Some things our conductor said in rehearsal tonight, and a Rhyming Moment

1. Our conductor seems to be consistently either unnecessarily cranky during rehearsal, or striving to be the young, cool, funny guy that wants to joke around all the time. I think because we were on the cusp of a long weekend he was in a good mood.

"Alright, so this is like the little French boy trying to sneak out of his house to play on the French streets in the middle of the French night. On second thought, that sounds kind of sketchy actually. Never mind."

"What does La poupée mean, anyway? The puppet? Ok, right here I want you to just tickle the puppet, okay? What, you think that sounds creepy, too?"

"We are in SCANDINAVIA! There's mountains, and cliffs, and snow, and fjords, and there's a Big Concert Timpani playing REALLY LOUD out there!"

"What's the tempo marking on this movement? Moderato? Good. Does anybody have "rush every time you have quarter notes"? Because I was afraid the publisher had marked all the winds' parts wrong again."


2. I think that perhaps I should change the cd I'm currently playing in my car. As I turned the corner onto my street this evening I noted that not only was I listening to the same song as yesterday when I made that same turn, but I was listening to the same phrase within the same verse of that song. I thought for a moment I had lapped myself.

Charming People 5: Me!

Hey folks, just so you know, I'm pretty dang charming. Want to know why? Here's some irrefutable proof:

• I take my banjo with me whenever I go camping. Everyone loves a banjo at the campfire!
• I donate every year to our local community radio and secretly I call it The People's Radio even though I'm pretty sure not all of the dj's are communists.
• I sing to my chinchilla every night when I feed her the square of shredded wheat that she so covets. Usually I sing either "Alberta" as sung by Eric Clapton (except I switch out "Chinchilla" for "Alberta") or "Honey Pie" by the Beatles (not "Wild Honey Pie", just the regular one).
• I had a speech impediment when I was a small child- who doesn't love a little kid with a speech impediment?
• I make cakes from scratch for the birthdays of everyone in my office.

Did you know?

I'm more disciplined now than I was a little over a month ago. Just so you know.

I've joined an orchestra (I'm last chair in my section- nowhere to go but up!), started riding my bike (partway) to work every day, and completely cut refined sugar from my life (except for family birthdays and religious holidays). Ooh! And I'm also bringing my lunch from home instead of eating out at work, mostly.

Alright, so it sounds pretty cheesy and half-hearted when you read over my pitiful list, but I've been amazed by how much I've been able to get done in the past month, and how, dare I say, easy it has been to do. I'm starting to believe that obnoxious line about if you want to make sure something gets done, give it to a busy person. Somehow, although I still have the same 24 hours in each day that I had before, I'm finding time to get it all done, and I'm finding the willpower to do it, too.

I've been wondering if one of the disciplined actions is somehow imbuing me with mystical powers, and if so, which one is it? Is the orchestra making me fulfilled in life so I feel happy about everything else? Does cutting sugar clear my system from all laziness? Perhaps the bike riding is raising my endorphin levels so I don't notice how annoying and haaarrd it is to make my own food and stay up for evening rehearsals after work.

Whatever it is, I'm just hoping that I don't end up like Allie from Hyperbole and a Half...

Charming People 4: Krystal

Aside from having a name that makes impossible for her NOT to have been born in the 1980's, Krystal is a pretty amazing lady.

When I lived with her, she was the cutest mixture of party girl and midwestern mom you could imagine. She spent equal amounts of time making casseroles for our apartment for dinner, going out clubbing, working at a small-town public pool, playing Pretty Pretty Princess, and wearing her Marilyn Monroe wig to classes just because she felt like it at the moment.

One of her favorite things to do in the evenings was to watch her Best of Will Ferrell Saturday Night Live dvd, and when she wasn't doing that, she'd make us dinner and shout with us across the table. My favorite thing to do was to watch my roommates should at each other and wait for our across-the-hall neighbors to come in to see if everything was ok.

We cried at the end of the year when we all moved out.

Now Back and Better Than Ever!

My computer, that is. My writing, well, we'll see. Maybe next week.

