why don't you find out for yourself?

you know how life never happens how you expect? i hate that.
like for example: holi.
i've never missed a holi since i've known it existed. for me it's one of those things that takes precedence over everything else.
this year was set to be ideal.
it was late in the month, we'd been having a warm spell, and it was spring break so i was rested.
nothing like last year when i was frantically moving the entire day and was so tired i almost didn't want to go.
this year a number of people were going to come for the first time.
and i was going with them, to show them the ropes.
i was excited. beaming. busting.

but i didn't go to holi this year. the unthinkable happened: i missed it. and not only did i miss it, i was there to witness for my own self that i had indeed missed it. and not only that, i had to watch, powerlessly, just how annoying the provo-ites can be.

(it was due to a combination of any number of factors and the reason is truly irrelevant.)



you know how life never happens how you expect? i love that.
like for example: my garden.
i love gardens. i love taking care of them. i used to work at millcreek gardens. larene put me in charge of vegetables. almost immediately. that ought to tell you how much i love gardening.
i used to plan my garden over thanksgiving; my old garden barely tilled under, i could hardly wait for the next year.
this year i had decided to not even try. i moved from home and there's no garden plot where i live. i tried small pots last year. it was a miserable failure.
i don't know how to take care of pots; i'm much better in the real earth. and i'm even busier than i was last year.
i was sad. frustrated. resigned.

but i don't have to be gardenless this year. the unthinkable happened: someone offered to let me use their garden and THEY MEANT IT! and not only did they mean it, they're more than willing to help. and not only do they help, they get almost as excited about it as me. (i said almost. no one can get as excited as me about such a silly thing.) and not only that, i get to see how wonderful real friends can be.

notice

i want to say that today i have lived in my house for exactly one year.

this is momentous because ever since i went to spain i have felt like a transient.
most of my nomadic ways were by my own free will and choice, but it is nonetheless draining to have to carry your life with you wherever you go, to be wary of putting things in cupboards because it will be that much work to pack it up again.

i have lived in one place for a year and have no intention of moving for at least a little while, so i thought it worthy of note.

who do you want to blame?

do you know those days when you just think "i'm a fool for being alive"?
i have more of those than i think is my fair share.
which, liza, is why i have a happy blog. cause otherwise all i would think about is how somehow, just when i'd discovered all the tips and tricks i needed to finally master my one great photographic ambition, the entire bottle of liquid light got exposed.

i should've had a good day today, but it's nearing 11pm and i just am not happy.
i can't really say why.
i didn't necessarily have plans so it's not that i didn't get to do them.
i did work on my project AND do homework so it's not that i'm lazy.
i got to talk to rennie and kathryn, which is sadly rare.
cam sent me a happy birthday text.
(by the bye, i think it is so super awesome that cam, out of all people, would remember my birthday)
i ate good food (my dad is perfecting his sandwich repertoire and tonight i sampled the latest reincarnation of the tuna melt, which i love. jalapenos. who knew?)
and i finally learned how to operate tivo (which may solve all of my "i hate tv/turn off the idiot box/candy everybody wants/what show's that? oh sorry, i work nights. and mornings and days." problems)

all in all, i would have to classify today as a good day and myself as an absolute brat for being in a sad mood right now.

i think i'm going to bed.

a post

so i just wrote about today on my happy blog and i realized in panic as i posted that the last line could sound totally sarcastic, but the word i said in my head was cynical and then i remembered that just today i was checking-in (? i don't really know what to call what i do) a magazine called the "skeptical inquirer" [emphasis added] and i want to know the minute differences of these 3 words which DO NOT describe my happy blog.

not to say that i lack a working definition of the words, but i think it's an interesting train of thought. and if you don't believe me, i'll show you the highly illuminating conversation i had with joey on the topic.

thank you.

i win the contest because i say i do.

(what contest?)

