Prosaic Paradise

It’s been a long time since I talked about office supplies. Too long! I just haven’t been doing as much hand writing either at work or at school, and my writing surfaces have been all jammed up in remodeling at home.

My most recent Jetpens purchase included a pen from Ohto, a brand I’d previously had a bad experience with because of its needle point pens, which made a fine line but turned out to be too fine for me. I guess, needle point, I should have known. But this time I went for the Ohto Tasche Ceramic Roller Ball and it’s been my favorite ever since. You can even see I did my nails to match.

I have seldom used a pen as consistent. I never experience any skips, and it always lays down a even medium line without any blobs or excess ink on the page. Among all the pens in my order, this is the one I want to grab and use most frequently. (And I bought the Zebra Sharbo Multipen in this order, which people loooove.) The pen comes with the 0.5mm refill, and that is what you see me writing with here.

Obviously, aesthetics played into my decision. It’s just pretty. The metal barrel and length of cap give it a nice, balanced weight in the hand when posted. I didn’t find that to be true with the needle point – it was too light. The refill on this is hefty too, so that may have something to do with it. All this is brought home when being reminded why the Pilot G2 is not actually the best pen. Of course, I didn’t do a dry time test, but I think it would come out favorably, I have never noticed myself smudging my writing.

Anyways, another great Jetpens find. Highly recommended.

Tags: Pens, Stationery

I am in a small way writing this just because I love this picture I took this weekend.

But also because I am waiting for two packages I am super excited about. One pair of glasses from Warby Parker (Telf keeps her eye on the trends, and for that I am grateful!) and one Moleskine Folio from Rickshaw bags. My current/old glasses are about to fall apart and are in noticeable disrepair so no matter how much I love them, it is their time. The folio is more of a risk purchase because I’m not 100% sure it’s going to be the perfect thing, but I have a really hard time resisting a custom tool. If you make your product with a customizing tool, I am doomed. I do already have a bag from them that Jack’s awesome sister got me for Christmas, though, so I know their product is of excellent (not just good) quality.

Speaking of my sister-out-law, we got to see her and her two adorable kids and her partner this weekend, as well as Jack’s parents. That is where I took the mail truck photo. I’m still no baby whisperer but I got to hold the baby and do that bouncing-singing-calm down thing and the child did not cry.

On Friday I learned that the official Genesis website is being taken down. Basically, the band’s management handed over website/webstore/whatever to this company called Ultrastar when they went on tour in 2007. They set up memberships and forums and stuff and you paid an annual membership and got “some cool stuff” about 33% of which came through. I am not upset about that. I am highly upset that they are taking the community and dismantling it. I met so many cool and passionate people, musicians and fans, people I met in person at shows and tributes. I don’t really know who to blame. It makes sense for a band with a 40 year history to have a god damn official website. Well – I have most of the folks in my contact list on Facebook. But I still think it’s rotten. It was a tremendous resource. One person said “it was the best forum I’ve ever been a part of” and that’s true for me too. Yes, other forums are being built and alternatives sought, but now it will be many separate places and … just not the same.

Today was … today was a hard but worthwhile day. I had been struggling with the spare bedroom and doing anything at all with the contents. It was a graveyard of things I didn’t know what to do with but seemingly wanted to keep. I was/am blocked. Well, today Deborah came over in a gracious act of kindness and used her considerable personal organizing skills to start me on the path to usability. We got rid of 10+ trash bags of stuff, I lost count. There were points where I struggled with emotional attachments. My dad will probably laugh at me but I cried at the idea of throwing away his Cat Stevens’ Teaser and the Firecat cassette. It is one of only a few he had that we would listen to together. Obviously I have the music digitally but I remember that cassette as being my dad’s, listening to it in the garage while he worked on one thing or another. Well, I have a plan for that one. But the rest went.

Next week we do more. The even harder stuff. I can’t wait to get that room down to the boards, quite frankly.

Tags: genesis, stuff

Between the snow, and the health issues, and just winter doldrums from hades, I have been doing a whole lot of consuming of media of late. I’ve been digging down into the Netflix sad, somewhat limited instant queue, I’ve been eschewing music for podcasts and audiobooks on my long commutes, and I’ve been ignoring the book club book for something more lighthearted.

First, Books.

