Twisted, Nostalgia, Moving

I like to braid hair. Mine, friends, my nieces. I would braid Eleanor's but she just doesn't have enough yet (though I did manage to get a bow in it the other day!)

I just like it. It's soothing and pretty and I like it. I've been doing it for over 20 years now (which, when I figured that out, I immediately felt quite old) so my hands just sort of know what to do. I can braid my own hair just as easily as a head that's not mine. If I think about it and pay attention, I can do a dutch braid. Fishbone braids are a piece of cake and I even learned how to do a 4-strand round braid. What I can't manage is a rope braid. It is my nemesis. You twist the individual strands one way and then the rope the other way which makes my brains fall out of my head. I know the MECHANICS, how it SHOULD work, but my hands refuse to obey my head. I can sort of do it on someone else's head, but not mine. Except once, when I did, and now I think that I can, but I CAN'T and  without replicating the results it's not a triumph but a fluke.

So, my iPod got stolen so I've been listening to cds, which isn't bad at all. It's been really nice. And a bit nostalgic because when I went through my cds to grab some from my car, apparently I was channeling a little 2001--the year, not the movie, or book that it's based on. What I mean is that every cd that I grabbed is reminding me of college, specifically the year I moved into the Ghetto Chateau with my Nebraska girls and worked at the college radio station and wrote REALLY bad poetry with my friend Andrew and it's been a nice trip down memory lane. Which reminds me of the article that Andrew wrote for the Daily Nebraskan about how music affects memories and it had the very scientific test along with it. You were supposed to put on a cd, go make out with someone, and then months/years later listen to the same cd and see if you remembered who you were making out with. Well, I wasn't making out with anyone in 2001, so it's easy enough to remember. But I remember Andrew's white Toyota something that we rode around in and deciding that Whatshisface from OkGo made Robert Smith noises. And I remember driving up and down O St. looking for parking so I could meet Erin at YiaYia's while listening to Alkaline Trio. So, I'd say that it works.

I have this habit of always looking at houses/apartments/neighborhoods and deciding whether or not I'd like to live there whenever I'm driving. It's not because of any sort of wanderlust or desire to move. I hate moving. I hate packing and unpacking. I hate finding a new grocery store and transferring my prescriptions to the new CVS and deciding whether or not to keep the same dentist/optometrist/vet from the last house--and that's just when you move across town. But that's not the point I was trying to make. The thing is, I have some very weird rules about my dream house. I don't mean perfectly reasonable things like "a master bathroom with a tub and room for 2 butts at the same time." I mean truly irrational things. For example, my barbie dream house would be on a 1 word, easily pronouncable, easily spelled street. Having lived on Pope's Creek Circle and Caymus Court, I long for simplicity. Also, I don't want any one word that you have to specify is one word--combination words are right out. I'd like a house number that is 3 or 4 digits long. Not 1, 2 or 5. 6 is right out. I want a front porch that you can stand on and be dry if it is raining, and a mail box on that porch.

That's all the randomness my brain has in it at this moment. Now, back to my sleeping baby.

Better run, better run, Faster than my mullet!

Ok, so there's this song, by Foster the People, and the actual lyric is "faster than my bullet" (and this is going to be a bulleted post, so there's the connection, ok?) but someone on Twitter said "mullet" and now I only sing those words. Mullets are better than bullets anyway.

• Have you ever had a brilliant idea for a mix-tape*, only to realize that what you really had was a couple of great songs that go well together, but not a real... theme or motif or reason to built a playlist? Yeah, I have one of those right now. 2 songs that are just killer together, and then a bunch of vauge ideas. The whole thing is full of songs that I like by bands that I think I should like and might like if I investigated any of their other music, but haven't gotten that far yet. As a theme for a mix-tape, that isn't the best I've ever come up with, though probably not the worst either. "Chelsea Danger" by The Fratellis followed by "Flourescent Adolescent" by Arctic Monkeys. Then maybe "The Polite Song" by The Bird and The Bee... I don't know, I kind of get lost after that. Do I want to put some Temper Trap on there to transition to The XX? Santagold? Metric? Do I want to try to figure out what goes well with that one Vampire Weekend song I like? I don't know. It's percolating. Oh, I should put that Jerk It Out song on there too. That song makes me happy.
• I have identified my main pregnancy symptom as "increased whininess." I'm not sure there is a cure, but I'm trying a healthy dose of STFU. We'll see if that leads to implosion and unnecessary blow-ups.
• There was a water-main break under our street this weekend, and they shut our water off on Sunday to fix it. They shut it off after I'd taken a very long bubble bath, and for a few, very-scary minutes I was convinced I'd somehow drained all the water out of the world. Or it was all frozen in the pipes, except it wasn't anywhere near cold enough for that to happen. Thankfully we had a pitcher of filtered water in the fridge, so we could still have Mac & Cheese for lunch.
• I bought a bag of roasted & salted (un-shelled) pistachios on a whim at the grocery store... a lot of days ago. They got stuck on a shelf in the pantry and I forgot about them--which is why I need someone to come organize my pantry for me, because it's just a mess. The point here however is that these nuts are the best things ever. Pistachios, I love them!
• My living room in still in mid-craftsplosion, but my last holiday function before actual family Christmas is Thursday, so I'm hoping to reclaim my living room for living sometime soon. 

*I will continue to call them mix-tapes because it's the only thing that sounds right in my head.

Fa la la la la, la la la la

Today I went caroling in Historic Downtown McKinney. The weather was actually quite nice, and we sang all of our songs--some of them twice. Some people came and watched. Some sang along. Sometimes they clapped. Really, as audio-visual wallpaper, that's the best you can hope for, and it was nice.

Now, I do this every year, but this was an odd performance for a couple of reasons.

1) My costume. I've worn the same thing for 4 years: long black skirt, white blouse with high lace collar, vest, jacket, and usually a doily on my head. It was very... 1900 school marm. Now, technically I should have been aiming more for 1865 British socialite, but you know, it's what I had in my closet and it worked. Then last year, my friend Ted made me this BEAUTIFUL rose & chocolate brown day suit, with dark brown velvet trim and the prettiest brocade and a corset that matched and he laced me in & I made a fabulous hat with lots of stuff on it, like this:

This year... well, I really wanted to wear my hat, but I don't know if you noticed a key word up there: corset. There is no corseting me at the moment. I'm full of baby. So, it was a bit of a concern as to what I was going to wear. I thought I could maybe just wear my old black & white school marm duds--the skirt still fastened and the vest sat high enough that it could be latched over my expanding middle. But then there was the hat... I didn't want to wear a doily. It was only going to be 47 in McKinney. That's not doily weather. That's hat weather. But my pink & brown costume was made to go over a corseted version of me which is about 4" smaller than the normal me, and I'm about 4" larger than that, so you see the problem.

Enter: The Bella Band. That's right! I totally used a spandex/cotton cummerbund as part of a Victorian caroling costume. And it worked! So I got to wear my fancy hat after all! The day was saved!

