Sara Ryan

I’m back. The rest of the conference was colored by the way it started for me. But I had so many great conversations with so many cool people while I was there that my undercurrent of sadness mostly stayed an undercurrent. And today I was engaged in my standard re-entry practice of reading assorted conference [...]

Less than half of what we dug out. I know a girl who has this same dollhouse. This had to go in the ‘food and chemicals’ pile. Refrigerators and other appliances are called ‘white goods.’ We had to take a break while the city workers hauled the first load away. I took this from the [...]

Everyone was very close on the guessing game. My friend works here, and she sells costumes, wigs, and makeup. This time tomorrow, I’ll be at the airport again, headed to New Orleans on a redeye flight. It seems somehow appropriate to arrive in the city exhausted and uncomfortable, as I’m sure a lot of residents [...]

A friend of mine asks these questions often in the course of her job: Will you be doing anything athletic? Are you likely to perspire? Do you need to be comfortable? Are you going for sexy, silly, or ironic? Oil based or water? Guess what she does for a living.

Maybe this is somebody’s initials, or a worrisome threat in a code I cannot crack, but I prefer to think of it simply as an exclamation:

When I’m hosting a friend I haven’t seen in a while, and we’re out getting groceries, running errands, and engaging in other standard activities, all my habits suddenly seem utterly bizarre: the food I buy, the establishments I visit in the course of said errand-running, etc. Does this happen to anyone else?

How excellent to open an unexpected package and find…pants! Thanks, dirtylibrarian! I’m wearing the blue pair right now! Y’all: what’s the best surprise you’ve gotten in the mail?

“Life Drawing: with a new graphic memoir, cartoonist Alison Bechdel proves she’s more than just a Dyke to Watch Out For.” Fun Home is amazingly good.

Plastic horses, explained. (Click “horses” on the sidebar at left.)

Back, and exhausted. It is not as clever as you’d think to have walls painted in your absence, because when you get back, you have to move all the furniture again. Which makes you think about rearranging it. Which makes you actually rearrange it, several different ways. Which makes you exhausted. Anyway. In the undisclosed [...]