jennifer vs lizard

we have hired domestic help. her name's jennifer. (yes, she's indian.) she speaks english, works 6 days a week, cleans and cooks 3 meals each day, does laundry and the household shopping, and asks to be paid monthly about as much as we would pay someone at home to do the same work for like an hour.

there's a tiny gecko in the apartment. jennifer discovered it the other day when she was cleaning the window grates. she screeched and darted around the apartment in a frenzied flight of panic. according to her, if you make the lizard angry, it'll bite and you'll die from the venom. ... our first indian urban legend!

i have a cold. it sucks the big balls.

we went to a photo opening the other night. it was downtown in a big, airy loft space. there were lots of photographers and canon people and models there. the work itself was pretty disappointing, but m was finally amongst his own. it was a good thing.

to get to the opening, we hired an a.c. car for the evening. at any time between 1am and 7am, the drive from here to downtown is a breezy 15 minutes. at ALL other hours of the day and night, it takes a minimum of an hour and a half. the traffic is insufferable, stop/go and stifling hot. about 1/3 of the way there, the friggin a.c. in the a.c. car stopped working. every time we turned it on, the car stalled, and the clutch was completely shot. we were with amazing imam, who has no shame whatsoever and absolutely refuses to be uncomfortable unnecessarily. he hopped out of the car, opened the passenger car of the car next to us (empty but for the driver), and convinced him to take us downtown! we rode the rest of the way in icy cold, euphoric bliss.