Prosaic Paradise

I am sitting in between three or four lists right now. A to-do list I didn’t complete last weekend, a packing list for BlogHer, a to-do list I wrote last night, and a shopping list with almost everything checked off. I don’t even know which one to look at right now. Thank goodness my exam was Tuesday.

Yup I finished microbiology! All those favors I said I’d do when “the semester was over”? I guess you can start calling them in. Although, I’ll be in Chicago for the next 4.5 days.  The exam itself was pointless as I needed something like 10% on it to get an A. That’s how manic I was earlier in the semester. It paid off in total non-stress for the final.

I found out some bad news about applying to the community college accelerated Nursing program though – turns out I have to put in 6 hours on a standardized test. This is a brand new requirement. Couldn’t they have waited 6 months? I am cross with them.

So today I am technically on vacation and will be until Monday. But if I were really on vacation I would be sleeping all day and then setting up some incense and emptying our stockpile of booze while listening to albums all night.

Uh, Megan, I promise not to get blitzed and put American Beauty on repeat all night in our hotel room while you’re trying to sleep. This will be a different kind of vacation. For those also attending – see you at BlogHer!

Tags: blogher

I’m about to show you just how ridiculous it can be to be me. Pen bloggers, at least, will understand… I hope…

About a week ago, the Office Supply Geek posted a fabulous highlighter refilling tutorial which reminded me that I have been saving up a post about highlighters for a while now. This is because I found my holy grail of highlighting. I am interested to see if the pen nuts out there agree with me.

At my office, I found a pack of the middle guys – the Bic Brite Liner Z4 – sitting around in a conference room. They’d been there a few days, and I needed highlighters, so I snagged them. I do a great deal of document review at work and these are an essential tool in my arsenal, so it was to my delight that I found that these puppies behaved like no other highlighter I’d ever used. When they were all getting close to empty (and I love being able to see that happen as I use them up!) I went looking in stores for replacements. Nada. Couldn’t find ’em. But I saw Bic Brite Liners (on the right) and thought maybe they’d just changed the form.

Nope. There are big differences between a Brite Liner and a Brite Liner Z4, it turns out, not the least of which is the see-through business. I also picked up these Sharpie Accents because I have a great deal of faith in that brand, and because I have a disease that causes me to not be able to walk out of a Target without spending at least $60. I know, it’s tragic. So let’s see how they stack  up:

The two on the right, the Bics: this is like night and day to me. See the clearance above and below the letters that you get with the Z4? I’m pretty sure this is 12 point typeface. Some might be put off by the tendency with the Z4 to overlap the line below with the line above, but I prefer that. Once you’ve taken in the fact that you can’t clear the tops and bottoms of letters with the ordinary Brite Liner, note the wimpyness of the colors as compared to the Z4. The orange and the green seem close-ish, but why accept less than the brightest? If you’re me, that is.

The Sharpie seems to straddle the middle. The chisel tip lays down a slightly taller line, but nothing like the Z4. The brightness is merely OK. I think it would do, if I didn’t know how lively the Z4 ink can be. But now let’s get into the real nitty gritty – what happens when you press that tip to the paper. To be kind, I’ve put the rest of this behind a cut – including chisel tip pictures.

Continue Reading »

Tags: Pens, Stationery

1. I can’t listen to all of them in two weeks of trying. I’m on 180 and I’ve done an awful lot of skipping.
2. I owe someone a debt of gratitude for turning me on to Twilight Guardians via their amusing La Isla Bonita cover. This is my kind of music.The cover is just OK.
3. I have a low Kyuss tolerance. It’s pretty much tolerable after exams, when my brain is turned to mush.
4. The new Abigail’s Ghost cd is improved greatly by listening out of order and spaced out by other music.
5. I never thought I’d be on a boat. It’s a big blue watery road.
6. Huey Lewis can bring on vivid middle school bus riding sense memory. I was the last off the bus in the afternoon so two hours of Fore! every day can really stick with you. I remember what the Walkman buttons felt like, the texture of the bus seats (and floor for some reason) and the exact temperature of an un-air conditioned bus.
7. It’s amazing how much music I get that I have no recollection of getting. Sea Wolf? Love it. Where did this come from?

Tags: Music

So ever since Genie passively talked me into signing up to go to BlogHer*, I have been somewhat in denial of what the whole thing will be like. I have been somewhat in denial of the whole thing, based on the fact that I keep telling myself I can’t think about it until then end of the summer semester. Well, the time is nigh. And thankfully I had the opportunity to test the waters of this whole roomful of blogging strangers thing.

