keep this coupon

Something I have learned in this paper pitching process - just because a small red piece of paper says to KEEP IT, it does not mean you have to. Now, on to the list of exciting things found by me while trying to get rid of paper:

- an 8 page photocopied glossary of badminton terms. For your badminton edification: an "ACE" is "a term used interchangeably with the word "point" seldom used in U.S but quite common in England."

- a rock with a santa hat (I believe this was a gift) The rock has been divested of its hat, and is now sitting in the garden. I can only imagine that this is a less humiliating existence for the rock.

- A note written back back and forth in typing class between me and my ages 6-17 best friend Priscilla. I am guessing this was sophomore year... I will have to send it to her. it's a typical 15 y.o. mix of obsessing about boys, wishing we could smite our enemies, and things like "I just found the neatest thing to type -- try bookkeeping -- that one is fun!" (man - we still used TYPEWRITERS when I was in high school. It seems just this side of a quill pen. And we were learning typing! 5 year olds can type now!)

- yellow legal pad with what looks to be the rough draft on the infamous Mesopotamian Culture Club paper. I managed to work pirates in! "Sextus Pompey (referred to as the pirate of the Res Gestae) had control of Sicily and the Mediterranean"

- a sweet card from my Grandfather upon the occasion of high-school graduation:
Jenny Dear - How I wish I could have been there for your graduation - an event you will remember vividly as long as you live! I also graduated in June, but it was 1927! Only 60 years ago! Your grandmother and I were in the same class - how proud I was of her -- and you. How lovely she was -- and you are! Keep your heart filled with love -- and all things will go your way. --Grandpappy.

some notes:
1) I am fairly certain he had more fun at his graduation
2) I am relieved to discover that my irregular punctuation and addiction to the exclamation point is hereditary and so there is NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT! phew.
3) ditto on the excessive sentimentality.


OTHER THINGS FOUND:
Naked one-legged Ken's other leg. I wonder if surgery has advanced sufficiently for him, or if I should just give it a decent send-off? Or shove it back in a drawer? Ken looks like he's doing fine without it.

MISC:
someone tell me to stop asking the Magic 8 Ball questions! Or if you'd rather, you may leave a question for the Magic 8 Ball and I'll ask for you. (it pretty much has to be yes or no)

Augustuary: third round trial mix

Because I should be doing 1000 other things, here is the latest mix I've been working on. It's still not quite right, but I got tired of trying out new songs for it. I started it in August (when it had the noble name Augustus), now it has to be Augustuary, although I suppose this means I could change it up until the end of February. I do love some built in flexibility!

FSM = Favorite Singalong Moment

1. Good Weekend - Art Brut - Most joyous recitation of the word "twice" ever recorded. This song is lusty but sweet, which is not something you run across that often. FSM= I haven't slept in about four days!

2. El Scorcho - Weezer - FSM = the redhead said you shred the cello, and I'm jello baby -- This alone is enough for me to love this song, but it certainly isn't the only reason. Neurotic Rivers Cuomo, I still love you, although I think reading someone else's diary is bad form.

3. Baby C'mon - Stephen Malkmus - I loved this song from the first time I heard it. I'm not sure what it is... it's just so loopy and shambly and shaggy and charming. FSM = Ba-by, c'mon!

4. Do You Wanna Hit It? - The Donnas - They would TOTALLY get into fights in parking lots. I like that about them.

5. Rich Girl - Gwen Stefani - I know all the year end lists featured Hollaback Girl (which I also like because of the B-A-N-A-N-A-S), but this one had a fashion pirate ship in the video! Plus I like singing "ding!" along with Eve. (although I am still disturbed by the fact that Gwen is apparently keeping 4 Japanese girls as pets - she will dress them wicked, and give them names -- hopefully she's using some of her Rich Girl splash to pay them well.)

6. Super Disco Breakin' - The Beastie Boys - Nothin' sounds quite like the 808. I always think of this song whenever I see or hear the numbers 8-0-8. Just like I always think Battle of Hastings whenever I see 1066. --fifteen cups of coffee and you know it's ON. Maybe the Normans had better coffee...