2) I almost forgot I was doing a list here. The other thing that was weird was the ratio of singers per part. Most of our songs are in 4 parts, SATB. We usually have a pretty even distribution on the parts, though the ladies tend to outnumber the men a bit. Well, this year, due to some life and stuff, illness and whatnot we wound up with 2 on bass, 2 on tenor, 5 altos and 1 soprano. Yeah... no balance there. So, we altos got to sing really soft and quiet and thankfully our 1 soprano was bolstered because the director sang soprano too, and they are both Ethridges. You don't know the Ethridges? Well, one time, many years ago, when Queen Anne's Lace was recording an album, and all the ladies had to share one microphone, the sound engineer was having a hard time getting a good balance. After several polite requests he came up with the following solution: If your name is Ethridge, face the wall. That way, with their voices only bouncing off the wall to get to the mic, they were in balance with the rest of the ladies who were singing INTO the mic. Yeah, they have some AMAZING lungs & voices. 

Things I learned

The story of the weekend, in bulleted list format, because that's the amount of brain power I can muster at the moment!

What I learned this time, at the Texas Renaissance Festival (and associated roadtrip)

1. My car seats 5. However, it only holds 3 tarts* & their associated luggage for a weekend trip.
2. Sharing music makes the drive seem to go by faster. There was: Terence Trent D'Arby, The Bobs, Juno Reactor, Ludo, Beats Antique... I'm probably missing something, but those were the main highlights in the "oh, have you heard *this*?" game.
3. A suitcase full of other suitcases will weigh just enough to convince you that it's actually the suitcase that you packed full of costuming that happens to be the same color, shape & only 2" larger. This will lead to shocked gasping when you open your suitcase upon arriving 200+ miles south to find that you have no costuming what so ever.
4. Always pack your real-world clothes & toilettries in a separate bag. That way, you'll have clean clothes, socks, underwear & stuff to be clean & good smelling even though you don't have a costume.
5. Good friends are the ones who see you in your normal clothes backstage before the Faire starts and hand you spare costuming, mug and pouches to make it through the day, even though you were perfectly content to just walk around in jeans and a t-shirt.
6. Ginger of Faire Paire makes amazing hudge-hiding dresses. There is no hiding a hudge that has been expanded due to pregnancy. I felt visably pregnant for the first time, but I still think it's only obvious to my friends, because they know me. To the rest of the world, I'm just pudgy.
7. For the first time, friends asked to touch my belly. I was surprised that I was ok with it. I thought I was still hung up on not being roundly pregnant, or that what's visible still isn't baby yet, but turns out, it was ok. I felt... good. It was affirming, not hurtful, so that was really neat, and quite unexpected.
8. Also, I totally love that even my friends who are firmly anti-having-babies themselves are totally excited, supportive & loving this baby. That's pretty damn cool.
9. I am content to just smell the booze other people are drinking. It doesn't drive me crazy that I can't have any as long as I can sniff the stuff other people are drinking near me. Thanks Kyle & Krys!
10. When the crowd reaches a record-breaking 42,088 people, there is no leaving until well after the final cannon has sounded, even if you get to your car more than an hour before it goes off.
11. When stuck in a parking lot for 2 hours, there will be singing. Someone will start humming a part to practice, and then it snowballs until you're having an impromptu rehearsal/performance, in the dark, for yourselves. It was... wonderful!
12. Sometimes, it really does take a village just to get dressed and make sure your hair & make-up are where you want them to be. As a whole, QAL seems to be moving towards more vibrant and dramatic eye make-up, and this weekend, we got lots of compliments on looks we've been perfecting. Also, there is such a thing as the perfect red lipstick, and when you find it, you share it. (Sephora has one called "The Red" which worked really well for several of our ladies. I'll stick with MAC's Heartless, which is sadly a limited edition.)
13. There is always some new thing in the Mad Girl Clothing line that we have to try on.

I have other things to say, but they have to percolate a bit first. So there you go! TRF in a nutshell.

*Did I ever explain the Tart thing? At our faire, the ladies of Queen Anne's Lace, the ladies I sing with--our characters work at The Pounding Heart, House of Tarts: Where your every appetite is satisfied, nudgenudge, winkwink. So, we refer to the ladies of the Pounding Heart as Tarts. There, explained?

Things Remembered (not the store)

Ok, so here are some things I remembered recently:

When I was waiting to pee on a stick, we had dinner at a friend's house. They make the best fajitas, and Marci's guacamole is... amazing! (That's not what I remembered. I never forget good guacamole.)  Anyway, while we were there, the grown-ups went to play Munchkin, which is kind of like a card-game version of Dungeons & Dragons that totally makes fun of itself. John & Marci have 2 lovely daughters. Cassie, the oldest, wanted to play Munchkin with the grown-ups, which was totally fine by me, because I didn't really want to play Munchkin, so I gave her my spot and went to play dress up and dolls and watch Tinkerbell movies with Tori, the youngest. I love these kids, by the way. I just do. My favorite part of the evening was when they took me on a tour of the upstairs and showed me their rooms and all the cool stuff they got on their recent trip to Disneyworld. ANYWAY, while we're up in Tori's room and she's showing me the goods, she showed me this... thing. Ok, it had the Green M&M lady on it, wearing a turban, because she was a fortune teller, and there was a bubble thing that you pressed, like in Trouble! (the board game, remember?) and it would tell your fortune, Magic 8 Ball style. Then an M&M would come out of a shoot on the bottom--only this one was dispensing marbles instead because they'd already eaten all their allotted M&Ms. So, I asked the Magic 8 Ball/M&M Fortune telling marble dispenser if I was pregnant, since, you know, at the time, the question was pretty top on my mind. It said yes, and I thought, "well, gee, I hope your right."  AND IT WAS! Only I forgot, and I've remembered twice since then, but... but now I'm telling you, because I forgot again.

I really love U2. This isn't a surprise to those who know me, and they've been my favorite band since I was 16, so you know... there's that. Last night I was watching the most recent tour DVD and just sort of remembered all over again how much I love the music and the show and the way they don't take themselves seriously, but are serious about what they do and using their voice for things they believe in, and how some songs just totally come alive when played live in a way I didn't ever imagine from listening to the cd, and how in this HUGE arena, it can still feel like an intimate moment when you realize that up there on the stage, Bono is worshiping God in the midst of a rock concert, and so are you... yeah... I really love that band. This song (Magnificent) is from No Line On The Horizon and it's my favorite U2 song ever to be released as a single. I've been listening to it a lot lately (as anyone who follows me on Twitter knows) and it still makes me happy and makes me smile and makes me worship every time. I love, love, love it. Also, I touched Bono. Not recently. It was back in 2001, when he came to speak at a little church in Lincoln before giving his big address at the Leid Center for World Aids Day, and at the end, I got a chance to give him a card to say thanks for the music, and I touched his elbow. Yes I did.