Our assignment for February for Peril Book Club was to read Cuisines of the Axis of Evil. I decided to try for the first time to read a book on the Kindle app for the iPhone. While it wasn’t – bad exactly – a few things about it helped me not read the book. The obvious one is a lack of page number. It has some kind of numbering system but didn’t give me a clear idea of how far I was in the book. The other thing was the fact that it is simply too small a screen to be reading a damn book on. Other folks in book club complained about the right-hand margin justification and word spacing, but that didn’t bother me a bit. It just felt constrained.

That wasn’t the only reason I didn’t finish the book; I made several notes and bookmarks (one of the good features of the Kindle app) and one of them says “This is going to be one of those books that should have been a blog post or a series of blog posts, isn’t it?” Of course in order to account for that statement, I’d have to say exactly why I think there is a difference between something worth printing “on paper” or publishing as a book and something that you publish serially to the ether. Well, I don’t know if I can properly address that. I just felt the tone took informality further than I wanted for the subject matter. That’s actually a matter of taste, so let’s just say this wasn’t the book for me.

What I really felt like reading was something that would make me laugh out loud, something reliable and familiar… someone who’d never failed me. So I picked up Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country. I never looked back, and have chortled and had to read sections to Jack aloud multiple times. I will be sad when the book is over. It helps that I already have a mild fascination with Australia, but it’s not absolutely necessary. Unfortunate side effects: every time I look at the cover, I get “In God’s Country” by U2 stuck in my head. I don’t even like U2.

In addition to this, on Audible I’ve been indulging in my interest in health care narrative with King of Hearts by G. Wayne Miller. This book is awesome, if you can stand that the story includes a lot of graphic descriptions and the many failures that led up to successful open heart surgery. I have to take it in chunks because there really is a good sense of drama conveyed by the author (and well, the events are pretty dramatic) and it’s intense. And I’m only about a third of the way through!

You might notice a lack of fiction in this list; I just haven’t found something fictional that seems good enough. I’m going to try The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo from Audible next and see if it’s as good as everyone says. I welcome recommendations.

Second, Magazines.

Yes, you read that right. Magazines!! I know they are a dying institution and all, though my friends’ collections of EW betray that concept. (I used to get them to give me those precious paper candies after they were done with them, but really, it sucks up to much of my time because I find every page interesting.) But I subscribed to one in self-defense. Jack’s kind sister gets us a subscription to a magazine called Believer for Christmas every year, which Jack enjoys. Unfortunately I don’t feel the same way about it. I hate its pretentious artiness and annoying cover art and articles about fans of Bret Easton Ellis (may he die in a fire). (Though I admit they had an article about the band Gentle Giant once and well, that was fine and good.)

So it was in self-defense that I signed up for a subscription to the Oxford American, which is a lit mag I used to pick up at Borders a decade ago based on the strength of my love for southern writers like Michael Malone. It has already paid off in that I discovered this author Barb Johnson, a former carpenter with a turn of phrase that sets my arm hairs on end. There’s something about the defensive posture that seems to pervade the construction of it. Like, the issue I am still working through right now proclaims on the cover, “Southern Literature is Never Dead” So: magazines and southern literature, not yet dead, still very much alive in my bathroom magazine rack.

Third, Podcasts.

I mentioned this on Twitter but it bears repeating: the Life Well Wasted podcast is a gem and worth listening to for anyone whose life was ever touched by video games. By the end of episode 3, “Why Game?” I was lamenting a little the lack of female voices, but he acknowledges it in that ep and makes up for it in the next. I was listening to the second ep while walking around downtown and it actually made me chuckle audibly several times, causing passers-by to give me strange looks. That’s entertainment!

Fourth, Movies.

Keeping with the nonfic theme, I had the documentary Bigger, Stronger, Faster in my queue for reasons I cannot recall or even imagine. I have never been a huge sports fan, never really cared about steroids controversies. I know about as much as anyone who grew up in the 80s. For some reason the trailer caught my eye, and I am glad it did. What a great film. The stories of the filmmaker and his brothers are told with wit and care. The way the science is presented, it’s sort of referred to in a “actually no studies support this” or “one study says that” kind of way. For instance, he posits that “roid rage” is just a myth – and believably. I had no idea. And yes, I spent the entire time waiting for the “All Steroid Olympics” skit to hit. But really, if you think you might be even a little interested in the topic, watch this. I loved it from beginning to end – the juxtaposition of performance-enhancing drugs for other endeavors vs. steroids in sports was particularly compelling.

