miss alexandra chantal yvette mackenzie

i know what you were all thinking.
and i posted it that way just so you would think it, but,
no.

no young men have been smacking their chapsticked lips for me.
that last post was a quote from the lovely alex.
quite close to the last words i heard in her lovely british accent before she abandoned us all here for the comforts of her jersey home.

today is alex' birthday.
i think it's such a nice birthday.
9/9

isn't that nice and symmetrical?
she's a whole number!! she's complete.
and it's so true.
a flawless person if i've ever known one. (which i have, obviously: alex.)


it's not much of a birthday cake, but there's only so much you can do from across the atlantic.
so,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALEX!
many happy returns.

did i just turn down a chance to kiss miles?

that wasn't very sensible.

i am falling and there's still no one to catch me.

i wanted to have something to say, but i'm just so tired.

you know that curry paste?  it smells good, but it's going to go bad if i don't use it soon.
but i can't use it now because i have to go to viv's to practice.
marshmallow treasures aren't bad.  but you should eat them before they get old.  what's with all the humidity?  weird.

walking to work take 2

so.
i love a bustling campus. campus has a personality all its own and the mood changes dramatically with each semester.
but, this morning i almost missed my solitary walk to work.

everyone heading in to classes made me feel a little old and boring.
and those guys at the booth made me feel a little annoyed.

maybe if they hadn't been playing SUCH lame music i would've taken their silly little flyer.


and is it like "lame campus booth radio" or something? a mixtape?? because i swear the one by the library was playing the exact same crappy song.

gracious goodness. what an unsavory way to begin your fall semester life soundtrack.

the last time i looked in the mirror, it looked like it was going to be fine.

let's talk about signage in the library.
i can think of just a few off the top of my head, but perhaps the brevity of this post will be able to make up for the exceeding length of the previous.

1- the sign by the east entrance that not only tells you you can't have food and drink, but in it's clear, white, seventies lettering, explains why: "it attracts bugs which damage books." i'm a bit of a rebel and quite frankly, if i'm hungry and i have food, i'm going to eat it. no matter where i am. i passed all those standardized tests from high school to college by smuggling chocolate chips in my pocket (seriously. it's brain food.) but that sign appeals to its readers not to blindly obey, but to consider the consequences. and let me tell you. even in the dead of winter, i have packed up my things and sat outside with the smokers to eat my peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich before returning to my studies. (unless i was studying at the study group table. we always ate there, but there weren't really any books there. and i was careful for crumbs. and al always had the good crumbless snacks like carrots and peppers.)

2- the sign by the bathrooms that tells you who to tell if you feel your safety has been threatened while you are in the library.
i think this is wisdom in signage because if i feel threatened, i totally head for the bathrooms.
you can hide there for like ever.

3- library staff only.


and while we're talking signage, can we talk about the enormous chili's grill sign that was randomly sitting in the parking lot across from my work?

bags' groove

i feel like i should say something.

it took me all night, but i think i finally saw taurus. i never could make out perseus.
i'm tired, of course. and i feel bad that i didn't stick around for the sunrise (i had good reason) and on the whole i'm pretty bummed that my camera broke before i could put the 50 in, but it was nonetheless a pretty spectacular night. in many ways.


my short walk to work each day is punctuated by certain sights and sounds. the morning's trek through president's circle carries the distant yelling of camp counsellors and children screaming so loudly i fear something unnatural is happening.
on the return trip i get to see more of camp in action and by then the tables have turned; this time the children are in control and i politely contain my laughter as i watch the exasperated counsellors NOT get frustrated and use all the tricks up their sleeves, not to mention their "considerable skill" and "natural affinity" with children, in a vain attempt to maintain order as children of various shapes and sizes run around playing various games and eating various snacks. my favorite today was the child running races back and forth with his friends, winning, i assume, as i'm sure did he, by virtue of the fact that he was running in swimming goggles.

i narrate such a mundane portion of my day to set the stage for the realization i had this after...'fore?...noon. (don't mock. it's a good thing i went home early; my car died and if i had waited any longer to discover it, my dad wouldn't have been able to come buy me a new battery)
i appreciate that they try to do major construction projects in the summer so that it doesn't adversely affect the multitudinous student body of fall semester, but tearing up the main walkway from president's circle to the library has been getting on my nerves. especially since they make it so confusing to walk around AND it changes every day so even after you find a path, it won't be there the next day.
but just today i finally realized what was going on.
this is no construction project.
they're not replacing the sidewalk because it was old and cracked. oh no. this is art. (i am trained in recognizing art because my sister added me to her performance art class' blog and i went to bad art night once.)
you see, it LOOKS like construction because there are people working, pouring cement, smoothing cement, standing around, etc. they have caution tape and the whole thing. but today i saw the crowning piece: 5 or 6 packets of papers. they looked like application forms, or an exam, or a very elaborate survey. i couldn't take a closer look because of the caution tape and supposed wet cement and the old guys with oxygen tanks sitting on a bench practically in the center of the construction zone.
and then it hit me.
why would there be papers in the cordoned off part of the sidewalk? and they weren't accidentally blown or dropped. i can tell because that would make too much sense. AND they were pretty evenly spaced. what "coincidental" act would space things evenly, but not too evenly, but definitely just so, with just the right number of pages turned?
and the old guys?! too many coincidences.
it's art, i tell you. art!

