Kelly's room is tiled and grouted, but it's still empty. I think her dad is moving in furnature today, and I'll rearrange everything this afternoon. Beth is back in town, and we all had dinner at the Bamboo Club last friday, so I guess I can't write anything bad about her anymore. I owe her $10 bucks too.

I looked up Kelly's uber-slow Compaq PC online, and according to ebay, it's worth less than $65. I didn't find a computer like hers, but I found a comperable one that has slightly more RAM. Kelly's computer only has 48MB of RAM! That's why it's so slow. Unfortunately, the max for her computer is 64MB, which probably won't make much of a difference. There's no way around it except to buy a new computer.

Kelly and I are going to be staying in the guest bedroom where there is plenty of room for us to sleep next to each other. Thus, I won't be ditching her to sleep in my own comfortable, calif-king-sized bed.

Summer is here and it is f*ckin' hot! Yesterday was the thirteenth anniversary of the hottest day in Arizona history (122 degrees). That was the first year I came to AZ...what a welcome that was! Anyways, Kelly is getting her room redecorated. Her dad is tearing out the carpet and putting in tile. Unfortunately, that will take a day or two. I have no idea where we will sleep. To be honest, I'd rather sleep in my own bed than on a couch. The reason for staying over at Kelly's house is to be able to sleep next to her, and I can't do that on a couch.

Haven't heard from Beth yet. I wonder what happened to her.

I just heard Beth is coming back from New Zealand this weekend. She's been helping her boyfriend with "field work". She's going to get in trouble for keeping all of us in the dark about her travel plans. Either she's always like this, or she's experiencing the alternate universe of relationships wherein everybody else except for one's significant other ceases to exist. I know that happened to me when I first started going out with Kelly. I didn't see or talk to Clint in over a month. I still really don't.

Boy do I suck at petrology. I seem to write the same things over and over again. Maybe it's because I'm just looking at cherts, which is basically just quartz in different forms, with some carbon thrown in for color (if black can be considered a color). It's also boring. If you think petrology lab was boring, try looking at a bunch of slides of the same thing!

In other news, while biking Lisa got run over by another cyclist and bent her rim. It turns out the new student worker in the geo office was the other rider, so Lisa's been spending all afternoon plotting how to get revenge, or $50 to repair her bike. Note to self: do not EVER make Lisa angry.

Here's another reason why Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides is so good:

As little children Milton and Tessie had shared the same bedrom and bathtub, but that was long ago. Up until recently, Milton thought of Tessie as his prim cousin. Whenever one of his friends expressed interest in her, Milton told them to give up the idea. "That's honey from the icebox," he said, as Artie Shaw might have. "Cold sweets don't spread."

And then one day Milton came home with some new reeds from the music store. He hung his coat and hat on the pegs in the foyer, took out the reeds, and balled the paper bag up in his fist. Stepping into the living room, he took a set shot. The paper sailed across the room, hit the rim of the trashcan, and bounced out. At which point a vioce said, "You better stick to music."

Milton looked to see who it was. He saw who it was. But who it was was no longer who it had been.

Theodora was lying on the couch, reading. She had on a spring dress, a pattern of red flowers. Her feet were bare and that was when Milton saw them: the red toenails. Milton had never suspected that Theodora was the kind of girl who would paint her toenails. The red nails made her look womanly while the rest of her--the thin pale arems, the fragile neck--remained as girlish as always. "I'm watching the roast," she explained.

"Where's my mom?"

"She went out."

"She went out? She never goes out."

"She did today."

"Where's my sister?"

"4-H." Tessie looked at the black case he was holding. "That your clarinet?"

"Yeah."

"Play something for me."

Milton set his instrument case down on the sofa. As he opened it and took out his clarinet, he remained aware of the nakedness of Tessie's legs. He inserted the mouthpiece and limbered up his fingers, running them up and down the keys. And then, at the mercy of an overwhelming impulse, he bent forward, pressing the flaring end of the clarinet to Tessie's bare knee, and blew a long note.

She squealed, moving her knee away.

"That was a D flat," Milton said. "You want to hear a D sharp?"

Tessie still had her hand over her buzzing knee. The vibration of the clarinet had sent a shiver all the way up her thigh. She felt funny, as though she were about to laugh, but she didn't laugh. She was staring at her cousin, thinking, "Will you just look at him smiling away? Still got pimples but thinks he's the cat's meow. Where does he get it?"

"All right," she answered at last.

"Okay," said Milton. "D sharp. Here goes."

That first day it was Tessie's knees. The following Sunday, Milton came up from behind and played his clarinet against the back of Tessie's neck. The sound was muffled. Wisps of her hair flew up. Tessie screamed, but not long. "Yeah, dad," said Milton, standing behind her.

And so it began. He played "Begin the Beguine" against Tessie's collarbone. He played "Moonface" against her smooth cheeks. Pressing the clarinet right up against the red toenails that had so dazzled him, he played "It Goes to Your Feet." With a secrecy they didn't acknowledge, Milton and Tessie drifted off to quiet parts of the house, and there, lifting her skirt a little, or removing a sock, or once, when nobody was home, pulling up her blouse to expose her lower back, Tessie allowed Milton to press his clarinet to her skin and fill her body with music. At first it only tickled her. But after a while the notes spread deeper into her body. She felt the vibrations penetrate her muscles, pulsing in waves, until they rattled her bones and made her inner organs hum.

Milton played his instrument with the same fingers he used for the Boy Scout salute, but his thoughts were anything but wholesome. Breathing hard, bent over Tessie with trembling concentration, he moved the clarinet in circles, like a snake charmer. And Tessie was a cobra, mesmerized, tamed, ravished by the sound. Finally, one afternoon when they were all alone, Tessie, his proper cousin, lay down on her back. She crossed one arm over her face. "Where should I play?" whispered Milton, his mouth feeling too dry to play anything. Tessie undid a button on her blouse and in a strangled voice said, "My stomach."

"I don't know a song about a stomach," Milton ventured.

"My ribs, then."

"I don't know any songs about ribs."

"My sternum?"

"Nobody ever wrote a song about a sternum, Tess."

She undid more buttons, her eyes closed. And in barely a whisper: "How about this?"

"That one I know," said Milton.

I'm baaaack! Field camp was a blast, given that you're the TA. Of course my life is in chaos now, and I'm in the middle of competing routines and habits, but with my lovely girlfriend by my side, I can overcome anything. By the way, as much as I hate to say it, Nalgene bottles are better than Coleman bottles.