Stuck!

Leina had quite a scare at the airport last night. She was taking a red eye into DC (that's right, not to LA--someone got his weekends mixed up) for the social work conference. After she got dropped off at the airport and her ride was long gone and it was pretty close to the time that her flight was going to leave, Leina discovered that her driver's license was not with her! Horror of horrors! She had evidently removed it from her purse one night in the past week when she went out clubbing and forgot to return it to her wallet.

Leina did not panic, however. She made a quick calculation that it would be impossible for Charles to return to her home and pick up her ID and get it to her before the flight left. And though she was without an official, government-issued ID, she did have her diminutive stature and her charm, as well as her old student ID. And it worked! She cased out the three different ID-checking people at security and chose the sweetest looking TSA agent, and she gave her the whole story, embellished only slightly, about being held up and giving the criminal her dummy wallet stuffed with newspaper, which happened to accidentally have her real ID in it.

For the flight home, Leina will face the same problem. She may call the airline first and see how to avoid the debacle at the airport. If Leina happens to read this entry before then, she should take this advice: swear up and down to the security officers that she is only 15 and therefore doesn't need official, government-issued ID.

Another wedding

Last night Leina had her blogographer and his wife over for dinner. It was a sadly unchaotic evening, aside from the the superlastminute aspect of the whole thing. They ate homemade pesto and Greek Salad in a Sausage (honestly) from Trader Joes. The sausage tasted how it sounds--great! Why it took until the 21st century for someone to invent salad in a sausage will go down as one of the great mysteries of our civilization.

Leina, after going to DC last weekend, is going to LA this weekend for her friend's wedding. Yes, another wedding. Everyone wants Leina to come to their weddings. She has fun, she dances with the little cousins of the groom, occasionally even wearing a tie on her head as she gets down and it gets caught on film. And she is always blindly supportive of the bride, even if it means wearing a bright pink dress that is way too big for her.

So her friend who's getting married met Leina in Japan when they were studying there together. Then he met his wife a little later, doing speed dating still in Japan. Leina won't have to wear a pink dress this time--she's going to wear a lavender tanktop and some sort of slacks.

Interview

Leina is going to be out of town this weekend, back in DC working on P.R. for social workers. She's hurredly trying to conduct interviews to finish her thesis. Today she interviewed an elderly Japanese caretaker. He was very nice, and Leina wanted to tell him how nice he was, but she didn't. Instead, she politely listened to him for three hours spin yarns about how he used to take the bus to the Safeway across town to purchase his bottled water then take the bus all the way back unless someone gave him a ride. Three hours down the drain and nothing too good to show of it. So Leina made up some quotes that she thought he would have said if she had only asked the right questions and threw them into the thesis.

Then she came home and tasted the limoncello she is making from the sour oranges from her backyard to see how it was. It tasted like lemony alcohol. She wasn't sure if that was how it was supposed to taste or not. Either way she decided that she would be drinking very little of this beverage herself.

Premature accolades

It has come to my attention that I was a bit premature in declaring victory over Leina's thesis. Alas, this battle has not yet subsided. While I stand factually by each and every word of the previous report, the fact that she had turned in her thesis was not intended to imply that it had been accepted. She's close, though. Today she met with her advisor for two and a half hours and the good news is that Leina only needs to interview two more people and do some more research--two poeple with whom she has already scheduled appointements, I might add.

Leina was really sick last week but she is feeling better. Leina always shares her leftovers with Angie and Angie gratefully accepts and showers her with accolades. But when Angie cooks and offers to share her victuals with Leina, Leina never takes her up on it. Perhaps she doesn't like Angie's cooking, but we know she does because if she didn't, then she definitely would eat Angie's cooking to be nice. And that's unlikely, too; Angie may be a little heavy-handed with the salt but she is an excellent cook. So Angie made chicken soup for Leina the other day, offered some to Leina who was sick, and, of course, was denied.

a hiatus

It has been some time since Leina's life has been vividly rehashed in blog form. And that is beacause her life has been boring. Leina has been sick, too. Angie was gone for the weekend so Leina had the house to herself again.

She finally turned in her thesis and it is being reviewed. When asked what she will do with herself now that she has a degree, she said, "I don't know, find a job. Go on a trip somewhere cheap." So if you're in the Walnut Creek area, look for Leina this week.

Editing

Leina had another infamous dinner at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Turner, the parents of the fair wife of your narrator. The meal was quite fancy, shortribs in an East meets West Bass Ale and hoisen sauce gravy. Leina only disappeared twice to copy edit her thesis, which she is determined to turn in shortly. She brought rice crispy treats for desert.

This afternoon Leina went up to Marin (where there is ample parking) to the Buddhist church that her grandfather founded to celebrate Buddha's birthday. To an atheist like your narrator who is especially ignorant of the Eastern religions, it came as somewhat of a surprise that Siddhartha's birthday was celebrated. Leina was asked to elaborate on this tradition--was it a Kwanzaa-esque imitation of the incredibly successful marketing of Jesus's birthday, or was this something as old as Siddhartha himself? Leina never got around to explaining it due to a long story about a cousin forgetting about Daylight Savings Time and having to pick up and drop off relatives, but one can find out a bit about it here and learn that they were actually celebrating six days early.