I decided last night, that in a lot of ways, U2 & Alkaline Trio are kind of like the angel & devil on my shoulders sometimes. Not that either gives me ideas or talks me into anything, or that one is evil and the other good, but that I turn to music for comfort a lot and musically and personality wise, those two groups are very different, but both long time favorites, and there are Alkaline Trio moods and there are U2 moods. That's what I meant. I'm not explaining it well, but there it is. Imagine a little Matt Skiba on one shoulder, Edge on the other.

I don't do a very good job decorating for holidays or seasons. I have many friends who have a passion and a gift for turning their homes into wonderfully seasonally appropriate welcome places for friends to gather. I don't have that gift. I have some random pumpkin stuff, because I like fall, and I have some space in which to put it, but nothing elaborate or fancy. This year, I bought some lighted twiggy things for the front of the house so that we look vaguely festive. Our neighbors to the left (when you're facing the house, in case you needed clarification) always do a really great job decorating for the fall/winter holidays and it makes me happy to see their house, then sad that all I've got is one purple plastic pumpkin on the front porch.

Also, I don't have people over very often. I forget most of the time that you don't need a special occasion to invite folks to dinner or a movie or something. I'm bad at calling out of town friends just to check up. Thankfully, my friends are mostly the same way, so completely understand & still love me, and when we do talk, we just sort of recap the intervening time and move on from there. It's comfortable, and I like that. But what I remembered is how much I like talking with them when I do get a "hey, it's been a while" call or e-mail. I like hearing how they are, and telling stories and all that. So, this isn't a promise to be better, because these days I'm lucky if I remember to do all the steps involved in just getting myself put together to face the day, but I'm hopefully reminding myself that I do like talking one-on-one with friends, so maybe I will remember to do it more often, but no promises.

I remembered that I bought some pre-fab pastas the other day--tortellini & ravioli & those ones that look like tiny crab rangoon? So I boiled some up for dinner last night, and then I sliced up a summer squash & a zucchini & I sauteed them a little, and then in ANOTHER pot (3 pot dinners are rare for me), I dumped one of those cans of diced tomatoes that comes with the basil & garlic & onion stuff in them already, and when that had cooked down a bit, I poured it over the squacchini stuff, then spooned it on top of the brie & garlic pasta bits and it was like ratatouille on pasta... sort of.  It was really good!

Wanna know what's in my brain? Here you go...

Drinking Water
This is a thing that you should do. 8 glasses a day or some such. Usually, I'm really good at this. I've got a lovely purple...thingy...that holds a litre of water, and I consistently drink 2 of those a day while I'm at work--one before lunch, and one after, while running to the bathroom every 45 minutes. On the weekends... well, then I just sort of drink whatever sounds good when I feel thirsty, or with a meal, because that's what you do. I certainly don't drink water, because I don't know if you know this, but Dallas water tastes like dirt. Really. Not exaggerating or being picky. It does. And Plano water tastes like algae all summer. So, I don't drink tap water, and while we have a Britta pitcher, it is insufficient to take the taste out of the water, so I mostly just drink milk like it was going out of style.

Only now, I'm thirstier than I ever remember being when indoors. So weekend drinking is a problem. I bought a Britta water bottle, thinking that would help, and I keep it next to my bed because when I wake up at 3am thirsty, I'm slightly less picky about the taste of my water, mostly because I'm trying to take a drink while still as asleep as possible. It turns out I'm trying to do lots of things while mostly asleep these days--walk to the bathroom, rearrange the cats, throw pillows towards the dog who is chasing something in his sleep, nudge my husband into a more comfortable (for me) position, steal his pillows, completely destroy the covers on the bed, rearrange some more cats, go to the bathroom again, and yes, take a drink from my purple Britta bottle.

The Problem With Merging
It's like a zipper people! Like a zipper!

My long-neglected 80s station
Oh Pandora! I think the answer to making a station good again is to ignore it for five to six months. Then it's so grateful to be played that it only plays the best and most awesome songs. So far, this theory is holding true.

Dreams I can't even begin (and won't try) to describe and their subsequent effects on my sanity:
Um... so, it seems that whatever I watch on television (read: Hulu, so my computer really) will get twisted and morphed into my dreams. This would be fine if I didn't tend towards sci-fi shows and murder mysteries. Hyper-realistic dreams with strange imagery that leave me confused about reality when I wake up? NO GOOD. Thankfully, my husband is the only one who has to endure the details on a daily basis. I shall spare you that much, I just wanted to say that I'm torn. I really want to keep watching Castle & Doctor Who, but... but... the dreams!

Is this the day?
I keep thinking that this is the day that I will stop being queasy. This is it! I feel great! I go about my day and then I make some simple mistake, like smelling something, or standing up too fast, or looking at the fridge, or thinking about food and then I'm squinting at everything and flapping my hands and talking to the cats about how this is totally sucky. I mean, I saw the cutest little bouncing fetus on that screen, so, you know... worth it in an abstract sense, but that doesn't stop me from wishing I was one of the lucky 25% of women who don't get all queasy at the very thought of food words. Also, I wish that my stomach were consistent in what it wanted/didn't want. Some days, the smell of sweet things sends me running. Other days, I just want to eat an entire bag of mini marshmallows. (I didn't... I ate it over the course of a weekend, which is remarkable restraint I think since it was the only thing in the whole house that didn't sound or smell terrible at the time.)

Also, when do I start glowing? I would like my glow now. What I've got instead is a flashback to 1995--pimply & awkward. I know I've got a while before I stop looking lumpy and start looking maternally round, and while I would like to get to that stage soon, I'm also liking still wearing (most of) my pants, especially since thus far there is no such thing as a pair of maternity pants that will fit my butt and still touch my feet. Too fat for tall pants, too tall for fat pants. I'm looking into Bella Bands and skirts for now. I mean, this struggle isn't exactly new to me. I've pretty much always been on the borderline between "misses" and "womens" sizes--which, anyone else find the naming annoying? Anyway, being a size 16/18 means you get equally dirty looks walking into Lane Bryant and...I was trying to think of some other regular store that I shop at, but, I'm a Target kind of girl, so, that doesn't really help my example any. I was going to say Ann Taylor, because I have braved their store sometimes. My top half is slightly more average than plus-sized--at least for now. I love my maternity tops because they are long, and on a tall lady, that's pretty flattering, so I wear those now to hide my hudge anyway. I am looking forward to having "the belly" though, even though I can't in any way, shape, or form imagine it. I see my friends growing and see their bellies getting bigger, but I look at me and think... nope, this is the same body I've always had...

Getting a shiner
No, not the beer, sadly. I seem to have lost the ability to put on purple eyeshadow without looking like I ran my face into a doorknob. This is sad for me on many levels. One, purple is my favoritest of all the colors, which anyone who's taken a peek at this site can tell. Two... um, I really like make-up and purple was always my go-to color. Supposedly it brings out the green in my sort-of-hazel-but-mostly-brown eyes, which is totally enough of an excuse for me to wear it. Only now--not it's not doing me any favors. Lucky for me, I don't actually bother with eyeshadow all that often, so I'm not terribly worried. I also have about a million colors to choose from at home, so I've got options.

