Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Formica Blues

After long, long last, I got myself connected - I now have cable internet at home. It was cheaper to get cable tv, too (although they got a hefty installation fee for that out of me, so was it really cheaper? in the long run, maybe...), which is weird to have after 4 years without cable. I watched the Daily Show and the Colbert Report last night, and it was like I was at someone else's house - not mine. It's nice to have, I guess...
I missed iTunes. Hard. The past 24 hrs has been spent (off and on) loading music onto it. iTunes reminded me how much i missed this. And this. And this. iTunes brings all your music to you - you don't have to remember that you have it. Sometimes it is very difficult for me to remember what music I have.
I'm reading a big ol' pile of books right now - too varied and numerous to name here, I think. 2 are for book clubs, and the rest for my own personal pleasure. I meant to overhaul my apartment before starting work on Friday, but that is probably not going to happen. I'm spending the week going to gym classes I want to attend, reading, taking bubble baths, loading up my iTunes...who has time to clean? I really should, though. And I still have time.
In the immortal words of Ellen DeGeneres: "Procrastinate NOW. Don't put it off until later."
Thanksgiving came, Thanksgiving went. Very quiet and pleasant, as far as Thanksgivings go. The though of putting over 20 people together in one house for a few hours who are not, when you think about it, there by choice, makes me a little nervous; family makes me nervous. But everything went smoothly, so I can't complain.
And speaking of having nothing to complain about, the weather has been perfect this week - I've been trying to spend some time in the sun. I have a sneaking suspicion that this will be our last bit of warm weather for a long, long time, so I'm going to enjoy it while I can. Even the south has to get cold sometime, although it sometimes feels like it never will.
My treatise on nothing is going to have to end sometime, and it might as well be now. Remember: let's be careful out there.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

I Want Candy

Things I love right now, at this very moment:
  • The Marie Antoinette soundtrack. Disc 1 is fun, decadent, sumptuous early 80's New Romantic music (the Cure, Bow Wow Wow, Siouxie, etc.); Disc 2 is the slower, more melancholy music Coppola used for the film, like Air, Squarepusher, and Aphex Twin. I love it so much, I even made my own unofficial Disc 3. See me for more details.
  • The Art Lover by Carole Maso. It's a novel about grief, art, love, being a girl, astronomy, New York...I'm savoring it like The Thin Place. That one was a tough act to follow, so I'm glad I picked this one up at The Strand in New York when I did. It is very stream-of-consciousness without being frustrating. I love writers who have truly mastered language. Mostly because almost none have.
  • Lipton's new cranberry pomegranate green tea. I'm an admitted tea snob (although I'm hard pressed to find a Lipton product I don't like), so when my mom gave me this, I was dubious. It's wonderful, though.
  • Staples composition books. Yeah, yeah, I love my computer, and put most of my life into it, but something keeps me coming back to Staples composition books. They smell good and feel good in the hand. Not to mention the fact that the writer in me still has a close-to-indecent fetish for office supplies.
  • Jane Austen. It's that time of year again - I read 2 Jane Austen novels every winter. I'm starting out with Mansfield Park this time. After that, I might get really wacky and go for Persuasion. She is the perfect writer.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both...

If anyone needs me tonight, I'll be home, cracking out on The Facts of Life, Season 3. We all have our low-brow pop culture guilty pleasures (right? I mean, 5 million Diff'rent Strokes fans can't be wrong, can they?), and TFoL is definitely mine. It made me WANT to go to boarding school as a kid. I could talk here for a long, long time about TFoL and how much I love it, but I won't.
You're welcome.
Halloween came, Halloween went. Besides the buffet full of leftover candy at my parents' house that I'm about to literally dive into (no one I know had any trick-or-treaters; how sad a statement is that on parents, children, and Halloween, I ask you?), it didn't make much difference one way or another that Halloween was here at all. I think I'm over it. It's one of those celebratory days that somehow eats its way into your consciousness, and makes you think you HAVE to "go out." It's a huge build-up for an evening that can never really live up to how you saw it in your head beforehand (see also: New Year's Eve and St. Patrick's Day).
Watching an 80's video countdown at Chez McCarley was way, way more fun than being out.
Ignore me - I've become such a humbug about a lot of things lately (smoky bars, chain restaurants, the behavior of small children, video rental stores, malls, major holidays, the state of modern music, and the list goes on...). I'm not even 30 yet, and I have a sneaking suspicion that my disposition has veered dangerously toward "ornery" in the past couple of years. I cannot be turning into my mother. Not this soon, at least.
Merry Christmas, everyone!