My ipod ate all my music

Well really it didn't. I transferred purchases (this american life episodes I wished to keep and like a song) onto my ipod. But then I somehow didn't update the music, so it just transferred everything off. This was not what I was looking for this morning.

Le Sigh!

Not the place for everything

I have been thinking about it lately. I feel like I get blocked about blogging when the things I want to write about and tumble around in my mind are too personal and too private for an inherently public forum like a blog. Because some things just are, much as I love all of you. Hell some of the things I have published ought to have been kept much more private probably (and might have saved me some cyberstalking grief but whatever it happened).

My friend Sallyacious reccomended that I do something that I think she called artists pages where you wake up and first thing in the morning immediately, you write like 3 little journal pages or one and a half full size pages of anything and everything that is in your mind. I used to write in a journal pretty frequently pre-blogging, but it has definitely been neglected and ignored for this more public and interactive forum.

I think artist pages will help solve several dilemmas. It will let me get the private stuff into a private forum on a regular basis, making way for more public stuff to go up here. Hopefully unblocking the way for that more public stuff to be more interesting than my errands list. Also helping to train me to get right up because I will want to to do my early morning artist thing. This could lead way to early morning wii yoga or pilates on the on demand netflix. It could solve all the world's problems in just a few yammering scribbles!!

Or not. I should probably shut up and try it.

Oooh, and I almost forgot a ordered a box of my favorite pens to facilitate this creative endeavor.

Another Story in the Saga that Stars My Crazy Ass Cat Who Thinks He is Human AND President of the Universe (or More Likely Emperor)

Last night Sam had to be part of some sort of Maintenance Network/Internet something at 2am, so he fell asleep on the couch at like 8pm next to his iphone which was set to wake him up in time for the call/fix. I went to bed myself sometime between eleven and midnight.

Steve McQueen went to bed with me because all three of us had been in the living room, and then I moved into the bedroom, and he had of course to go with me to make sure he knew EVERYTHING that was happening. Then of course there was his nightly, post-human-bedtime ritual of running around very fast and occasionally popping up from the ground to the bed and swatting any stray people limbs and running away very fast. At some point after this I fell asleep.

At one am Sam woke up and started to do his maintenace, and sometime after that and closer to two I didn't quite totally wake up but became more awake than I had been and kind of aware that someone else was awake. Steve McQueen was of course in the living room with Sam inspecting the work Sam was doing and making sure everything was under control.

And then Sam did something that got him in BIG trouble with Steve McQueen. Sam went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. (I know right, what a jerk?!) Steve McQueen went along--as he always does if anyone goes to the kitchen because his food dish is there and he needs to make sure some things are true a) that he has food b) that he has enough food c) that whoever is in the kitchen is giving him more food and d) that whoever is in the kitchen is not stealing/touching/otherwise defiling his food or his dish--and to Steve McQueen's utter horror, Sam didn't fill his food dish! P.S. Steve is always certain that his food dish is less full than necessary for his survival through the next hour of life, so he should be used to this disappointment.

Well, Steve McQueen had to take things into his own hands on this matter. So he chased Sam back into the living room and batted at the back of Sam's legs with his paws (kind of ineffective as he is front paw declawed). That did not seem successful enough, so Steve McQueen darted into the bedroom where I was not so soundly mostly asleep and used his paws to hit the metal corners of the bed frame in a way that makes this odd tapping noise. Then he crossed around to the side of the bed where my head was closest to the edge and began to meow in my ear. But it was not a mew, it was a big howly, yowly talking meow, and it was LOUD and very insistent!

Of course in my half sleepy state, I wake right up (I probably would have from a suond sleep) and I think something must be wrong, or why else would the cat be yelling at me? So I leap out of bed and cross into the living room and ask Sam what is going on. He of course is at his computer and not sure that anything happened. Why, I ask, did Steve McQueen come in and wake me up with yelling?