Sunday there was a pre-BlogHer gathering for locals at the National Harbor (you know that giant lit-up thing that went up on the south side of the city over the past few years? yeah, I didn’t really either.) at a gallery. Apart from Art-O-Matic, I think that’s probably the second time I’ve set foot in an art gallery (that was not a museum) in my life, so here’s to different experiences.

Reading the sign-up thread before the event, I was starting to get a little worried. It seemed like there were a fair – perhaps a very large – number of mommy bloggers on the list, and having not used my womb thus far for its intended purpose, I was beginning to wonder (out loud to anyone who would listen) if I was going to fit in. So, I was due for an attitude adjustment about how I can relate to moms. In any case, I managed to somehow wrangle Jen into coming, just in case I was feeling lost!

I did get one. I tried to chat with everyone at the event for at least a little while. It’s hard, at first, to get over the feeling that you’re interrupting everyone all the time and you should just hang back and wait to be invited to a conversation. (I think that dynamic doesn’t entirely apply to this kind of thing.) Maybe someone out there who attended could correct me if I’m wrong and let me know if I was being rude. But! The nice thing was that while most of the other folks present were moms, that didn’t stop us from finding common ground to talk and laugh and relate.

And a bonus, the mass cell phone emergence and twittering didn’t start until the event was almost over. People were too busy actually talking to each other!

Serious thanks to Devra for organizing! There’s even a flickr group with some photos.

*She just kept talking about how much fun she had! How could she!

Tags: blogher

I seem to be getting both in equal measure, but that still means I’m having success.

This week I signed myself up for a photography workshop led by Me Ra Koh. I knew as soon as I saw the announcement on her web site that she was coming to DC, that I was going to make it work. I immediately became anxious about it but! That is tempered by total excitement and knowing that it will be fun and is the right thing to do for myself right now. Plus the name of the workshop is “confidence” so, that is probably a good sign.

So I haven’t written much about school. This summer semester is going so fast and sucking up such a portion of my brain that I don’t have much left to blog. The thing right now is that I have a really good grade. So, you know, that’s good. Unfortunately, I still get such bad test anxiety that I think I might need a prescription. Not so good. What makes a lady have crippling test anxiety when she consistently knocks out the test like it’s a punching bag filled with air? When I find out I’ll let you know.

Oh and people were speculating about microbiology being the most squicky and frightening of the classes I have had to take so far. I will say, the swine flu had already upped my hand-washing quotient, and other than that, I don’t feel like I’ve learned anything more than I already knew that was squicky about microscopic organisms.

I got my wait list letter for the nights/weekends non-accelerated nursing school at HCC. My number is 25. I am not disappointed in being wait listed, since that was a foregone conclusion being out of county. I just wanted to be on the list for next year. It’s good to have the insurance, and the timing is important – if I applied next year and got wait listed I’d have to wait even longer.

Lately my fashion sense has been a bunch of “meh” with a side of “whatever” and “screw it”. I’m busy, so that’s fine. Then I find out that Tim Gunn is supposed to be at BlogHer. I had a second of panic, but then I reminded myself and my BlogHer cohorts that I want to be comfortable and myself. I am not a little black dress kind of girl. My primary fashion concern can continue to be “will my fashion sneakers be comfortable enough or do I need to invest in more Dr. Scholls” and I will continue to dress like a 30-something curvy woman trying to be a skater kid.

I’ll put my weekly SYTYCD thoughts behind this-here cut tag.

Continue Reading »

Tags: class, clothes, School, TV

Yes, around here our 4th of July comes with tiki skulls, but that is A-OK with us. Our generous and gracious hostess and her birthdaying hubby had a pretty grand repaste prepared for everyone and I had a whole mess of fun, though I was being kind of a weirdo and largely taking photos. And getting into fights defending my favorite dance show. Thank you Telf! It was an awesome party.

Tags: Friends, party

I need to thank Genie for helping me with my current blog constipation, because I simply can’t deny her when she posts her Living Out Loud projects. (Well, when the assignment was a video, I could, apparently! Sorry about that. Someday I may get to that.) This month we have the topic of home.

I recently slipped and said to my therapist, describing a recent visit to my parents‘ house, that I “went home”. I thought that was telling; I won’t readily let go of that place as a place to call home. But I think I meant that in a more literary sense, like “homeland”.

