Oh no you don't - just a little LATE!! I had to pick up a rental car cause some little tipsy girl smacked into my car. Loud enough for the boys in the hood to wander over. Not a scratch on either of us. Good thing she left her number though cause my steering got knocked out of alignment. A couple days over the GG Bridge holding on REALLY TIGHT. Of course the parts didn't come in on time etc. and the coolest thing is that the guy from the body shop is paying for a car for me for the day so I can get to my job tomorrow. Everybody with body damage go see Eric Deo at Stan Carlson Body Shop on Frederick Street in the Haight. Good guy. CRASH OF THE TITANS

Nuttin' today.

I'm beaming lika a proud parent - an orchid I raised from a three-inch baby is blooming! Tiny little fringed yellow orchids, delicate and lovely. Several of these blooms in a cluster. What a thrill! My orchids tend to be pretty idle. I have only ever had one re-bloom from when I bought it, and the bloom was a mutant, so this one was especially cool since it had never bloomed in it's life. I have some orchids I think might be dead but it can be hard to tell because they can all of a sudden show green bits again. I was always semi-afraid of orchids until an orchid grower described the best care technique as "benign neglect". Well, I can definitely do THAT!!! Piece o' cake.
FLOWER KONNDOUMIKA

We are having our bathrooms repaired and retiled (in non-matching to the original color tile) by our Chinese landlady's brother-in-law. At least we think that's what he is. I don't believe he is actually a contractor of any kind but it seems like his skills have improved since he taped all the pipes together at some point in the history of the house. The landlady is choosing to ignore that all the fences on the property are lying in the yard, and instead chooses to complain about the way we prune the pine tree, and about the sink that was cracked at least 10 years ago. She swears that a toilet that we complained about running never ran in the other house she installed it in (I guess 70 gallons a month doesn't consitute "running") but since we replaced that toilet ourselves with a "flush-it-six-times-at-least low-flow" model the point is moot. Anyway, I won't get to take a shower for a while. Too bad I work in public. PORCELAIN CHINA VAGINA

Events like the shuttle disaster always creep me out because I can't help but wonder how long they knew they were going to die before they did. I'm sorry, I can't help it, too many Irwin Allen movies. Morbid, horrible, all that. I'm sure it will be revealed to me in a made-for-TV movie soon enough. Exciting visual effects of astronauts bursting into flames and shooting like tiny comets into the atmosphere. Would be nice to know they burst into these kinds of flames first: LUST IN SPACE