The sweet, gracious discourses.

Way back when this year started I believe I was feeling a bit at odds. I do believe I must have had way too much free time back then because for whatever reason I decided it would be a good idea to read at least a book a week for 2009.

For a time this was easy. But by mid-spring things were rather busy and it was becoming difficult. I have allowed myself a bit of cheating by counting any audio books that I consume. Realistically they take significantly longer to get through the book, but I can get in ‘reading’ hours while driving or when I’ve not finished the book after the drive I’ll listen and do crafts.


This is the 30th week of 2009. I’ve more or less been tracking what I read through www.goodreads.com but it’s been a while since I actually calculated how I was doing. And so here is an exhaustive, hopefully, list of books which I have consumed:

Across the Nightingale Floor - Hearn, Lian
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Haddon, Mark
Children of Dune - Herbert, Frank
Dancing On My Grave - Kirkland, Gelsey
The Kite Runner - Hosseini, Khaled
Holding on to the air: An Autobiography - Farrell, Suzanne
Shaman’s Crossing - Hobb, Robin
The Friday Night Knitting Club - Jacobs, Kate
All the King’s Men - Warren, Robert Penn
My Sister’s Keeper - Picoult Jodi
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia - Gilbert, Elizabeth
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - See, Lisa
Animal Farm - Orwell, George
Brisingr - Paolini, Christopher
Anansi Boys - Gaiman, Neil
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Hosseini, Khaled
Artemis Fowl - Colfer, Eoin
Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident - Colfer, Eoin
The Children of Hurin - Tolkien, J.R.R.
The Secret Life Of CeeCee Wilkes - Chamberlain, Diane
Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code - Colfer, Eoin
Fellowship of the Ring - Tolkien, J.R.R.
Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception - Colfer, Eoin
Invisible Man - Ellison, Ralph
The Fellowship of the Ring - Tolkien, J.R.R.
Dragonflight - McCaffrey, Anne
Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony - Colfer, Eoin
God Emperor of Dune - Herbert, Frank
Dragonquest - McCaffrey, Anne
New Spring - Jordan, Robert
The World According to Garp - Irving, John
The History of Love - Krauss, Nicole
Odd Hours - Koontz, Dean
The White Dragon - McCaffrey, Anne

And the grand total is: 34!

Yay I’m actually a bit ahead.

“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.”

Hydrant Hysteria: Part II

On May 20th the fates changed in my favor. I was going through the mail at the office I noticed something from the Downtown Improvement District (sponsors of this whole shebang). I immediately opened it and then ran to my co-worker/partner in design’s office to show her the good news. We then proceeded to inform every other staff member of our success.

She recommended going home to see if I’d heard about my other designs. But I come to work at 8:30 and leave at 4:30, none of this in between crap. So by the time I left for home I’d pretty much forgotten about it. And then remembering, soon found myself delighted to be have had ALL 3 of my designs selected! Whoa.

Unfortunately Jo supposedly sent in a design of her own that was not selected (she never showed it to me). So I felt a bit bad being so excited about mine. But all 3….wow that’s crazy.

There was a reception for all of the artists on June 3rd. I tried to find someone to go with me, but to no avail. I steeled myself for the awkwardness that is me at socializing type events.

This also meant that I had to drive downtown. As a general rule I don’t go downtown. The exception being for concerts. So I have my well established route down to the Forum and back home. I also occastional go to one other performing arts venue, but I park in the parking garage (and lose my car) every time.

Downtown I went. And I even found street parking! It was pretty spectacular. I procured my materials including the locations of my hydrants. One of my former co-workers was there so I stood around awkwardly for a while hoping he would finish the conversation he was in then I could talk to him. It was to avail and after a bit I determined that I’d had enough and went to leave. However he had seen me and so quickly caught up with me and we chatted a bit before I returned home.

The materials I received there gave me the locations of the hydrants.

They seemed good. I was excited.

[to be continued.....this is a long story]

Hydrant Hysteria

Sometime in April I came across some publicity that my city was having what they called “Hydrant Hysteria”. There were 58 hydrants in the downtown district that would be available to be painted. Artists and community members were invited to submit design proposals for the hydrants.

I thought it would be the most awesome thing ever to paint something, in the public, that is more or less permanent. And so my idea was to make as many designs as possible and submit them thereby giving us (I sucked Jo in) a better chance of being selected.

However as a good many of my plans go, this one fell to the wayside. The deadline (May 1) approached and designs had not been made. Then in a rather last ditch effort I spent an evening making two designs.

The first was my original idea: a penguin. I have a mild obsession with penguins, but as a card carrying member of the Secret Society of Penguins, I feel this is perfectly acceptable. Also it should be noted that “we were penguins before it was cool”. This was the result:

SSO Penguin (see how I snuck in my SSOP reference)
A bit lame but it’s mostly just an inside joke with me and my h.s. friends.

Then I worked on my awesome idea that had suddenly struck me that day or the day before. I had been trying to think of something that would tie into the city itself somehow. And I noticed this picture:

Supreme Court Dome
My city is the state capitol and that is the Supreme Court Dome in the capitol building. I’m a big fan of slightly abstract repetitive patterns and so I went for it:


Supreme Cournt Dome

I loved it.

Now I was torn as to what I should submit. The penguin had significantly more personal value to me, but the dome was just a lot better looking and I liked it as well. So I decided that decisions were no fun and submitted both a day or two before the deadline.