7. Rock & Roll Queen - The Subways - this is not especially clever (or rhymey) you are so cool/ you are so rock and roll - it's definitely no redhead said you shred the cello, but there are some fun yelling parts. Good for the car.

8. Since U Been Gone - Kelly Clarkson - it is a truth universally acknowledged that this song is the gold standard for singing into a hairbrush.

9. I Want a Pony - Candypants- Mom I want to be an astronaut, buy me a rocket ship so I can sail to Mars/ I don't want to fly in Apollo, get me the Enterprise or I don't want to go-- Indulge your inner Veruca Salt by chanting I want a pony! I want a pony! Now!-- It's fun.

10. Do What You Want - OK Go - this song has just the perfect, fever-reducing amount of cowbell. (plus that addictive power-pop stutter d-d-d-do what you want!) OK! I will. I want to hear this song again, please.

11. The Way We Get By - Spoon - work on your tambourine skills and rock star enunciation during these 2.5 minutes! (I think on the latter the trick is not to breathe through your nose at ALL)

12. Wilderness - Sleater-Kinney - moved to a city where hippies run wild... I have my suspicions about where this city may be.

13. Galang - M.I.A. - I have no idea what is going on in this song, but I do like saying "ya ya heyyyyyyy".

14. Goin' Through Your Purse - Material Issue - hmmm, much like El Scorcho (where he reads her diary!) this is a sort of wrong-headed invasion of privacy song, but I can't help liking it. I cleverly put these things all back into place so you wouldn't think that I was a jerk/ the things I found while goin' through your purse. I still think OK Go should cover this song.

15. Four Leaf Clover - Old 97's. Rhett Miller and Exene Cervenkova snarling at each other over a very tension-laden guitar and drums. That makes it all the better when you get to my FSM = shouting: I've got a FOUR leaf clover, but I ain't got no hope of getting you -- It's cathartic, even if you think you don't need it. (This was one of two Old 97's songs used in a recent Veronica Mars episode)

16. Gonna Make You Love Me - Ryan Adams - By many accounts, Ryan Adams is kind of a jerk. But being a jerk doesn't mean you can't write a good song. Like this song! It's only gonna make you love me more - I mean, that sounds kind of assholish right there, but he makes it work.

17. Little Black Ache - Bishop Allen Chasin' my excuses to the end of the night/ tried to make a friend but it ended with a fight/ I don't know why, and I don't know when/ but my keys have found a way to lock me out again. Poor guy. This song has vaguely Buddy Hollyish guitars, which I dig. FSM = I got my little black ache (what you got?) my little black ache won't fade. Although my sister insists it is "little black cape" which is funny. It won't fade!

18. My Doorbell - The White Stripes This isn't about an actual doorbell? I am shocked! :: has vapors, fans self, faints, revives enough to shake actual maracas:: (seriously - I can't NOT like this song - and that was even before I saw the vaudeville get-up they had going on in the video - LOVE!)

19. The Fallen - Franz Ferdinand - I love the beginning of this song so much! it sounds like a rubber band being pulled back. They never quite let go all the way, which is probably good because I might not survive it. just because you like to destroy/ all the things that bring the idiots joy/ well, what's wrong with a little destruction?

20. I Predict a Riot - Kaiser Chiefs - I predict you will be singing la aa-ah lalala aa aa lalalalala

21. Illegal Tender - Louis XIV - This song makes NO SENSE, but it is strangely compelling. It is ridiculously sleazy and almost completely incoherent, but it does have inadvertent hilarity and a lot of enthusiasm going for it. And handclaps. FSM = even your knees are nice! I like to think that they have hired a guy that has to drop an anvil on his foot just to make the repeated "aiiiiiiieeeeee" noises in the background. Or maybe they startle him with a mouse. In any case, five in the bucket is better than six. Read here for the hilarious (but nasty in every way) pitchfork review of the album.

rockaway beach

some observations

1. I promised myself that I would try to stop using the word RANDOM all the time, otherwise this would almost certainly be titled 'random observations.'

