I know, I know, I'm a gentile, but I really want to meet a nice, educated Jewish guy to settle down with and raise interfaith (is atheism a faith?)children. Every time I drive by the Hebrew Faith center and see the ad for Hebrew classes, I think about signing up.
I think this is all because Simon Stein drives a Prius.
Shalom!
We had to watch this for our argumentation and logic class, and it nearly took my breath away.
It's been one of those weeks for like the last 3 months. Every time I approach something close to stasis at work, something completely disruptive happens and everything changes. I'd like to say it keeps me on my toes, but that sounds like exercise, and I know that isn't true. The good news is that if we keep growing at this pace, I will probably be some executive type person, wearing tailored suits and talking of paradigm shifts. The bad news is that if we keep growing at this rate I will probably go mad long before a promotion that would require tailored suits. In my business writing class we are working on resumes and cover letters, right now. I joke with myself that I am any position to start a new job now. I also joke with myself that my job is really all that bad. I need to suck it up.
I did laundry tonight. I even put everything away. I'm quite proud of myself for that. I have many bad habits when it comes to laundry: I leave things in the washer, I leave things in the dryer, I throw clean clothes back on the floor, I lose socks and an alarming rate, I fold towels and never put them away. The latter has become a real issue for me. I wash the towels and fold the towels and then I deposit them on the side of my bed, never putting them away, until every clean towel in the house, be it hand, bath, beach, or kitchen, is in my room. I thought confessing this would inspire me to go put the damned towels away, but it didn't. I'm super lazy, and we have a lot of towels.
Maybe not for long though? Villi and I are spearheading a group yard/bake sale to take place on July 7th and 8th. We are using this opportunity to weed out all of the crap in our lives (hello bratz dolls) and maybe make enough money for a few lottery tickets? I'm looking forward to tackling my inner pack rat. I even stopped doing homework tonight to plan for the yard sale instead.
I didn't get any homework done at work today because I spent most of the day at work reading about Monica Emmerson, the woman who was detained at Reagan International airport a week ago for dumping the contents of her child's sippy cup on the floor. Initially, this woman released a statement that she was illegally detained by TSA authorities and that her rights were violated. She indicated that she didn't dump water on the floor, merely that the some spilled when she opened the cup. Then, the TSA released security videos that refute all of the woman's claims and basically capture her throwing a tantrum. Additionally, I guess she is former Secret Service, and she tried to use her expired credentials to claim that she was above the law and security screening. I spent all afternoon fuming about the nerve of this woman. I am continually impressed by the sheer number of people that think they are special. You see them on the roads, roaring by a line of traffic only to cut over at the last second, or at stores, cutting a head of other waiting customers, or, apparently, in airports dumping water all over the ground like some sort of petulant five year old. The behavior is self-sustaining, since most people just let them get away with it. I was glad that this woman has become a public spectacle because she lied about her obnoxious behavior and got caught on tape. Just like Marge Simpson says "You know, the courts might not work any more, but as long as everybody is videotaping everyone else, justice will be done."
I was trolling for articles about something or other (Harry Potter, Libraries, Bookstores, or other) and I came upon this editorial in the Chicago Tribune about the difference between book lovers and book likers, the importance of both, and the reluctance of the literati to accept book likers to their fold.
Initially, I aligned myself with the book lovers, but as I read the article, I became unsure of if I was a book lover. I don't always read literature. I have a healthy appreciation for trashy books. I also have a tendency to re-read my favorite books, even though I have plenty of new books that need to be read. I don't always read for knowledge and growth. Sometimes I read for familiarity and escape.
I was getting very downhearted that I might not be a book lover. In agony, I went out into the front room, into the library, and ran my hands lovingly over all of the titles. The books I had stolen from the school library (donation piles, friends, family), that amazing box of books I had rescued from the trash, and the Nancy Drew's I had paid a fortune for on EBay to recover my collection.
Then it hit me. My books had made me a thief, a trashdigger, and an addict. My books had made me deviant. I slept well last night, knowing I was officially a book lover. That, plus I finally set up the exhaust pipe for my little air conditioner and got the room a chilly and lovely.
Courtesy of Leslie...
Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo
I just watched this office video. I was really charmed by the idea of all these young, moderately attractive, professionals choreographing dances to 90s alternative music. At the end, I noticed the link to the company's job postings; this took the shine off a bit. It made the whole thing feel slightly like a recruitment video. "come work for us. we have fun."
How on earth is it monday already? I want to buy an atomic clock to wear on the weekends. I'm pretty sure that after the weekend, when I check my atomic clock against another (like norad) it will be at least 9 hours faster. Holes in the space-time continuum are the only way I can account for the shortness of my weekends.
