Habari Gani? (What's the news?)

Good news first: Baby Girl is 2 months today!!! And, delightfully, she slept from 10pm till 2:45am, and then until 6:30. Momma got some sleep, albeit full of dreams of work and leaving BG with someone without any milk, then wearing a stewardess outfit while piloting our Volvo wagon.

More good news: Sam and I celebrated our first anniversary yesterday, the 15th. We made it one whole year without killing each other, even while I was pregnant! We celebrated by going to Tony's, the only 5 star restaurant in St. Louis. And it has 5 stars for a reason. The food was amazing and the service impeccable. We had a gift certificate that Sam's parents got from some employees years ago and never used. Thank god, cause that's a pricey meal, my friends. But well worth it!! Sam's folks also watched O for the first time. It was a success! Thanks, Cathy and Gary! Mom defrosted our wedding cake for Sam and made me a gluten-free cake. Thanks, Mom again! Breakfast for days...

Also on the 15th was our friends Casey and Lana's baby Raleigh's first birthday. They had a BBQ and Raleigh managed to put lots of icing in his hair. Our friend Kit has his birthday on the 15th too. Greatest day in the world, apparently.

AND...Mandy was in town this weekend in part to see the babe. She's a semi-pro photographer and took TONS of pics of Ophelia. They are so cute! I can't wait to get them all, and be sure that I'll be posting many of them here.

No news: I haven't been posting much cause school has started and I have LOTS of reading to do. That's difficult when BG doesn't sleep as much anymore during the day, and demands to be carried around, facing outward, or she gets bored. And yes, of course I indulge her because I want a happy baby, a trusting baby, and I know you can't spoil a two month old, no matter what anyone tells me. Mondays are the hardest, where I'm at school from 12:45 till 7:30. And I commute using public transportation (bus/Metro passes free from Wash U), so I'm gone even longer. I end up with a really clean house (thanks, Mom!) and a happy baby (thanks, Mom and Sam!) but I'm exhausted when I get home and I still want to see her. I have class Wednesday days and Thursday evenings as well, but I'm only gone a few hours. So, point is, I may not post as much. I'll try to keep up.

Bad news: David Foster Wallace hung himself Friday night, at the age of 46. I share the sentiments of Radar blooger David Zweig here. While I didn't cry like I did at the death of songwriter Elliot Smith a few years back, I felt a pang of sadness that the world lost an incredibly inflammatory, insanely ridiculous, awesomely talented writer.

I read Infinite Jest in 2002. This is a book that has been called a modern Ulysses, is more than a 1000 pages long, and probably almost a third of those pages are footnotes. There are plotlines that occur only in the footnotes. This book is about addiction, and is an addiction. I literally had co-workers read it out loud to me when I had to do work and they didn't. I carried it with me everywhere for the month it took me to read it. I read it at lunch, I stayed up till 3 am finishing chapters, I snuck it under the register at work just to eek in a few words. It's brilliant. There's professional tennis and a disfigured, veiled public radio host on WYYY, paraplegic wheelchair assassins (from Canada, of course) and twisted tennis boarding school antics. There're incredibly real moments in twelve step meetings and glib Bostonian AA old-timers who yell "Live it up!" out the windows at winos.

There's a connection you feel with other people who've read Infinite Jest. Many people attempt to read it, but very few succeed in finishing it. You all know people who claim to have read certain books...You can't fake this one. Meeting someone who has is like stumbling onto another member of a secret society, someone who has "heard the squeak." I don't think I know anyone anymore who has read it. Those who introduced me to it have moved out of my life, mostly to become clowns and lighting technicians.

So read away, people!! Let this book ruin your life and make it fabulous all at once. And I'll know when you're done.

And to David Foster Wallace...Live it up!!