Standing in a darkened room, swaying to an unheard melody, there is a little head resting on my shoulder, little arms at first clenched — then draped — around my neck. We sway to the slish-slosh-slish of the dishwasher.

He’d called my name out in the dark: Dada. And I came to find him. Dim light showed him standing at the railing, waiting, gazing expectantly into the darkness. Of course Daddy would come when needed. That is what the Daddy does.

I marvel at how big he’s getting, how much he’s learning.

How it is all speeding by so, so fast.

I hold him close as we sway, and he squeezes back. I know this will be the part that breaks my heart when he’s older, when he doesn’t want hugs and kisses from his dad anymore, when he’s a teenager and screams that he hates me, when he heads off to college, when he is a man of his own …

…and doesn’t need a father to gently rock away the bad dreams or lay him peacefully down to sleep.

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yeah, i know i haven’t posted in awhile. reason being is that my life had been in the process of being completely uprooted and turned around. i no longer live in Richmond, VA. I am now a resident of New York City. Yeay! kinda weird selling our first house and renting again, and paying a LOT for rent. anyway, hadn’t had access to the web much over teh past few weeks and when i did, i was overwhelmingly busy. internet will be hooked up in our apt this sat, so my normal posting routine shall resume then.

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This is my second day of recouperation.

I basically spent every day for the past two weeks travelling and running a booth at trade shows, giving the same spiel over and over about the new marketing portal technology I created. I am still exhausted, and my face is still numb from smiling all the time. Ah, life in advertising is grand.

I bought the new Mike Patton/X-ecutioners album for my travels. Do check this work of genius out. It’s one of the best albums I’ve heard in a while.

I met some nice people from an agency called DDB Worldwide in line for the plane in Austin. When I got back to Dallas and watched them drive away in their brand new BMW 740 IL, I realized that I should have given them my card and let them know that I was looking. I spent the entire evening hunting them down on the web. At one point I was scared about the client demands at an agency like that. Now, agencies are all I’m looking at.

On Saturday, I went to see Lisa on set. Her production company was filming a commercial for HEB grocery stores at Fair Park. It was nice to get to finally meet all the people she works with. Plus, I got to meet the actor from the Volkswagen commercials (you know, the guy who starts screaming when he passes the other car in the Passat commercial). He had everybody cracking up.

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i need some help from you guys.

i have a credit card. just one. and i use it a lot. for almost everything. and since i have been in school, i have carried a balance. ive had this card for like 7 years now. i am what you might call a loyal customer.

and im not sure why.

i miss one payment by a week because i am in the hospital. i am charged a late fee and they cut my card off.

this is uncool. when i call on fri to find out why my card is off, they tell me. they tell me that my option is to make a debit purchase/charge on the phone. that will clear it all up. oh but wait. they would charge me 5 dollars for this service. even though i was in the hospital, even though i had mailed the check to them.

so i didnt do it.

i speak to my father, who suggests i call back today and make them remove the late fee because of my illness.

i call. i am told since they have never removed a late fee for me before, they can do it this once. they do not care if i was hospitalized. this is not why they are removing it. in fact, they can never remove the late fee again.

this seems to be a group that does not care about me as a customer. and, as kurt knows, i expect decent service. esp when i am paying you like i do my credit card company.

so i am ready to get a new card with a new company. i am ready to move my balance and try someone else.

this is where you come in. do you have a credit card or a credit card company you love? or one you loathe? kurt has suggested the amazon visa card, which i am leaning towards. i would like a card with: 0% apr for the first 6 months, at least on balance transfers. i would like some kind of reward system, since i charge so much. and i would like no annual fee.

what do you use?

