Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Evil's still afoot. And, I'm almost out of that nancy-boy hair gel I like so much.

Dear World,
I have absolutely nothing to say about you lately. 
However, this clip is brilliant (and I'm mostly posting it for Lindsey, but the rest of you can enjoy it if you would like to. Feel free to skip the first minute-ish with Angel kicking the creepy boyfriend's trash - unless you want to see Angel, in which case I totally understand.) 




Actually, it's been a good few days. Emily came up last Thursday for Katie's wedding (and also to watch Cold Comfort Farm with me), and then I got to go to the temple open house with her on Friday night (tragically missing out on ward karaoke night. Wait - no. I wasn't actually heartbroken about that). On Saturday, I went to lunch with Todd (because he's moving to Phoenix and will be gone forever) and got to see Jonathan while he was in town, PLUS I had a good long talk with my brother Treb while I was stuck in traffic. Father's Day was fun, especially the part where we got my dad an iPod nano and taught him how to use it. ("How do you put it on shuffle?" (I shake the iPod.) (Pure delight.) 
Work was boring today - it's much less exciting without Clark, who is in Denver right now. I'm hoping that I can get some emails out without blowing anything up. 
Finally, I want to include this bit of wisdom from High Fidelity, which I finally finished. I'm really sad about how me this is, but I'm glad I'm not the only one. The first quote he's talking about is actually on my sidebar - this comes about 150 pages later. 

"So maybe what I said before, about how listening to too many records messes your life up . . . maybe there's something in it after all. David Owen, he's married, right? He's taken care of all that, and now he's a big-shot diplomat. The guy who came into the shop with the suit and the car keys, he's married too, and now he's I don't know, a businessman. Me, I'm unmarried--at the moment as unmarried as it's possible to be--and I'm the owner of a failing record shop. It seems to me that if you place music (and books, probably, and films, and plays, and anything that makes you feel) at the center of your being, then you can't afford to sort out your love life, start to think of it as a finished product. You've got to pick at it, keep it alive and in turmoil, you've got to pick at it and unravel it until it all comes apart and you're compelled to start all over again. Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those starts are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship. Maybe Al Green is directly responsible for more than I ever realized." 

Oh, so tragically true. 



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Thursday, June 11, 2009

Rainy Day Music

In honor of the excessive number of rain storms of late, I wanted to post a list of rain songs. (Treb, didn't you make one of these a few years ago? You could probably add.) I made a quick one with the search function on my iPod at work, so I've sifted it out a little. It's mostly supposed to be songs ABOUT rain rather than just songs that have rain in the title. (In other words, as much as I love the song "Damn, Sam, I Love a Woman Who Rains," it will not be on this playlist. There may be a few exceptions anyway though.)  

  •  "Sit and Listen to the Rain" - Whiskytown
  • "Ballet for a Rainy Day" - XTC
  • "Why Does It Always Rain On Me?" - Travis
  • "Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall" - Simon and Garfunkle (slight cheat, but still works and so good) 
  • "Rain Falls Down" - Ryan Shupe and the Rubber Band
  • "Rain" - Rusted Root
  • "Let It Rain" - OK Go
  • "Caught In the Rain" - Martin Sexton
  • "Still Rainin'" - Jonny Lang
  • "Blinding Sheets of Rain" - Old 97s
  • "Dry the Rain" - The Beta Band (I just want it there, okay?)
  • "Buckets of Rain" - Bob Dylan (because "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" isn't really about rain, it's about change. And this one isn't really either, but it feels like rainy day music, and that's the important part. I think I might let "Shelter from the Storm slip in as well.) 
  • "I Can't Stand the Rain" - The Commitments
  • "Raining in Baltimore" - The Counting Crows (one of my all-time favorite songs) 
  • "Chance of Rain" - John Gorka
  • "It's Raining Again" - Supertramp (yes, I really have this) 
  • "Heavy Cloud (No Rain)" - Sting
  • "A Thing Called Rain" - Jackie Greene (again, this one may not be completely about rain, but it feels like a rainy day, so it stays.) 
  • "Storm" - Jose Gonzalez
  • "Kathy's Song" - Simon and Garfunkle (because this is one of the first songs I always think of when it rains. "I hear the drizzle of the rain, like a memory it falls, soft and warm, continuing, tapping on my roof and walls.")
  • "Riders on the Storm" - The Doors (Um, yes. And it always scares me.) 
  • "Rainy Day" - Guster (this song is SO depressing, but I guess it needs to be here anyway.) 
  • "Weatherbeaten" - Republic Tigers
  • "Thunder" - Young Dubliners (this is another sort of, but it's just kind of awesome.) 
  • "Nice Weather for Ducks" - Lemon Jelly (because it's SO bizarre, but really fantastic. How can you say no to a song that begins with "All the ducks are swimming in the water, fal-der-al-der-alda?" Yeah. 
So there you go. Mostly I feel like making this will put an end to the rain so that no one can use it, but even so, everyone should have a good rain playlist, right? 
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This is Summer