Books, Books, Books

I've been reading a lot, but not what I'm supposed to be reading. I don't think I've had to say that, or even think it, since I was in school. That's the last time I can remember having a "supposed to be reading" list. Now it's a book club list. Not as strenuous, onerous, or mandatory, but still... it's there.

I'm supposed to be reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I mean to read it, but I don't have it, and somehow have completely failed to make it to anything that resembles a library or bookstore. Heck, I've barely made it to the grocery store.

Instead, I've been reading what people have been handing me, and what's laying around my house.

A teacher friend handed me Little Bee by Chris Cleave. She didn't really say much about it, but I read the back cover, which says pretty much nothing, but I hadn't bought A Tree Grows in Brooklyn yet, so I figured I had some time for it. It was less than 300 pages, so you know... that was encouraging. Now... I don't know what to say about it. I'm not really good at book reviews and after a recent discussion about critical reading and themes and motifs and symbolism and whether or not any of us really read that way now that we're out of school, I have even less to say. I read the whole book in... a day. It was a strange day where I had lots of down time, and then finished it up before bed (staying up hours past my bedtime to what most adults consider a reasonable time to be done for the day), and when I got to the end, I was deeply dissatisfied. Maybe I'm just too naive for books based on true stories because if I'm going to invest my time into these characters and try to find a way to connect to them, then I want to be rewarded with some measure success. So, to give what sparse information is on the back cover "enough to get you to buy the book" they say, which I admit, I found amusingly honest--it's a book about two women who lead vastly different lives who once met years ago. One had to make a hard decision and now they're meeting again. Yeah, not much to go on, but enough of an open-end that I was willing to spend some time trying to find out what the heck it was about. There was enough mystery with enough detail to keep me reading.
One line, just a sort of random part in the middle of nothing, made me actually laugh out loud, but you have to understand my unreasonable bias towards U2: "That's a good trick about this world, Sarah. No one likes each other, but everyone likes U2." I'm not going to say that sums up the whole point of the book, because it doesn't. I think the book is more about survival and coping with tragedy and moving on and other deep stuff, but that sort of is the secondary part--people are people no matter where you go. Good, bad, ugly, indifferent--people are people, and most of them will listen to the radio, so, you know... U2.

Then I found my copy of Lamb by Christopher Moore in my car, and I really like that book, so I decided to read it again. I was just going to read a bit in the middle, sort of skip to my favorite parts while I was waiting in the doctor's office, but I wound up going all the way back to the beginning to get all the good stuff. Lamb is "The Gospel according to Biff, Christ's childhood pal." It's funny and touching and wonderful and fictional and great. It's not a new gospel, it's a story, pure imagination, that takes on "the missing years" of Jesus' life. It starts with a 6 yr old Joshua bar Joseph of Nazareth and ends with... well, there's an epilogue, but it ends shortly after the death of Jesus, who they call Joshua since Yeshua is the Hebrew that was translated Jesus by the Greek, and so that's why they call the Son of God Josh.

Last month, my mom had loaned me her copy of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and after seeing a preview for the movie with Daniel Craig, I decided to read the book first. Well... it took a long time for ANYTHING to happen. 108 pages. I counted. 108 pages before we got to the hook that was on the back of the book--the mystery to solve that was the reason for the book. Now, granted, after those 108 pages, the rest went by pretty quickly and then it ended on an almost cliffhanger, so I expected the second book to pick up and keep going. So on my latest trip to my folks place, I grabbed The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson. Oh... I was so mislead! Book 1 ended dramatically. Book 2 starts with a hurricane that has nothing to do with anything, and once again, it was 216 pages (an eerie coincidence that makes me dread book 3) before we got to the mystery on the back of the book--or really any mystery or cohesive plot at all. Why do I keep reading? I don't really like Mikael, the journalist dude. He's a little too... Mary Sue-ish sometimes. All the women everywhere fall for him and even though all the women are very different and have different needs, he somehow fulfills them all perfectly all the time? Lisbeth is... interesting, and I suppose that's why I keep reading. Oh, that and I'm a sucker for a mystery & I MUST KNOW WHAT HAPPENS! So yes, I'm going to read book 3, and if it takes until pg 324 to get going, I just might scream. But I'll still read it, because I have some sort of bizarre loyalty to books that I start reading.

Now I have 3 days to find and read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Wish me luck!

Schmooblies, dreams and some other stuff

A quick review, in case you forgot:
This is my husband.


I know, right?

 He's a musician. That has lots of perks, and also some drawbacks. Right now (as I type this, probably not as you read this) he's in Houston, auditioning for The Voice, which is sort of American Idol-ish, only, a little different, but essential the same--singing competition reality show, and stuff. Anyway, he never was interested in American Idol, that I remember, but has LOVED The Voice. And being the awesome, ambitious, dream-chasing man that I love, he signed up for the live auditions in Houston. And that's where he is. Singing his heart out. I'm so stinkin' proud of him. Mostly because he's chasing his dream of making music full time. Which is funny, because he also loves his "day job" so much. I don't know anyone who is so happy with both their 9-5 and their hobby jobs. He's very lucky in that way, and I totally reap the benefits of a happy husband, so I'm lucky too.

So, dreams, in the "life goals" way, not the "what happened in my brain last night" way, because what happened in my brain last night is just disturbing and not to be shared with the internet, because no one but me cares. But life goals... see, mine are vague. I have a card with this quote from Jack Kerouac, "...the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."  and a fridge magnet that says "To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."--Ralph Waldo Emerson  I really think that sums it up for me in lots of ways. Perfectly ambitious I think.

I was going to have more to say, enough to add a third "and other stuff" paragraph, but it's my wonderful coworker's last day & we're headed out to lunch to celebrate. I'm really gonna miss him, so that's all I have to say about that.  Oh, and good luck to him. And to my husband. And to everyone today--have great days. Do well at the things you want to accomplish. Be well, because I probably like you a lot.

Hodge-Podge & some music

A confession:

Complementary
Complimentary

Two different words. I have been completely ignoring the first and using the second for both meanings. I know! I should totally know better. Now I do. My apologies for being wrong for so long.

A question:

Is rock-n-roll bohemian a valid style descriptor? If not, I'm making it one for today. It seems like something Cosmo would say, which makes me a little nervous, because I'm... well, not the kind of person who would be featured in Cosmo, but today, I feel a little like a hip hippy. You know those 2-layer wrap skirt things that supposedly can be worn 23 ways? I've only ever managed to pull off two of those ways until now. I saw one where you turn it into a jacket-shawl-cape-thing and I'm sure I dismissed it 100 times thinking that it's not a look I could pull off, but something about it looked do-able and now I'm all flowy and stuff. I love it! But I'm also wearing half pig-tails & crackle nail polish, so... you know... I feel a little rocker-esque too. So there's that...