2. I have too much stuff. All I do with most of it is move it around from one flat surface to another. Papers are the worst. Why can't I get rid of them? Bah!

3. Spoon - Gimme Fiction = !!! All Music calls it a "dark, theatrical album seething with late-night tension and menace." Way to go, seething late-night tension and menace! I'd heard the first track The Beast and Dragon, Adored from Fluxblog, but other than that this is all still pretty new to my ears. I am sure that my mind will shift as I listen to it more - usually my initial favorites remain favorites, but some other songs I move up the list as I get to know them. My early favorites are The Beast and Dragon, Adored (I could listen to Britt Daniel sing "uh huh" all day long), I Turn My Camera On, The Delicate Place, and The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine. They were here in pdx in December for under 10 bucks and I missed it. I will try not to become too distressed about this. Rumor has it that the singer lives here now, or his girlfriend does or something. Anyway, maybe they will play Portland more often. Or maybe by the time I figure out that isn't going to happen the sting from missing the show will have subsided.

4. Jane Espenson has a blog now. I love Jane! She was one of my favorite Buffy writers, and seems to be an all around good-egg. Her blog is pretty new and has been about writing, writing for television, and what she had for lunch. Interesting stuff.

5.Cupcakes are delicious.

willful creatures

by Aimee Bender #1

This collection of short stories is so good! I liked her first collection well enough, (The Girl in the Flammable Skirt: Stories) , but I really liked this one. Is it because it is objectively better? Is it because I read it with more distance from the latest Kelly Link? Who knows. What I do know is that you should read it if you haven't already.

One of the things that I love about these stories (and Bender in general) is that she taps into darker feminine feelings. Not that I am feeling particularly oppressed or anything, but there is a hmmmm, I don't know - a cultural expectation that women are peacemakers and civilizers. (does that even make sense?) Despite being a 'Violence is Not the Answer' kind of person, if I am honest there is a small part of me that would get into head-cracking brawls in parking lots. In Off, the main character behaves in socially unacceptable ways. She knows it, she doesn't care. (it sort of reminded me of the Fiona Apple lyric I'm going to make a mistake, I'm gonna do it on purpose). The character is at once sympathetic and horrible. I loved reading about her, but would run as fast as I could if I saw her coming at me. (she would beat the shit out of me in a parking lot, for starters.)

Other stories that stand out particularly, a couple weeks after reading it : Motherfucker (about a man who seduces single mothers, of course), I Will Pick Out Your Ribs (from My Teeth), and Job's Job (heartbreaking and wonderful). I also really liked Fruit and Words- it struck me as being the most dreamlike - not just the words (read it and you'll know what I mean), but how time passed (watch the fruit) and even how the proprietress changed in her attitude to the main character. Those kinds of twists and reversals seem very dreamlike to me - like when one landscape changes to another in ways that don't make sense to your logical waking brain but make total sense while you sleep.

televised

A while back on Gilmore Girls - this season, but I can't remember which episode - Lorelai and Sookie had a whole riff going about how every show on TV involves cutting up dead people to solve crimes. They aren't far from wrong! Speaking of Gilmore Girls - I am glad that Rory and Lorelai have patched things up. LUKE! Why?!? Don't be an idiot. Richard and Emily need to return. I like Sherilyn Fenn as Luke's baby mama. Stupid, jealous Zach = ADORABLE! "Welcome to the SH, bitch!!" I love Mrs. Kim.

Las Vegas: I have low expectations for the Love Boat of the 21st century, and this show is failing to live up to even those! I think I am going to have to give up all TV that is not appointment TV. It will probably be good for me. Then when I do catch an episode that consists solely of making male-stripper jokes and finding the "ghost" that is haunting the casino, it will seem funny because it is a once in a while thing, instead of me thinking "maybe the male-stripper is the ghost!" and then wondering if I have lost my entire mind, or just my critical faculties.

