I told Dan this morning that for all my eagerness to take him back to Washington, I had some anxieties about parts of it. I'm eager to show him the battlefields, and to introduce him to friends, but I have reservations when it comes to showing him the House of Representatives. My time at the House was some of the most significant and moving portions of my life, but it was also a debilitating crossroad. Up to that point, my entire focus after the age of 18 had been about living a transient, career-driven, solitary life. That's how I had pleasantly envisioned myself. Unpinned, independent, a gringo Sasha Fierce with a passport like Hillary Clinton's. So it has always been beyond strange to me that at the exact moment that I was offered a transient, solitary and amazing independent job in Australia, in a post that would likely eventually lead me back to the Committee, I chose not to follow. I chose a path more pinned, in an act seemingly entirely against my nature and ambiti...

My sister Alissa is an avid horror fan. She can watch anything without grimacing. As a kid she used to have these terrible night-terrors, and I don’t know if somehow those desensitized her, or if she is able to watch horror movies in spite of it. I wonder what she thinks. I like most horror movies. I like Zombieland. I enjoyed Resident Evil. I love the ole’ black and white psychological thrillers like Vertigo, the Birds, and my favorite,  The Haunting . The great thing about a horror movie, is that at worst, it can only be awful and torturous for at most, an hour forty five minutes. After that, you pop in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and it’s like it didn’t happen. (Unless you have nightmares that night that an Undead Joey Fatone is chasing you down the aisle of a Greek Orthodox Church. True Story. Ruined *NSYNC for me. ) But this methodology doesn’t apply when I signed on for The Walking Dead on AMC. Instead, they can torture you over several months with the long drawn out zombi...

While doing some work research, I stumbled onto this nugget of gold!  I'm not entirely sure of the era, but I'm guessing from her Jean Harlow looks that this may have been early 1930s. MISS ETHEL D. HOOK CLAIMS DISTINCTIVE TITLE Miss E. D. “Ethel” Hook, of Sacramento, California, insofar as we know, enjoys the distinction of being the only woman in the United States, to purchase gold in commercial quantities. This blond, young woman, is employed by the California MacVan Company, and is given full authority by her employer, A. E. Vandercook, to buy gold in any quantity. Grizzled old men who have aged in the hills hunting gold, young fellows getting their first callouses, and even women- turned miners to boost family finances— they’re all familiar to her. Sometimes they come with a great deal of gold, and go away with a great deal of money, sometimes they bring as little as 15 cents worth of gold. Almost two years ago, Vandercook wanted a secretary, who could learn the ...

Sometimes as I go about my day, or my week, I start to envision my life as it might be symbolically represented by priceless works of art. Like, sometimes I get on the scale, and I feel like a fatty, and I try to reframe the moment through Botticelli , as if I were a perfect modern representation of the ideal 15th century woman. (which for better or worse, I am.)  Occassionally, once that painting is in my brain it can set the tone for the future, and often times, it's set by one of my favorite artists, Goya. The great thing about Goya, is that he started life extremely optomistic, and ended it extremely disturbed. So practically any moment in a person's life could be symbolically represented by Goya. He runs the gammit. Last week, I would sum up my existence with this late Goya work: I couldn't say for sure if I'm the poor sap getting eaten by a deranged monster, or if I was the deranged monster eating others for breakfast (a la my mechanic, the insurance company...