A project:

I was trying to figure out a way to say (in 140 characters or less, because I was tweeting) that my friend Paula & I have barely convergent circles in the Venn Diagram of interests, but that what was in that together space was really strong & has kept us friends for more than 10 years, which is pretty incredible. Now I want to go make an actual Venn Diagram thingy for my Nebraska girls, because, on the WHOLE we don't really seem to make sense, but like lots of friends that you've had for a long time, there some shared experience stuff that kinda works like glue, but in the beginning, we had people look at us and actually say, "You two are friends? How does that...work?" Usually about me & Karen, but we were DESTINED to be friends. We had the same 2 posters on our walls (Trainspotting, the rant, and Say Anything). Destiny!

A sad:

So, remember way back on Tuesday or something when I said that maybe something exciting would happen before I posted next so I could make you laugh again? Well, I forgot to put the caveat of "something good & exciting" in there. Not that me saying that had anything to do with what did happen after I posted that, just... you know... you say things like "how could this get any worse?" and then it does, so you think, "wish I hadn't said that!" It's like that. Because after posting that, I found out that a friend had died due to complications in a surgery to remove her leg because of cancer caused by neurofibromatosis. Yeah. Sucks. She wasn't a close friend, but someone I sort of hung out with for 15 weekends a year as we participated in the same hobby. In preparation for the surgery she cut her shoulder-length red hair into a pixie cut and dyed it electric teal. She was a fighter and it's totally lame that she's gone. Totally lame. Cancer sucks, and it's the bad kind of diva, and... just... yeah.

A triumph:

So, a while ago, I got a new phone. I was very resistant to doing so because I loved my old phone. Now, I was totally one of those "phones are for calling people" people until I got my own smartphone. Then, having access to my e-mail and Twitter whenever I wanted was... too awesome to give up. So, I had a Google phone with a full qwerty keyboard that slid out, not a touch screen one, and that's all I wanted for my new phone. As a bonus, my new phone also is a lot louder than my old phone, so I can use fancy music ringtones & still actually hear my phone ring. This was very exciting to a music-based life form like me. But then! I didn't "safely disconnect" my phone from my computer and all the files on my phone for cool music went all wonky and I lost my fun ringtones, only I didn't know it until I missed like 3 calls, because I had my phone turned up ALL THE WAY and still missed calls when my phone was IN MY POCKET. So, I switched over to one of the standard rings that came with the phone, and it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't awesome, and I was used to awesome. Anyway, all that is just the back story. The triumph is that I fixed it this morning & instead of having to listen to the love child of a UFO & a pinball machine every time someone calls me, my phone now sings Blue Carolina to me. This is awesome again and makes me wish that people would call me so my phone would sing to me more. Almost.

Musical Cosmetics

It should be no surprise to anyone, anywhere that I like make up. I do. My husband might spend 82% of his allowance on Chipotle every month, but if I'm not careful, I can spend 110% of mine in one trip to Sephora.

Long ago, I decided that my dream job was being the person who names colors. I wanted to work for Crayola and all the cosmetics companies, because I'm fairly sure they don't really know what color lilac or lavender is because they keep mistakenly labeling things that fall firmly in the mauve-to-fuchsia range as "Lovely Lilac" or "Frosted Lavender." Seriously people... get with the program!

Some of my favorite make up ever is from Urban Decay. I love them because they have bold, highly pigmented colors (like Make Up Forever and M.A.C.), pretty packaging (unlike Make Up Forever and M.A.C.) and fabulously creative names (like M.A.C., unlike Make Up Forever). I recently received this as a gift from my husband.

look at all the colors!

It's an amazing set of 15 eyeliners with beautiful names like Bourbon, Ransom, Asphyxia, Rockstar and Uzi. Those are names that I love... I have glitter gel eyeliners, also Urban Decay, called Distortion and Spandex. So, there is this beautiful blend of wild colors, wild packaging and wild names. I won't lie--I make a bee-line for the Urban Decay counter every time I set foot in Sephora. I rarely buy stuff, because it takes a lot for me to justify some of the colors that I love (where am I going to wear lime green sparkly eye shadow?*), but I always ogle their products.

Anyway, the other day as I was driving and listening to my music at a possibly ridiculous volume with my sunroof open, which never happens because I kind of loathe being in direct sunlight, I was struck by an idea. (And it hurt!)

I should combine my love of make up with my love of music and throw caution and copyright protection out the window to create my own line of musical make up. Not make up that sings or anything, but is named after my favorite songs, lyrics, albums, bands, instruments, etc. Then I spent the rest of my drive flipping around songs on my iPod thinking up what would make good make up names. This is what I've got so far, and I think this is a dream that will keep me happily entertained for years! It's so much fun trying to figure out the perfect color and application for everything. Feel free to share your favorite band/song/lyric that you'd like to put on your face in the comments!

Achtung Baby--silver glitter eye shadow
Supermassive Black Hole--Classic black eyeliner
Subterranian Homesick Alien--pale green eyeliner
Transatlanticism--rich blue cream eye liner
Get Over It--anti-everything cleanser (for wrinkles & acne & dry skin & oily skin & whatever else)
Again I Go Unnoticed--fabulous, hardworking, all-day concealer
Sha-Sha--warm golden beige eyeshadow
1,000 Stories--rich red-black lipstick
Star Turtle--mossy green eyeshadow
Like A Feather--light, all-day SPF moisturizer
Helter Skelter--dark red-brown lipstick
Electric Pink--sweet pink blush
Barracuda-- black eyeliner with silver flecks
Gimme Gimme Gimme--candy pink lip gloss
Too Funky--Royal purple sparkly eyeshadow
Tainted Love--blue-black eyeshadow
Another Innocent Girl--pale pink "all over" face powder
Age Six Racer--Waterproof mascara
Get it Faster--quick drying nail polish in RED
Neon Tom--bright pink lip gloss

Seriously, I could just keep going, but I'll stop here and go grab breakfast!


*Turns out, I wore it on Mardi Gras

It's about the Reflex...

Once upon some time ago, my brother and his lovely wife were driving (well, I imagine he was driving and she was riding, but you get my drift) down the road when "The Reflex" by Duran Duran came on the radio.  The following conversation (or something like it) ensued:

Wife: What is this song about?!?
Brother: It's about the reflex...