"Oh that?" he answers, "Well he seemed pretty mad at me when I went into the kitchen."

And so I went back to sleep, and had dreams about a radiation disaster. Yeah, so not so much with a good night's sleep tonight.

A Movie: Up In The Air

I saw this movie last night, and it was really charming. George Clooney was spot on, Vera Farmiga as ever was rocking my world with her wonderful strong yet vulnerable acting style (I think that is why I have always loved her, she is totally a tough chick while looking like a mega babe and able to have a vulnerable side that isn't necessarily soft but is vulnerable), that new chick Anna Kendrick is pretty good (Twilight films we are going to ignore as you know we should), the supporting cast is spot on too (Amy Morton from right here in Chicago and the nicer stepsister from Ever After, etc), but what I find myself thinking about today was the framing of the scenes and the opening credits which show views from the air.

The lovely big patterned O's of irrigation circles and the green, brown, yellow, red, gray, and white of the world. The shapes carved into the land by the rivers that run through us. The largeness of our world made tiny by the distance. I keep seeing them now in my head, playing over and over.

Happiness at the Misfortune of Others

Our office is old and electronically jury rigged to work.

The heating system seems to have two heats in winter, one being "ON FIRE" which we combat by running the air conditioning and the other being "Not so much on at all" which we try not to combat by turning our own heat unit on too strong because then it makes part of the office "ON FIRE" while still leaving the other part of the office "Not so much on at all." This means that one room gets a little heating unit BUT it also means that they cannot make their special coffee with their special coffeemaker AND have their little space heater on at the same time. They assure me that they are not dumb enough to do this and blow fuses (or really blow daisy chained extension cords/surge protectors).

They did just that this morning. Haha!!

This message brought to you by the letter J for Heather is kind of a jerk. And also it would be less fun for me and I would take much less and even no glee from this IF the people it had happened to had not been team of people who make my life miserable, treat me rudely or just badly, and actually a few months ago were so mean to me I almost quit. If it had been the nice people, I would've felt bad and offered to help them. I am not a total jerk, I just believe in Karma or at the very least in what goes around comes around.

Good Day

I kind of thought I was going to blow it and spend it in bed and watching crap that I have stored on my Tivo, but no. I got up. I got out. My lovely friend Sara Jo came with me, and we ran errands and parked in many different styles of garages and street parking!!

First stop Quiltology on Halsted where I bought backing fabric for both my quilt and the one I am making for my sister. Tomorrow and tonight I want to get a lot farther along with the sister's quilt and piece the backing on my quilt. The goal will be to turn the quilts back in for pick up before I go to NYC, so that I can get them back during the Olympics and start the binding. Then sometime before the end of March I will have made two whole quilts. But that is awfully ambitious (and expensive).

Then Restoration Hardware where I bought lovely fluffy delicious new towels for our bathroom in a lovely color that they call 'Juniper' in their 'Silver Sage' collection.

Then we dropped everything off and walked to the Trader Joe's near us to get a few groceries.

Now I think I will see if I can get some sewing done before I sleep.

Mad Men Nights Rule

Two friends come over to my house to watch Mad Men in order on Thursdays from the start. So far, we have watched 5 eps over two weeks, and it is super fun, and we have dinner too.

It is especially fun for me as I see them react to things the first time, and I know what is happening. But it is also great to see these shows in a more measured way than when I watched them all in a rush when I first started them last fall.

Also I am a TV aholic, and I think I need to go on a TV diet where I wean back what I consume on it. But I also do not want too. Well rather I don't want to stop watching my shows. Sam's sure but not mine (which I grant you seems hardly fair).

So, to fight the rundown I took an extra day off work this week

And then I slept through it. I slept and slept, like I hadn't slept for the last few months or I was in a freaking fairy tale where I was cursed to sleep for that long or something by an evil stepmother/witch.

