Let's make a deal.

I've been walking this week, trying to get Leory and me back in condition before I end up like Jabba the Hutt, massive and sluglike and stuck chained to a sulky slave girl in a metal bikini top. And I have to say this about my walks: I am so glad I didn't have to move elsewhere to find a job, because while you know how much my house rocks (no, it does, really), what you may not know is that my neighborhood rocks too. It's what you sort of knew neighborhoods were like before urban decay and white flight and anonymous suburbia blighted the land, but don't get to see much nowadays on account of the blight. People are out gardening, and they stop you to chat and to thrust unidentified flower bulbs in your hands, and tell you that the house across the street from you is the oldest house in Macon and used to be a trading post and Jefferson once slept there, and discuss dogs, and ask you if YOU GOT A GODDAMNED PARKING TICKET TOO, and they are on their porches drinking iced tea, and sitting on the stoops of their apartment buildings, and walking and running and playing soccer in the streets.

I am so happy to be here. I wish you were here, too. Everybody should live in a neighborhood like this.

:::

I read a post the other day out in free-range blogland, someone asking her readers to post their relationship dealbreakers. She got hundreds of comments, ranging from the preposterous (a man who once cried "tallyho!" during the crucial moment in bed -- I would kind of like this, though it might tend to set me off into giggles) to the shallow (there are a surprising number of people who would never in a million years date a man with back hair) to the quite sensible (no abusers, if you please). And I've been thinking off and on about my own dealbreakers ever since, but to tell you the truth I don't really have but a couple and they aren't very interesting. I much prefer thinking about the dealmakers, you know, the things I have a knee-jerk attraction to in people. Some of them are these:

• Pale skinny dark-haired possibly-bespectacled big-nosed people (hence my conviction that Adrian Brody and Angelica Huston are two of the sexiest people in the universe). Also in the looks department, I like prematurely grey hair, crows-feet, and long bony hands.



• inherent kindness: the sort that seems to flow naturally and has no ulterior motive



• curiosity/enthusiasm: I don't care so much about a person's IQ -- well, okay, that's not exactly true. My point is, though, that while constantly-peppy cheerleader types get on my nerves a bit, I like questing souls better than static ones, and that's more important to me than measurable intelligence. It delights me more, to see that someone is capable of being delighted.



• expert-level skills: sort of related to the point above. Bonus points if they're able to do something that I cannot. Like particle physics, or walking in stilettos, or phrenology.



• subtle-but-genuine nonconformity: as a subtle but ironclad iconoclast, I love people who aren't in the least interested in conventionality for conventionality's sake. But I also like those people who pick their battles, you know? People equally uninterested in unconventionality for unconventionality's sake. It's a fine line, but it's there.



• bookworminess: It'd be nice but not necessary to overlap in reading material; what I really like, though, is people who understand why exactly it is that I cannot go to bed without having read something during the day, or who are drawn irresistibly to my bookshelves because they must know what's on them.

There are probably more. But my dog is reminding me, quite forcefully, that I have not fed him, and so I go to feed. But I'm wondering. What are some of your dealmakers?

Sunday Bloody Sunday

I'm sure everyone has seen this -- I'm usually the last -- but.

Dubya does U2