:: anne in the attic ::

Create Your Own Countdown

:: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 ::

I've really been enjoying my latest bargain bin score, especially at night. I've never actually owned a lava lamp, and this is just a little one, but it makes me smile and trip on the colors, the colors! It ranks as the best five bucks I've spent frivolously on myself in quite a while. Most things I buy have a purpose, and in fact, I was in the place I bought it for some tasty new sheets and a nice-looking shoe rack. All practical Virgo-sounding stuff, right? But there's this kid in me that sometimes has to do the fun thing, too, just to keep it light (ha-- I really didn't intend that pun, but if the foo shits...).

While on the job, out and about in the city today, I saw a bumper sticker that I had to stop and write down. I wanted to try to make a song out of it (and this evening, I did manage to do something with it, but it's incomplete). It said: "You all laugh because I'm different, I laugh because you're all the same." I love the bittersweet feel to that, right up my songwriting alley these days. Been a little bit in the doldrums, but sometimes that makes me more prolific (yeah- I write more crap). People are up to their old tricks of disappointing me. And I? I'm guilty of letting them.

:: Anne 8:16 PM [smartass remarks] ::
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This posting of my small but much-loved lantern collection is for my Virgo friend in Corvallis, with whom I got to hang out yesterday in what seems to be our typical annual way. We're always able to pick right up where we left off without any loss of comfort or understanding, it seems, good because of the sparsity of visits. For me, there's just something about the way another Virgo's mind works that's comfortable. I like the forthrightness, the honesty, and even the bluntness cloaked in wry humor that is so Virgo: blink and you might miss it. I have always had other Virgos in my life and hope I always will; I truly enjoy that dimension (dementia? haha!). Music, beer, food, stories-- all good. I didn't start the drive back until almost midnight, which made it a bit harder than usual to get up early for work, but it was well worth it.

Before that, I'd stopped in for lunch with mom and to take care of a couple of chores that required two people. And also to see the photos and receive the gift of vanilla she'd brought back from her month in Mexico. It was a very nice afternoon.

I've decided not to go to Seattle in April for a two-day turnaround. Though I'd like to see my friend there again, especially since she's just going through a series of chemo treatments right now, it's not as economically plausible as it was last Fall; air fares have tripled. And though I would have made the trip also to stop in at the Lark in the Morning store there, I'm leaning more towards making the drive to the one in Mendocino now. According to the website visuals, the San Francisco store looks like the one to see, but it's just too far south to extend the drive within the time I have to spend on it. Isn't that always the way? I'd really like to spend a few days there, but maybe this time I can at least stay overnight. Then the end of the week is the choir outreach in Newport, and I'm going up to the house (I asked my Yachats friend whose house our family has used for years for summer weekends at the coast if I could have it for this event, but space is limited) early on Friday to just hang out and chill with possibly a couple of other folks. Then Saturday I'll be filming the outreach (if all goes well), Sunday will be decompression/last minute chores, and Monday it's back to work.

So that's my next week off and it's already fairly booked at both ends. Somewhere in there, I'd like to spend some quality uninterrupted time in the studio to finish some things, if possible. Good thing I'll have another week in May (for the choir's Spring concert at the Hult Center, which isn't until the tail end), and yet another in June for the Song Selection retreat. And somewhere in there is a bowl-a-thon, making arrangements with my dad and that side of the family for his 80th birthday celebration, a TON of yard work, going back on the overtime list at work in a week, and getting my taxes done. Guess I'd better get it in gear. I'll be quite relieved to land somewhere in that June vacation....

:: Anne 8:04 PM [smartass remarks] ::
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I think the Martin Limited Edition D-50 K2 Deluxe acoustic has GOT to be the most beautiful guitar I have ever seen. But at the dear cost of $47,500, I will just have to admire it from afar....
Click on the image for a more detailed view.

:: Anne 12:23 PM [smartass remarks] ::
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This is cool. Someone posted this on a MySpace bulletin. 75 bands are represented in this picture. Some obvious examples are:
1. The Rolling Stones
2. The Cowboy Junkies
3. Queen
4. Alice in Chains
Get the idea? See if you can find some of the more obscure ones.
Click on the image for more detail.

:: Anne 11:23 AM [smartass remarks] ::
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A couple of mornings ago, after much of Spring's growth had begun to trust in the sun, there came a chilling frost.... And the sidewalk in front of my house looked like this (at left), dusted in snow. In mid-March. I noticed something amiss when the alarm went off for work because the house was uncharacteristically dark. It's usually never dark in the daytime because there are skylights, but they were blanketed in snow that diffused the light. So I grabbed my camera and ran outside in my pj's and boots to get some photos at the buttcrack of dawn. And then I went to work and trudged around in it until it melted later in the afternoon.

The weather has been kind of dicey lately-- teasing us in so many ways. I've been shamelessly wearing my classic fur hat with ear flaps. I gave up the whole looking-like-a-dork thing when that first icy chill came in January and a freezing wind sliced right through to my scalp. Well, so yesterday at work the sun shone and it snowed no more, so I (like a schmuck!) was lulled into the visible warmth and did NOT don the furry cap. I did notice at times that I was kind of chilly, but didn't realize until later that I'd actually caught a chill and could not get my core temperature back up before something slipped through my defenses.

So this morning I woke up with a sore throat and a fever on the day of one of our choir gigs and could not sing. And tonight, one of my favorite bands, Girlyman, is playing a somewhat unadvertised, intimate gig (now--as I write this!) right around the corner from my house, at Sam Bond's Garage. And I'm too sick to go out. This thing carries quite a headache, too. I'm still somewhat in denial and hoping my body will beat it back tonight while I sleep, but I doubt it. Well, this has been a scintillating blog entry, hasn't it? Good night, all.

:: Anne 9:56 PM [smartass remarks] ::
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As far as I can tell, the image at the right was created by Ed Jonas. The only distinction I might add, in encompassing time and place vectors like this, is the central boundaries being less linear and more like helices.

I'm drawn to the idea of elsewhere and transvergence as part of a nostalgic longing I've been experiencing, a wonderment and somewhat of a mystery, like pieces missing; yet, those pieces actually fit a puzzle parallel in time-- similar, but not the same. Analogous to 'experience' during a time period (era) at certain coordinates being so broad and varied. I know mine, but seek others'. Why? A thirst I cannot explain, except this nostalgia that is wearing on me from the inside out. I ask again, two years later: What am I missing? (It's in the transvergence, perhaps. Ha ha.)

:: Anne 7:25 PM [smartass remarks] ::
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