Love Monkey: hmph. I am on the fence - it is hard to tell after one episode (although clap clap blog has already rendered a (hilarious) verdict). The new Boy Wonder that they were all racing to sign sounds just like John Mayer. (side note: have you ever seen John Mayer sing? His face!! What's going on there? It is like watching a slow-motion train wreck - I can't look away no matter how desperately I want to) Are they really going to go there with the best friend who is a girl (but not a girlfriend) being hopelessly in love with him? why, why WHY??? Seriously - are there no platonic friendships anywhere in the whole entire world? And Secret Gay Guy's secret revealed via MONTAGE? Good grief. (Secret Gay Guy was on Buffy, though, so I am forgiving). I will give this show the benefit of the doubt and see if maybe all of this is just a lot of exposition to get us situated in this fictional world and it will get less ham-handed as it goes on. There were things I liked about it.

Lost: I know this is a big critical time in life on the island and all, but I find my interest in the show just slip, slip, slipping away. It should be more interesting. They are on an island that has a Jungle of Mystery, for pete's sake! How can they make an invisible monster boring? On the one hand I like how slowly they are releasing the information - it's just like getting to know a person. "Oh, you trained Lippizaner horses on the deck of a merchant marine ship? I had no idea!" and then that sort of colors things from before you knew they trained horses with the merchant marines. Suddenly the whip and the hat with a plume and the immunity to seasickness make (slightly more) sense. On the other hand... I think this show might be better on DVD where I don't have to wait 122 weeks between new episodes. A really good show feels like it is over too fast. This show feels like it has been on all week by the 30 minute point. Last week's Mr. Eko episode was really good, though.

Veronica Mars: it hasn't been on in thirty thousand years, so I have no comment. I hope it doesn't return tonight because I will be at the Colin Meloy/ Laura Veirs show!

wonderfalls

I love this show. It was imaginative, funny, snarky, and sweet and therefore doomed to only 3 or 4 episodes before it was precipitously yanked off the air. Luckily for TV watching humanity, "the complete viewer collection" is out on DVD. Hooray for DVDs! The producers (including Tim Minear from both Angel and Firefly), must have sensed that the early demise was a possibility because the thirteen episodes in the collection are arced so you get a satisfying conclusion, but it is still open ended enough that they could have gone on another season. (or at least one whole season!)

The set up is that Jaye Tyler (our heroine), has a degree in philosophy from Brown, but works in a tourist trap gift shop in Niagara Falls. In her opinion, things are going along just fine until inanimate objects start talking to her. And making her do things. Each episode is named for the object doing the talking (Wax Lion, Crime Dog, Karma Chameleon, Cocktail Bunny, Wind-up Penguin, etc.). Jaye begins to doubt her sanity - all of her carefully constructed walls against the rest of the world start to teeter.

Mahandra: And what happens if you repress something?
Jaye: It goes away?
Mahandra: It comes back - all crazy and pissed off.

Caroline Dhavernas is fantastic as Jaye. Her face is so expressive - one quirk of her mouth or twitch of her eyebrow takes her from anxiety about going insane (it's stressful) to besotted thoughts about Eric the bartender. (She has more range than just insanity and lust, of course.) The rest of the ensemble is perfectly cast - especially Katie Finneran as Jaye's tightly wound older sister Sharon. KF would make a marvelous screwball comedienne - she has a gift for rapid-fire dialogue with improbable physical comedy. I can totally picture her tromping around behind William Powell driving him crazy. Maybe it's her voice. She's got that screwball hysterical pitch when necessary. She's just great. They all are!

The writing is really sharp and funny. I mentioned that, right?

Jaye: Yes, but maybe she's just a lazy whore. That happens, right? They can't all have hearts of gold and good work ethics.