My dearest group of friends and I have been talking about starting a band for ages. Mostly, we talk about it drunk, pining for a life beyond the call center. We create band names, song names, tour names, acceptance speeches, and even city specific crowd references (does Des Moines know how to rock or what?).
I have a feeling that as a job becomes more numbing and corporately soul-crushing, smart and creative people have to find an outlet or they will die. Personally, I write. I write short stories, essays, and even have an unfinished mafia novel out there on my hard drive as well. It seems necessary to my survival to know that I can put a pen to paper and create something. Villi likes to paint. It is her refuge from the drudgery of the working class.
Between Limmy, Villi, and I, we currently have two acoustic guitars, an electric guitar, two keyboards (one full size, one not), and my violin from high school. I fully expect, by summer's end, that we will own a bass guitar and a drum kit. We just seem to be heading in that direction of older people who create for creation's sake. It no longer really occurs to us that we would be successful; we just want to dedicate a little time to do something that is meaningful to us. Work doesn't fill that gap, obviously.
We went to John and Andrea's housewarming yesterday. Homeownership is so grown up. Ethan was, predictably, totally adorable. We got John a karaoke machine for this birthday and Ethan fell in love with it. We taught him how to do the sound check on the microphone (check check 1 2). Yella wanted to teach him to say 'kill whitey' but I told Yella we wouldn't further her facist cause. Instead, we taught him to say peace. Maybe Ethan won't ever have to sell his soul to the company store.
Here he is, mid-pose.
So far, I am really enjoying my Argumentation and Logic class. It is one of two 4000 level classes I am taking this semester and my first foray into senior classes. The teacher for this class is hilarious. She is also teaching my business writing class, and I like logging into my class site just to see if she has written anything. Like this.
Right now: You should be posting on the Week 3 discussion board if you haven't already. You should have your roughest of drafts there, and you should be peer reviewing two other students' roughest of rough drafts. You should be getting responses back from your peers, telling you in painstaking detail of your triumphs and failures, your glories and your humiliations. It's all very casual.
Monday, June 18th (Three days from now! That's practically tonight!): You should submit a more polished draft, but still not the final draft, of your ann bib to the Week 2, Assignment 2 Dropbox.
Thursday, June 21st: You should check in to see if I'm done commenting on your draft so that you can polish it even further. (I am going to try very hard to get these back to you all by Wednesday night.)
Monday, June 25th: You should submit your final draft, which will be the best work of your life, to the Week 4, Assignment 2 Dropbox.
I'm not sure what will happen after that. I suppose we'll all go on, somehow, to experience the small joys and disappointments that an ordinary life offers. And maybe one day, when we are all old and full of regret, we can look back at this time and think, "Oh, yeah. I kinda remember that class."
I'm writing my paper about the bookstore model in libraries. Interestingly enough, even though people bitch about the bookstore model in libraries, I am having a hard time finding credible sources (rather than someone's rantings in a blog similar to this one) against it. It's like professionally, public librarians have enough sense to know when a battle is over and a victor declared.
It's been a real hard week at work, punctuated with some seriously crap interactions with our larger customers. I'm glad it is Friday. I am gearing up for another full weekend. For fun, here I am as a south park character/cat burglar.
At my company, we have initiation for new employees. One of the most interesting questions asked (or the question that leads to most interesting answers) is name three people, dead or alive, that you would like to have dinner with and why.
When I started the job, I am sure I tried to pick people that seemed intriguing, smartly obscure, or obscurely smart. Something like - Eleanor of Aquitaine, Salvador Dali, and Jimi Hendrix. Do I really want to meet these people, or do I just want people to think I want to meet these people? It is probably the latter, because at this moment, I would give my right eye to meet Avril Lavigne and beat the shit out of her.
I was happy to see the FCC ruling come down on the decency laws. I loves me a good swear word. Not that I watch much network TV, but I disliked Michael Powell as the FCC Chairman, and I dislike Kevin Martin, too. I liked Mark Morford's take on the whole thing.
But maybe that's beside the point. Because as far as Bush's God-spanked FCC is concerned, it is, always and forever, all about protecting the children. Or rather, it is all about protecting some imaginary Christian Everychild, some sort of perfect hypersheltered dovelike organism made of spun glass and delicate bunny hearts and little golden crucifixes, a fragile, blessed thing whose happy, unblemished life had been completely free of blood or spit or pain right up until he overheard Bono say "f--" at the Golden Globes and his precious virgin heart shattered forever.
