that's that. Only I got on the F and for some reason imagined myself to be in my previous job, five blocks south of where I work now, and hence got off the train at 42nd St. instead of 34th St. and wondered why there were no signs for the N and the R, only the 7, and where the hell does the 7 go? Then hopped the V train, a very peculiarly empty car with just one old weird bearded guy sitting in it, which when you got on you discovered was because there was no air conditioning. Got off the hell-car at 34th, waited for what seemed like an eternity in the fiery pit of the subway platform, got on the Q, and managed to blow right by the Union Square stop, only coming out of my stupor at Canal St., at which point I annoyedly got off, stomped up to the 6 uptown, waited on the fishy smelling Chinatown platform for what seemed like yet another eternity, and finally finally made it to meet my - incredibly- not pissed off friend. It was all capped off by the ride home, which featured a large black man rocking in his seat and telling us, "Conde Nast, 4 Times Square, racist drug dealer. I ain't never heard of a chocolate matzoh ball till I worked for Conde Nast, 4 Times Square" ad infinitum.