On a whim, I also watched Chris Rock’s film Good Hair. Definitely an interesting film, though I had also read some compelling critiques of the movie. (EW, Feministing, WM) Yes, it has a 94% positive rating on rottentomatoes.com, but just how many reviewers captured there are black women? Whenever you leverage a criticism of a film that it doesn’t “go deep enough” it’s hard for me to envision just what “enough” means, but when you make a whole segment of your film implying that women are economic liabilities because of their hair expenditures, it’s kind of grossly obvious.

Finally, TV.

Stephen Fry on Craig Ferguson – the whole show, just them, talking, no audience – was sublime.

Grey’s Anatomy has been kind of having a renaissance. The flashback episode rocked my socks.

And that’s about enough for one girl. Maybe I should think about cleaning the house instead or something this weekend. Or going for walks. Of course, I can listen to stuff while walking…

Tags: books, movies

(I posted this comment over here at BlogHer in response to a post about being jealous of Big Famous Bloggers and it got long so I figured I might as well just store it here for posterity, also, probably most of you don’t read the BlogHer site.)

I had a bit of a reckoning when I attended BlogHer ’09, when I came to terms with how delicate and difficult the interaction part of blogging is. It is simply a fact that if you are a blogger who gets 50 or 60 comments that a) you are probably (probably, not guaranteed) saying something interesting and b) that means you are probably a pretty busy person and thoughtful, which takes up a lot of time and thus c) you probably don’t have time to interact with all of those people.

So while a blogger may be the nicest, most generous person in the world, they cannot reciprocate every kindness that is afforded them. That was why while I was at BlogHer I said that the definition of fame is basically when there are more people trying to interact with you than you can feasibly interact with. It doesn’t take a very large scale to get there, hence microfame.

That said, it’s interesting how the world of bloggers, which I always thought about as The Great Equalizer, handles this. Sometimes it seems to arrange itself into a social hierarchy, and that’s particularly painful when you find yourself – because the nature of the beast is so personal – caring personally for someone who doesn’t, or can’t, care about you. Sometimes it gets distributed, and there is a web of interaction where everyone is feeling on the same level. Continue Reading »

Tags: blogher, Meta

I couldn’t remember the NATO phonetic alphabet for ‘K’ and had to look it up. Sad.

For the past several hours, in fact most of the day, I have kept myself sequestered in the upstairs office, with the curtains closed, distracting myself from what’s going down out there. I had a bit of a moment yesterday and since then have not been letting other people’s alarm get to me! Anyways, the pictures I took before I lost my damn mind can be find when you click through the skis.

We are going to have to get all our gutters replaced, I suspect. One fell off and most of them are horribly bent. Maybe we can get them fixed? I have no idea. (See this photo and comments for the long and the short of that.)

I have this winter workout jacket I bought to run in. I used it for its intended purpose exactly once. But right now, I am hugely grateful to have it! It’s super lightweight and zips up to the chin and is the perfect shoveling fashion. Basically something like this.

I have watched everything that is available from Netflix Instant that has anything to do with Liev Schreiber, including Kate and Leopold, and I was tempted to skip the parts that did not involve Liev, but I did not! Anyways, it was funny to see him & Hugh in a context that was not Wolverine. (Note to self: Assemble a Wolverine viewing night.) I forgot to mention on here that I recently watched Taking Woodstock and I loved it so much. I had forgotten that it was Ang Lee until I was halfway through and then realized, oh yes, that is why I am profoundly touched by this film. That Liev can pull off a command performance as Victor Creed (no seriously – he acted the shit out of that) and then turn around and act the shit out of his role in Taking Woodstock, well. I don’t know much about acting as an art but I know what good looks like. I also recently watched him in A Walk on the Moon which blew me away too.

Then I was telling some girlfriends about this snowbound actor obsession, and this may have devolved into a highly frivolous discussion during which I realized that young Peter Tork and young(er) Jared Padalecki may have the same appeal. Amirite? Gilmore Girls fans, back me up?

Note: I am keeping my blessings in mind during all this. We have so much and are so lucky. To all those out there that are helping others – public workers, health workers, volunteer drivers, volunteers of all kinds, food donaters, folks running shelters, folks working to get power back, folks keeping bread stocked, you are heroes. Everyone deserves kindness, obviously, but I hope particularly that people are treating you kindly during this, make no mistake, historic event.

Tags: movies, pics, snowmageddon, weather

This entry is for Genie’s Living Out Loud #13, Drinkin’ Buddies.

That title is one of the many quotes from my days of drinking that is trotted out when it’s time for everyone to tell their drunk stories. I don’t remember exactly when I switched from being interested in creating drunk stories to just telling them to apparently being a bit of a teetotaler, but it happened a while back and I haven’t really been missing it.