In the meantime, here's my weak excuse for new content:

Somehow I've become inspirational to multiple people lately. Or maybe I've just had good ideas? I recently got this urge to keep a bunch of journals. You know, one just for travel, one for work, one for dreams, one for bicycling. I suppose that in order to inspire people, you don't necessarily have to do the thing yourself; just spreading the word is enough, because although I've only written in two of my six journals, I've been telling everyone I know about the plan. So far at least three other people have jumped on the Journal Train, and one person went so far as to confide in my that she's suddenly started remembering her dreams when she never could before. Cower before me, for I can make people dream!

Also! Is it just me, or are there Colin Meloy's running around all over the place? Maybe it's just the glasses, but I've seen more of his doppelgangers than one can reasonably shake a stick at, and really I don't even get out all that much.

Also! Chaim Potok, as a personal favor to me, could you please not write such heartwrenching stuff? I just finished The Chosen and now I'm all dehydrated.

Psst

You may be wondering why, after getting such an energetic start to my Charming People series, I suddenly stopped saying anything at all. You might guess that it's because I don't know all that many Charming People.


But you'd be wrong.


I stopped writing because my computer suddenly and unexpectedly died on me. It's been a tough couple of weeks, let me tell you. I'm taking it in to be injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected today, so hopefully we'll be back in business soon.


Just so you know.

Charming People 3: Mrs Wahnsiedler

She was my Kindergarten teacher.

She taught me to read.

She had us put on a circus with hair-raising performances like hula-hooping to music. I think I was a clown.

She didn't say anything when I bought chocolate milk every day instead of regular milk for lunchtime.

She started every new year maintaining that, like Christopher Robin, she was six, and would never be any older. She must've been in her seventies by the time she was my teacher.

Charming People 2: Jukebox

For my second installment in the Charming People series, I'm casting back to my first job: Taco Bell, the first two years (two years!) of college.

Jukebox had a real name, but only his coworkers knew what it was. His nametag said Jukebox and that's how all the customers knew him. He worked the late night shift, and once business had slowed to a trickle for the evening he would sing and rap for the customers in the drive-through and chat everyone up, as if he wanted nothing more than to talk to the people who happened to be at Taco Bell at 10:30 on a Tuesday night. I think perhaps there might have been nothing he wanted better than that.

Skinnier than a skeleton and not much prettier, he was everyone's favorite, from coworkers to customers to managers to even the corporate suits that would come in every once in a while. He'd never gone to college (heck, I'm not even sure he finished high school), but he knew more about current events, history and religion than anyone else I came in contact with. He was also one of the most generous people you'll ever meet; the "he'd give you the shirt off his back" sentiment is beyond cliched, but it truly describes Jukebox.

My life was enriched by knowing this skinny white guy from Minnesota who regularly sang the chorus to Get Low by Lil Jon and Eastside Boyz, loudly, while I mopped the floor every night after closing.

Charming People 1: Bill

I read once that Oscar Wilde had something to say about how to judge people. He posited that "it is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."

I've found that in general he was right, and so in general I try to spend time around the charming people, and avoid the tedious ones. I save a lot of time that way. Every once in a while I wonder if perhaps my idea of charming is different than everyone else's, but I suppose that doesn't matter a whole lot.

I'd like to introduce a few people that I've run across in my life that have been charming. Today let's talk about Bill*.

Bill was a grad student (now an assistant professor, I think) (yes, across the country)** that taught a few of my sociology courses as an undergrad. Bill is of Greek descent, liked to watch movies and google whatever popped into his head during the middle of class, and told great stories. He found some time in the middle of all that to teach us a lot about culture and religion.

He's a scrawny guy, had black hair and a bushy beard and Buddy Holly glasses, your typical nerdy sociology grad student. He always wore these horrible pants- one pair was butter yellow and the other was baby blue- and a polo shirt, with old man sneakers.

When he was a young man, like somewhere between age 7 and 15, apparently his father took him to Greece to see the fatherland. While they were there his father decided that he (Bill) needed to be baptized, and hired some Greek Orthodox priest to do the deed in a local stream. The story goes that there he was, a geeky American kid, standing in a Greek stream in his shorts, about to be baptized, when a bus full of tourists drove up and stopped right there. He said he wanted to tell all the tourists that he wasn't an authentic Greek, but was too busy being dunked in the water to do so while the cameras pointed and clicked.