.

there are parts of it i like, i admit.
but don't you think the blog is looking a little blah?
boring?

the metaphysics of literality

scott just asked me if vanity (or pride or talking about pride, whatever. this isn't his blog) was obnoxious in a blog.
i told him no, of course.
(i won't go into that because... i don't feel like it.)

and then i realized that my blog is probably where i am most vain (which is really kind of pathetic)

scott hates links.
scott and i have fights about links.
that is also pathetic. (and my theme song plays: "riding on city buses for a hobby is sad...")

i just told scott how much i like linking in my blogs, most especially (in the supreme act of blogging vanity) to my own older posts.
take, for example, the following chain of events.
in reverse chronological order (which, i might add, i have already posted about):

1- http://barcelona-calling.blogspot.com/2007/02/meet-me-there-in-blue.html
when you click on the title of this post it takes you to the song the title came from, "in circles" by sunny day real estate.
within the post i refer to an earlier post ("walking in circles"):
2-http://barcelona-calling.blogspot.com/2007/01/mystery-in-time-of-certainty-i-wish-i.html
this post is based on real life events. i really was just circling and circling around on the train platform. and not for the first time, i might add. yikes.
the link here ("circles"), again, goes to an earlier post where, interestingly, (if you read the comments and follow the discussion back up) i confess to spiralling inward:
3-http://barcelona-calling.blogspot.com/2006/11/cant-wait-until-you-cant-wait-til-you.html
if you click on the title of this post it takes you to a contemporary post on my happy blog

3a-http://happyment.blogspot.com/2006/11/but-what-if-they-like-it.html
which in turn (clicking on the title) takes you to another contemporary post on my blog with ren (i'm seriously letting way too much out about how sick i am):

3b-http://renandjo.blogspot.com/2006/11/and-lock-us-in-cannery-with-your.html which finally, in a move so brilliant i'm still excited about it and sad that no one caught on to the joke, takes you (again, by clicking the title) to a video of owen pallet (as final fantasy) playing the "title song", as it were, which is a direct reference to arcade fire whom joey and i are going to see i boston in may. (but not just playing, playing along with a overhead projector/transparency/craziness no one will ever understand):

3c-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC2nKcB-S2s

towards the end of this post you find yet another link to an earlier post ("circles"), which is the key to my philosophizing. it is a full-circle moment in my life, where, yet again, i realize that playing on the internet is my refuge from a solitary life:
4-http://barcelona-calling.blogspot.com/2006/06/theres-solitary-man-crying.html
and finally, the only not so self-involved link in the bunch, is a link to a dance step, the "gypsy" which, in so many ways, is an effective representation of my insanity:

3d-http://www.srcf.ucam.org/round/dances/elements#0.2.GSUMN2.2PL4XM.I4SFGD.61

santas y buenas

meet me there in the blue

(the player won't work, so click on the title to hear the song)
so jo brings up a good point.
i struggle for a way to describe a spiral that winds outwards, that gets bigger instead of smaller.
surely, this is a fault of my vocabulary.

jo offers "concentric circles" and i wonder to myself what the best way to represent my walking in circles would be.

here are concentric circles:

while in my mind my original thought looks something like this:

but what if it's really like this?

in a crowd it's hard to spot him. or: she's a single face in the crowd.

for a long time i wanted to be a passionate personality. the kind of person who defies ambivalence, those people who embody the law of excluded middle.
“she’s the kind of person that either you love her or you hate her. there is no middle ground.”
the appeal of igniting such fervent responses was very keen. "any reaction is better than no reaction," i thought.

i have spent much of my life being invisible.
even my friends would sign my yearbook: “ you’re so smart. and quiet.”
at maximum, that’s all anyone ever knew about me.
at rock bottom were the boys in 7th grade who when i answered a question stared at me in disbelief: “you can talk?! i thought you were mute.”

i grew to hate being called smart. i grew to hate the number “34” (which is now only ever presented to my remembrance by one Julia who knows i hate it and forces it upon me merely to annoy.)
i am smart. school is my thing, it’s where i feel most comfortable. i like being smart. but i hated being categorized by that.