I do however feel much better if I little like a caged beast. However today I intend to do a bit of housekeeping, make a taco salad for dinner, and go out to a movie with my fiancee. Just to feel like a human. Of course, I am also going to take another nap before then.

Post Happy, Throat Sad

Apparently I either post multiple times a day or not at all, but whatever I do what I want.

Anyway, an update on the Upper Respiratory Infection. I still have it. The drugs I got to dull the symptoms mostly don't. The cough suppressant does help knock it down enough to get to sleep and stay there mostly kind of. Apparently I should be resting more to get over this. And that isn't so much happening. I am being very aggressive with my water intake, but that again not so much helping. And I am getting very impatient with the wait it out phase. Which I am probably elongating by not getting enough rest.

However, apparently sometimes people drop a lot of weight with URI's. Because it does sort of supress the appetite or mostly you just don't feel hungry ever, and it kind of hurts to eat (see throat pain), so you do not eat. I have noticed no weight loss at all, and I feel kind of ripped off. I mean if I am going to be coughing my guts out this much and feel so bad, at least I should lose 5-10 pounds. Like I could be okay with feeling like crap if there was any sort of bonus for myself. This is bullshit.

More Quilting

I FINALLY got the right size of bobbins for my sewing machine, so I got to do some sewing this weekend and that meant some quilt-top makking. I FINISHED my very first ever quilt top, so later this week I can take it in to get it machine quilted.

I have decided that due to the particular size and pattern of my first project(s), I will get them machine quilted and do the binding myself. I will learn to hand quilt and machine quilt (using my machine) on smaller projects, so if they aren't really activities I enjoy I will not want to murder myself and give up all of quilting by the time that they are done.

I also started on scrapping my sister's quilt together. Well I had it all cut out and laid out carefully before today, I just needed to start sewing the strips together. So far half of the big initial sewing pieces are done on her quilt which will be a great deal crazier than our quilt. The next project is a quilt for my mom, and I will gift her on mother's day and my sister's by her birthday in June (so I have a deadline but I should be finished much earlier).

I am using the same pattern for all three or a slight variation on it, just to sort of get the basics down. I will need a new project after that, and I am not sure what I want to do. I got this awesome quilt book, and I think I might try my hand at some of the things in it and try to make a quilted bedspread for our house for the summer months, thinking if I back it in pieced cotton, it should still stay light weight.

Also we got the camera's battery charger this weekend, so I now have a good camera, so I will try to post some pictures soon.

Strategic Posturing and the Regular Kind (which for me means slouching)

A friend and I were discussing a few weeks ago the oddness of a third friend of ours. This third friend seems to be using their mid-twenties to strategically position and present themselves as a specific type. I mean we all change in our midtwenties (and before and beyond but that moment in time seems particularly fertile with the first foray into adulthood all alone), and sometimes that involves trying out new things that might lead you to new fashion or interests or whatever or for health or something. So why does this third friend's change needle us?

As far as I can figure, I think it needles me (cannot speak for second friend) because it has a very artificial and put on sort of feeling. It is like a weird strategy and it seems to be even being presented as a strategy rather than a more organic growth. Like I could get the following, Jane wants to get in better shape so she tries various exercise class and yoga rocks her world and so she goes to more yoga classes and ends up at a very sort of religious yogic studio with yogis who shave their head and wear robes and a year or so later Jane is one too. I mean I would definitely think that weird, but I can see the way the dots connect even if they would not have connected like that for me. But for third friend I don't see the dots connecting. And this irks me because I tend not to be friends with the kind of person who gets to strategic in positioning themselves in life because that strategy feels fake and put on to me.

