� Julia Keller, in "Double-Crossed" (Chicago Tribune today)

I always mean what I say at the time.

� Amy, here

Go read the Keller, it�s good in a not at all screechy or ax-grinding way and for me personally it�s capitalizing on the salutary state of mind that lingers after the PBS doc on Monday night. The bullet points at the end of the article are well done. And when is someone going to write an opera about the life and death of Rosalind Franklin? I�m serious.

Tonight dinner and trivia with Jerry and players TBA (am skipping Number Two this week) and tomorrow drinks with Vanessa and everyone�s favorite returning serviceman at everyone�s � and I do mean everyone�s � favorite Capitol Hill scenestering hole. Tomorrow also it�s nyet to the dacha, and I will pass over without comment the subject that came up this morning at coffee of how, no, I�ve never spent this much time with a beefrond before and, yes, it�s interesting to me that my hoarded privacy and autonomy have yet to feel impinged upon. I am wearing the rubberized cotton skirt today, and Steve�s cat kept trying to jump up on my lap and then sliding back off. I like the poor old kitty and always try to be kind to her, but I can�t deny it, that was funny and I made her do it a few times before I took pity and picked her up. The first theater of my semi-diet is breakfast: on a daily basis I plan to eschew the toast in favor of a grapefruit and a banana, except at brunch on weekends and of course once-a-week bacon is sacrosanct forever and ever, amen. This seems to work well because it makes me hungry around noon rather than two, so I end up on a less flaky eating schedule and less inclined to snack, up two fruits on the day, and with that virtuous start less likely to want sweets in the afternoon or before dinner. Also, now that I have that blender I can theoretically get back into smoothie mode, though there�s the small matter of where the blender would have to live for me to take advantage. I don�t know, we�ll see how it goes. Asparagus is on sale this week at QFC, and I got a bunch and roasted it with olive oil and then threw on a little bit of salt, and it was wonderful. I�ll get some more tonight.

Got e-mail yesterday from the Sorbonne-ified (ha!) JB, who has just moved to the suburbs of Paris with his girlfriend. I gave him my diary URL, I realize now, partly because I am practicing for one day having to do the same for Steve, who last night was quizzing me in an amiable and non-alcoholic manner, if you get my drift, over how I write about him in it: have I mentioned his felony convictions, the hair implants that didn�t take and that he is suing over, etc.? (For the felonies and plugs insert some other things he wouldn�t want me to tell about but which, duh, are his private business and therefore would be verboten topics even for someone whose own privacy restrictions are less militant than mine.) I once described the new diary, as opposed to the old time-bomb one � which I have already invited him to read, but he declined � as a daily documentary of sorts, a tracker of my moods and pursuits and whatever was going through my tiny little mind on the day I chose to write in it. Which, I also stressed, was not all that often, certainly not every day, so he shouldn�t think that it was a pathological affliction. But then last night he seemed caught off guard when I explicitly confirmed that I wrote about him in it, and then the questions started, and this was weird for me because, Dear Heart, what can you possibly have thought has exerted the major gravitational force on my m�s and p�s and whatevers for the past few months? Like, *obviously* I am going to be writing about you. I think that it�s those privacy restrictions that have made me so hardheaded over the issue of someone else�s diary. If it were I who knew someone who kept one, I might be idly curious but I would not, not wish to read it. I fear the devil I don�t know, and I would also fear loosing some kind of Heisenberg effect on the diary in question. But other people, those who brush their teeth over your shoulder, those who have never known a Weasel to teach them how low they have to lie, they don�t feel the same, and they don�t understand. They might take it personally, and that�s not what I want. I imagine that Steve will be at least an occasional reader of this page within a few months, and if that changes the diary in any respect, then oh well and who really cares, because that turn of events will still be about a hundred times more welcome than another way it could shake down. If you get my drift.

Not that I don�t like you for your own sweet and erudite self, Jim! Raise a glass and eat some cheese for me, won�t you?

My new diary will be six months old on Friday. Already Steve is in more than half of it, chronologically speaking. I told him that too.

I think sometimes about the world of pain that befell me over the word "lies" and the set of behaviors I glommed together under that faulty rubric. I�m not saying I was innocent in the escalation � nobody ever is � but I was careless, maybe uncharacteristically so considering my usual semantic, ahem, nitpicking, and every once in a while I feel almost compelled to explain myself, explain how much being honest truly does mean to me despite how I often can�t quite work out how to graft that on top of my hard-wired fearfulness and need to protect myself by means of that shifting impermeable membrane, explain it even though no one is around who would be moved by it or who would even listen. It comforts me to know that some people already understand.

One of the doctors here has the most charming, vivacious laugh I have ever heard. Perks me up just listening to her.