what i can't tell you exactly is what it means.
i don't know. something deep, surely.



i moved across the street, but i still like to take the old way home. two reasons: 1- i still have to come in from the front, 2- i get to walk past one of my favorite gardens in the city.
do you have favorite gardens in the city? i have about 4 that i love to look at. every day i see a great new garden, but there are a few that i just adore.
this one is enormous. they put the vegetables where i like, out front. they have an oh-i-don't-know 4 by 15 foot (and that's a conservative estimate) bed of just strawberries! huge sunflowers that can't even keep their heads up, tomatoes just beautifully ripe, and sunsugars too! pretty beans on a charming trellis, corn maybe? and the whole thing, along the sidewalk, is lined with lavender. smells delicious and i don't even mind the bees. and the house is charming. a big white house with TWO wrap around porches (one on the second story) but it's not overcrowded. there's a place for everything and there's a porch swing.


today there was a car parked across the street. i noticed because we saw some people at grunts and posture and then went home and the same people were sitting on the lawn across the street!
this car was blue. and the door was open. and there was musical music playing. that made me smile. i like musicals. i thought about how nice it was to have a little personal serenade on my way home, but just as i got close enough to see if i could identify the music, the door shut. and as the car pulled away, i saw the license plate "ising4u"

(do you think she was a singing telegram girl? cause i hope so. i really do.)


it's late and i've yet to eat dinner, but i'll leave you with this parting thought: i am often led to exclaim, "i love credit cards!" but i think that that fact might lead many to be concerned about my fiscal responsibility. i often tell my students that "i usually pay for things with a credit card." (it's a semi-scripted test. don't ask.) and i always think that makes them think i'm living high off the hog. but i am neither well to do nor financially foolish.


goodnight.

don't drink that milk in front of that window

i'm in a real bind here.  i have a thing about bugs.  i hate them.  they scare me.  they make me shake.  and shiver and squirm.  working in a garden center and on a landscaping crew, you learn to just cope with the fact that bugs are going to crawl on you.  but i still hate it.  and i hate them in my bed.  they love my bed.  remember when i lived in the pit of despair in provo?  and i would have to take all the blankets and sheets off my bed every night and morning and shake them out and then inspect the mattress itself to make sure there weren't bugs all in my sheets? 
yeah.  well.  you leave your windows open for a few days before you realize there aren't really screens and you know there are going to be bugs.  box elder bugs i've been able to ignore and kill.  (not squish.  that's too gross.  i put things over them until they die.)
now there's this big weird bug in my bed and i don't know what to do.
and now i keep thinking that joey would probably like it.  and it doesn't move. and i keep thinking that it's probably really scared.  how did it even get in here?  the box elder bugs who came in the window on purpose crawl and fly all over.  don't get me thinking about how it probably grabbed on to the guitar accidentally as i got out of the car and came in, but it's not its fault that it's in here.  and now i have all this guilt about killing it, supposing i could muster the courage to do it.  and now i have retroactive guilt about the cruel way i killed the box elder bugs this morning. 

but it's midnight and al was telling me about this thing and i'm supposed to get 8 hours of sleep every night.  and i have to go in to work early because i have to leave work early to go to other work meeting which will take too long and i won't have time to write my test.  oh goodness.  this bug is ruining my life.

help!

the busted back of that old and rusted cadillac

i don't quite know what to say, i just enjoy the contrast.
so happy. so sad. so mustache!!!

anyway.
in other news, i made alfredo sauce tonight.
took for danged ever cause i had to go to the grocery store right in the middle and it would've been a fast trip, except that they were selling notebooks for 29 cents and i was just thinking how i should get some notebooks for my students so we could work on writing, etc. so then i had to go through them all and get the best ones. and i had to go to the scary smith's cause it's closer to my new house, but i get so lost in it.
and then linds called when i was checking out so i forgot to give the lady my student card so i missed out on my 5% discount. bummer.

