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Radio silence

I apologize to everybody for being so out of touch lately. Cec and I are leaving for the US tomorrow. We're going to hit Tampa (I have family there) and New York for a couple of weeks. Then I have a meeting in Fargo, and will take a 2-day layover in Chicago on the way out. I can never get enough of New York, and I'm looking forward to seeing Chicago- I've never been outside the airport but I'm told it's very cool.

So in order to pull this trip off I've had to get caught up at work, and I have hardly had time to breathe since the turning of the year. No time for communication, no time for fun. But this is going to be worth it. Expect pictures when I get back in May.

While I'm on the road, I'll be checking emails at peteineurope@hotmail.com

Love you all
P

Here, Kitty Kitty

Ha, it's great to have friends who try to make me happy! Thanks, Rick and Sara for the awesome shirt, and the books and music... Rick, that Jewish Klezmer Rastafari space dub is bizarre in ways I can't even begin to describe, but I've been listening to it all day at work... cool stuff!

Two more

Yeah, this doesn't make me miss San Francisco at all... Here's two more shots of SF from Marton...

The western end of the Bay Bridge, shot from what looks like the Presidio.

And this one of the TransAmerica Pyramid, taken from what looks like Columbus Street... man, I just remember all the nights crawling back from parties in North Beach, buzzed and hyper-aware, watching the Pyramid getting larger in my vision and knowing that when I passed it I'd be on Market and able to get a bus home so I could sleep... Strange days those were... It's the perfect picture for it, too...

Berkeley

I had to cancel a trip I was planning to the Bay Area in April, because of scheduling problems with work. What made it particularly painful was that I'd already told a bunch of my old freinds in SF and Berkeley that I'd be in town, and we'd planned a whole week full of get-togethers and fun stuff. Anyway, my friend Marton from Budapest is studying at UC Berkeley, and sent me some pictures of Telegraph Ave, I guess so I wouldn't feel completely forlorn.

Isn't that just the perfect picture of Telegraph Ave? I can see nothing's changed in the last four years, which I find reassuring.

The West Wing Quiz

Cec and I held a West Wing dinner party at our place on Saturday night (I got the DVDs from Amazon.co.uk a few weeks ago). It was fun, I've been so busy lately, and it's been a while since I've been able to host a party. I handed everyone a pop quiz just before we started the video, and said the winner would get first pick of the door prizes (a stack of mostly downtempo CDs). Here's the questions:

1. Who was President Clinton’s first press secretary, who is now a consultant on the West Wing TV show?
1. John Ehrlichman
2. Nancy Pelosi
3. Dee Dee Myers
2. President Clinton was the second American President to be impeached. Who was the first?
1. Andrew Johnson
2. Richard Nixon
3. Aaron Burr
3. George Bush Senior was the chairman of the Republican Party during whose administration?
1. Richard Nixon
2. Ronald Reagan
3. Lyndon B. Johnson
4. What was the Whitewater scandal based on?
1. Bill Clinton caused the collapse of the Savings and Loan industry in the US in the 1980s by underwriting loans he knew to be worthless when he was Governor of Arkansas
2. The man who managed a piece of real estate for the Clintons turned out to have defrauded other individuals and the government, in unrelated financial dealings in the 1980s
3. Bill Clinton secretly sold high-tech American weapons to Iran in defiance of Congress, then used the money to fund right wing death squads in Central America throughout the 1980s
5. Who was the Attorney General (Minister of Justice) under Clinton, just before John Ashcroft was brought in by Baby Bush?
1. Al Gore
2. G. Gordon Liddy
3. Janet Reno
6. Which important position did Daddy Bush hold before becoming Vice President and then President of the US?
1. Director of the CIA
2. Chairman of the Federal Reserve
3. Secretary of State
7. Who was Bill Clinton’s opponent in the 1996 Presidential race?
1. Daddy Bush
2. John Ashcroft
3. Bob Dole
8. Which country did Bill Clinton NOT attack while he was President?
1. Serbia
2. Somalia
3. Panama
9. Which country did Daddy Bush NOT attack while he was President
1. Iraq
2. Guatemala
3. Panama

We got lucky there...

I just heard on BBC that the Max Planck institute just finished a detailed comparison of the genetic structure of humans and chimpanzees. They found that over the last million years, humans have apparently lost much of the sense of smell we used to have.

Honestly, let's all thank fuck for that... I've said for years that I wish I had twice as much vision and half as much smell.

Whatever.

Asleep and Dreaming

Too tired and overwhelmed to make sense right now- lots to write about but no time. Listening to Magnetic Fields and the track just came on with the lines-

You may not be beautiful, but it's not for me to judge-
I don't know if you're beautiful because I love you too much.

I've seen you laugh at nothing at all. I've seen you sadly weeping.
The sweetest thing I ever saw was you asleep and dreaming.