nowadays, the more people i meet, the more i recognize the fall in their face, the disbelief, the twinge of guilt or almost panic when i say, “i (too) went to brighton.” the bottom here was my friend, and i do mean friend, who said, “well, you must’ve become a lot more hip since then, haven’t you?”
to which i firmly replied, “no.”

in response to a different question, i don’t think i am any more myself now than i was in high school. i’m just more evident (as myself) to other people now.
how this happened i don’t rightly know.
it took a long time, a lot of self-doubt and subsequent shoring up of self-esteem. some of it was at the cost of social acceptability, i gave up on caring and was thus liberated to do whatever i wanted. and discovered i enjoyed my own company immensely.

taken under the wing of a disenchanted socialite, i learned how to navigate the shallower waters of sociability and make my “idiosyncrasies” more accessible to my peers.

now i have become a harmless eccentric, still widely unknown, but smiled upon indulgently when forced on people’s notice.
people recognize my purse or my shoes, and then associate them with me months later. this i don’t mind. it’s much better than being known merely as smart and quiet.

as i started becoming aware of different personalities around me, i found myself repeatedly attracted to the people you either love or hate. i would think of damon albarn telling me that "anonymity can cost; it's never cheap or cheerful." and think he was right. think he was singing my own feelings on the matter. i used to think of 10000 maniacs singing “your silence is my greatest fear” and think that it would be better to be hated because at least they knew who you were.
but i no longer wish for that.
i can’t take the hatred.



and, come to think of it, i don't think i could handle the attention very well either. i like the anonymity after all.

nature is a language, can't you read?

today i walked around the mbh instead of through it.
this is the one luxury i have allowed myself in the recently more humane temperatures we have enjoyed.
i'm conscientiously not getting too comfortable.
after all, you know what they say: "don't plant tomatoes until there is no snow on the oquirrhs."

as i walked along, i heard the pine cones opening in the trees.
i didn't like it.
i felt like they were talking about something i didn't understand.

staff only beyond this point

so today my boss took me and seyran on a field trip.
you know how we're doing some major renovations here?
well, they've finished a little bit so they took reshelve out of what they call "the 1968" and moved them upstairs into the new bit. i don't get to move cause my office is already in a little temporary structure within "the 1995".
however, i DO have to drop off carts of books to reshelve/marking every day so today i got to go inside the new library!
now, i'll be honest, it wasn't a revelatory experience, but there are lots of windows and it looks like there will be a door on the south side of the 3rd floor. that'll be nice.
the really best thing is that i got to go where you can't go because I WORK AT THE LIBRARY!!!

the fact of the matter is: it's tuesday and i'm tired.

Mystery in the Time of Certainty: or, i can't leave this title alone because i didn't write it and i think the person who did was making fun of me

why do i feel so much more conspicuous and ridiculous when i pace than when i walk in circles? pacing is a socially acceptable way to pass time, stay warm and assuage frustration and impatience. walking in circles invariably connotes insanity.
and yet, the abrupt about-face is still much too much for me to bear and i always give up on the pace before i even get to the end.
i like the continuous movement of a circle. and sometimes i like to watch and see if i will ever be able to stop gracefully.

today, as i found my circles contracting and then widening once again, i asked myself, if you must go in circles, is it better to walk in big circles or small ones?
on the one hand, if you walk in big circles, you feel as if you're going somewhere, you're making progress. and you get to see more.
but, on the other hand, if you stay in a small circle, you don't feel nearly so bad when you wind up back where you started from; you haven't wasted as much effort, and somehow the futility is lessened.
or does it matter at all whether the circles are big or small? maybe you're just killing time while you wait for a train to take you somewhere else entirely.

and so, for the sake of momentum,

i felt decent about this weekend.
i felt like i finally did stuff i planned to do. i maintained a brief semblance of priorities and discipline.
and now, 10 o'clock on sunday night, i'm realizing how far behind i still am, what a mess my room is, and that i haven't got my lessons planned for this week.
i panic to determine when and how i will get this all done and i realize there's no hope.
how do i get out of this cursed rut?!