The home I live in, sleep in, and spend some waking time in almost 365 days a year, is right here where I’m sitting as I type this. I think it’s taken a while to feel that way. In so many ways I’ve still felt like a kid, just hanging out in another new place I’m not quite entitled to. But this place has a mortgage with my name at the top of the 30 year binding legal document, so after a while, it has begun to feel like home. Apparently I need some objective measure of permanency.

But what makes it feel like home most of all, are the living breathing inhabitants that populate it. This is no new sentiment, to be sure. But for me, up until a few years ago, I think I was always feeling like a floater. So now, when someone asks me where I’m from, I feel like I can answer two places instead of just one. I think the best way to express this is in pictures, so here’s Jack cooking up his signature stir fry last Thursday.

Just in the past week I’ve made him cook my dinner, asked him to help me with my microbiology homework, help me make stupid consumer choices, edit my emails for overeagerness, make sure the pipes weren’t backing up the entire time our laundry was running, and pretty much a thousand other things.

So, as much as we love and are grateful for the excellent edifice that is our house, I think the hominess is generated out of the actual everyday actions and reactions that make up our partnership. I could make a home by myself, to be sure, but in this house, it takes two of us.

Astute readers might wonder what the hell I do to make it a home, but I’ll let that remain a secret, kept by my faithful partner, who I am sure will not tell you the important things I bring to the table because he is shy. (Or because what I bring is a crap-ton of junk and a negative attitude towards housework.)

Tags: house, jack

It’s like a rollercoaster. As soon as I got home from NEARfest, I wanted to go back. Despite feeling a little out of place, thanks much to Twitter, I was able to follow NEARfest folks and meet people! I even had someone stop me in the hall and say, “Hey, I recognize you from your twitter icon!” So that salvaged what might have otherwise been a mostly anti-social weekend.

Which would have been a pity, because proggers are very nice and interesting folks. As it is, I’m sad I went back to my hotel room to study while the party raged on.

Social dynamics aside, I was so excited to be exposed to a whole bunch of bands I had never heard before. There were plenty of surprises and even the bands that were not my bag were worth watching, and barely a weak spot was to be found in the lineup.

Cabezas de Cera: I saw “avant” and thought surely I would be indifferent. That was not so! There was plenty of musicality and a really engaging performance presence by this band. I tend to need vocals so for me to say I loved an instrumental set is high praise.

Beardfish: You all already know that I am a monstrous Beardfish fan. They did not disappoint. Thanks so much to Mike for letting me steal his seat for that set!! They did “Spegeldans” from their first album and that’s one of my favorites. I love the particular quirks of Rikard’s songwriting and Magnus’ lyrical drum parts, and the live show of course takes the whole thing to another level. This band is having fun and they project that in their live performance.

Gong: I had never heard Gong. I was a Gong newbie. I was totally grooving on their show and highly entertained. Thanks for weirding out beautifully! I have doubts about whether their music would carry over in studio albums, so if anyone out there wants to correct me on that, please do!

I also really loved hearing the VdGG set and the Trettioariga Kireget set, it was just a great experience all the way around. Next year who knows if I can return, but if I can, there is no doubt that I will. I also really enjoyed that the venue and the organization are very free about photography, so I was able to do a bunch of practicing with the manual settings. (Not to mention, the professional lights were a big help, and in most cases accented the performances well. Kudos to the lighting team.)

Tags: Music, show, shows

Another week, another episode of SYTYCD, another night of ear-ringing from Mary Murphy’s screaming. Is it getting more gratuitous, or am I just putting on my rose-colored glasses when I look to the past?

People seem to be knocking Toni Basil out there on the internets, and I don’t actually get why. She was full of pride at the beginning and I guess that turns people off, but I don’t give a crap about pride and she said at least two things about the actual dancing skills of the actual dancers, and since the bar for judging on this show seems to be lowering, that’s enough to make me happy. (I don’t need the judges to tell me about my emotional reaction to the dance, that I can figure out on my own – please tell me if they were technically proficient thanks! That is why they call you experts!)

I have but brief notes, after the cut… and when you are done with mine, you can peruse Megan’s or MightyGodKing’s, because they are funnier than me.

Continue Reading »

Tags: TV

I just got back from NEARfest, and I am exhausted. I took a few (500) pictures so I won’t be posting them until I’ve sorted them, but in the meantime, here is Cabezas de Cera in action. They will be playing Art-0-matic on Thursday and the Kennedy Center on Wednesday, so if you are a DC local and free you really should check them out.

Tags: Music, shows