Go here for more quotes, but what I really recommend is that you just go buy, rent, or borrow the DVDs and watch for yourself.
Oooh! I almost forgot! Another thing to recommend it - the theme song was written specifically for the show by Andy Partridge of XTC.
Here it is (yousendit link - only good for a week): I Wonder Why the Wonder Falls

things I have been doing in addition to painting what must be the equivalent to every flat surface on the earth:

1) reading Pride & Prejudice. I realized that I had either never read all of it, or it had been so long I couldn't be sure. Shocking!!! Having read about half of it now, I know that couldn't have read it a long time ago and forgotten - it is so freaking good!! I really wanted to read it before I started the new Crusie-edited Pride & Prejudice essay book: Flirting with Pride & prejudice : fresh perspectives on the original chick-lit masterpiece. I am not nuts about the chick-lit term, but I guess that genie is already out of the bottle.

2) Playing with Clutter, which is a really nifty application that lets me put the cover art on all of my albums in iTunes. I don't even have a video iPod, so I suppose it shouldn't matter, but I'm having fun with it and I'm for fun. So there.

3) Went on a brief photo-taking jaunt today to take advantage of the not-rain. Notice I didn't say sunshine. The clouds were pretty, anyway.

4) Thought about a bunch of other projects I am really fired up to do right now. Then I thought about WHY it is that I am all of the sudden fired up to do them. Is it because the new year always brings lots of enthusiasm since I don't have the pressure of holiday stuff? Or is it for the more probable and less benign reason that I want to work on that Nano story from a couple of years ago, and my brain is fighting itself? Knock it off in there!

5) While painting, (which largely consists of climbing up and down a ladder, taping things, and dropping paintbrushes full of paint on the one spot of floor there is no newspaper covering..etc.) I have been listening to the playlist I made for that soon to be worked on nano story. So fun! I haven't listened to it in a while, and it really brought back a lot of the things I like about my story. A couple of songs no longer work, a couple new songs presented themselves, and I *think* I might have come up with a solution for something that probably would only ever bother me. But I count! Of course I haven't read it in a while, so that good feeling could leak away. But maybe it won't go entirely.

6) (completely shallow): I have spent a few minutes - ok, more than a few, but not a lot - wondering why hot-as-the-sun (and also very talented, she hastened to add) Rhett Miller has made himself over to look not unlike he should be on Desperate Housewives. I know, I know - new look for the new album. I guess I will need more photos to properly evaluate. Poor me!

7) enjoying the He Wrote, She Wrote blog featuring Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. They have collaborated (although I have learned that collaboration is not the preferred term, but I can't remember what the right word is) on a novel coming out in the spring. She typically writes romance, he typically writes action-thrillers, but this combo looks like it will be a lot of fun. The blog is certainly entertaining (and illuminating) to read! Not only are they each funny and clearly very fond of each other, but it is interesting to see how they have such differing creative approaches, yet very similar dedication to their work. And they are both very open talking about how the process works for them, which I always like to read. I hope they have a hit on their hands.

ready, set, go!

I am launching an experiment. I am going to see if I can get one big painting project (it's a room) done by... the 15th! I don't know what happens, but every now and then I get overcome with the need to start a big project and if I'm not careful it ends up begun with great enthusiasm and finished much later with bitter resentment and sub-optimal results. So, I will have 5 days (counting today) to get the room prepped, painted, and put back together. That sounds like a lot of time, but it is a big room and I have to do this weird taping off thing, plus all of my normal things! While I'm working on it I can be thinking about my writing project (including what I should call it besides That Thing). Multitasking, ahoy! Now to pick music. Painting tunes are crucial.

Don't ask me what's up with the duck, I just really like him.

navel gazer, heal thyself

I had this whole long post half-written, but it was too boring for me to even go over again, let alone subject anyone else to it. Here are the highlights: pissy day, diet coke and ginger, vetoed on orange bathroom (it would have looked AWESOME), blah, blah, whine, PMS, I hate everything, grrrr, mood swing, mood swing, sigh, I love everything (except that one thing), and so on. The true high point of this day was seeing Mafia for Dummies at the library again. The fact that it even exists (although I think it is really called The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Mafia) just makes me laugh and I don't know why. I walk by its shelf on purpose just to see if it is there, or if some Dummy or Complete Idiot really needed Mafia advice. One day, I'll sneak a picture of it. I'm not sure what the library's picture taking policy is, but it will probably be more fun to try and be sneaky.