So many of his stories center around some humiliation or another (another time he was pulled over on his bike twice and fined for not having a headlight on after dark), and he told them with such indignance and obvious relish. I think that if it turned out none of those things ever happened to him, and that he was actually a compulsive liar, it would just add to his charm.

Everyone should be taught by a Bill at some point in their life. If you haven't yet, you need to start looking up classes to take at your local college. Go for a Master's, what the heck.


*I'll leave out last names, since these are all people I've known more or less in passing, and they might be creeped out to google themselves and find somebody they don't remember has been blogging about them.

**Oh, I feel sad now that I'm NOT using last names, because everyone should google Bill's name the way I just did. I got a huge belly laugh out of the different places he comes up on The Internet.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

Ever since Carrie and Justin both graduated, I never find love notes on my car after work anymore. Sigh.

Frustrated, much?

Once upon a time I went to Mexico. In Mexico they sell you things cheaply, sometimes swindle you, and sometimes kill you on the highway and leave your body for the crows to find.

I didn't get killed or swindled (yet!), but I did buy a cheap hammock. It's actually a very nice hammock, I met the dude that made it, he seemed nice, and it's blue and white. And comfortable. I know this because I set it up at the beach house we stayed at while we were there.

All good things must come to an end, and being back at home I realized that there was a crucial error to my purchase. Namely, we have no trees. The house we live in, it has no landscaping at all, just dirt and many, many rocks. Likewise there are no beautifully exposed rafters or anything on our porch to attach a hammock to, so my lovely blue and white hammock has been sitting, wound up in a ball, on a shelf in my room for a few months now, completely unused since its first glorious day in Mexico.

This weekend I decided that this would have to change, and that I would buy a stand to attach this thing to NO MATTER WHAT, even if the stand cost more than five times what the hammock did, I was going to sleep in that thing on Saturday night.

Many stores and hours later, after searching high in low in every likely and unlikely spot, still no hammock stand. I know that these things can be easily purchased via the internet, but I want instant gratification! If I shell out the dollars, I want to see results that same day. Plus, I'm never home during the middle of the day, so if a package came, probably my Completely Untrustworthy Neighbors would steal it and then sit in their hammocks, laughing in a wicked manner.

I've got two more leads to try out, hopefully tomorrow- the Sports Authority (how I hate that store) and a patio furniture store I've never heard of, but drove by when it was closed the other day. If I have no luck with those, I begin to wonder if it might not be the best idea to just plant some trees in the yard and wait for them to grow.

Things I Can No Longer Say I've Never Gotten For My Birthday

Rodgers and Hammerstein CD
TP'd
A New Friend
Musk
Silly Triangular Birthday Flags
Kisses from an Italian Man

In Case You Aren't Yet,

You really should be a regular kottke.org reader. By NOT visiting that site, you're missing out on things like this:


A robot learning to flip pancakes from Sylvain Calinon on Vimeo.


And you're missing out on those things every single day.

Unexpected Worries

Here's another item to add to the list of things I never imagined I'd worry about:

"Oh no, the cleaning ladies are coming today and the house isn't dirty at all! They won't have anything to do! "

"Maybe we can do a rain dance to track some dirt in for them to mop up..."

Pro Tip

Want your blush to smell like blush when you get home from vacation?

Try storing is somewhere other than in your makeup bag full of freshly gleaned seashells! This will keep your makeup smelling like makeup and your seashells smelling like disgusting rotting fish, like they should.

For this and more vacation tips, check out my blog at www.areyoureallythatstupid.com !

Another day, another island

Nantucket is just as sweet and 1920's as I've ever imagined it to be. Our bikes have baskets on them (wicker baskets!) and they get us across the island in a leisurely half hour. There's sandy paths through the beach grass to get to the water, and the waves are satisfactorily pummel-y on my torso. It is, again, quite chilly here, and I begin to wonder why anyone lives anywhere else than on an island during the summer. Why be hot? Why be sweaty and gross in the desert when you can be cool and charming in Nantucket? Just move here for the summer, stay in a cute hostel or maybe rent a home for a few months, and work remotely. We have computers that connect to each other anywhere we want to! Why do we not take advantage of this more often?