I have no trouble with the particular personality/life niche third friend is putting themselves in. I mean it isn't the most common within my friend group, but it isn't unrepresented. But my friend group covers many because it has grown organically to include all sorts of people, and actually the unifying factor seems to be that they are all unique organic people and even if they mostly fit into a specific niche (Logan Square Hipster Artist, Vegan Marathoner, Park Slope Stroller Mommy, etc.) the thing about all of them is that they aren't that cleanly definable. The housewife I still am friends with from home is sarcastic and liberal and talks about how she should've never taught her kids to speak and can't wait for the teenagers to get out of the house. The Logan Square Hipster Artist loves sex and the city and girly movies. I am very clearly a Childless NPR Artist/Intellectual (which talk about a lame niche to accidentally end up) but I go to rock shows and I don't even listen to NPR, I listen to some of their podcasts (yes I know that makes it worse). Third Friend is driving me the crazies because in pursuit of this ideal new life niche, third friend is sanding off all the edges of third friend's life and losing all the really interesting bits about third friend and replacing them with faux interesting trump l'oiel life (I know I spelled that wrong and I do not care). I like the real interesting bits even when they aren't glamorous and reveal way less cool roots (see all my country kid stories).

Updates and Life musings

Well, I still haven't heard back on the job application that I put in last week (although the job is no longer listed on the site), but I finally heard back about the volunteer application I put in to the Lincoln Park Zoo, and I will be attending an open house late next month. I also met with the second wedding planner who is not someone who would be a good fit for me or for our wedding at all, so she is a no. I meet the third planner tonight.

I also was thinking today about how when I was a teenager or even younger, I used to think just wait until I get to be older. When I am a grown up I will do whatever I want. And the truth of that statement is weird. When I was littler I thought it meant I would eat out all the time and that I would only watch awesome movies and go cool places. I do eat out all the time (but it is over rated, lots of the places I eat are just mediocre), and that part I feel I have really satisfied. But the other part seems not to have worked out the way I imagined. I do get a lot of cool opportunities in Chicago and I take advantage of a lot of them, and they would be pretty impressive to my teenage self, but I also waste a lot of time watching TV on the Tivo. And I don't see as many movies as I had dreamed, although I guess I saw more before I started seeing Sam since he isn't much of a movie person.

But I also do lots of less glamorous things. There is the time I spend doing dishes and the time I spend doing things my fiancée loves that I wouldn't likely do as much of on my own (or any of--although he does return the favor). There is the time I spend cleaning and tidying up the apartment and caring for the cat and running tedious errands to the doctor or the pharmacy or the grocery store or the drug store. Basically I spend parts of my life living a life, and it has less glamorous parts that I never took into consideration in my youth. It is depressing to grow up and to see that life isn't as easy (even in dumb little ways) as you thought it would be.

Oh sheesh!

Now I have an upper respiratory infection! And it is way down in my chest, but I saw my doctor and should be feeling betters soon. It was just a tiny tickle in my throat last week and now I am super sicks. Well not really, I actually feel totally fine except for the big deep annoying cough and soreness in my chest. But like no headaches or fever or fatigue or runny nose or sinus pressure or anything expected.

Addendum to Today Post

Eddie Izzard was awesome! The material was all new to me and other than Jazz Chicken there isn't a whole lot that I can like remember quote wise from it because it was all so fast and furious, and it was in a gigantor stadium with the expected echo issues. So it was awesome, and he was a really compelling performer, but I cannot possibly hope to ressurect his performance with quotes here.

Also I might be getting a iphone. A hand me down iphone. From Sam who may be getting the new fancy google phone that is unlocked so it works on a couple of networks including AT&T because he might be getting that bought for him from work, so I can replace my awful phone with his iphone, and I guess give him his itouch back as an ipod so we each still have ipods. I wonder what happened to our other ipod that he used to use pre iphone? Anyway, I am excited to get the iphone if only to have a phone that doesn't completely and totally suck at being a phone, texting, and most other features that I expect to use on my phone. Although I may not get it, so I guess I should get less excited.

