In The Words Of Wilson Phillips, "Hold On"

will be back soon.

(This is the envelope in which the Bed & Breakfast delivered my room key and the most interesting written interpretation of my name I've seen in years.  By now I'm used to people finding "Siegel" a more intuitive spelling than "Seigel," which is mildly bewildering because "Sie" looks as if it rhymes with pie, and many of these people have heard my name spoken out loud.   A contract that came to my andreaseigel.com email address last week pulled the well-worn flip-flop, and the nice ladies of the Brandeis University National Women's Committee put the more German looking version of me on a bookplate inside one of the Learned Research Journals acquired by their libraries.

Somewhere in the stacks a young, dilligent student thinks this kind appreciation is going out to:

Andrea Siegel, clothing and fashion theorist (caption on the photo came with the photo- I wholeheartedly question the cut of the pants):

Andrea Siegel, Massachusetts real estate agent, who recently donated her hair to "Locks of Love"?

 

Andrea Siegel, Immunology & Molecular Pathogenesis grad student at Emory, who is obviously wayyyyy better at science than I am?

Or any of a number of my evil near-twins with the wonky i's.  I have very few regrets in my life, but one of them is that I never made the effort to collect all of my Starbucks cups, which have featured more creative manglings of my first name than belonged in the trash.  I know I mumble and I know I have a monotone that camoflauges my speech inside the pillowy hum of the air conditioner, but there are versions so fantastical, so dreamy I can't properly recall them, far better than the "Delawndra's" and "Handree's" that I can.

Anyway, my time at the Bed & Breakfast helped me to finally put together why I loathe Bed & Breakfasts-- because who wants to feel like a personal guest?

And now I need some time to pull things back together in L.A.

Comments

[big daddy]

It's easy--I before E except after Seigel

[Bonacker]

"I loathe Bed & Breakfasts-- because who wants to feel like a personal guest?"

I can answer that, because I used to turn my house near the ocean into a bed and breakfast during "the season" to make extra money.

The answer is that, unlike you (and me), a lot of people want just that. They want to talk and mingle with the other guests, nose around, ask you where you got that thing on the mantle and how old your cat is and where to go for dinner.

Having a guest house was the closest I will come to being a whore. In many cases I was not only selling shelter and an omelette, but selling myself as someone's fake friend and providing an illusion to the customers that they were weekend guests at a real friend's beach house.

[Cheryl]

Inconveniently, there is a children's book editor named Cheryl Klein, spelled exactly the same way I spell my name. She blogs about books and stuff, so any Googler could easily confuse the two of us. I showed up to do a reading at UC Riverside last year and was dismayed/delighted to see posters around campus featuring a photo and bio of the other Cheryl. I'm hoping it will be worth millions someday, like an upside down postage stamp.

[kim]

yes yes laundria/gabrielle