A few weeks prior to the deadline I had mentioned to one of my co-workers about the whole thing. She had heard about it from another co-worker and the concensus was that the Symphony should submit a design. However spring is a ridiculously busy time here and so nothing ever became of it….until April 30.

That evening I once again stayed up late with my random drawing supplies and used the ideas that she and I had bounced back and forth to create a 3rd design:

Symphony Under the Stars

It turned out well. And I mailed it the next day.

All in all I was nervous. I couldn’t decide if I thought that no one would hear about it and I’d have a really good chance of being chosen or if my hurried attempts at being an artist would be in vain. Although I did have high hopes for the Symphony as the design turned out well and frankly we are a fairly major institution in this town.

Anxiously I waited for the listed May 15th deadline of when artists would be informed of success. The 15th came and went and I heard nothing. In fact that weekend I was downtown working the last concert of the season. There was a primed hydrant right outside of the venue that just sat there taunting me. I was sad.

[to be continued]

Re-invigorate

I have decided to once again attempt to revitalize this blog.

Recent things I want to post on:
Hydrant Hysteria
Biking
Food
Spinning

Wish me luck.

Each of us knows all.

I just got back from seeing the movie Angels and Demons. It was a good movie, but rather than talk about the movie I was more amused with my relationship with the story.

At some point between approximately 2003 and now I read the book. In thinking on it I believe that my father may have gotten the book from the library and with it being around the house I then decided to read it. However that particular instance could also have been the book The Da Vinici Code and then because I liked the Code so much I went and got Angels and Demons on my own. I'm not sure. But I do definitely recall that my father had read the book and so he knew how it ended and I did not.

So in theory the movie could be good, but I knew how it ended. Except that my mind is at times rather equivalent to a sieve. I went in knowing that while I remembered a few things, for the most part I didn't remember what happened.

In the theater the credits started rolling and I turned and said to TRM (who has also read the book of course), "well that stuck to the book rather well". Her responce "kinda, except for the missing big plot lines at the end." "Oh really?"

It was pretty awesome how I really don't remember. And it amuses me. And it most likely pointless to everyone else.

Ah well your loss.

"Each of us is a god. Each of us knows all. We need only to open our minds to hear our own wisdom."

Things fall apart.

My life has been depressing me lately.

It started with me doing nothing but working. We had two concerts in a row and so for those of us who didn't take any days off (turns out only being 2 of us) we worked 19 days in a row with no days off. That includes 3 days that ran somewhere around 12 hours between time left house for work and time returned from work to go to bed. It's freaking crazy.

So that really made me feel like my life was pretty pathetic. Then to add to the stress of the situation I've hardly seen TRM. She was nearly living over at her boyfriends house. And being as she is the only friend that I have within a 30 minute drive, and only friend that I ever hung out with like ever recently - it was kinda sad that she wasn't around so much.

Then she took the cats over there too. And like didn't bring them back like she had done before. No friends in the house for me at all. Therefore for the few hours that I actually was home I was pathetically alone. *sigh*

This Tuesday the bomb was dropped. I talk to her on googles chat thing during the work day. We like to complain to each other. It helps us from not killing our respective patrons/customers and or co-workers. She wanted to know if it would be ok if we no longer did the 'the house spilts the cost of groceries' thing anymore. Before now she did all of the shopping and cooking - it was kind of insane but as far as I can figure she enjoyed it, so I wasn't going to argue. It makes sense because she was buying, paying a portion of, and preparing stuff and then wasn't around to eat it. I'd just been going along with it and not questioning it. Plus really I think that her non-aroundness wasn't nearly so intense as it became in the last 2 weeks. So anyways I said that would be ok because fair things are only logical to me.

But it started me on the path of 'holy crap' this is the beginning of a progression of events that very much changes how I've been living the past two years. I asked if she was planning on moving out "yes". Now thats all well in good except that she owns this freaking house. "Planning on selling the house?" Well not anytime soon, but eventually. *double sigh*

I also asked her if she was going to marry him. Because well sometimes I'm subtle like that, and hey it's how I think.

me: indeedi was going to say 'are you gonna marry him?'

TRM: I think so me: holy crap

TRM: no guarantees

but

me: damn all of you peoples

Seriously I'm quite familar with the idea that I need to be happy for her. But gosh darn it it bothers me whenever I see friends/people my age actually like getting married and all that jazz. I totally can't come to terms with it yet.

There are actually at least a dozen topics that roll through my mind as "ought to be explained further" as I write this. But I suppose it works for a readers digest type version.

Things, they are a'changing. Now if only I can convince myself that change is not bad...


"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold"

Complaining

Last weekend was a concert weekend and it’s finally the new weekend. Normally this means I get this sudden rush of productivity and I accomplish long lists of stuffs that I didn’t have the time or energy to accomplish in the previous week.

But not this weekend, nope. Instead there is another freaking concert. So I am at work, again. And I’m bitter about it. Plus I have this itch to be doing the things I would be doing at home. Namely cleaning, crafts, gardening, biking, etc. Plus when I left to come into my windowless hell hole it was shaping up to be another ridiculously georgeous day.

Last weekend we had ridiculously crazy downright hot weather (hit the 90’s). Most people around here bemoaned it as being “too hot”. Myself, being a warm weather creature, loved it. And I missed it because I was working.

Here we go again.

Really this is getting ridiculous.