Since I haven't posted for awhile, I give you a brief update of what I've been doing lately. 

What I'm Listening To
  • Lots and lots of Andrew Bird, including a little of his first CD, which is bizarre and very Celtic-sounding. I don't know when he developed his real style, but I'm glad he did.
  • Lots of covers. Most recent addition? Greg Laswell's cover of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." It's lovely.
  • This bizarre mix of space-related music I made. It has "Rocketman" and "Spaceman" and "Starlight" and lots of Ziggy Stardust and Major Tom. I like it. I want to make a mix of train songs next. Or rain songs, in honor of our long wet spell here.
  • TV On the Radio. It isn't like anything else I normally listen to, but it's kind of great.
  • Fanfarlo. I found them on All Songs Considered the other day, and they are FABULOUS.
  • The National, of whom I never seem to tire.
  • Podcasts and NPR. So nerdy.
What I'm Reading
  • Most recently, The Secret History (so good! Thank you Greg!), Run, (because even though I thought Bel Canto had a cheesy ending, I love Ann Patchett's style a lot), and soon Return of the Native, because Treb and I have made a pact that we will Hardy it up together this summer, and have our own little mini book club. 
  • Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, which is the book for next month in the book club around here. It looks good and I'm excited. 
  • If I ever get around to it, I would love to read Life of Pi and The Satanic Verses this summer, not to mention the Anne Tyler and Norman Mailer books I picked up from the sale table and B&N. (Yes I'm saving money, but that doesn't mean you can't buy the essentials!) 
What I'm Watching
  • More BBC miniseries movies
  • More Buffy, especially when my parents go on vacation and I don't have to feel guilty about not talking to them for hours on end. I'm only a season and a half or so away from the musical episode, and I'm pretty sure Nathan Fillion is going to pop in at some point as well. I'm just going to pull out all the stops and go full speed ahead on the nerd train. 
  • Henry V and The Secret Garden at the very least down at ye old USF. 
  • Some new show called Mental that showed up on Hulu. It's not amazing, but the head of the psych ward is cute and British, so I keep watching. 
  • The Brothers Bloom tonight, with Kellie. It exceeded my expectations, which were decently high. I loved it. 
  • Up, which I saw with Coop and Savy and Spence and my parents. DE-lightful. 
What I'm Doing

Besides being a miser and hoarding my money, I'm doing the following: 
  • Enjoying my job and getting to see my brothers every day. 
  • Learning basic html so that I can write the code for the emails we send out and get rid of all of the crap that Dreamweaver throws in that our email program takes back out.
  • Buying makeup with my coupon code (mwinegar0509, people! 10% off!), usually one item at a time because that's all I think of. 
  • Regretting the fact that I probably will not be going to see Conor Oberst at library square next week because a) it's $30 and I am saving money, after all and b) all of my friends who like him (Lindsey) are far, far away. And since I don't live in NYC with Treb, I don't get to go and see him for free. Hmph. 
  • Doing my best to have a good attitude about the singles' ward (like mostly surviving the ward campout)
  • Getting ready to sign a lease for an apartment in Indiana and registering for classes with professors who have diverse, unpronounceable names. I know that one of them is Kurdish.
  • Pretty much hyperventilating every time I have to drive through a puddle on the freeway. Stupid slushy spinout. 
  • Showering my nephews and nieces with adoration. (Exhibit A)

That pretty much catches you up to speed.  Maybe I'll post another playlist soon, since actually writing has been a struggle lately. 




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Friday, June 5, 2009

Not my strong point.