It is windy as all get out here. Maybe it will blow in a nicer day for tomorrow. Here's hoping!

belle ruin

by Martha Grimes #45
There are so many things I like about this series I don't even know how to start without resorting to a long list that would be not nearly as convincing as if you would just read it and see what I mean. However, time and cruel experience have taught me that my wishing for things does not make them so. There are only three books in the series proper (Hotel Paradise, Cold Flat Junction, and Belle Ruin*) There is usually some mysterious element or another, but not a mystery in the typical sense. There is far more time spent on the quality of doughnuts at the diner or how fine it feels to walk in to a cool room on a hot day than on the motivations of a killer - which is all fine by me. Grimes is also very good at drawing side-characters who seem at once to be completely real and like characters I've been reading (and loving) in fiction forever.

The real treat in these books is the first-person narrator Emma Graham. Emma is cub reporter, strategic planner, girl detective, Deus ex Machina ( for her brother's play Medea: The Musical!), romantic smartypants, observant busybody, and 12 years old. The past hangs all over the Hotel Paradise like a fine coat of dust, but rather than write "Dust Me" in it with her finger Emma exhales little puffs of breath that make it dance around in the light. I would read Emma's words all day long if it didn't mean it would bring me to the end of the book faster.

Here's a quote: There must be certain things that make us look at them, but we can't say what they mean because they don't have any words attached to them and sometimes not even a face, so it's like staring into a vacancy, yet it's the most important thing of all. But since there aren't any words or pictures, we can't say what or why it is. I do not know what was so important about the Waitresses and the Girl. I may never know. But I do know I'll keep looking until I can put it all into words, as if it's my duty. I do know that.

*One other Grimes book (The End of the Pier) features a regular character from the Hotel Paradise world, but is not really part of the series.

superintendence of my darlings wardrobe, is constantly cutting out

This is my new favorite spam email title. If only it had been sent by my favorite spammer (Maud Champagne) instead of Rodger with a "d" Lowe. From Maud Champagne it would almost seem like some sort of lost jazz-baby lingo that would make sense if it were 1924 and I were shopping for beads, garters, and ivory cigarette holders with my bobbed hair and a discrete flask of booze for when the shopping got to be just too much.

fun things for a thursday (or any other day)

1. A nifty video for the Stephen Malkmus song Baby, C'mon. I love the song for reasons I'm not sure of, but I love the video because there is some sort of mop monster in it. And other good things. (this link goes directly to the video, which is Quicktime, but in one of those uber-clean formats where you can't see how far it has loaded or anything. That's kind of a drag, but the video is worth it)

2. 7 Deadly Sinners - I saw something from here on boing boing, that made me click, but what I am directing you to is the awesome calendar! I am so glad to know that the 21st is not only National Hug Day, but Squirrel Appreciation Day. (side note: that full moon on the 14th is exactly what the moon looked like last month when it would not let me sleep)

3. The mp3 blog You Ain't No Picasso has its best of 2005 up. I got there via Said the Gramophone, which posted a different list at the end of last month. So many good tunes! There is some overlap between the two lists, but many wonderful things on each. One song that does appear twice is Andrew Bird's Fake Palindromes, which I am obsessed with. At least I'm not alone. Said the Gramophone says it best: And if you don't fall in love with the tune in the first two seconds, you will when Andrew Bird drawls "coulda died... shoulda died". Or when you notice the weird electric guitar that's stalking through the briar in the back, with long long legs. ... Or when "Fake Palindromes" ends (it ends!) after a scarce two minutes and fifty-two seconds. "I want to drill a tiny hole into your head," he sings. Well sign me up - just let me hear this thing again! Put it on a whirling repeat in a purple room with the blinds drawn. Run through that barrage of images, the formaldehyde-swap, the singles ads, the blood in her eyes. And then open the wardrobe and loose the violins, the super strings, the brown swooping things what lift me out the closed window and straight to the moon.

but in my opinion it is not to the moon pictured on the 14th of January.

anansi boys

by Neil Gaiman #44

Poor Fat Charlie - he's got family problems, women problems, arachnid problems, little old lady problems, work problems, and - well, a lot of problems and trouble with the law on top of it all. He is not the sort of hero that can gracefully extricate himself from these troubles, which makes him all the more compelling and sympathetic (even as one winces at him putting his foot in it again and again).