la pa'hacer

1-finish the italian
2-start amazing adventures of kavalier and clay and read horace kallen
3-start flight to canada and beloved
4-rewrite test for chapter 4
5-switch books, order books and write master syllabus
6-visteach
7-put away laundry
8-put away cds
9-eat?
10-sleep?

and that's just by tuesday

certain people i know

it's saturday. i'm not gonna lie. i stayed up too late cause i was having too much fun.
it's good to have jana back. it's like there's a void finally filled.

ic was good. and more than jana, i saw liza (happy 23 !), joey, steph, cameron, valerie, lindsay, carly, cate and gus (blast from the PAST) and i met rachel who (or whose parents) know my aunt and uncle in vancouver. (don't even get me started on my canada obsession.)

but the real reason i sat down to write is because i want to draw your attention to two very awesome people. (located on the right, there, but as i said, draw your attention...)

1-my super-dee-duper awesome sister liz who studies of the violin in boston and has quite the firey red head: http://thisbetheorchid.blogspot.com/
2-my best friend allison who exceeds even all the awesomeness inherent in the word and is currently residing much too far away in preston, england: http://alinlovelyland.blogspot.com/

enjoy. i know i do.

hidden treasures. or: one man's trash...

i worked at the library today.
i work at the library almost every day.
today i was going about my business as usual and just as i pulled the final volume of the jahrbuch der osterreichischen byzantinischen gesellschaft my eye was caught by something unusual: there was something wedged between the shelves.
i was further intrigued by the metallic glint of what i saw.
feeling it my duty as a library employee, i carefully reached in and removed the can of nalley original chili con carne with beans and placed it on the blue re-shelving shelf as i do with everything i find out of place.

i continued my work, this time working my way through vizantiiksii vremennik (i'm told that is the romanization of the cyrillic), and the chili con carne with beans (note: "con carne with beans" not "con carne y frijoles" there is an important distinction between food items that can be left in spanish and others, like beans, which must be translated for the good of the public) was soon followed by campbell's chunky chicken noodle soup and healthy choice chicken with rice soup.

now, in my mind there can be only 3 reasons why there would be a cluster of canned foods in the DF 501's:
1- someone thinks they are funny/i am on candid camera.
2- some campus group is either planning or recently held a scavenger hunt in the library. the canned goods would suggest a service project of some sort.
3- somewhere there is a very paranoid librarian. it is true that you cannot eat in the library. but, however much like superhumans they may seem, even librarians need to eat. most offices will furnish a small refrigerator and microwave fulfill this need for sustenance, so why would you store your canned goods in the stacks? well, as i see it, someone's been stealing someone else's lunch and someone's taking back a little of their own.
or perhaps it's a rogue student. they find themselves passing most of their days and lives in the frigid corners of the library and think to themselves, "i need a good, hearty, warm meal.i'd really like some chili. but i don't want to lug around a can of chili all day... i know! i'll keep a can in the stacks for when i get hungry. then i can run to a local microwave and warm my soul."
the only flaw in this explanation is that there are no local microwaves on the u campus. sure, there are microwaves, but you have to have some kind of an in to get at them. (maybe you work at the library, maybe you work at the union, maybe you know katie register, maybe you happen to be in the mbh when the classroom with the microwave doesn't have a class, maybe you have the magical powers to make the microwave in the osh turn on [and off.]) and if you don't, there's no way anyone's lugging a can of chili from the library to the institute just for a hot lunch. goodness.
but i digress.

why are there soup cans in the stacks? perhaps we should take a closer look at the cans themselves.


these are all top of the line name brands (note: not just campbell's chicken noodle, campbell's CHUNKY chicken noodle. there's a difference. you just go to the grocery store and check.)
these are not soups to be trifled with; obviously our culprit has a healthy appetite.
we have at very least 3 meals here, so this is not just a one-time fling. oh no. (unless it's a group... someone not working independently... but there's such a greater risk of discovery when you let other people in on the secret...)

