navelgazer’s Neighborhood

of 2009. I am planning to get these things done before the end of the year:

• organize the front room
• write personal letter A
  
• make appointments with doctors
  
• buy (late) gifts and mail them
  
• spent time thinking
• go to school and finish photocopying
• send work-related email B
• call friends

Albums released in 2009 that I especially enjoyed:

• M. Ward - Hold Time
• Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
• Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
• Sondre Lerche - Heartbeat Radio
• Avett Brothers - I and Love and You
• Girl in a Coma - Trio B.C.
• Visqueen - Message to Garcia
• Asobi Seksu - Hush
• Joe Pernice - It Feels So Good When I Stop
• Richard Hawley - Truelove's Gutter
• Grizzly Bear - veckatimest
• Doveman - The Conformist
• Buddy Holly - Down the Line: Rarities

These are still growing on me.  If I had listened to them more, they would probably be in the above list.  Yet another symptom that I buy too much music.

• Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs
• Grand Archives - Keep in Mind Frankenstein
• The Dodos - Time to Die
• Monsters of Folk - Monsters of Folk
• Vetiver - Tight Knit
• Wussy - Wussy
• Decemberists - The Hazards of Love
• Minus 5 - Killingsworth
• Young Fresh Fellows - I Think This Is
• Robyn Hitchcock - Goodnight Oslo
• The Swell Season - Strict Joy

This one I played so much I got bored with it.

• God Help the Girl - God Help the Girl

This one I keep not buying, even though I suspect I will love it.  Maybe S----a C---s will put it in my New Year's stocking.

• Kings of Convenience - Declaration of Dependence

Addenda:

Particularly enjoyed:

• Soundtrack to Away We Go
• The ear candy award goes to: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
• and also, though because of the lyrics:  The Raveonettes - In and Out of Control

Deserves further listening:

• Brandi Carlile - Give Up the Ghost

Played ad nauseam:

• Soundtrack to (500) Days of Summer

Maybe it will find it into my New Year's stocking:

• God Help the Girl - Stills EP oops never mind it's digital only

Well, it has been an interesting two weeks around this place, that's for sure. I seem to have gotten into the habit of the bulleted post again. Maybe this would be a good point to stop that and just use the standard paragraph. I think I could make that work. First, I'd like to say I hope you all had a wonderful and Merry Christmas. I know there were a few neighbors who experienced some really tragic things and to them, I would like to send out an especially warm (((HUG))) and hope that they can find peace.

Christmas time is also the time that my employer is doing it's maintenance shutdown work. Which means that I ended up working a whole lot just before and right after Christmas. Before Christmas I was setting up projects, making sure that everything was lined up for all the projects we have scheduled to complete. Someone has to help allocate money, people and line up parts for the work. Not to mention all the risk assessment stuff we've been doing lately. After Christmas is the one week period where we have to get all of the actual work completed. So this weekend has been one of hustle and bustle. Tracking project timelines, adjusting schedules and prioritizing work. There is always more work to be done than we can do, so it's a matter of starting with the high priority stuff and working down.

Good news to all the working is that every day worked is paid as triple time, plant holiday pay plus double time. In my case, I have the option to defer the holiday pay and take it as another paid day off later in the year. That means by working this week, I will add another week to my vacation and still make double time doing so. Awesome end to the year. Woohoo. But, in the middle of all that, I needed to shop for Christmas, pay all the year end bills, clean the house, do the baking and cooking adn everythign else. Whew. I made probably upwards of a gross of cookies and still haven't gotten the sugar cookies, the macaroons and the gingerbread stuff out of the fridge. I made the doughs up Christmas Eve, so tonight, the cookies get baked. I'll have pictures to share hopefully soon.

Got the new freezer, but still haven't gotten its new home set yet. The laundry room needs a thorough cleaning before it goes in there. until then, it's still in the corner of the Lego room. And no, I didn't buy that semi truck load of bricks. It's amazing what temptations having money sitting in the bank will bring. Even though I know it's supposed to go for paying bills, I still wanted to buy that stuff. Shame on me. Instead, bills will be paid and paid off. The New year will come in with much less debt than this year had. Almost every credit card will be paid in full too. Now that's a great accomplishment. Of course, knowing the credit card companies, they will lower my limits and/or cancel the accounts which, instead of helping my credit with no balances, will screw it up with closed accounts. Did I mention that I hate credit card companies? Yeah. I do. Like a dog hates a vaccuum cleaner.

Besides all that running around and going crazy, it's been pretty quiet actually, except for the huge piles of snow everywhere. Like Springtime in Chicago, only here in Kansas City. People here have a hard time driving in snow too. Maybe it's just me, but there are a lot of people in the ditch lately. Slow down and increase your distance between you. Seriously folks. Just do it. Or better yet, stay home. There, I feel better now. Alrighty, clock says it's time to go, there's an oven with my name on it, just waiting to bake some more cookies. In case I get tied up before the end of the year, I wanted to wish for every one of you to have a wonderful and happy New Year. Keep your underwear on and remain in the (semi?) upright position, at least if you are going to be out in public. Peace, Joy and Hope for the new year.