If i had to try to nail it down, I’d say it’s when I became permanently non-single. Maybe it was a little before that. It’s been almost a decade since I’ve been excited about becoming woo-hoo drunk, and I think the lack of enthusiasm is because of the times I got myself in “trouble” that way. Oh, I got sick a few times (I was champion of keeping the stuff in my body even beyond alcohol-poisoning levels) and I had wicked hangovers and made a few drunk calls in my life, but the “trouble” was usually more of the hanky-panky variety. (Not all. for instance, the bush was comfortable on my 21st birthday and the most risqué thing I did was drink one of those “BJ” shots you’re supposed to drink without your hands. Once they pried me off the bush, I slept it off alone on Telf’s couch.)

I haven’t really blogged the litany of hilarious and bawdy stories because in part they are not solely my stories to tell, and in part because in many cases, someone’s feelings were hurt, relationships torn asunder, and all kinds of just bad shit. I drank to lower my inhibitions, and that is the long and the short of it. I drank to be more socially adventurous, let’s say. And while it took me a few horrific mistakes to learn this, that doesn’t really mesh well with monogamy. So in some ways I associate myself getting very drunk with hurting the people I love.

It’s not that I will cheat on Jack if I drink more. We’re beyond all that nonsense now. It’s just that the thing that made drinking fun for me was “getting closer” to people, and if that’s not a factor, then why drink? I never really drank to relax – I’m too hardcore anxious and high strung for that to be effective. Smoking was far more the vice for serving that purpose. I like the flavor of some beers and wines, and ever since April made me that grape cosmopolitan (Ciroc vodka is the key) I’ve been a fan, but I also really like the taste of a cold glass of ginger ale. And then there’s no “gosh can I drive home yet” business. Thus, the compelling reasons to be drunk have been removed.

So I don’t know. When someone says “we’re gonna get drunk!” to me these days I’m like… “why?” Of course, the opportunity presents itself less and less when one finds oneself more frequently at a 1-year-old’s birthday party than at the club. (I stop at this point to shudder while imagining what life might have been like if, in the heyday of my drinking, there had also been blogging.)

I will say that I think of those times, with all the good and all the bad, fondly. Much fun was had. And probably much of that fun couldn’t have happened without social lubricant. Maybe someday I will write down the stories because they are funny and human. Yeah, I should probably do that. But not today.

I’ll go watch the Super Bowl and drink a beer instead. I know it’s not in the spirit of Living Out Loud but believe me, it was all very out loud back then and that’s good enough.

Well, if I thought I was an affront to fashion before, I am certainly topping it today, with some workout capris, cabled legwarmers, Birk sandals with socks, and a Howard Community College hoodie.

But I reckon I can be forgiven, for we are in the grip of the Historic Weather Event. I am mostly enjoying it, and mildly worrying about it. Let’s think about how nice Sunday will hopefully be. Here is a glimpse based on last weekend. Doesn’t Jack look like he’s having fun?

Last weekend we did in fact have a wonderful time taking snow walks and being cozy. Honestly, the enforced down time has been a blessing. Sometimes the only way for me to unblock mental blockages is through a lot of no-obligation time.

For the east coast folks, may you be safe and warm, and enjoy whatever it is you get to do this weekend. I have a copy of Poems to be Read Aloud, and it may be a good night for a little Cremation of Sam McGee. We have chili ingredients, I believe, and some Mountain Dew Throwback purchased in the height of last-minute grocery store panic. (Not proud.)

Maybe I’ll even have time to consider finishing my best albums of the past decade list.

Tags: Home, snow, weather

Yesterday I got sidetracked in one of those internet vortexes when someone linked to a bunch of outfit-a-day blogs.

A lot of these fashion bloggers are shaped like me. This is awesome. It’s refreshing to see what clothes look like on people who look like me, because if I am shopping for clothes online, the models wearing the clothes are a size two. That item might be available in size 16, but while I have a vivid imagination, it’s not the same as seeing the garment on someone my size. I have no idea how hard it is to take pictures of the garments at different sizes on differently sized people, but it must be really, really, really hard/expensive, because no major online retailers do it.

Anyways, I was thinking today as I received the stink-eye on the elevator from a woman who looked like she stepped right out of a Banana Republic ad of what an outfit-a-day blog might look like here. The answer is that it would likely be an outright unintentional mocking of those ladies’ sites, because fashion is not really a skill I have ever had.

