Prosaic Paradise

Remember the optimistic, joyous, burden-removing start I had when I said I was going to get rid of one thing every Thursday? I called it Purge Thursday, and a couple of folks even took it on, and started documenting what they were getting rid of every Thursday? We were all going to live more simply and make room for the things that were really important to us?

Yeah that all went to shit, didn’t it.

Well, it has to come back, and with a vengeance, because I have Plans. Those plans involve getting rid of almost every stick of furniture in our spare bedroom and tearing up carpet and purging a vast swathe of junk. No, I haven’t knitted anything in five years. No, I don’t need to keep my grandmother’s luggage that smells a little weird and I have hung on to for reasons I should probably go into with my therapist. No, I don’t plan on taking the harp back up now that I have drums and guitar. No, I don’t need 200 cassette tapes that probably wouldn’t play. Yes – I want a dedicated place to study that is not the kitchen table. This defines the whole Purge Thursday mentality. What’s really important?

So taking advantage of the fact that I might try to post every day this month, and the lack of exams and homework I have now that all my classes are done for a while, I hope to be using this Purge Thursday tag regularly. Just about everything you see in this picture – including the carpet – must go. Not sure of all the destinations but it has to go.

And hey if any of you have a recommendation for someone to install carpet in my local area, by all means do tell. Oh! And the plans do include a futon or day bed, something a person could sleep on, so not all guest bedroom properties will be compromised. But if you’ve stayed with us and you really liked the 4-poster, please either come get it or come by and sleep on it one more time, because it’s going.

I shall now shamelessly comment-bait by asking you to please, post encouraging thoughts or stories of your own remodeling or just tell me it’s all going to be OK, or point me to blogs about uncluttering or simple living, OR if you are comfortable enough, come over and hug me because I’m scared. I’ve been avoiding this too long!

Tags: house, Purge Thursday

I don’t care if it’s November. Here’s a few photos of our costumes this year – the Clue characters. Minus Mr. Green, since we didn’t have someone to play him. Thanks Jen, Pam, Lars, and Jack for participating so enthusiastically… wait Lars! Not that enthusiastically! (Last year we were the Scooby Gang… apparently I came up with this idea right after that success, and then promptly forgot. Thankfully Pam is keen and reminded us!)

Tags: halloween, pics

Here is the recipe for turning around a bad day:

1: Have a really good guitar lesson. We spent the entire lesson on Josh Homme’s solo at the end of Little Sister, and I learned that I need to get way more aggressive about bending the strings. While I play it at a snail’s pace and with completely appalling technique, it’s still fun.

2: Visit the bookstore at your Community College, and have your life turn into an episode of Community. Which by the way cracks us up regularly. Today I’m wearing the unbelievably comfy sweatshirt I bought there proudly announcing my school spirit. I have never understood what school spirit feels like exactly, but I do understand what a really, really comfortable item of clothing feels like. If I someday do get my AA from there, I may want to be buried in this sweatshirt.

3: Make Lightroom2 do things you want it to do. I was at HCC to get the student discount on Lightroom, so now I finally own it. It’s awesome, the end. Photoshop can suck it. (Ensemble Halloween costume portrait forthcoming!)

4: Feel like the writers of some damn show ‘get’ you. Sort of. And with that, I give you the real thing:

Tags: guitar, Music, photography, School

I got out of bed on the same side I do every morning, like most folks. By the time I got to work, I had decided it was the wrong side. According to a thoroughly non-rigourous search of the internet, this phrase has its origin in getting up on the left side of the bed, from back when people remembered that left was “sinister”. The left when I’m facing it or when I’m in it? Whatever, my point is that I am in a really terrific mood.

(Although the other night I slept on Jack’s side of the bed and I have to admit it was a strangely refreshing change of pace to wake up and see a different part of the room! So maybe it’s good to shake things up.)

I am creaky and sore in weird ways, and for the past week I’ve been eating bran muffins and salads (though I did indulge mildly at Telf’s Halloween party because who can pass up cheese baked in phyllo or peanut butter crunchy things) and the HCC bookstore is never open when I have time to go there and the bathroom is a nuclear waste disaster area and I have a spider bite that won’t heal so I’m pretty sure I’m gonna lose that leg and and and…

I came in to work this morning to the Buddhist Prayer Deck that I set up right next to my monitor to remind me, on days like this, that it’s not worth being grumpy. I am still halfway of the “fuck you, Buddhist Prayer Deck” mindset but it’s hard to deny that when you’re fully engaged in snarl mode, seeing “All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become.” gives slight pause.

Then Jack texted me with a theory about what is up with Izzie on Grey’s Anatomy and being texted before 10 in the morning by your heterosexual life partner about a nighttime soap opera pretty much cuts a big chink in your armor of grr, so I LOL’ed right there in my cube, and then got to work.

Tags: journal

This is an entry for Genie’s Living Out Loud project. You may remember Genie from me posting about her giving birth earlier this month. She is the happy mama of a baby boy now and I can’t wait to meet him.

