And the answer is.... YES!

Yes, my lemurs, against all laws of nature and probability, I asked, and she said yes. (The asking wasn't the improbable or unnatural part, trust me). Let me lay it out for you.

It was Friday night, a wildly dramatic and romatic evening planned. The flowers were delivered late in the evening. I made reservations at The Melting Pot, which is a rather romantic little fondue place nearby. We had late dinner reservations, so we had planned to do some shopping beforehand, but we got all dolled up and decided to have a champagne toast and relax a bit before going. Their special V-day dinner was several courses, beginning with (yet another) champagne toast, wine and cheese, followed by an incredible array of shrimp, lobster, filet mignon, and oh yes I think there may have been some broccoli or something in there, but we ate around that. And then, over the chocolate and the cheesecake, the card. With a Christopher Marlowe poem inside. And then, while she was flummoxed by poetry and the opiate capacities of the chocolate, I asked the burning question:

Are you going to eat the rest of that?

And then, while she was further flummoxed by that improbable non sequitur, I asked the real question:

Will you please marry me?

And the rest is history. She filed the restraining order on Saturday. Or so I had feared. But no, the love of my life gently and tearfully agreed to spend her life with me. I am beside myself. I am incapable of coming up with any non-cliche ways of describing this at the moment, but I'm sure I will have other opportunities as the months wear on. But I never thought I could be this happy. It never stops getting better.


I love you LK. Thank you for saying yes.


posted by MT at 7:15 PM |

A tip of the hat to the hydrocephalic cherubim out there...

In spite of the fact that I'm pretty happy these days and looking forward to a lovely and meaningful (and surprise-filled) V-day today, I can still appreciate the ascerbic and the dry wit about this (let's admit it) Hallmark-manufactured holiday. And in that realist spirit, I give you Mimi Smartypants describing some office decorations.

Someone on the other side of my office has decorated her cubicle with the freakiest Valentine's Day decorations, they are freaking me the freak out and I want you to come over here, hold my hand, and feed me Valium until I feel normal again. This woman's entire cube is covered with these big-headed children, "I Wuv You This Much," Precious Moments style, and I guess these hydrocephalic monsters are supposed to be in love? Or something. There is one in particular that I cannot deal with, it features the hydrocephalic boy and the hydrocephalic girl facing each other, with a lot of bubbly cartoon hearts around them, and they are holding a kitten between them. To me it looks like these children are moments away from tearing the kitten apart and stuffing its kitten flesh into their creepily similar pink rosebud mouths. Like they are just about to smear their extraordinarily creepy child-sized wedding clothes with kitten blood. I don't know about you, but hydrocephalic Precious Moments children with moist blank eyes dismembering and eating kittens does not exactly scream HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY to me, and on my way to the fax machine I have to run by this woman's cube with my eyes closed, and let us just hope she takes it down promptly on Monday because I do not think I can take it much longer.

I warms me that I probably would not have gone quite so rapidly to conjuring images of kitten blood on their pristine white seraphim garments. I think I may have turned a corner!


posted by MT at 12:51 PM |

"Can't talk...maintaining myself in a state of catlike readiness."
Marge Simpson

My negligence knows no bounds. Not only am I not writing, I'm not even reading anymore..I'm about a week behind on all my bloggy haunts and even the email is piling up. Spent this week in various cold places, behind closed doors and in stuffy rooms with stuffy docs who drone on and on. But at least I have my health; no anthrax or anything that I'm aware of.

So I'm particularly thrilled that now, at least, we have something to do when the Terrorist Warning Rainbow starts inching up towards the more alarming colors. I was beginning to think the goal was just to clench up -- or as LK said, hold your breath! Now at least we have pointless activity to engage in to go along with the pointless warnings. Tape up your windows! Spay the cat! Stockpile gummi worms and saltines! And for Shrub's sake, please please don't let the water in the toilet get too low. We should all go to my grandmother's house. She's got enough food in storage there to get us through the next ice age. Wanna come?



Ah, the Westin

Okay, there was one high point in the week. Conducting late groups in Philly on Tuesday, and the whole team was staying at the Westin on 17th street. Had an early morning flight the next day, so it made sense for me to stay overnight as well. Gotta love the Westin; hotels are generally hotels, but they sure do know how to put a comfortable bed together. LK thought it would be fun to meet me there and enjoy the poshness. And enjoy it we did! I got in around 11:45, and found the room candlelit from every corner, a couple of glasses of wine from the minibar, and LK. Mmmmmm....LK. Exactly what I needed after such a grueling day. We ordered room service the next morning and they pampered us like you would not believe. Our waiter rolled the tray in, seated us and served us with much careful attention. Even toasted the bread right there with his portable toaster and these nifty wooden tongs. It is the first time I have truly taken advantage of all of the amenities that come with this travel life. It was spectacular.

