( continues...) throw a party back in 2003, when the show ended. One of the attendees was a guy in a Bite Me shirt. Towards the end of the night (well, closer to the morning), a girl decided to act according to his t-shirt's instruction (not anything serious, didn't even left teeth marks). He came to me, all puzzled. Not to justify the girl's act, but he really couldn't see a connection between the party's crowd, his t-shirt and the girl's actions, who saw this as an invitation.

Some highlights from the past month in my life:

Dating sucks. But dating a jackass is worse.

That. I had several dates in June, no jackasses, and all close but no cigar. I actually started to have doubts if I'm being too picky, until a friend who heard about one of them, realized she know who he was (and that she was also in love with him) replied instantly with "Shir, he's so out of your league!". Made me feel all better about rejecting the "well, he was nice, but I can't say anything else positive about him" folks.

One time my dad basically told me that women will corrupt me and turn me into a drug addict.

I suddenly feel like I understand a lot more the entertainment industry.

The other day I was reading my U.S. trip journal. Wow. I was so jaded. It's written almost as if someone bleached every shred of compassion out of me. I now understand why I was considered as "blunt" - it wasn't being Israeli abroad, as I suspected at first. It was about being me, then.

And I nearly killed my dad yesterday. Still on the angry/tired trainwreck with him. He's playing with his meds, and it's hardly fun for the whole family. I'm not home much, so my mother and sister get the most of the fun pack, but in many ways it's like raising a 5 year old. Only 5 year olds learn and grow, eventually, or so I've heard. I need to work on my "I'm listening and talking to you because I respect you and we're sometimes under the same roof, but not because I agree with your attitude toward things" approach, it was a long year and he is really on everybody's nerves.

And there were those Afghan Whigs shows here, last month (AKA, things I didn't expect to be present in, ever). I feel like I used up all of my vocabulary and 87% of internet pixels to talk about it already, so I'll just say I'm so, so very grateful and lucky for friends who get me interviews and introduced me to band members and say so much nice things about me to them. I'm still mind blown when I think of it.

And. Last but not least: Any chance I could use your help, American Buffistas, and especially Buffistas in Florida? I want to track down a phone number or an email address (preferably the later). It's my dad's cousin, which my family was last in touch with in 1986. In May I finally managed to drag my dad to Yad VaShem after years he talked about it, and we found there tons of fascinating documentation about our family, which raised, in turn, a lot of new questions (we spent 10 hours just on 5-6 family members. The documentation of the Red Cross is simply amazing. Every survivor in the database has a file with the route s/he went through the war. Every ghetto, concentration and death camp, with how many years/months they've been there. I never knew any of them - I was one year old in 1986 - but it felt so extraordinary, holding the hidden life of a family member in a shape of a paper form from an old archive, with just a few lines that answer so many questions and raise new ones. I want to come back for more, and track back the roots of my families. The Red Cross database is amazing enough to allow me to find out things such as this, and track them back to the mid 19th century).

I searched for my dad's cousin Facebook profile, but I only found one on linkedin which I couldn't get access to. Yellow Pages gave me two wrong numbers, and one number that always goes straight to an answering machine (and I'm *not* going to leave a message on a sensitive matter such as this; "hi, you don't know me, but I'm the daughter of..." and etc.). I don't even know if my grandmother's sister is still alive). (continued...)

( continues...)

I'd be happy for any advice, input or help in finding her contact details. I don't know if my grandmother's sister told anything to her side of the family, but my grandmother and grandfathers said nothing about the Holocaust. There were only ghost stories in the air, and the parts of stories their children got when the grown-ups thought they don't understand if they'll speak in Hungarian/Polish/German. And now, after decades, we know more - but not enough. I now know that my grandmother's sister and her parents were in Płaszów ghetto and later in Płaszów camp. I know that my grandmother's sister escaped that camp. I know that my grandmother managed to hide until '44 (we have no idea where), then was sent to Auschwitz for a few months, and was sent again for a work camp in North Germany in the summer of '44.

And knowing all of this, with the documentation is... well, it leaves The Afghan Whigs experiences in the dust. It is simply an amazing feeling of wonder and amazement. I'm so glad we went there.

So, yeah, I think that message is long enough as is, so I'll stop here.

Please remind me this post if I'll ever thought "oh, there's only 250 new messages in Bitches and I have a spare hour". Because it rarely works.

(Edited for grammar, as usual)

I, humm, wow. Three posts, really. First time that happens to me here.

I'm going to put the keyboard away from my hands for a while. I think this will be safest for all.

I, humm, wow. Three posts, really.

Impressive! That's the way to make an entrance. Welcome back, Shir.

Hiya Shir, welcome back!

Congrats to Strix on landing the plum gig and sympathy to P-C, it's a real bummer and I'm so sorry it happened to you.

I have a house full of kids who want donuts. Ugh. I don't even like donuts but I guess I'll go procure some.

Hi, Shir! Sorry you've been working so hard, but yay for raise and bonus! Good luck with finding your cousin; what an amazing journey that has been!

You say hole, I read basement opportunity.

ha!

omnis, "come see the awesome view from my bedroom" sounds like a great pick-up line.

P.-C., I'm so sorry that happened to you! That's a rotten thing.

Hi Shir!

I also saw this and thought of bt:

I like that. I will quibble about the king cobra - true, it's not a member of the genus Naja, but the term cobra tends to get applied more broadly. I'd go with "not a true cobra", but wouldn't restrict it further.

I'm also pretty sanguine about the "king" appellation, since the genus it does belong to (its only member) is Ophiophagus, which translates to the entirely accurate "snake-eater".

To balance things out, let's add to the list the musk ox, and one I came across just recently - African acacias are not members of the genus Acacia. Scientists discovered that all the species included in Acacia were not in fact monophyletic, and split them into five genera. Acacia now mostly consists of Australian wattle trees, despite that:

1. The African trees are usually called acacias and the Australian trees are usually called wattles;
2. The word "acacia" derives from the Greek word for thorn; most African acacias are thorny, while most Australian wattles are not; and
3. Back in 1773, Carl Linnaeus himself designated the genus Acacia to refer specifically to the African trees. The Australian wattles were only added later.

Anyone feeling like using a different name for my beloved Australian wattles (the golden wattle is in flower now and it is awesome), I recommend "Sugababes".

I'm feeling ridiculously exhausted. I'm not sure if this is purely physical or a combination of physical and emotional. (I've been pretty stressed out lately.) I'm in that boneless phase of exhaustion where you could fall asleep at any time and sleep for hours and then get up and be awake for a bit and do it again.

I'm not sure if this is purely physical or a combination of physical and emotional. (I've been pretty stressed out lately.) I'm in that boneless phase of exhaustion where you could fall asleep at any time and sleep for hours and then get up and be awake for a bit and do it again.

sumi, I get that. I think stress sucks all your energy, big time. I'd rather get a bad cold than be as stressed as I made myself over the past couple of weeks.

My feeling is that if you need the sleep, then do it. I finally got a good night's sleep last night -- about 10 hours or so -- and I'm still kind of tired. But better.

I'm in that boneless phase of exhaustion where you could fall asleep at any time and sleep for hours and then get up and be awake for a bit and do it again.

That's the state I've been in for about the last 13 years.