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one more awesome story about stupid companies.

ive dropped my phone a lot. its broken so many times. its been superglued no less than 6 times. i am surprised it works.

when i signed up last christmas with sprint, in a 2 year contract, the nice woman helping me told me that, after 18 months with the same phone, i could get a discount towards a new one.

this is good. and the time is now.

i go to the sprint store a couple of weeks ago to look at the new phones. but the person there tells me i must sign a new 2 year contract.

what? thats not right.

today i call sprint to get the details.

the woman on the phone this time had atough time understanding me. but after a few moments, we reached the conclusion that i had had my phone for over 18 months. theresfore, i was entitled to a discount.

great! how do i get the discount?

oh, i go to a sprint store. but thats what i did and they gave me the hoopla about a new contract.

then she says: ‘well, yes, you have to sign a new 2 year contract.’

what? how is this a reward for having my phone for 18 months? how is this different than signing up for a new account? its the same thing. thats not a discount.

i ask her these questions and the answer is merely a ‘these are the rules.’

i say that it makes no sense. and then i followup by asking how much it is to cancel my account. she says 150 dollars. and i tell her, ‘excellent. this is what i will be doing.’

i thank her. she thanks me for choosing sprint. either oblivious or uncaring that i just told her that sprint was loosing a customer.

so i think this weekend, with any luck, ill become a verizon customer. unless someone has a better idea.

damn. i cant get over the idiots and the cons we have to put up with.

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yesterday, a gaggle of us went to see constantine. b, lily, kurt, roxy and i journeyed down to graumans chinese theater on hollywood. this is the famous chinese theater you always see when there is footage of hollywood.

knowing it was the day before the oscars, it was even cooler. all the stuff was set up – cameras, the carpet, the bridge, the gates. but because it was the day before, you could still walk around a lot of it. we all walked on the red carpet and marveled at how much we hated it all.

now, turning on tv and seeing stars and idiots walking where we were yesterday is odd. not quite as surreal as hearing a helicoptor outside and then seeing it on tv. and knowing it is the same one.

constantine was amazing convoluted. the plot was a mess. but it was a solid ‘b’ action movie with too many special effects and a budget a bit too small to pull them off. i maintain reeves was miscast in it. and the coolest parts of the movie were the parts they glossed over too much. i would have happily traded some more lines about magical artifacts, about his job, about anything spooky for the dull action sequences. even if they involved demons.

such is life. what was surprising is that everyone int he car seemed to like the movie. i suppose that is a testament to the movies lowest common demoninator approach, which, in this instance, paid off.

* * *

as a small treat, ive made a movie out of the pics i took with the sensecam yesterday. (the sensecam is an alpha/research project from microsoft i have been working with.) keep in mind it takes a picture about once a minute with its fisheye lense around my neck. im putting it up here before it goes on my thesis blog, so yippee for you guys. im also lazy and throwing it up just as a qt file. you should be able to click and play, though its not optimized for the internet and its about 3 meg. (perhaps a better option is a right click and ’save as…’ cause then itll open [once the dl is finished] in the qt player.) 2.5 minutes, no sound. enjoy mis amigos. movie

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tripp gave me a cd case that mike and david gave him over christmas. it now holds dvds that tripp burned for me in LA. the case has a white cover that says Jason Mraz | Live!! and on the back, there is a blues traveler cd back. it is sitting on my desk now at the studio and, too embarassed that people might see either side of the cd cover, i had to flip over the Jason Mraz Live!! cover so that it is just bare white now. not that it isnt funny; im just a little too much of a sorority girl for people to get the irony on my desk. of course, it _is_ sitting underneath a framed picture of puff daddy circa 1995, but that’s beside the point.

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my yogurt contains “partially defatted peanuts.” i should like to be partially defatted.

m&m’s have funny oscar bingo cards on their website. how odd.

also, based on the survey i was asked to fill out, i think they take themselves -and chocolate- a little bit too seriously.

i usually give up something for lent. when people ask me what i have up this year, i reply, “sleeping with married men and men who have girlfriends.” they never know quite how to respond. although i guess that would be a more appropriate new year’s resolution, or else come easter i’d be open season for adulterers . . .

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