In an attempt to reconcile the pomposity of the business card fiasco, I was going to try to track down the two people I met and call them and apologize and take them out for drinks or something. So, I punch them into google to try to find them and Leanne's name shows up on a reunion site for my 10 year high school reunion...the one that happened last weekend and no one told me about, even though my name is on the page as one of the class of 97 favorites (I was Most Dramatic). Doubly wounding, I am not even on the list of people they are looking for. It's like deletia. I no longer exist in the eyes of my high school. I didn't really want to go to the reunion, but everyone wants to be the rejecter, not the rejectee. Sigh.
To be fair, my arch-nemesis was there. It is probably better that I didn't even have the option. It would have been internal conflicts galore.
What a full and busy weekend. It hardly felt like a weekend at all. We were going to do the gardening first on Saturday, but that seemed stupid and hard, so we went shopping instead, which is fun and easy. Since we were going to the drive-in that night, I got some new university chairs that, for $25 apiece, were fantastic. By the time we got done shopping, we had one seat folded down and everyone was holding stuff in their lap. A good time. We did do the gardening after and it was stupid and hard, just like we thought. After that, we were off to the drive-in to see Oceans 13 and Spiderman 3. Oceans 13 was pretty good, much better than 12, and they had churros, which are fantastic. Spiderman 3 was possibly the worst movie I’ve ever seen. It was disjointed and painful and non-sensical, sorta like this post. Luckily, Villi and I made many inappropriate jokes about nipples and illiteracy, and we got through somehow.
Sunday, I had fully intended to sleep in, but it was not in the cards. I ended up cleaning the kitchen and washing all the new lovely components of my new lovely picnic basket. After that, we sort of lounged through the afternoon until it was time to head up to Red Rocks. Some people think the fact that I am 28 and a Colorado native and have never been to Red Rocks for a show is unacceptable, but it is the truth. We (Villi, Dave, MFS, Limmy, and I) were going up to the see the True Colors tour sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign. The Dresden Dolls, Deborah Harry, Erasure, and Cyndi Lauper. Pretty good line up. The opening band, The Cliks, were already mid set when we arrived. They were playing their cover of Cry Me a River when we sat down.
The Dresden Dolls were next and they are a lot of fun to watch. Amanda is surely a site to behold in concert. I hadn’t heard much of their stuff, but I think I will download some more. They are sort of what I had wanted Nellie McKay to be, but wasn't.
During Deborah Harry’s set (which wasn’t very good because her band was too loud for her and she did this weird leslie sansone walkaerobics for the whole set) I looked down my row and was delighted to see two ghosts of Christmas past, Patrick and Leanne. Patrick (who goes by his middle name Troy now and I always forget) was my best friend for the better part of elementary, middle, and high school. Leanne was also a terrific friend of mine in middle and high school and I knew, in my heart of hearts, that I would run into them at this concert. We couldn’t really talk because the music was so loud, but I really wanted to get together with them. I gave them my business card, which in hindsight seems rather pompous, but I forgot to get a pen and it didn’t occur to me, what! 9 years into this digital age, to use my cell phone. Such a dummy. I hope they call me!
After an intermission, it was erasure and Cyndi Lauper, and they were both fantastic. Andy Bell is a treat to watch live. Erasure gets the crowd dancing and singing; it was lovely. Just because, here is a video of Erasure taken off my cell phone. It sucks, but it proves I was there, that I heard of them first.
Cyndi Lauper was a delight. She has so much energy and heart, and she can really still belt her songs out there. I was blown away by her. Plus, I was amazed by her conviction to this cause and her sincere desire to eradicate hatred and violence towards the GLBT community. Everybody came out on stage to sing Take a Chance on Me (ABBA, natch) and then a very beautiful and haunting version of True Colors to close out the show. I spent the better part of this song trying to sing along but crying instead. It was way more moving than that stupid Kodak commercial.
And now, it is Monday and I am back at work and I really wish the weekend had been a little longer, but I feel it was well spent. I normally try to avoid diary style entries, but I had a lot to report and a finite number of snide comments.
Last night my team and a couple of the consultants went to McCormicks for happy hour drinks and appetizers. We were promised drawings for prizes, but there were none. Anyhow, the consultant from the previous post/email exchange told me to look up the Flights of the Conchords on youtube, because when he first saw it, I was the first person that came to mind. And having found this folk guitar/comedy duo on youtube, I'm pretty flattered. It was precisely my sense of humor. The first person I thought about when I watched the videos was Limmy. So far, my favorite is business time.
After all beers at happy hour, we went out for more drinks last night too. Now, I'm a little dehydrated, but I'm sure i can rehydrate tonight at the drive in with some icees or something.