so the sauce.
i was feeling really good about it. i think i've cured myself from the flavorless variety of yesteryear, but i still can't get it right. i feel like there are more flavors (i make sure there's enough garlic, i try not to skimp on the butter, i put in pepper. this time i even put in a touch of ginger and salt-which i usually don't do, cause parmesan is so salty anyway. but kathryn was complaining about the bland american parmesan so i tried to help it out) but i feel like all these flavors are just overcompensating for a fundamental flaw in my alfredo sauce. maybe i should go back to square one. i should find some recipes and figure out what i'm doing wrong.
i just ate two bowls of pasta and it's just not truly fulfilling. i'm full, but not happy about what i ate, you know? and now i have to go do all the dishes.

maybe i should melt the cheese in a double boiler before i add it to the white sauce? or is it just the nature of parmesan to be grainy? maybe i add too much milk to the roux? i've often thought that my sauce wasn't buttery enough, but my biggest complaint usually is that the sauce is too heavy and buttery. where is the balance?

on a more positive note, kathryn left some artichoke hearts, which made for just the right added finish. mmm.


still other news: there's a big scary bug under my guitar on my bed and i don't know what to do about it.

sorry for the non-posting.
i'll see what i can do for the future.

are you gonna fall apart again?

i need to post. i'm being bad at blogging. but i don't rightly know what to say.

i had an unexpected day. everything i did was spur of the moment. one would think this wouldn't be unusual for me, but it was. i greatly enjoyed myself. which is not to say that i don't usually enjoy myself, just to say that today i had no plans and still had fun.

i enjoy conversation. of all forms. tonight i kidnapped erin and we drank tea (ginger tea. very delicious) and talked and talked and talked. she told me that i am ultra-feminine. that i am like a fish, gaily swimming in the center of the bottomless pool of the intuitive while everyone else was fearfully clinging to the wall of the concrete. it would take longer than i have the patience for to explain what that really meant, but i was refreshed by our conversation. the meat of what i internalized was that i have been spending far too much time of late looking at my craziness (or as we decided to call it, "eccentricity" or "idiosyncrasy". we looked up the roots of these words and decided that not having your axis in the center, not being concentric to any other circle and being your own mixture are highly desirable traits.) from a "male" perspective. i'm not scary just because i'm odd. i'm not problematic just because i'm not normal. eccentricity is a good thing and i'm chock full of it.

anyway.
i don't know that i believe her, but it was still nice of her to so highly compliment the parts of me that i view as intrinsic, but often objectionable.


in other news, my hair looks really bad today. that's kind of all i can think about right now.
so i'm going to make a sandwich.

you know what, i'm already up late.

so. i work for a non-profit. which i like. i struggle with money and sacrificing everything especially humanity for the sake of profits. (oh! and i was just checking out the yes men thanks to the uccs gallery of contemporary art blog.)
in order to pay the bills, namely my salary, we rely on grants from the federal government. my boss "writes" these grants, but this year he asked me to review it and help out, if i could. what i found when i started reading nearly killed me. it made no sense and was woefully cut and pasted from any number of previous drafts, documents, letters, who knows. one piece of information that i tried to salvage referred to a study that had been done about something and someone. (i'm blocking the recollection because we were turned down for the grant and my future life has gotten considerably more stressed and, forgive the pun, underfunded.) i gathered a few words from what i found and blingoed them and eventually found my source and cited it. before i found that source, however, i happened upon this picture:

i'm just gonna let you read the caption for yourself and react...however you please.
goodnight.

oh you you you you you

i'm posting from my dashboard.  i think that's kind of fun.  silly, but excellent good fun.
some people didn't understand yesterday.  they needn't worry.  it's not really supposed to make sense.  that's partly the point and partly the cipher of making a journal public.

i tried, but the old devils, they found me in my hut, poured through the windows; they cornered me so i cried out, to no one:

i give up.

you know, if i were a rock star, no one would care that i was "suitably eccentric". they would think it was cool. they would be so excited to be the beneficiary (i was going to say victim) of my insanity. i would get all kinds of slack for all kinds of oddities. and the thing is, really, i wouldn't even have to be talented. just brazen enough to be a rock star.

my mom once said i had the soul of a rock star. as near as i could tell she said it because when i sing along to music, i don't sing so much as imitate, mimic, the singer i'm listening to. she said i could "capture" any voice (not true in the slightest) but she only had her voice. only one way of singing. i, on the other hand, have no idea what my own voice sounds like because the only time i sing is if i'm trying to sound like someone else. i wanted that to be a metaphor for life, but it's not. not my life. happily, not my life at all.
maybe that's what she meant.



mondays oughtn't to feel like fridays. i had good intentions, but i'm still not in bed and i haven't accomplished a durn thing since 6:30pm.