Greetings from Martha's Vineyard!

Where the sun is shining all day long and the air smells like warm rootbeer and anyone on the street would gladly shave your back for a nickel, wokka wokka doo doo yeah!

Alright, so not really, but this place is pretty amazing. They have trees! and water! and a smallish bus service! and bike rentals! The best part? It's not New York City, the hottest place on the planet! I'm very glad to be in a place that has shade and a climate that makes me think that maybe I'd want a sweater in the evening. That thought will pass, I think, but it's still a nice thought.

The only thing that could make life better is if I had some way of getting my pictures into my computer to share them with the world right now. As it is, that will have to wait until I get home. Just imagine me with a silly boatneck red and white striped shirt on, walking around cute little towns, eating seafood near rich people on vacation.

New York is trying to kill me

Uuuuuuuuuuugggggghhhhhhhhhh. I feel disgusting. I think I will probably be like 20 lbs lighter after two weeks in New England. Everything you do here is like bikram yoga. First pose: walk down the street. Second pose: wait for the train. Third pose: try not to fall over when packed onto the subway car like cattle on a train to Chicago. Fourth pose: who the crap thought that swamp coolers would be enough in this hostel when my brain is obviously coming through my pores since there is no more sweat in my body?


Aside from that, our trip has been just peachy. I walked a gajillion miles today and the Cyclone at Coney Island almost killed me with whiplash. The hot dogs and chinese food and gelato made up for it, though. Next stop, Connecticut!

Predictions on what 19 ACT-takers will learn in college

• You're going to learn that you need to make better friends and be careful with your money.
• You're going to learn that the university is kind of hard and maybe you should've started at a community college.
• You're going to learn that the community college is kind of hard and maybe you'll just go to beauty school. Do beauty schools have sororities?
• You're going to learn that Engineering is pretty great, but it doesn't leave you much time for drinking.
• You're going to learn that your personality alone isn't going to cut it anymore. But you'll also learn that you're smarter than you think.
• You're going to learn that your chosen major will determine whether you have friends for the next 5 years.
• You're going to learn that you're smarter than all the other girls in the sorority, but you won't know what to do with yourself without it, so you'll stay.
• You're going to learn that you'll be the exact same person you were in high school, only older. This is not a bad thing.
• You're going to learn that Insect Science is awesome, even though it's full of nerds. You like nerds even though you're not one of them.
• You're going to learn that because you're blessed with good genes and good jeans, you will accidentally surround yourself with shallow people and you'll dumb yourself down for them without even realizing it.
• You're going to learn that no matter what major you choose (and you will try most of them), you'll be dissatisfied and disillusioned. Your hygiene will deteriorate and you will become that creepy grad student in the Philosophy department that never finishes his thesis.
• Your suspicions about the way the world works, and what your place is in it, will be confirmed. You'll graduate in four and a half years, join the air force as an engineer, and have a blonde wife and three beautiful children to celebrate your 30th birthday with.
• You're going to learn that you're not really passionate about anything, but you'll graduate anyway because your parents told you to. You'll become an accountant.
• You're going to learn that you are actually very politically minded, and your parents shouldn't be surprised when you get arrested at a rally that gets out of hand.
• You're going to learn that no matter what your GPA, your extensive community service, and no matter how good your times, no one will know your name for being on the swim team.
• You're going to learn how to convincingly lie about how you spend your nights. Energy drinks taste horrible but they really help you cram in hours of video games studying.
• You're going to learn that college really isn't as hard as you've been led to believe, but it's ok- there's a lot of English Literature classes to fill up your time.
• You're going to learn that, just like in high school, your protestant work ethic and above-average IQ will be exploited by your classmates. You'll learn this again in the "working world" after you graduate.
• You're going to learn that the problem with racism isn't persecution so much as it is the outrageous expectations put on your academic and athletic career, and even social life, based on ignorance and reliance on stereotyping.

Stealing yet another man's words- has it gotten old yet?

It's just that people keep on saying the things that I'm thinking (before I start to think the things I'm thinking). I think I might have a case of the feelings. That is all.