The V-Day is upon us!

I learned a statistic yesterday that estimates about 65% of men wait until the last minute to shop for a V-day gift. I suspect I saw most of them at the mall yesterday. I of course was not one of them, but I was in the vicinity looking for a new jacket for tonights festivities. Having a hoedown at the Melting Pot, fondue heaven. It's a very romantic place. Our reservations are late, but that gives us time to relax, enjoy a little wine and flowers, do some jewelry shopping...more on that later on. And we should be heading out just in time for the latest blizzard! Huzzah!



posted by MT at 10:12 AM |

Once again, the drums of war...

So it's been a harrowing kind of week, traveling in frantic fashion to cover for a colleague who had a family emergency. From the ridiculous to the sublime: a Holiday Inn Select in Dallas, to the Grand Hyatt in NYC. Actually, the Holiday Inn was much more impressive than I ever thought possible...good room service, even a jacuzzi in the room! But still...It's a Holiday Inn...
Anyway, I'm back, and in the periods between focus groups have been reading reading reading and flipping between the cable news programs. I grow distressed about all of the theater and glaring hypocrisy of the Shrub administration's position on what has always been an inevitable war with Iraq. Dubya has had a hard-on for this guy and his oilfields forever. Stop yanking us around.

So I found a few things that I thought I'd share, some insightful and intriguing ideas, and one good cartoon.


Click here for a good example of how Dubya's words will probably continue to come back and haunt him.


Tom Morello on War

This is from Rollingstone.com. Not sure who Tom Morello is (well they say he's Audioslave'slead guitarist, but that means nothing to me). But some of his views are fairly compelling and well-said.

"This is the first time in American history where an anti-war movement has been growing and strengthening prior to a war. In Vietnam, you know, it took five years of a blood-drenched war orgy before the first anti-war movements got off the ground. Now, we're already seeing a growing sentiment against this folly. I mean, any rational person would be against invading Iraq.


"Interestingly, once you travel outside of the Fox News-controlled U.S. media, the world is in total agreement with that thesis. Just the other day, we saw huge anti-war demonstrations in Britain. Tony Blair's government may fall over this. "And it's really criminal: It's a moral indictment of Bush, and his administration, to be using the memory of the victims of 9/11 to proceed with his own geopolitical and personally political agenda. It's a crime, and we should hold him accountable for it."

The pen is still mightier...

A similar thought surfaced in a NY Times article today (paper copy). I reprint here without permission. Byline is Julie Salamon. Don't sue me, Julie.

When Sam Hamill, a poet and founder of Copper Canyon Press in Port Townsend, Wash., was invited to a poetry symposium by Laura Bush last month, his response was to send e-mail messages to 50 friends and colleagues asking them for antiwar poems to send to Mrs. Bush. In four days he received 1,500 responses.

"I didn't know there were 1,500 poets in America," he said. After learning of the protest, the White House postponed the symposium on the works of Emily Dickinson, Langston Huges, and Walt Whitman. Noelia Rodriguez, Ms. Bush's press secretary, said: "While Mrs. Bush respects and believes in the right of all Americans to express their opinions, she, too, has opinions and believes that it would be inappropriate to turn what is intended to be a literary event into a political forum."

For those opposing war with Iraq, the cancellation of the poetry symposium symbolizes the part the arts can play in politics. Hearing the drumbeat of a new war, through readings, concerts, art exhibitions and theater, artists are trying to recapture their place as catalysts for public debate and dissent.

If the immediate artistic response to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington was the theater of grief, some of the nation's poets, musicians, writers, actors and playwrights have moved on to the theater of protest. The prospect of an imminent military confrontation with Iraq has incited a new sense of creative urgency.

"I don't think it's an accient that in totalitarian societies they always arrest the artists first, though we don't seem particularly dangerous," said Andre Gregory, the theater director and actor. "I think the responsibility of the artist, each of us in our way, is to tell the truth. And the truth generally involves a great deal of ambiguity, and in times of war ambiguity and paradox are the first things to go. People want simple black and white answers."

Yes indeed.

posted by MT at 5:37 PM |

Let it snow!


posted by MT at 4:40 PM |