Given that I’m currently reading a book about how your own self-justification can screw with your memories, I am not sure I can participate in this month’s Living Out Loud group in good faith. But I can try to remember as best I can.

As a little kid, the earliest aspirations I recall are classic – many kids have expressed their desire to be a veterinarian. I was among them. Kids love animals, and animal doctoring seems like a really great way to be spending more time with animals. A little youthful misanthropy might send some kids running in the direction of animal companionship, and I recall being really obsessed with big cats as a wee lass. But just like most kids with this dream, I got told really early on about that thing that you have to do as a vet. I don’t think I need to tell you what it is. So that dream was a non-starter.

When I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, that inspired a passion for archaeology and/or movie directing that didn’t last nearly as long as my crush on Harrison Ford. I seem to also recall brief youthful flirtations with fashion design as a career. The results of that were not very… pretty. And it’s probably somewhat sad that I have proof of that. I think my favorite part of this is the hamster? rat? and the kneecaps. And I can’t really tell what I improved about this poor girl’s appearance. So, fashion design was off the table.

Not until I was a little older did I finally land on the thing that lasted me through most of my teen years and in fact right up until I realized we couldn’t afford my first choice college, was a desire to participate in some vague way in international relations. I cringe to admit, but this had its source in a crush too. I so loved Crowded House that I researched their homeland – New Zealand. I decided that a good career to allow me to go there would be ambassador. Makes sense? OK, maybe not. I was not good with details. I did write the ambassador of New Zealand at the time a letter, but possibly due to the clear threat I posed as a competitor, that person never responded. And Virginia Tech didn’t exactly have an International Relations program the way American University did.

Like a lot of folks I know, I’m still in the process of figuring out what I want to be when I grow up, I’ve just gotten better at figuring out the details of that. I have an explanation, by now rote, to offer when people ask me why I chose nursing school. It involves talking about my abandoned desire to be a social worker, and I do the hand gesture that shows the decline from cost of MSW to potential income as a social worker, and the incline that goes from the cost of an AA in nursing to the (hopeful) potential income of a nurse. But that’s not close to the whole reason.

It was during college that I first knew I wanted to do something that helps people. I think my capacity for empathy & compassion got a dose of steroids when I experienced acute clinical depression during those years. It was at my second job out of college that I learned that I liked, to some extent, to be a problem solver, and work in an atmosphere that was more immediate. I still mark that tech support job as one of the most satisfying I ever had. It was a few years after that that I began to understand that my little fears – of needles, of gross stuff – were pretty surmountable, conquerable psychologically. I need to have my hands on a problem, I need that problem to be one not of commerce but of humanity, and I want to feel daily like I might have accomplished something.

At this point I’ve done a lot of research – I read a ton of nursing blogs. I talk to every nurse I meet, and seek out nurses whereever I can. I’ve read a bunch of the “One L” books of the nursing world. Nothing can truly prepare me for being present in the first moments of clinicals, the first time I do a procedure, whatever is coming my way, but unlike my other dreams I think for this one I’ve laid some foundations that might lead to, you know, fulfillment.

Tags: Living Out Loud

Kim: It’s amazing how food science can design a bran muffin that has 24% of your daily fat intake.
Kim: I know Eric gets mad at people who blame the food industry, but
Kim: DAMN PEOPLE
Rob: *laughs*
Rob: It’s a business
Rob: and it does terrible things and wonderful things
Kim: Yeah, I’m not mad at the food industry, I’m mad at capitalism.
Kim: Sometimes the things that are good for us don’t taste as good.
Kim: Like socialism!
Kim: And dry bran muffins!

I was of course joking around (a little), but there is no question about David Kessler’s strong sense of purpose in his book The End of Overeating. He wants y0u to know what commercial food preparers do to make you want their food even when you are not hungry, and he is going to make sure you get the message. Even if he has to say it a very large number of times.

And that’s the primary problem I had with this book. I listened to it as an audiobook, which can be quite a different experience, so I’ll disclose that to begin with. The book focuses on the way current U.S. culture is designed to make the average consumer eat more often, more volume & faster. On the outside, it is a really good idea – as someone who struggles with overeating there’s no question that many things in the book rang true. Unfortunately the rhetoric is tiring and repetitive. To borrow an idea from my friend Fred, it’s like having a pamphlet’s worth of helpful information and stretching it out into book form. Continue Reading »

Tags: books, food

Hi everyone.

Right now one of my bestest and most longstanding friends (I was in her wedding which was held at our freakin’ high school, for crying out loud) is in labor. I am so excited and happy for her and I am 4 hours away so there’s not much I can do but monitor her tweets ‘n’ stuff. But there is something that I can do, based on a terrific idea my friend Rob came up with.

Tonight and tomorrow, send me photos to snidegrrl@gmail.com with pictures from all over the country (and the world? are you out there world?) of stuff that’s going on on this day that this wonderful kid is born. I will amass them all together and create a present that we all contributed to and that Genie and Rich can have to see your messages or just what was out your window on this day that’s so special to their family.