based on the location within the library (mstkone/mst1asr) i would say this is a quiet student, if student it indeed is. the first floor is significantly more empty and the hushed sanctity of library silence is rarely, if ever, broken, even by turning pages.
you can often tell the academic pursuits of a student based on where they choose to study, i, myself, usually seek out the P call numbers in whatever library i may find myself.
this particular section is where france becomes greece.

a world traveller, perhaps, someone resourceful enough to think of hiding food and rebellious enough to do it in the library.

if you think about it, it's a brilliant plan. i mean, it's kind of a good place to hide things. who reads books in cyrillic anyway?

no one would ever find your secret stash.
unless they were paid to go through books no one reads... (like me)


as i sit down to finish writing, my brother-in-law says something that reminds me that the library is undergoing major renovations and slc is undergoing major freezing-too-cold-out-your-mind temperatures and i think perhaps he is right and someone without another home is living in the library. perhaps the cans came from a food bank or homeless shelter. and maybe this joke isn't so funny after all.

stupid f series

so, did you know that the umfa is my birthday?

(in case you missed it, allow me to enlighten you:

=
)

not that i have any particular affinity for the umfa above other museums, but still, any museum is "cultured" and besides, it's much better than having like, say...an office max for your birthday, right?

i mean, that would be like being told you're a brown crayon.

9months old. lookie at me!

better to stew in discontent than to admit we’re wrong

december 30, 2006.
it's a red -letter day.
today is the day we drove to denver to see andrew bird and devotchka.

some said we were foolish; mother nature is a fearsome force to be reckoned with.
who were we to challenge her?
but we were smiled upon and here i present to you a record of our success.

despite what others might have you believe, we took only calculated and reasonable risks. we gave ourselves 14 hours to do a 7.5 hour drive. in order to do this we started early.

here we are venturing into the cold at 5am:

and here we are shivering out there in the dark:
and here we are, piled into the back of t.r.'s car:


as instructed (888.wyo.road), we expected "dry pavements" for most of our way through wyoming.
roads weren't bad at all, in fact, proving all the nay-sayers wrong.

we made ourselves comfortable, grateful that t.r. was driving, and enjoyed the scenery.

the mundane scenery of wyoming:


we listened to andrew bird.
first weather systems, then mysterious production of eggs. then joey pulled out the bowl of fire:

ren's a bit of an andrew bird novice so we gave her an introductory briefing.
then, just to be fair, we enjoyed a little devotchka(!) and i promptly fell asleep.

i awoke to joey and jeni arguing about the validity of such shows as what not to wear and split ends. rennie passed out the rolls and cheese and we discussed the most likely places to steal mustard.

the back seat was a little cramped so we got out to stretch our legs and play a short round of chinese fire-drill meets musical chairs. you might say i lost.

cramped quarters and road trip food:



in good time we made it into denver, recognize the famous skyline?

we headed directly to the d.a.m., having been informed that it was free.

aren't we artistic?


we saw the sights of denver, well those that we could get to, and decided to dump our stuff and meet our hosts.
so we headed down to aurora.

here's a look at the treacherous, blizzard-beset roads:


we had to park a couple of blocks away and walk in, but it gave me a chance to demonstrate the usefulness of my new pink snow boots:


the funks entertained us until it was time to head over to the "historic" venue.










andrew bird is, as it were, a gem.
andrew bird can make the very absolute worst day of your life happy and worthwhile.

devotchka ain't bad either. (plus, we decided, much more condusive to understandable dancing.)

here we are rocking out at the show:

sunday morning took us south again to the springs and here the roads were a little more sketchy. but we made it and saw my lovely sister and brother-in-law and my fat kitty-nieces.

kitty-nieces:


we decided against another night out and headed home in the early afternoon.
the ride home was slightly more onerous (the way home always is) but we made the best of it by sleeping most of the way.

the dull drive home:

happy new year, kids!

and she doesn't know why that she runs, but she runs

cats, i'm not so sure about this...