external abdominal obliques

I love the library. I found exactly what I needed; a book with an illustration I could color-xerox, and now I have it on my desk. Muscles of the Human Body, Anterior View. Now I can identify what hurts, what's stiff, and which funky little groups I'm supposed to be learning to use independently of the others. Yow. I think I've even picked out the muscle that lets me wiggle my ears--the temporalis.

Just got home from a party at Poi's. It was fun--a lot of Burners, some of whom I'd met at the Crashland Inn--nice to see people again. Poi spun fire for the first time at home, nicely, and we all stood around watching a slideshow of burningman photos being projected on the wall of his house.The cute EMT Almeida'd been chatting up in BRC was there, and it looks like they got into a little deeper conversation tonight. I'm crossing my fingers for her.

When people asked me why I was picking up all the beer bottle caps, Poi got out his necklace, and now there are a few people on me to make one for them. I promised the guy who manages the space outside my studio that I wouldn't pour again until I had some kind of ventilation in place--I'm trying to figure out how to hack together a fume hood--used ones online start at a couple grand (!) and I don't really need that much protection. So, it was great getting the affirmation. And the bottle caps. I need to start looking for copyright-free art for those caps that I plan to sell, and maybe drawing some backgrounds myself...scary...

Do you ever pick up a book and know within the first few pages that it's going to be really fun reading it? I just started Anne Soffee's Snake Hips: Belly Dancing and How I Found True Love and I can see it's going to be a hoot. She begins at an airport Holiday Inn in Richmond, Virginia, backstage at a big bellydance performance. I wish I didn't have to work in the morning, I'd stay up reading until the sky lightened. Maybe tomorrow.

So I've been musing on romance a lot over the past several months, and a conversation I had with Almeida has catalyzed an idea that makes sense. We were talking about someone she's interested in, a guy who makes less money than she does, and she was wondering if he was hesitant to pursue her because he was intimidated by that fact. So we started wondering if men generally believe that they have to do elaborate things for women, and feel trapped by it. "He could make me dinner," she said, "and it would mean more to me than if he took me someplace fancy and spent a lot of money on me." So we got into it--it's the idea that counts, maybe some women require high-ticket treatment but we (and our female friends) don't, etcetera etcetera.

The idea that has started to gain currency in my mind is that a romantic gesture--not romance, per se, but a gesture--fits at least two criteria, neither of which have anything to do with capital outlay.

1. While it may benefit the "gesturer", it's oriented to the recepient and may not immediately benefit the giver at all.

2. It is a way of letting someone know that you're thinking about them even when they're not around. This is really important to my conception of romance. Even the littlest, humblest gift, chosen with an understanding of the intended recipent, their likes dislikes and so on, can delight the recepient. In this case, "gift" is a very open concept, and could include things like forwarding a link, say.

Can barely keep my eyes open. Laaaaaaaayter.