If you’re really ambitious, apparently there are Orionid meteor showers happening tonight. I know that I know a bunch of Genie’s friends out there, but in case I don’t know them all, please send them this blog post or retweet my tweets so I can hear from all those folks who love Genie! I want as many people to be able to contribute as possible but it’s all a little time-dependent.

When I have stuff I will make a slideshow or a book or both!

Thank you so much! This will be fun. Genie! I’m so happy for you!!

* Well, the part of earth that is outside of Genie’s womb.

Tags: Friends

Went to Orion Studios in Baltimore for the first time last week. It seemed like every time I wanted to go there and support the prog scene, there was something in my way. But finally the stars aligned. I felt extra motivated to go after chatting with Mike Potter at ProgDay; what a great guy and he clearly sacrifices to bring the music to the fans.

The show consisted of local classic prog band Deluge Grander followed by the main event, a group of musicians collectively titled Agents of Mercy for the first set and Karmakanic for the second set. I’m not an expert on their music or the history of the band. Roine Stolt is a legend in prog circles, but I did not groove on the Flower Kings much so I never fully explored his work.

Based on this, I’m not sure what it meant that I liked the Agents of Mercy set better. I liked the flow of melody and slightly smoother and more connected feel of the set. Deluge Grander was good but I missed most of their opener. I enjoyed Stolt’s solos most of all; in those moments I abruptly burst into what I now know as my “prog smile”, which is an involuntary reaction to something in the music that makes me happy. I’ll be sitting there, taking it all in, thinking about where I could shoot from without bothering other listeners, appreciating the drum beat or something when all of a sudden I’m grinning from ear to ear and I didn’t even see it coming.

It was an interesting contrast to Them Crooked Vultures the previous night. I thought it was funny that almost everyone in the Orion crowd whom I spoke with, when I was telling them about that show, didn’t know who Josh Homme/Queens of the Stone Age/Dave Grohl were. It’s funny because of every music critic I’ve read who says that Josh Homme has a prog sensibility (or maybe that’s just the guy who wrote or copy/pasted his wikipedia entry). That may be true, but I don’t think prog fans know about it!

Oh! And of course it was really late and a school night and everything so I decided to cut out before the 2nd encore. And I got my feet to the threshhold when lo and behold what did I hear – fucking Afterglow. Folks who have met me before laughed at me when I slunk back into the venue. Needless to say, it was transcendent.

Anyways, the next show at Orion is Sunday, Cheer Accident. I don’t know if I can handle the weird but I might consider going. Cheer Accident is weird, and … I think you have to be in the right mood.

Tags: Music, shows

Like thousands of other folks on faith I signed up to go to this show with reasonably vague expectations and I am definitely glad I spent unreasonable sums of money to get tickets to this show off craigslist.

The personalities are larger than life but of course what is it really about? The music. I was worried I’d be bored or disappointed, right? I mean there’s no album, so what do we know? I came out of the club absolutely hungry for more. (Apologies for the crummy iPhone pic, I am not smart enough to know how to get a press pass to something like this just yet.)

I don’t have the knowledge required to say definitively that you can hear each contributor’s influence on the songs, but what I felt was that this sounded not a little bit like what a QotSA follow-up to Era Vulgaris would have sounded like. That is good for me, maybe bad for somebody else. The rhythms were so solid, and Grohl was on fire, practically invisible behind the kit but a massive presence nonetheless. Anthing I have to say about Josh Homme’s performance is tainted with bias.

John Paul Jones did whip out a keytar. Now, I didn’t write about this, but that makes a lot of keytar action happening in music I like.*

Anyways. There were several songs in the TCV set I really liked, I don’t know the names, but I can’t wait for the album rumored to come out next month. Check out this semi-helpful interview with Homme from Austin City Limits. For really good photos check out DCist’s post about the show. I agree with Francis Chung – the crowd seemed a little under-energetic. I mean I understand that is a stereotypical DC crowd, but come on! Stop giving dancing people the stink-eye; it’s good when the music moves you.

* I went to the Ram’s Head Live and saw Sonata Arctica and Dragonforce, and the keyboardists from both of those bands (who put on FLAT OUT FUCKING AMAZING live shows) (not that I would ever buy DF’s albums, ugh) came out in the middle of the show and had the most amazing keytar-play-off I have ever, and probably will ever, see. Jeez, I really should have written that show up. It looked a little like this.

Tags: Music, shows

Is Chicken Leg. I don’t know why, his little kitty IV shaven area makes me think Chicken Leg. He doesn’t like it when I pet his shorn area but it’s all I want to do before it grows back!

He only had three teeth removed.

I think Hero’s kind of jealous.

I have been immersed in classwork, which is quite boring, and has me convinced that in order to be a healthy individual I need to cook. As anyone who knows me is aware, this is not welcome news. I’m still internally struggling with it.

Thursday night I am planning to go to Orion Studios in Baltimore to see some of the big names in progressive rock, Roine Stolt and Nick D’Virgilio as well as many other crazy talented folks (and, yes, Swedes). If you are at all interested in joining me let me know! I’ve never been to Orion Studios before and it would be nice  to have some show companionship.

Tags: cat