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2000-12-18

I spent much of the weekend watching An American Love Story, a ten-hour documentary about an interracial family; I'll watch the last hour tonight. I recall this series airing on PBS last fall but didn't catch any of it. Then last week I found the whole thing on five videos at the library. It's really good, very compelling and thought-provoking about a lot of issues: race, marriage, the parent-child bond, small towns vs. cities (New York in particular), artistic expression vs. nine-to-five, conformity, non-conformity, belonging and fitting in. I highly recommend it.

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Things with the new beagle are going fairly smoothly; the other dogs, now known as The Big Dogs, are very tolerant and maybe even like him. Whether it's his size, his age (two to three years) or simply his temperment, he's more mischievous than they, getting into all sorts of things I don't think it's ever occurred to the others to get into. Hope he's not too bad an influence. He spends most of the day sleeping on our bed, resting up for a graveyard shift of antics: last night he howled more than usual. (Good thing I'm a heavy sleeper. Too bad B is not.) But it's working out pretty well. He's a sweet little guy and despite the occasional "What have we done?" we like having him around.

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I got a Thai cookbook from the library and have been cooking up a Thai storm. I haven't been too adventurous, have mostly stuck with variations on this one red curry (beef or chicken, bamboo shoots, red peppers, green beans, red curry paste, coconut milk, fresh basil, Thai fish sauce). I make big batches which are even better the next day. I believe I could eat this every day of the week.

And speaking of savory taste sensations, Costco opened a store ten minutes from our house. What a great place. They sell this feta spread--it's cream cheese and feta with various seasonings--on which I have become hooked. It's great on a cracker but if you're watching the carbohydrates as I am, you can stir a dollop into just-cooked spinach for a spanikopita-without-the-phyllo kind of experience. I believe I could eat this every other day of the week.

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We've managed to avoid too much holiday hoopla thus far. Last weekend was my company's annual dinner at a fancy restaurant. B was all set to accompany me but he had some upsetting news the day before and was in an even less social mood than usual. About an hour before we were due to leave he got this serious look and said he wanted to ask me a question but was afraid I'd get mad. I don't know quite what I imagined. Actually, that's a lie, I imagined the question to be "Do you mind if we don't have a kid after all?"

So when the question turned how to be "How upset would you be if I skipped the dinner?" I was relieved and said, truthfully, "Not very."

I would've preferred that he go, but I suspected his going would cause him more pain than it would bring me pleasure. So I got dressed up and grabbed a dreamy Yo La Tengo tape to listen to in the car. I arrived late, at the tail end of the cocktail hour, just in time to grab a stick of chicken satay before sitting down to dinner. I managed to share a table with some people I like and the food was decent and the whole thing was painless enough. When I got home B told me I'd missed a really good episode of Miracle Pets: a dog had detected breast cancer in its owner!

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