Yeah, he's like that.  So, we* have been thinking about other songs that we blithely sing along to and have no clue what they're about.  I mean, I sang along to "Wild Thing" and "Woolly Bully" as a child and never really had any idea that they were about anything other than a monster that lived in the woods.  Also, one incredibly embarrassing evening, my brother** and I were in the kitchen doing the dishes after dinner.  I'm not sure how the topic came up--maybe I was humming a tune, maybe he was, but somehow the discussion turned to Salt-n-Pepa's "Push it."  I was, I think 7 or 8 at the time, and he, being older by 7 years, was challenging me about that song's underlying subtext... or overlying regular text.  He basically said something to the effect of "you don't even know what that song is about."  I, as an uppity, wanna be know-it-all little sister, gave the classic answer: "Uh-huh!"  Did I really know what the song was about?  Um... no, and he called my bluff.  He wanted me to tell him.  I didn't want to be found out, so I said I didn't know the words, but I knew a dance... really?!?!  That was my brilliant escape plan?  So for what felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes, my brother tried to convince me to show him my super-fly dance move that explained the song while I wriggled and blushed and tried to explain why that was never going to happen.  a) I didn't want to get caught doing it and get in trouble--to which he offered to take the blame. 2) I wasn't sure that I really could do it because I'd never practiced--to which he said something brilliant, I'm sure, along the lines of "no time like the present" and D) Um... I don't know, I was young and embarrassed.  Finally, I gave in and performed a few half-hearted hip thrusts.  I remember wanting to melt into the linoleum with humiliation... but I can't remember what happened next.  Did he laugh at me, roll his eyes?  Probably both, but I couldn't tell you.

Anyway, on to the not-very-long-list-of-songs-I-can't-figure-out-what-they're-about*** portion of this post:

• Seal-Kiss from a Rose on a Grave.  Seriously?  What's that all about
• Everything by Radiohead in the history of ever.
• um... this list was going to be longer...
• I really thought I had more examples...
• So, Internet! Provide me with your examples instead!

  

*We is mostly me
**Same brother, I only have the one.
***It's short because I can't think of more songs at the moment, not because I inherently understand all the subtext and nuances of modern lyricists... I really, really don't.  I think I also just don't care to look too deeply most of the time.

Hobby, Diversion, Pastime, Leisure Pursuit

I have only a few hobbies. I scrapbook & make cards two or three times a year. I play World of Warcraft in a very casual manner. I don't garden or make preserves or sew or knit or quilt. The real things that take up most of my free-time are music and renaissance restivals. Singing at a renaissance festival is what I do every weekend in April and May, every year that I've been in the DFW area. This will be my eighth season to perform, my third to sing, and my second to teach. So, starting Saturday my weekends belong to the Scarborough Academy of Performing Arts and Queen Anne's Lace.

Yes, that's 16 weekends but it only really works out to 28 days, which is ony 7.7% of the year. For the majority of those days I will be outside for a minimum of 8 hrs--at least half of them more than 12 hrs. I'll start in the cold, possibly in the snow and ice, and finish in the blistering heat of Memorial Day weekend, which almost inevitably comes with rain of some sort. I do this for fun.

And it is fun. It's challenging and sometimes frustrating, but there is a rush and a thrill that makes me keep wanting to do it again and again. It might take a special kind of person to want to give up more than a quarter of their weekends to play a highly elaborate game of make-believe mixed with street theatre of the interactive variety while wearing clothes designed to mimic a time and place 500 years in the past and at least 40 degrees cooler. Thankfully, I'm that kind of special.

Now, it's not all downhill just yet. Sunday is mostly mine. And I'm not teaching all of the days, so I have a few hours here and there to take care of some last-minute spring cleaning (long before spring officially arrives).

In my Barbie dream world, I'd manage to get the bookshelves organized--not in an alphabetical, thematic, or any other logical manner. I just want to have books and things that belong on shelves on the shelves and not sitting in boxes on the floor. My Barbie dream world also has clean floors and counters, so let's not think that it's actually going to come to pass anytime soon.

I do want to hang curtains though. I have some lovely valances for the living room and beautiful tapestry curtains for the dining/music room. I would love to get one of those nifty wall stencils that says "If music be the food of love, play on..." to put above the little opening to the hallway.

Truth be told though, I'm going to spend a lot of those few breaks doing utterly unexciting things like... napping with my cats piled about me, cooking with my husband while watching Netflix, and maybe going to see a matinee movie.

Cleaning and necessary housework will happen during the week like it always does. Laundry will get slower as costuming takes its place in the rotation. Meals will get crock-potted and left-overs will sustain us. We'll come home tired and possibly bruised. We'll tell stories about classes and people we met and things we said that we had no intention of saying. We'll begin to detest our alarm clocks and the smell of sunscreen... because it's fun. I'll put on my 35 lbs of pink, fluffy costume and sing and be silly. I'll wander about acting like a superhero from the planet Cozmetix and making up tall tales to suit my mood. Then I'll come back to my job, Monday through Friday, dragging myself through the work week telling the stories of the things I did and hope to do next time.

But for now... I'll read up on my lesson plans, and review my music, and check costume bits for tears while sitting on my couch, covered in cats, watching Netflix.

Quantifiable Data, Specificity and the rest of the stuff I think and feel

I really enjoy Pandora, and if you haven't checked them out yet, I highly recommend you do. The people behind the Music Genome Project did an incredible thing, that iTunes then imitated with their Genius mixes, etc. and it all boils down to this: it's like having a friend who knows more music than you ever thought it possible for one human to know, and he kinda knows you, and when you tell him what you like, he makes recommendations for you... only he's slightly more accurate in predicting your tastes than the guy who set you up on a blind date with his buddy back in '92. Most of the time, I'm able to create great stations from a single song or artist with minimal futzing. I get excited when somewhat obscure songs that I've liked for years get played along with pop gems and then I hear something I've never heard before and go off on a discovery tour of new music.

Sometimes, you get bizarre songs that you not only don't like, but can't figure out how you got from A to B. That's part of the problem with not being able to accurately identify things that are intangible. See, last week, I was in a mood. Not a bad mood, not a good mood, just a moody mood. I kept flipping through the stations that I had created* trying to find something that would fit. I didn't want my 80s Mix, Perky Dance, Glee-ful, Mr. Mister, Mellow, Grrrl Music, Tarlowski or Classic Christmas Carols. I couldn't even piece together what I wanted by using the QuickMix feature, which is awesome in that it lets you sort of shuffle lots of stations together.

So I started a new station. That wasn't really working very well either. I finally figured out that the problem wasn't that Pandora wasn't playing songs that I liked, but that I hadn't correctly defined what I wanted to listen to. Once I did that, I identified other problems.
What I wanted to listen to was moody songs, but Pandora doesn't really know what my moody songs are, and the list I came up with off the top of my head was musically diverse enough to be confusing. Fiona Apple, Terrence Trent D'Arby and Alkaline Trio have little in common musically for the Music Genome Project to draw on. The common element that caused them to be included in the seed songs was the way they make me feel. Luckily, the Music Genome Project looks at more than just the easily quantifiable data. The list of attributes identified includes objective observations like "Electric Guitar Solo" and somewhat subjective labels like "funky raps." Unfortunately, even with their comprehensive view of music and sounds, they can't accurately pinpoint all the things that make us like music. When creating a station, I want to be able to look at the list of attributes and put the ones I want into a list, in addition to picking the songs that are inspiring me.