Today for example I’m wearing black skinny jeans (ironic for reasons which I hope are obvious) with funny navy blue marled socks with black Birk clogs. On top, we have a stunning size-too-small cream v-neck over a tricolor organic cotton baseball-sleeve t-shirt. A teal scarf from three seasons ago completes the look. The hair was worn down and naturally curly until a trip to get coffee gave me more of a windblown look than I was really needing.

It is a fashion train wreck. And I just do not care. Until the lady in the elevator gives me the total up-down what-are-you-wearing glare. But I’m working on that “stop worrying about what other people think” thing.

Incidentally, any locals get their clothes tailored? I ordered an outfit for a wedding I am in online and I need it taken in a bit, but have up til now labored under a DIY fantasy. The ZIPS dry cleaners has a tailor attached but the Yelp reviews are not encouraging. If you know a place that has a tailor you trust let me know.

Tags: clothes, fashion, stuff

A friend of mine contacted me last week to see if I’d shoot his band Ephemeral Sun (myspace for listening purposes) during rehearsal so they could have some pictures of them actually playing their instruments. I guess being prog rock nerds they normally like to keep their identities secret, but from what I hear that doesn’t sell CDs and they just released a new one. Promotion is a bitch.

So I packed up my earplugs and headed out to Bristow Sunday to see if I could help. My amateur ass without any lighting shooting in a basement. Thankfully the guys are jackasses which is entertaining, and they bought me lunch, so this time I’m spending in Lightroom tagging and editing isn’t for nothing.  I kid! Jackass is a term of affection. And their music is excellent. So check it out. And you can click through to see the selected anonymity-maintaining preview shots.

(I had that thing happen where I was looking at everything in the camera and loving it, got home, loaded it into Lightroom, and hated everything. I really hope I break through this at some point.)

Tags: photography

This is my guitar. I bought it 8 years ago at Chuck Levin’s with a plan to get Alex to teach me to play. He learned quickly that I was a terrible student at things that require the kind of patience instruments do; so the guitar has lain dormant for the most part until late last year I decided it was time to try again.

It’s a Jay Turser JT-301. Most people say, “a what?” when I mention it. Obviously, it looks a great deal like a Fender Strat. I don’t even know how to express the kind of pickups it has although if the design has not changed much, then according to the Jay Turser website it has a “humbucking pickup at bridge position, coil tap switch”. Okay, sure. It sounded good to me at the time and was very affordable!

(I thought of trying to record myself playing it, so you could hear how it sounds, but it was 11:30PM and I was tired and couldn’t imagine how to record it authentically and with any quality. Suggestions for that for the future are welcome.)

Lately though I’ve been regretting my stylistic choice. I really like the look of the Gibson SG style guitar, and many musicians whose sound I enjoy use one. Turser makes a copy of that too. So yesterday I drove out to Olney to the Rocketeria because it was the one place that seemed to stock them and have a website I could peruse.

While the head guy there was super helpful and cordial, once we got the JT-50 hooked up and I started to play it, a deep sense of dissatisfaction set in. It didn’t feel as easy to play and it didn’t sound half as good as the Turser I already own. I am not experienced enough to know if this has anything to do with the super slinkys I put on my guitar or the other kind of pickups they have on the JT-50 or if Turser guitars have just gone downhill in quality since I bought mine. I was hoping for love at first sight but what I got was a bad blind date.

Of course, my guitar teacher reminds me regularly that he got his Squier Telecaster for $115 bucks at the Atomic and it sounds terrific (how?) and is a dream to play. Every time I go there I try out things that sound like two Yorkshire terriers having a fight in a dryer. Not to mention I have never been too hot on the look of the Tele.

Of course then I saw this baby, and I think it’s very pretty. Did I mention I’m finally selling one of my drum kits (assuming our plumbing doesn’t explode again like it did last weekend when I was planning to sell) and will have supposed extra cash for potential aesthetic guitar replacement? I might just go see if I can play that.

Oh and in terms of pie-in-the-sky fangirl things, there’s that classic Les Paul Gold Top that Steve Hackett plays. Obviously, I could not get one just like Mr. Hackett plays (think more money than my car cost). Jay Turser does make a fake of that too, though. But will that also sound displeasing? And where on earth could I find one to try out? Even the Epiphone version costs $500. But but but! Then I could sit around and play Hairless Heart over and over really badly.

Maybe I should just sell my drum kit and keep the profit for future lean times and continue to use my thoroughly decent guitar that I already have and find comfortable to play, and stop being so goddamn vain.

What do you think I should do?

Tags: Music, stuff