Right now I'm supposed to be packing for a ward camp out. And I'm not.
Don't get me wrong. I love camping, and I haven't been in far too long. I'm just not looking forward to the part where I get to spend 12 hours or so with a bunch of people I don't know at all. I feel sick just thinking about it. I feel like I'm out of practice in the friend-making department - at least the solo friend-making department, and I think deep down I'm dreading that I will end up awkwardly not talking to anyone the whole time and wanting to go home 2 hours in. 
It will probably be delightful, and it will be more delightful if I can convince myself of this beforehand, but right now I'm wishing I'd just avoided the whole thing and planned to stay at home finishing The Secret History for book club. Sigh. 
Send me some grown up not-shy vibes, okay? :)
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Wednesday, June 3, 2009

The Interwebs Liz Lemon!

First, I thought you'd all like to see the picture from my James Dean calendar for this month. Lovely, isn't it? 

Today my family got high speed internet. For the first time. After successfully setting it up, I celebrated by doing the following: 
  • Showing my parents the latest Will Ferrell as George Bush clip on Hulu
  • Downloading iTunes and teaching my dad the delicate art that is importing music. (He thought it was much harder than it is.) 
  • Finding all of the songs my dad has been talking about for years and hasn't been able to find - if not the actual songs, at least lyrics, which meant he was still very impressed and happy to know that he didn't dream up the song years ago. (By the way, if anyone knows where I can find the song "Rings for Sale" by Roger Miller, please let me know. I would be a hero.) 
  • Teaching my mom how to add a favorite
  • Registering for my fall classes (including Reference with the famous Kurdish professor that both Steve at the MAD and Julie my Indiana contact told me was amazing)
  • Uploading about 8 albums to a folder called "Operation Liberation" for Treb. At Christmas, I synced his iPod to my computer so he'd have something to listen to, but now he has to reconfigure it so that he can have his music. He sent me a list of the things he can't live without until next Christmas or whenever we see him again and have another music swap, so tonight I sent over the Calexico, Andrew Bird, and Bon Iver.
  •  Watching a couple of episodes of Arrested Development while uploading the aforementioned music for my brother. 
  • Finding a free download of a song by a band I heard on All Songs Considered today called Fanfarlo - the two songs I've heard so far have been fabulous, so I'l probably be seeking out more soon. Also, I downloaded a free mp3 of a "Rocket Man" cover they featured on This American Life from a project they did with a one day band. It's actually not too bad, and it reminds me that I should probably have a little Elton John in my music library. It's probably a little ridiculous of me not to have any. 
In other news, I got to talk to Jason McGee about London today because he's heading to the airport tomorrow for an amazing one month tour of Europe. (Jealous, but it made me really happy to tell him about London.) I probably told him more than he wanted to know in a really incoherent way, but I hope it helped a little, because 3 days in London isn't enough, but having some idea about what's worth it and what isn't makes it better. 

Tomorrow is my mumsy's birthday, so planning on some serious post-work playing with her. Good times. 

Stella finally got her groove back - or at least the part of her groove embodied in the driver's side bumper - and as soon as we're sure the paint is going to hold, I'm going to put on my Vonnegut bumper sticker (since my Mind the Gap one was lost in the bumper transfer).  

Now I'm going to try to sleep without clenching my jaw tonight. Good crimony. I don't know if I'm chewing too much gum (entirely possible, actually) or stressing myself out in my sleep or just leaning forward concentrating too much at work (the emails I've been making lately have been hating on me, but I delude myself into thinking that someday I'll understand what's going on), but it needs to cut it out or I'll get lock jaw or something exciting like that. 

Please welcome my parents to the interwebs at last. 
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Monday, June 1, 2009

Sorry. Not Quite Back.

Hey everyone - apologies for not posting anything lately. I'm thinking about plenty, but I just haven't felt like writing any of it. Amanda's wedding was this weekend, Whitney and I had a sleepover, and my family went to Lagoon. All of those things were lovely, but I just haven't felt like writing about any of them. 
I did finally get to see Little Dorrit, which was lovely, but made me realize that my watching of multiple BBC dramas is probably just as self-destructive as all of those people who watch stupid unrealistic chick flicks, because whenever they end I feel very much as if I wish my life could be like that, or at least could be like the part at the end with Matthew Macfayden being so very kissable. Never mind all of the parts about debtors' prison and murderers and such. 
Also, I miss having friends nearby, and I realize it more whenever I spend time with Whitney and Torie and talk to Lindsey. I'm working on it in the new ward, but I'm not as brave on my own. Maybe on the Heber campout this weekend. 
Hopefully my posting desire will return soon. 
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