However, the things that I'm thinking about aren't often on the list. There isn't an option for "bass lines that make me want to drive faster" or "guitar solos that sound awesome when you try to sing them" or "mopey girl songs" or "songs that remind me of that guy that I should probably never talk to again because I seem to lose my mind, my cool, and any semblance of independent thought whenever he's around." There's not even something as simple and quantifiable as "songs written or released in this decade". Best I can figure, I just have to put enough of the right songs in, and not be afraid to use the thumbs-down button to tell Pandora that what I'm looking for is different, even though that song has "mystical qualities" and "passionate atmosphere" and so did the last song I thumbed-up. I don't share the same vocabulary as the Music Genome Project to know that what I consider "joyful lyrics" is the same as their definition of "joyful."

I suppose you could take this to the nth degree and say that in the extreme we can't say that we ever know that our "joy" is the same as another person's definition and get all esoteric about no two people defining anything the same or seeing color the same way but that neglects the reality that the function of language is to communicate, even abstract concepts, if imperfectly due to the unique nature of each human experience but still with a degree of success because of the breadth of language available and the vast number of shared experiences.** No other person has the exact same mix of experiences that makes me think and behave the way I do, but for each experience, there's someone somewhere who can relate because of a similar, if not exact experience... granting that there will be exceptions to this, as with anything... but that's sort of peripheral to what I started writing about.

The Music Genome Project has no way of knowing that when I'm in a semi-nostalgic, somewhat bitter, contemplative and cautiously optimistic mood I want to hear old Dashboard Confessional, new Muse, some Justin Timerblake, some Whitesnake and only half of Introducing the Hardline According to Terrance Trent D'Arby but all of O.K. Computer. So I will tell Pandora just that, and use the thumb buttons to keep things in line.

Gee, that was simple.



*Interesting side note--my husband & I share an account. Of the 23 stations we've created, only two of those are my husband's brain child, plus a joint station.

**Someday I might learn how to make my sentences feel like my speech while employing proper grammatical form, but I doubt it. I think and speak in run-on sentences. If I cared more, I might fix it. I don't.

Christmas cheer, holiday spirits, and all the fa la la

Years of working retail has left me with little appreciation for contemporary holiday music. Christmas carols and hymns traditionally sung in December still make me smile. I adore the Nutcracker, and the Peanuts song.

However, there are a slew of songs that the department stores where I worked ruined for me. See, the last place I worked had a loop 107 minutes long. On a nine or ten hour shift, that's a lot of the same songs over and over. In fact, we used to tell time by Feliz Navidad. It was roughly the half-way point. Though in a loop you should be able to start counting anywhere, there was a brief pause at the end (or beginning) of the loop. 30 beautiful seconds of quiet that meant we were 107 minutes closer to freedom. Then Wonderful Christmas Time would start up, and we'd trudge on with armfulls of discarded sweaters to start the countdown again.

Certain songs still make me cringe just upon hearing a few notes. Most notably, The Snow Song from White Christmas... oh, how I detest that song. The wailing, the repetition. Wash your hands and face in snow? Really? Have you ever had to shovel a driveway full of snow? Twice, because by the time you got to the end, the top was full again, and you had to start in the dark just to be done in time to get to work on time? What's romantic and lovely about that? Or the grey piles of dirty snow that sit on corners for months looking dingy and foul because it's too cold to melt them and too cold for fresh snow to fall. And I know that dear friends of mine adore the song, adore the movie, the memories it evokes, all that. For me, the memories it evokes are of endless hours of drudgery, in the cold, in the store, piles of snow to be shoveled, piles of clothing to be folded and hung, sore feet, cold hands, cranky workers and cranky shoppers and a cranky me.

Retail wasn't all bad--not that I ever want to go back. Still, there were a few moments each year of light and kindness in all the sale-frenzy from Black Friday to New Years Day. Once, I saw a mother show her daughter how to fold a shirt back up & put it back where she found it. I still had to refold it, because that mom didn't know our super-secret formula to perfectly fluffy display sweaters, but the thought alone warmed my heart.

And there were gems that kept me going in that 107 minutes of music. Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home) by U2 always made me smile because... well... it's my favorite band, being silly, singing Christmas songs. I never seem to get tired of Santa Baby. Even Feliz Navidad still makes me smile, perhaps because of it's prominent position as half-way marker. I would sing and sway along to What Are You Doing New Year's Eve. I actually adore that whole album... so I suppose I never really did get 100% Scrooged on Christmas music.

Now-a-days, I sing Christmas Carols in frilly Victorian clothing in the cold... for fun! I've learned a number of new carols that I'd never before heard, and get to sing old favorites, like the Ukranian Bell Carol, We Three Kings, and O Come Emmanuel.

So, I took some time to un-scroogify and find my joy in music by creating Our Pandora Christmas Station. It's mostly traditional, mostly religious, and so far, full of songs that don't make me shudder with horrible memories of retail years gone by. If you care to take a listen, you can join me in my Christmas spirit.

Not strict in form, or what happens when you give a flamingo a yo-yo

One of my favorite movies of all time is Fantasia.  I love music and colors and dancing, so it seems like a perfect fit.  For my birthday, the man I love got me a musical snow globe thingy with Hyacinth Hippo & Ben Ali Gator dancing about.  That being our wedding cake topper and a frequent metaphor we use for ourselves, it was also a perfect fit.

Sadly, the musical workings parts... didn't.  But the globes were all sold out, so instead of a working musical snow globe, I got a silent globe and a gift certificate.  Well... I only owned the original Fantasia on VHS, and didn't have the new one at all.  Darling husband remedied that, and now I have both on DVD & Blu-Ray. 

As I watch, I'm reminded of all the things I loved, and why this movie is so special.  Imagination.  When I close my eyes and listen to this music, I don't see what the artists saw and then created and transferred to a visual medium so I can share their vision.  I see other stuff that I won't be able to share with anyone except through rambley, inarticulate explanations that involve lots of gesticulation.  Yet, like tinder, those images spark others and then my mind is off in a million directions planning universes that revolve around  me and granting my every whim.

My imagination is one of the things that has been both an incredible gift and a hindrance.  I suppose you could look at most gifts as both a boon and a curse, but that's a much bigger topic of discussion.  Not that imagination is a small or concise subject.  I've often been caught day-dreaming when I should have been doing useful and constructive things.  I dreamed of tutus and my name in lights as I entertained thousands of adoring fans in whatever particular way suited my fancy on that day.  I dreamed of wandering the globe in stylish and convenient modes of transportation.  I hardly ever imagined anything practical, like living in the suburbs with three cats and a dog, a husband and a cube job. 

When your mind is off on all the wild possibilities of the life we see in movies, how do you focus on the realities of life, like saving for mundane things like car repairs and new carpet?  How do you resist the temptation to wallow in dissatisfaction because life isn't grand or majestic?

Fluffy socks.