There are reviews of this book all over the internet, so I will just say that it is funny, kinda scary (in parts), and very satisfying. In his Powell's interview, Gaiman mentioned that he was going for a Wodehouse/ Thorne Smith vibe, which predisposed me to love this before I even opened it. My dad made me read Night Life of the Gods at an impressionable age (well, he didn't make me, but he did keep pestering me.) It certainly colored the way I studied Greek and Roman gods - it has got to be more fun to study mythology with the Thorne Smith module already in place. Anyway.

Lots of people have noted that this book has a character (Mr. Nancy) that appeared in American Gods,but I wouldn't really say they're connected in any substantive way. I enjoyed this one a lot more, but maybe I'm being unfair to American Gods. Or maybe I just like the comic tone of Anansi Boys more than the tough-guy, crime-novel style of American Gods. But it doesn't really matter what I liked more or less - this is about Anansi Boys which I love. I read it from the library, and then got it as a Christmas gift. Hooray! Now I can read it again whenever I like.

One more book post, and then I will be all caught up with my 2005 book list. I'm bummed I didn't make it to 50, but it was an interesting exercise and has made me consider what kind of reading I do. I think I'll try again in '06.

happy happy 2006!

Woo Hoo! Happy 2006! May the new year bring you happiness, healthiness, and lots of good laughs.

I don't really have resolution resolutions, but I have come up with some things I am going to work on for the next year (probably forever, really, but it seems less daunting when you break it into 12 month chunks).

Say Yes! - Something new I'm going to try out. I am a naysayer by nature. My initial, gut response to almost everything presented to me is No. This is so unfun, I can't even tell you! I am going to try in the coming year to reverse that - to turn some of those no's into yes. I'm not talking about stuff that I really have no interest in (so, Pat, that is still a NO for the lederhosen karaoke idea which you seemed so worried that I would be forced to agree to under the new plan) - this is for the things that my rational brain says I can do or would enjoy, things that until this point my irrational brain has said "better not," or "why bother." Screw you, irrational brain! Actually, nix that. I just need to train my irrational brain to be a little more devil may care. I have made a few forays in this campaign in 2005, and I feel certain that 2006 will be even better. Despite all of my natural no-ness, I am also an optimist so I think it will all work out. waves hands around head in international "it will all work out" signal..

Shark Punching - did you hear about the guy off of the Oregon Coast (Tillamook Head) who was surfing, got bit by a SHARK, and kept his wits about him enough to punch the shark in the nose until it let go? then he swam back to shore with a shark he just punched somewhere in the water behind him? I am going to let his cool under pressure be an example. He remembered it from watching Shark Week on TLC. See? TV *is* good for you.

GOYLA - (Get Off Your Lazy Ass) it's a classic for a reason! this year, GOYLA shall be directed at my actual lazy ass. I figure I can combine this with my desire to take more pictures. I will walk around *with my camera!*

in less general, more specific new year wishes, I would like to:
1) see a meteor shower. I keep dreaming about them (which is weird), but I've never actually seen one while I'm awake. I just need to figure out when/where there will be one visible and GO. My only concern is ending up in the middle of a field by myself somewhere in serial killer or meteor-cult territory. I don't want to join the mothership, I just want to see some meteors.
2) ride on a ferris wheel - I think they are so cool and it would be fun to take pictures from one.
3) Compost! I need to figure out a composting system so I can have tomatoes again in the summer that actually ripen.
4) acquire a pretty dress - Dress A Day has ruined me. I've been pretty much a jeans or skirt girl for a long time, but I have been casting my eyes dressward for a while now.
5) read more poetry, figure out encaustic technique, read more, go to more shows, do more creative projects including: write more, sew more, blah blah blah and all that jazz.