people are going away. it's sad and it's not sad, somehow.



sincere. earnest. erin hoffman is good for words. she's not wrong.





but then again, maybe people would be just as patronizing to a rock star, when it came to real life, as they are to me.

saudi

so, since there's no bulk uploader for blogger, if you're interested, you can see the rest of the pictures i found from saudi here.


for the most part, i believe these were taken by my then 13 yr. old sister. i was 11.

peach, plum, pear. peach, plum...

we all know that i love love love ikea. we also all know that i was wary of opening an ikea in utah cause i was afraid it would become the next krispy kreme (such a fiasco.) but today i went with the fam and realized i never should have worried.
ikea is going to single-handedly (or maybe double-handedly, with those big heart pillows with hands...) save america. they are using the affinity for the trendy for good.
sometimes ikea telling you how and in what order to shop can get a little smothering, but also, you know you can trust them. i like that they tell you how it works and you can just take it or leave it. you bus your tables at the restaurant whether you like it or not. and you can put that coffee table together yourself, thank you very much. i like that they expect you to step up.
and that don't offer you big, excessive stuff just cause that's what you think you want.
stuff is cheap, stuff is small. stuff is fun.
but how is ikea going to save america? well, i'll tell you. they are charging you to use disposable bags. they are selling you big reusable bags for cheap. they are taking the money you insist on paying just so you can have a useless plastic bag and not have to bring in your blue bag next time, and donating it to help reforest america. i think that's nice. i've always said the only way to make people care about the environment is to charge them for being wasteful.
also, you can't recycle glass in utah. i don't know why. but you can recycle glass, light bulbs and batteries at ikea.

hip hip hooray for ikea.

important to note

hindawi publishing corporation has their office at 410 park avenue, New York, NY.

keep it in mind.

who am i?

so i'm sitting at work waiting to give this oral exam. and i want to be mad cause the lady isn't showing up, but the truth is, i got here late so it's probably my fault.
the basic class is doing a listening exercise that goes something like this:
"i have class at 5pm. i was born in 1980. who am i?"
i'm assuming they are looking at some kind of chart or something. but i just keep hearing "who am i?" and i thought it was funny.

so, i'm a sucker for the sensational. kind of like how i was telling allison and her mom that i really like pre-teen romance novels. you know, the kind where the"steamy" parts go a little something like this: "the kiss was serious. serious like my hair." (no lie. it's in a book. maybe that milk carton book or the sequel? i don't know. i read too muvh as a kid.) so of course when my news reader tells me i can see the loch ness monster, you know i'm gonna click. and i did. and it's pretty cool, i guess. (although, i must admit, i was slightly disappointed.)

in a manner of speaking i don't understand

it's funny how the most unexpected things can have such a profound effect.


a couple of my sister's friends came over tonight. i wasn't expecting it to be much fun for me, but i ended up really very glad that they came and oddly invigorated.

i just found a photo album that my sister seems to have inadvertently stolen from my parents' house.
it's full of pictures of me when i was 11 and we lived in saudi arabia.
i feel like i have uncovered some lost record of my life.
i don't know why this is such a solemn thing to me, but it is.

we like the newness of all

jord likes this picture.
mostly cause i look dumb, but it is pretty funny. and kind of impressive that he could take the picture at just the right instant.
how would you feel if all the cheese came off your pizza right as you were ready to eat it? (thanks for your sympathy, liz.)



thoughts about my trip:
i like the ocean. there are lots of nice natural wonders all over the place, but there's just something extra wonderful about a seaside town. i admit, the southeast is the best, with the gulf stream heating the atlantic to a nice, comfortable bath temperature, but gloucester was lovely. we also drove through manchester-by-the-sea, round the tip of cape ann and some other place jord said but i can't remember.
heavenly.

i like old things. i like that boston likes old things.
i like old houses and architecture. little houses by some standards, but ideal by mine.
i like old cemeteries. they are very fascinating.
i like "european" cities.
i like getting lost. i like walking a lot, except when i have to walk home cause i've given up exploring because i'm too tired to walk anymore.
i like not having to drive everywhere.

i like getting treats on a whim.
i like things that stay open late.
i like knowing my way around and finding secret passageways.
i like shopping, but i don't have money.

i like spiral staircases and stone-walled basements.
i like boston terriers. especially those that say hi to us every day as we come and go.

i like living in places much better than visiting them. even though this often entails a few more inconveniences. (notably to my over-generous hosts)


i don't like traveling alone.

i don't like going back to real life and responsibilities.

we gathered in spring

i don't smoke!
don't listen to jo.

it's the turmeric, i swear. it could happen to anyone. nicotine isn't the only thing that turns your fingers yellow. trust me.