I go online, and my breath catches in my chest until I hear three little words: You’ve got mail.

it was the last week of my birthday month. thank you for the secret luck wishes, they’ve helped me take unexpected holiday and ride around afghanistan on my horse with my dog and eat tacos. i’d like a little more, if you have some to spare.

the week was nice enough. i visited the office. had dinner with becky avery on the 40th floor. great hummus. the vegetarian duck was a filthy bitter mushroom but everything else was delicious. except the creamed spinach tasted like fish. but the mashed potato was wow good, and the brocolli.

zippy the zip came visit and i made white girl tacos with ground beef and taco seasoning and the old el paso crunchy shells. my mother and me used to make that when everyone else was out of town, we’d get one of those old del paso boxes and a lettuce and some chicken and then we’d sit on the floor and eat it. that’s the only times i really remember us eating dinner with the TV off.

another good meal today too. we went out for eid for dinner and my waiter told my girlfriend i looked like a dead pakistani woman. great tagine. what else is there?

what else is there

i’m tired, a little nervous, everything’s gonna be okay. tomorrow we must all shower and eat well and worship the sun.

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p.s.

maybe Greg Kinnear had a point, in his opening lines of 90s romcom You’ve Got Mail:

Listen to this: the entire work force of the state of Virginia had to have Solitaire removed from their computers because they hadn’t done any work in six weeks.

You know what this is, you know what we’re seeing here? We’re seeing the end of Western civilization as we know it.

Name one thing that we’ve gained from technology. One thing.

You think this machine’s your friend, but it isn’t.

had a really big week. helped with a docs day at work, had notepads made. everybody involved did a great job and we had lots of fun.

had a couple of lovely days and evenings with the little birdie.

made doogh and sparkly pink with my drinkmate omnifizz.

running around robbing banks all whacked out on scooby snacks.

more later. wish me luck.

a lot happening at work at the moment. let’s wait and see.

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the data powered spiral to the bottom. imagine doing something because you thought it was a good idea. not anymore. now you need data to back it up. but if you want to do something brand new, something without precedent, what do you do? look at data for similar projects? well there’s no such thing as similar when it comes to magic. and things that work are magic. survey people? well it’s very difficult to communicate an idea. sometimes the only way to communicate it is to show it, but then it already has to exist. so what on earth are we going to do? we can’t just keep repeating these aesthetic copies of what went before. this can’t be all there is.

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i feel a bit sick, maybe i ate some bad fish. thursday was a long day, but it was so beautiful at the end. it’s nice to walk around and have a little burrito and walk around. zips handed over my birthday present. imported from italy. it’s a dolce & gabbana bialetti french press. it’s fantastic. i haven’t received many birthday presents in my life from people i’m not yet related to. i’ve had so many coffees from it already.

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i’d forgotten how strong a psychological boon it is to have such a clean and shiny home. it stays with you everywhere, even when you are walking around outside.

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rejoice!