I Never Update My Blog

It's true.

Things I Will No Longer Be Able To Do, Starting Tomorrow, Due to a Lack of Internet Access (in order of how likely I was to do them anyway)

1. Obsessively check Gmail, Facebook, and Myspace

2. Google my every thought

3. Gchat my Mondays and Wednesdays away

4. Videochat with my lover Cindy

5. Watch episodes of 30 Rock, The Office, and Brothers & Sisters. Oh, and Lie to Me.

6. Instantly request books and movies from the library as soon as they are mentioned in gchat conversation

7. Impulsively buy CDs late at night

8. Plan bus trips

9. Look at The Stranger website to see if there is anything going on worth making a bus trip for

10. Do crossword puzzles on NYTimes.com

11. Search for a new place to live

12. Search for MFA grad programs in creative nonfiction

13. Update my blog

We Need Help

Josh Ritter: wolves :: Counting Crows: rain

This is my insight for the day. Maybe insight is too strong of a word; thought is more like it. The other day I was thinking about public education while my teeth were getting drilled. My teeth were getting drilled today as well, but I was not thinking about education. 

Speaking of Counting Crows, the other day (and by that I mean some random day several months ago) I realized that a group of crows is called a "murder," and the song title "A Murder of One" made much more sense. That's the song with the lyric "I dreamt I saw you walking up a hillside in the snow/Casting shadows on the winter sky as you stood there/Counting crows." 

You'd think I'd been thinking about Counting Crows a lot recently based on this post, but the opposite in fact is true. The song lyric revelation made me think of a similar moment I had with Sheryl Crow's "If It Makes You Happy," but I was unsure of just what lyric was revealed to me after years of listening to the song. I did remember, however, that I had mentioned that moment it in the brief autobiography I wrote in a junior year writing class where I picked ten songs through which to tell my life story. (Yes, it was as bad as it sounds.) It was not worth mentioning, but I did proceed to spent a good half hour reading through miscellaneous pieces of old writing, coming across this gem. It was in a folder labeled "Memoirs," which I opened hoping that I would find a substantial body of work I could perhaps use. There was a single document named "March 10 (06)" and it consisted of a 3,000 word stream of consciousness, excerpted below.

Ok I’m going to write 1000 words right now without stopping to punctaute or anything so that I can take a shower and feel like I accomplished something– again we are going to go for quantity since measuring by quality these days makes me sad and like I want to cry. That was a little overdramatic, as was the part when I said I would not stop to punctuate. I feel that Lynn Truss, author of “eats, shoots, and leaves,” which is on my floor right now as we speak, would be disappointed in me. I also wasted precious time deleting to make sure that the comma went inside the quotation marks, even though I could just pass it off as british, it did kind of annoy me. I am on some level meant to be a proofreader but proofing these math papers makes me depressed since they are so badly written.

Three years later and not much has changed, eh?

A New Post

Because Kate demanded ever so politely. And because I have yet to post something in the new year and 2009 is already almost a month old. 

My excuse for this month has been an extended road trip. I am working on my excuse for next month. 

I have yet to finish writing my list of new year's resolutions. It is extensive. I also had a huge to-do list (which I also haven't finished writing yet). I was very proactive about one of the first items, which was going to the dentist for a check-up. I think it took some of the satisfaction of crossing it off my list when the dentist told me I have ten cavities that need to be filled and I should get my wisdom teeth out, but that my insurance probably wouldn't pay for both in one year. Now instead of having that one item on the list I have about five more dentist appointments to make, plus calling the insurance company, buying fluoride rinse (check!), etc. Not to mention how stupid I feel for not making it to the dentist in 2008. 

Last year I think my new year's resolutions were to volunteer and write. I started volunteering at 826 Seattle in February and I think I finally got around to joining a writing class in April or so. I also planned to exercise sometime last year as well, but never quite got around to that. I also resolved to blog regularly.

But it's a new new year. And I just got up to check why my water wasn't boiling after ten minutes. I was confused because my first thought was that I had turned the wrong burner on yet again (which is sad because I only have two burners these days), but I really didn't think that was the case. I felt for sure I had double checked this time since I had only an hour before been talking to Crystal about that very issue. Actually, it was more of a debate as to whether you can burn pans. I think her point was that pans are made to heat up and so you'd have to be really stupid to burn one. I think my point was that I am that stupid and have the burnt pans to prove it, therefore proving that you can burn pans. 

Water is making heating noises now. Oh, and I had turned the wrong burner on. But fortunately said burner had come out of its connection so my George Foreman did not melt. 

The end. 

Ugly Sweater Parties

What is the opposite of preaching to the choir? Preaching to the heathens that wander into church for the free sip of wine? I'm not sure. Anyway, that's what I'm doing right now as I know for a fact that I am the only twentysomething in the country who has never attended an ugly sweater party. And I know that some of you have even hosted these theme parties yourself. 

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I would like to say that I have never been invited to an ugly sweater party. So I can't claim that I've ever taken a principled stance and actually refused an invitation to one of these things. I don't have much will power, and I don't want to make it seem like I feel strongly enough about this issue that I would give up the rare opportunity to leave my one-room hermitage just to make a point. As you can see, such opportunities are few and far between for me. It is 7:30 PM on a Friday night and I am at home by myself posting to a blog that is, at best, read by five people (but five people of the highest quality, might I add). 

Anyway, all I know is that ugly sweater parties have gotten out of control. By this I mean that last time I was in Value Village (which is a second-hand store where I buy most of my clothes these days, except for underwear, which I now order online from gap.com. Is that too much information?) there were two girls in front of me, either SPU or UW students, sometimes it's hard to tell. (No offense. I mean, some of my best friends are UW students.) I could tell this because the girl placed two ugly sweaters on the counter and asked if she could pay for one with a debit card and one with cash, because it was for her roommate. 

Maybe I'm just bitter because the only time I ever placed a costume choice in the hands of a roommate I ended up being the red Power Ranger for Halloween. Bronwyn got to be Superman, her friend got to be Batman, and Cara got to be Spiderman and I was the red Power Ranger. I had never even seen the Power Rangers. 

But that is irrelevant. The point is I thought having an ugly sweater party was funny when I first heard about it. But now I don't get it. At this point it's no longer an original idea by any stretch of the imagination, but it's also about ten years too early for it to be an ironic party theme ("Let's have an ugly sweater party. It'll be so 2007! Like when they thought it was so funny to have parties to make fun of the sweaters people wore in the '80's.")

Apologies. I'll dismount from my soapbox now (10! She sticks the landing!). I haven't been this controversial since 2006 when I wrote about pink baseball caps and Kenli accused me of hating breast cancer victims.