The Winter Blahs are here

And I don't like them or want them. Seriously no good. It is cold here and sometime gray here and deceptively sunny and killer cold when it isn't and I don't want to leave the house, but I don't really like being stuck in the house. And then it sucks that I only leave the house for work because that isn't what I want to escape my self-imposed prison for, but it is cold!

Also I get a little cranky and whiny when it is like this. Obviously I need some Vitamin D. Obviously I need more interesting things to do with my time. However being massively hungover all Saturday did not get me braving the weather this weekend.

Unfortunately this winter promises to be a little worse than usual as I am not in a show that forces me to go to rehearsals. Although, I am trying to be really good about supporting friends in their endeavors and making myself take advantage of good opportunities. Like tomorrow night, the MCA is free. It is also hopefully maybe the place we are going to have our wedding and around the freaking corner from my house. Tomorrow I am going, just to get out and about.

I am also trying to introduce more activity into my life hoping the endorphins combat the winter sluggishness.

Well and I am going to NYC in a month, that should be something to look forward to! It should. I promise to look up. I want to be less whiny and mopey, I think it just makes me feel worse about everything and then I get all hopeless and doom and gloomy and that is no good, and rather pointless. My life is not that bad. It just isn't. Is it perfect? No. But, what would a perfect life even mean? Is that even possible? Isn't it far more likely that sometimes shit goes wrong. For everyone sometimes. It just does. And then you move past it or through it or around it or over it and things get better until someday they don't again and you do it again.

I am very lucky to have wonderful friends and family who care about me and who help me out when I need it, and because of that I shouldn't be so focused on the things that aren't perfect. Nothing is perfect. If I don't like it, there is something I can always do to change it, and at the beginning of every new year I usually call myself to a put up or shut up moment about the things I whine about.

Tonight-Do you have a flaaaag?

I see some Eddie Izzard tonight. With Sallyacious. At the United Center which seems an uneccessarily huge venue to see a stand up comic, and we opted for the cheaper tickets which mean upper deck rather than spending twice as much to maybe get super close. I mean our tickets are probably some of the best in our price range because we bought presale, but still.

I am very excited because he is my favorite Executive Transvestite.

Lying at Work

I keep a weird distance from many of my coworkers. It isn't that they are nice people, they are very nice people (mostly), but they aren't people I would really hang out with outside of work functions. Either we have disparate tastes or disparate tempraments, and I often feel like I am an alien from the far off planet artist. Even with the other artist because I am maybe from the planet theatre and he is from the planet rocker and we are from different points in time.

So I just don't tell them stuff, a lie by omission that I think is fairly common. I am sure everyone censors parts of their private life from their worklife just for sanity. But sometimes I tell them made up lies. Usually harmless ones about why I missed a day or something, but I do it pretty much anytime I take a day off not for a big vacation that I tell everyone about. I think I do it because I seem so brimful of stories and information that silence on something (that isn't even any of their business in the first place we have Personal Days not Sick Days here so you can just take them when you want them and you don't need a reason) that I feel compelled to make up a story that is totally innocuous and has nothing to do with my actual reality.

I think this is weird, but as I write this and think it through, I don't think it is that unusual. Lots of people call in sick when they are not and fake cough or say food poisoning or migraine or whatever and really mean hangover or just not interested in going to work. I feel less bad now.

Not Looking Forward To It

Going back to work tomorrow. I mean, next week will be a light week for me work wise, but I just no wanna go!!! Three day weekend plus a half a day is really just enough to make me think of chucking this whole work thing and running off to join the circus.

I did spend this weekend seeing some jazz at the Jazz Showcase, seeing some art at the Art Institute, and seeing a double feature (homemade not authorized/organized by the theatre) of Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces and Tom Ford's A Single Man which is very moody and emotional and I was in just the right spot to love it (also Colin Firth and Julianne Moore totally rule). Saw both of those with a friend who I was meeting for the first time. We are thing throwers at the ALOTT5MA blog together, and we met for the very first time today. She saw five movies. I was wimpy. She is awesome!