It's true.  Fuzzy socks are the answer.  Not just warm socks.  Warm socks are practical like 401(k)s and life insurance.  I'm talking about socks made of chenille that's been obnoxiously colored, stripped or polka dotted or patterned with some anthropomorphized animal.  Maybe with little grippy things on the bottom.  Maybe not.  They have to at least cover your ankles, and should allow you to slip and slide around on a hardwood floor better than Tom Cruise in that movie where he forgets to put on pants.  See, they have function--they keep your feet warm.  But they embrace the silly, the muppety, the wild dreamer inside.  Silly socks make life better.  If you can wear silly socks, then life can't be all bad.  You have a spark, a chance to dream and do little things that make the normal parts of life extraordinary.  I have a cube job, where I work with incredible people who make me laugh, and whom I willing spend non-working hours with.  I have a house full of pets and a husband to share the load.  I make crafts and wear costumes and spend 25% of the year pretending to be someone else.  I have friends and family all within easy driving distance.  I know at least 5 great places to eat and have a drink in my city.  I know I have people I can call when I want to dance, or shop, or eat, or see a movie.  It may not be the same as thousands of adoring fans, but an hour of laughing over shared memories feels just as cool (I think... I've never actually had the adoring fans to make an honest comparison, but I don't feel deprived by having never been face to face with those screaming hordes). 

So life is still full of imagination, even when you're balancing your checkbook or grocery shopping.  And when you don't let the mundaneness of life stiffle the silly and amazing thoughts in your head, with like minded friends, you can make cool things happen.

When did I become one of "those people"?

Alright, it shouldn't come as a shock to anyone that I'm not exactly cool. I wasn't one of the cool kids growing up. I worked at the college radio station because I had to for my degree, and while it was fun, I really just wanted to get back to my Avid and make movies. So, new music has always been forced upon me by kind friends and unwitting strangers, and I usually have to be dragged to concerts.

Or at least, that's how it used to be. I'm still pretty bad at finding new music by myself, because I like listening to the music I already have... all 362 hours of it, or something like that. I'm not really great at knowing who is playing where or when, but if I find out someone I like is playing near, I go. I don't even have to have a date. It's one of the things I've learned to do as I got older--go places and do things I like without having to be accompanied. I still like it better with friends, but I don't let that stop me.

But this isn't a post about my new-found independence. This is a post about getting old... sort of.

See, when I first started going to concerts, I was 16, and that was U2 at a stadium in Chicago, and doesn't really count in terms of "shows". It was a concert, and it was amazing, but "shows" are a different breed. I don't know what my first "show" was, but I'm going to guess something at the Sokol Underground with Andrew. And we saw lots of shows there.

(A side note: one of my favorite things Andrew has ever said about me is that I'm the most low maintenance high-maintenance girl he knows. I don't remember all the exact reasons why, but listed among them were the desire to go to shows and sit on a dirty concrete floor in jeans and sneakers and drink whiskey, but love lipstick and care about wearing matching accessories and still need reassurance that I'm a worthwhile human and stuff like that.)

So, this spring, Alkaline Trio came to Dallas, and I wanted to go. I didn't know anyone else* in 500 mile radius who liked them enough to go with me, especially since the concert fell on the same night as another social event that 93% of my friends were attending. I, forgetting that I was no longer 21, decided that I could do everything! I would put in a full day of work outdoors, attend Social Function A, then drive 45 minutes to the concert, stay up until it was tomorrow, sleep a pitifully small number of hours, then get up and do another full day of work outdoors again.

But again, this isn't really a post about the foolish choices I make to enjoy good music.

See, while I was at the show, I realized something.

What's 6 times 7? How many roads must a man walk down?

The number 42.  Much like exclaiming "37!?" will make Kevin Smith fans snicker, this number has special geeky significance to those of us who enjoyed "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

This isn't not about the secret meaning of life, the universe, and everything.  It's not even really about Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  It just happens to be my 42nd post, so I thought the intro relevant.

So, the topic of statistical probability came up the other day... maybe while I was watching House.  And given the fact that I actually do believe in some things that are statistically improbable and mathmatically unlikely, I still find this song by Tim Minchin to be quite funny and thought-provoking.

So for the lack of something else witty, profound, personable and engaging to say, I leave you with these lyrics to ponder.

If I Didn't Have You

Musical rewind

So, I had this grand idea: a cd with 30 songs, one from each year of my life.

It would be a fabulously eclectic mix, chronicling my life through songs! Only... well, obviously I don't remember much about music from the first few years, and then the songs that were influential later in life weren't necessarily from the year in which I was being influenced, and then you run into the problem where 1987 had so many great songs released that year I can't figure out which to pick! It's a conundrum.

So, I'm working on a list that will allow me to put the important songs in, leaving room for years I don't remember, and still putting the songs of important years in their place, while still paying attention to the years that they're from. So, here we go!

from cassette to jump drive

So, I'll be dating myself a little bit here, but that's ok. Since when have I ever been shy? (ok, one time when I was four meeting some of my parents friends for approximately 5 minutes.)

The first tape I ever bought--with my allowance money--was Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. Yep. There it is.

So, while I remember those little record things, I was still young enough that they mostly belonged to my brother, and I never called them anything other than little record thingies. We had one with the Big Mac song on it, and I had a few that came with books, like maybe the Care Bears?

Anyway, I had a Fisher Price tape recorder when I was 8 or so, and I remember putting my NKOTB tape in, sneaking in to sleep in my brother's water bed (while he & Dad were off in TX, Mom & I stayed in CA to wait for the house to sell) and put the thing under my pillow and listen until I fell asleep.
I don't know the first cd I bough, but I think it was Ace of Base... because that's just how classy I am. I do, however, remember when Dad bought our first cd player. He bought this awesome cd collection thingy of all the best songs from the 60s--15 discs full. Numbers 1, 4, 7 & 14 were the best.

But cds and tapes lived in glorious harmony for a long time.

Just shake your rump

Alright, there are lots of songs that I like. I listen to the radio, and I enjoy it. This may not seem like a huge revelation to you, and it's not to people who know me, but I think it still sort of disappoints those friends of mine who introduce me to good new music that I would never ever know about if it weren't for them, or my few years in college radio. Luckily, my friends like me anyway, and because I have a knack for knowing names of songs & artists and can sometimes extrapolate this information from half-hummed bits of songs and misheard lyrics, they keep me around and make me playlists to broaden my horizons and stuff.

That being said, there are songs that I like that also drive me up the wall... I mean, I like them. I sing along when they come on the radio. I dance in my car. But later, when they're stuck in my head, I detest them, can't believe I even like them in the first place. They're bits of unimpressive digitized fluff, spanning several decades, and still, pop music is pop because that's short for "popular" and it wouldn't be popular if people didn't listen to it, and I'm one of those people, so I should just suck it up and baaaa along with all the other sheep and enjoy my happy dance tunes and realize that they won't make my eardrums pop from repeated listening, which I think is a more accurate description of why it's called pop music... but I digress.

Friday's list is "Songs I like that are guilty pleasures but also make me wish I were cooler but not so cool that I turned all pretentious and elitist and stopped enjoying simple pleasures like pop music" or perhaps "Songs that I just love and I'm not afraid of the looks I get from people because whether they have 'artistic value' or not, they make my life better because I get happier when I listen to them: