Super Amy

Hmmm. Well, this is embarrassing.

I know winter has hardly gotten started yet, but I’m looking forward to spring. Maybe if I start a little spring cleaning, it will hurry things along some.

Andrew Bird could put out a new album every week, and it still wouldn’t be enough. He has one coming out in March and a more-than-tempting tour to go along with it, so if anyone wants to take a trip to Atlanta for St. Patrick’s day, you know who to call.*

In honor of the new year, I am debating trying a modified version of this, the Bon Appetit 2012 Food Lover’s Cleanse diet. I like the idea partly because it sounds nice to take a two-week break from tons of starches and refined grains, but also because I love food very much, and the pictures in this slide show are beautiful. Probably mostly, it’s the beautiful pictures.

Speaking of cooking delicious and fresh foods, I’m starting to feel the post-warm-weather pain of all of my herb plants being dead. I bought a pack of fresh mint at the grocery store yesterday (around three dollars I think?), and it’s the first time I’ve had to resort to purchasing fresh herbs in many months. If I’m honest with myself, though, I’ve been substituting the dried equivalents for a while now, too. I’m considering investing in an indoor grow light so that I can have basil again. I think it would make the winter days just a little bit longer.

As you can perhaps tell, I’m being very selective in my choice of updates to recover from an absence of many months. (I think I failed to mention getting married, moving back to Greenwood, and probably some other seemingly significant details, so feel free to make them up as you see fit.) J.R. and I got a dog for Christmas. His name is Buckley.

Yep. I think that’s just about it.

* Just in case you don’t know who to call, the answer is me. You can call me.

Of 2010′s resolutions, I have accomplished two of them definitively, two of them less definitively, and the rest can be chalked up as moderate-to-positive failures. Details not forthcoming. But, hey! Hello, 2011. Here is a sampling from my list of Non-resolutions.

1. I do not resolve to blog more often. Sorry, potential readers.
2. I do not resolve to eat less delicious foods.*
3. I do not resolve to clean anything, anywhere, ever. (Needs revising?)
4. I do not resolve to start any projects, only to be disappointed in myself when time/space constraints do not permit the desired commitment.**

I have actual New Year’s resolutions as well, but those are dull, aren’t they? I think it’s refreshing to start with a comprehensive list of what I’m not committed to focusing on this year. It’s a refreshing exercise; I promise.

2010 was a doozy. I enjoyed a cup of flame-roasted and traditionally prepared Ethiopian coffee, marveled at roosting peacocks, and comforted a blind chipmunk. I heard some new songs, explored an enormous abandoned mental asylum, and learned a little more about politics in the rest of the world. I saw creepy (Ted Turner?) monuments, famous animals, the official Alabama band monument and museum (seriously. I did!), and works from the finest outsider environment artists in the country. I changed my job, home, city, phone (four times), and favorite film director, but not my blog template (for the first year in many). I have an irresistible new nephew, a few new friends, a super-nice boyfriend, and the Kitchenaid mixer of many years’ dreams. I broke an old habit, probably picked up a couple of new ones, and learned more than I ever imagined about the state of homelessness.*** I took up screenprinting, attended probably eight weddings, and got attacked by 82 mosquitos in one horrible day. A good year, I’d say. Here’s to 2011.

* – More delicious foods include the amazing avocado, most all dishes originating in Brazil, and any item baked with fresh flour, a pinch or two of salt, leavener and/or butter. Also, cheeses and vanillas.
** – Nothing against the Sketchbook Project, to which my submission will be postmarked this weekend and will tour the country this spring — details forthcoming.
*** Food For Life Tuesdays 6:30 pm @ Triune Mercy Center, Greenville

I think most people have different soundtracks for different contexts of their days and lives. It’s nice having the option of listening to music while at work, because while I actually have a hard time doing anything requiring intensive thought with the distraction of music, some tasks (sorting email, prioritizing, repetitive database or spreadsheet tweaking, etc) beg for background music. I’ve found that my iTunes collection has started segregating itself more or less into albums I love to listen to at work, and albums I love to listen to at home.

Moby, Radiohead, Man Man, Stars, and Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s get the most play at work, with occasional visits by any band I’m obsessed with at the moment. When I’m home relaxing, I default to the Innocence Mission, Denison Witmer, and Belle and Sebastian, but when I’m baking or screenprinting, I’ll pull out punchier stuff — Sleater-Kinney, Leon Russell, the Old 97′s, the Mynabirds, and maybe Wilco. And then there are added influences of season, mood, weather, etc. — very complicated.

What bands / music do you listen to at different parts of your day? I’m curious to know what types of music other people work / relax / play well to, and secretly hoping for a new band recommendation or two.

I was headed out of the office shortly before lunchtime yesterday when I was stopped by a fellow with shaggy brown hair almost as wild as his eyes, and bright, multi-colored shoes. He was distraught; he had a song in his head he couldn’t place — “it was in that movie with Angelina Jolie; the one where they play all the games,” he said. After I explained to him that I’m not so familiar with movies, he took it upon himself to sing a couple verses of the song, desperate as he was. I don’t know if it was because I was in a hurry, or didn’t expect to be approached by anyone of this caliber, or if I was simply dazed by the robot-style dance moves he had to go along with his singing. Whatever the case, somehow I confused “Where’s Your Head At” with “Where Is My Mind,” and told him that the song he was after was by the Pixies, rather than the Basement Jaxx. It’s a rather humiliating error to make, especially for someone who falls so squarely in the midst of the definitive 90′s alt-rock generation. It’s been plaguing me ever since. I’ve been keeping an eye out for him downtown, hoping for an opportunity to remedy my error. I guess that would then make me the stranger who approaches people unexpectedly with minutiae. I’m not sure which of us has bigger issues, come to think of it.

if you get far enough away, you’ll be on your way back home.” – Tom Waits

Just another garden-variety case of wanderlust.

It’s not that I’m not writing things, it’s just that I’m not posting them. It’s not that I don’t have things to say, it’s just that I don’t have things I want to hear myself say. A rare state, indeed.

Usually when I write these posts, I’m on one platform or another. I’m either writing your “basic life update” sorts of things, which feel silly and trite (since most of you who care already know about my “basic life updates”). The other platform is the platform of “things that are in my brain,” which after I put them to paper, seem silly and trite (since they are floofy musings and ramblings, with little intelligent grounding, and make me sound, if possible, more ridiculous than I actually am). There is a third platform, and one that I aspire to: the platform of intelligent discourse and fascinating links and arguments. The platform of parsing through the internet and returning with the “best of the crop” — providing a filtered perspective on the internet. A “here’s what I find interesting, and maybe you will too” sort of thing. There are thousands of examples of just this sort of “platform three” blogger. It’s what started the advent of personal blogging; it’s why I started blogging, in theory. I mean, I actually own books on the subject. For years I’ve wanted terribly to be a good blogger, but like many such intelligent-but-artistic endeavors, it requires discipline, and once a blog becomes a chore, it usually becomes an abandoned blog.

But really, everyone is okay until they end up in platform-four blogging: bloggers who blog about blogging. It’s the one place I hoped I’d never end up, but here we are, I guess.

I do have one interesting thing to share with you. I found it on the inside of my Pineapple-Orange-Guava juice bottle cap. Here it is:
“Hundreds of whales live around the island of Nantucket.”

There. Are you fascinated?

I have been longing to post something witty and well-crafted; an amused ramble of an update providing both clever insight and intelligent discourse. But then I thought, why start now? So you will get the usual pointless, rambling-without-really-going-anywhere blog, maybe with a photo of something, if I feel like it. I’ve been learning enough new tricks lately.

I switched jobs two weeks ago. I’m working with M33 Integrated in Greenville now, doing software development with lots of new things to learn — the environment is very, very different from Eaton. I’m enjoying the work and the team a lot so far. The system is web-based, and I’ve always wanted to do more web programming, so the work is actually really fun. Even the drive hasn’t been that bad; it’s given me a lot of time for prayer and Bible study (via podcast; I’m not reading and driving…), and catching up with new music, but then I also feel like I’ve seen my lovely roommates and my house for a total of about forty minutes this past week. Even Sylvie has forgotten me!* I’m already kind of eyeing apartments and houses in the area, but not sure what will happen yet.