The invention of email, while useful for communicating, has probably reduced productivity in the American workforce by untold percentages. This is an exchange between me and one of the consultants; it starts with a simple invitation to happy hour.
Me: I thought we may stop for happy hour this Friday to say goodbye to Ryan and hello to Dave. Anyone interested?
Him: Who?
Me: New support guy dave. We haven’t taken him out for any of the obligatory company drinking.
Him: There’s a new support guy? Where?
Me: Behind Andy, to the left of Chris. He’ll be the one carrying a red rose.
Him: I can’t wait… what should I wear?
Me: Anything that highlights your eyes.
Him: I’m not sure if pink or maroon brings the red allergy look out better
Me: Even better, you’ll look maudlin, thoughtful, concerned for your fellow man. Ditch the color, go with black.
Him: Anyone who knows me would see right through that.
Me: Yes, but that is the beauty of a blind date. You can be whoever you want, even Spiderman.
Him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA97bT8WMSs&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ebestweekever%2Etv%2Fcategory%2Fvideos%2F yes, I know I already sent it. but it’s worth seeing a second or even third time.
Me: I wonder how much static electricity that cat gathers under that couch.
Him: Nothing would make me happier than having a cat who does that for 20 minutes, then jumps on the first person to walk into the house. The static jolt would just be terrific. I bet you’d even see an arc.
So, I was reviewing my last post from like 5 minutes ago, and I read some of my older posts, too. I decided to look up remember a trashcan to see who else used that line on their page. When you spell trashcan as one word, it is just one page: not mine. If you separate it, there are 8 pages. One of which is this
If you are too lazy to click the link, I just let you know that it is the entire script of bill and ted's excellent adventure colored to form a picture of the two titular characters. The internet is crazy; you can tell her I said so, too.
Cause I'm about to use some bullets.
• The carpet is starting to dry and no longer looks like pee-pee.
• School is much easier since dropping that one class. I’m thinking about dropping the other three.
• I keep waking up at 5 AM. It sucks. I have the bladder of a 50 year old man. I pay close attention to commercials that start with “frequent urges.”
• I’m ecstatic that cooler weather is rolling in. I wonder if it will last all summer.
•Like 80 of my books won't import from Media Man to library thing. I'm sad some of those books make me look super smart and literate. I have to do something us cool kids call cross referencing to find out which ones one import.
• These points are going to get less coherent and relevant. At this point, I’m just writing to avoid doing homework.
• Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
• ‘kay done
Dropped my Advanced Composition class yesterday, phew. I missed the first assignment because I don't know the difference between AM and PM. Whenever you miss the first assignment, it doesn't bode well for the rest of the semester, so I decided to cut my summer class load from 12 to 9 credit hours. I feel much better about this, especially since my argumentation and logic class looks really time consuming. I was a little sad to drop the class, since we were going to do photo essays and I had already picked mine and started taking pictures. I'm sure the topic will still be relevant in the spring.
I cleaned the carpets last night and after drying they actually look worse. WTF? I mean the carpet was jacked, but now it looks grotesque. I'll hit hard again tonight, I guess.
Since I entered all my books onto librarything.com, I have been debating whether or not to remove my Nancy Drew books from the list. For one, they are really more of a collection than books that I read. Also, having an author cloud with Carolyn Keene (a fictional person)as the main author is a little embarrassing. But, I have decided to leave them. First, because these books define my life as a reader. I started reading them in third grade and kept reading them through middle school. They were the books I spent my allowance and Christmas money on, and the books I bought from the school book fair. I've decided not to feel ashamed about them anymore. Plus, if I remove them from my library, Jennifer Crusie becomes my most prevalent author, and that is indeed shameful.
Always good to open with a Simpson's line. Another work week is over, and I have to confess surprise and delight that I even survived. Some days I just think it would be easier to bum change on a highway offramp. Lawd, have mercy.
"Regrets are a waste of time. They're the past crippling you in the present."
I always loved that line in Under the Tuscan Sun. I'm sure it's true, too. I just can't seem to embrace it. After the long talks earlier in the week, I spent an abnormally large amount of time dwelling on the past...like high school. It really couldn't be a bigger waste of time to wonder about things from 10 years ago. And, believe me, I feel stupid when I do it, but sometimes I just can't shake the feeling that I should have done things differently. I even try to console myself that these changes would make me a totally different person than the one I am today, but I hardly know if that is a positive or a negative. I'm trying to drop this bad habit. I try to remind myself about all of the good things that I have right now. I'm getting better at it; I really am.
P.S. The roasted garlic boca burgers are the grossest things I have ever eaten. Ick.