I have made an interesting (disturbing?) observation since I have started my job. I have only ever encountered someone else in the ladies room on our floor four times. Three of those times, the woman in question was on a cell phone. Of these three women, two were crying. (The third was yelling angrily.) What is to be learned from this? I think that most of the offices on our floor, like ours, are pretty male-dominant (I’m the only female in my office), so that explains the rare population, but what about the phone calls? Or the tears? I mean, I know none of you needed to know this, but it’s made bathroom trips at work pretty, well, depressing.

I was doing a pretty good job at cutting back my eating-out budget until the new job. It takes a lot of planning when two to three of the day’s mealtimes (five if you count “bonus” meals… second breakfast, anyone?) fall either during work or commute hours, and wow. I’ve really got to work on this. Keeping dried fruit and nuts in the car works great if I leave Greenville right after work, but when that doesn’t happen, I end up at Moe’s ordering a burrito deluxe.** Breakfast is less of a problem since I’m usually in too much of a hurry to stop anywhere, but missed breakfasts just make me eat more at lunch. So I would love any suggestions for good, healthy, travel-friendly meals and snacks that can be purchased or prepared in advance, and preferably, stowed in the car. Please comment with anything you’ve got.

I kind of miss being as busy as I was in college. I miss going to Mexico in the summer, and never having time to be tired when I didn’t get much sleep. I’m starting to think that having “free time” is something best left to other people. I don’t think I’ll ever get the hang of it, so I’m planning on, well, planning more stuff over the next few months. Time to get busy again.

Spring is coming and I’m so excited I can’t stand it. One more week until daylight savings time, guys…

Listening to: Sarah Siskind — Lovin’s for Fools

* Last week, Wendy spied my dear kitten slipping into the neighbor’s house. Alright, Sylvie. I see how it is.

** Eating a Moe’s burrito while driving is, I have discovered, a bit of an art. One that I’m starting to get pretty good at, even though the smell of tomatillo sauce might linger in my car forever.

First, a couple of new songs. Joanna Newsom is releasing a new triple-LP next month, and her label has a new song streaming (click the link on the right). I’m a bit of a fan, and thought maybe you were too.

Ferraby Lionheart has a new album coming out soon, too, and Harry and Bess is a fun song from that.

It’s almost February. What’s even up with that. That being said, I’ve somehow managed to get Christmas (mostly) put away in various closets, daily and weekly schedules (mostly) back to their norm, and plants (mostly) brought in from the winter cold. Here is the lesson I have learned from that: mid-January is, in fact, too late to bring in most plants for the winter season, since the first frost has likely already happened. As is my gardening style, I waited until after the plants were already looking pretty rough, dragged them en masse to the dining room/nook (arranging furniture as necessary to accommodate such a jungle), and tried to place them strategically near windows based on each plant’s individual light needs. A for effort, right? No. Heating vents, combined with a new kitten, sparse/sporadic watering, and what turned out to be poor lighting for even the most dismal of plants, I now have a dining room full of overturned flowerpots, clumps of soil, and primarily dead brown greenery. It doesn’t even come close to the verdant, elegant, herb-scented wonderland I’d imagined. Once I’m finished mourning properly, I suppose I’ll sweep the whole mess out the front door. Maybe I’m just doomed only to buy annual plants.

I finally pulled out my Wacom drawing tablet last night, which I honestly hadn’t touched since my senior art project at Lander. My macbook / CS4 package are newer than that, and so I’d never tried the Wacom on my mac. It’s a lot more fun than I remember it being. I managed to piece together a little cartoon for a retiring co-worker within a couple of hours, and while I’ll always prefer messy “real” art to click-and-drag anything, I’m reminded of what it is that fascinated me about vector design in the first place.

In the spirit of one of the last post’s resolutions, I’m batch-uploading a bunch of photos to Flickr (ok, so most of them are 2009 photos, but still!). You can see them on the photostream to your right over here: –>

listening to: Andrew Bird – Souverian