It's not a very bad cold. In fact it's one of the milder illnesses I can remember... My sinuses are about 40% stuffed up. My throat is just vaguely scratchy. I'm more tired and achey than usual, but not by much. Nonetheless I am taking the cue and lounging on my couch for the 2nd day in a row, swaddled in blankets, books, and handkerchiefs.

Sometimes when I'm sick I will do a juice & tea fast for the day - to keep myself hydrated and let my body concentrate on killing the virus, rather than digesting complicated foods. So today I've had emergen-c, water, yerba mate, and vegetable juice. And I really must not be all that sick, because I am STARVING. I think I will get some extra-spicy thai food for dinner.

And then perhaps I will watch the Dr. Who xmas special AGAIN! I can't believe it's the 2nd-to-last episode starring David Tennant.

I got a copy of The Talented Miss Highsmith for xmas (Patricia Highsmith's new biography). It's sort of fascinating, especially considering that the author seems to hold a certain amount of (justified) disdain for Highsmith. Apparently she was a racist and anti-Semite. Her personal life was chaotic, despite her solipsistic tendencies (it is even referred to on the inner flap as a "Pandora's Box"). She was an obsessive list-maker and left behind 8,000 pages of journals when she died. Her life is a rich territory. Still, this bio is a bit cumbersome... Mostly I'm interested in reading about writers' writing habits.

Being sick is dull. More tea!

I thought I'd get Christmassy with my silly little game of the week. I haven't done one for a while. Apologies about that.

Anyhow, to make up for it, I bring you Santa, haplessly brought down in mid flight into zombie land.

Help him save the reindeer!!!

Santa christmas nightmare

It's been a weird year. I put together my photo "yearbook" in iPhoto yesterday and titled it: The Waiting Area; 2009 never happened. Because that's what this year has felt like. Limbo. I don't know if this feeling is specific to the year - will things suddenly start moving again when I peel open this year's wall calendar from my uncle? Probably not. But that's what we always hope for, right? That the new year will change something, and we can simply leave behind the things we don't want.

Picture 22

But despite its weirdness, things of course did happen in 2009 (and will presumably continue to do so for the next week or so...) Here are some of my favorites:

1. President Barack Obama. Although I'm a bit non-plussed with the Copenhagen agreement, I am still SO GLAD he got elected. I trust him to make good decisions even if I may not agree 100% of the time, and it has been a long time since I trusted a president. I think I felt pretty good about Jimmy Carter when I was 6.
2. Expanded unemployment benefits. If this money weren't available I would likely be homeless by now. That may sound a bit dramatic, but I have now joined the ranks of those just a couple of steps from financial disaster, and once you're on that ledge it's easy to slip off of it.
3. Infinite Summer. I joined the ranks of David Foster Wallace fans who read or re-read Infinite Jest over the summer. I'm glad I finally read it, but it really needs a 2nd or 3rd reading...
4. I went to San Francisco and finally met Patty, Laurel, Deborah, and karen. It felt like I've known them for years! I'm still kind of amazed by the connections I've made through Vox. It doesn't seem to happen anywhere else on the interwebs...
5. My cousin bought a lake house. It's more of a "cabin" really... but it is a place I can stay on Lake Coeur d'Alene in the summertime for free.
   
6. The birth of anemone. I don't really know where it will go at this point, but it has been an adventure planting the seed.
7. I've made progress on my memoir and other writing projects. Not nearly as much progress as I wanted to make... but everything slows down in Limbo.
8. I'm getting used to a healthier, simpler lifestyle. More cooking, less eating out, and simpler meals to boot. Less compulsive buying, or spending money on things like haircuts. It's really kind of nice.
   
9. I was able to wean myself off antidepressants without major setbacks.

Here are a few spreads from my "yearbook"...

Picture 27

Picture 26

Picture 25

Picture 24

Picture 23

To my adorable friends:  always sing without fear.

Happy Holidays and may you have a New Year that embraces you with all the good things you desire.

Thoughts of these future events are making me happy right now:

• Hanging out with my brother and sister-in-law on Friday.  One family Christmas tradition is to go see a bad movie.  I'm voting for Sherlock Holmes even though I don't expect it will be bad.
• Seeing a few other friends who are in town for the next few days.  It was also nice to see adjunct family who were in town last weekend.
• Moving to a new office space!  Only five blocks from home, with daylight (if indirect; it's a heavily windowed interior space inside of a heavily windowed second floor loft that houses five or six other offices)  It's a portion of an architect's office.  I will be moving in sometime after the first week of January.  The unhappy part is leaving the nice people at the space where I currently work.
• Spending New Year's Eve with M-----l (plus a fews eves afterward).  I usually celebrate New Year's Eve by going to sleep before 11 and being grumpy when fireworks and carousers wake me up an hour later.  That might happen this year, too, but it should be more fun shared.  Or maybe we'll play records.
• Meeting Crankypants and Elvis in February!  I'm looking forward to spending the first half of President's Day weekend in Philadelphia with them.  If Cranky can stand my company any longer than that, we may carpool to the D.C. area in time for the infamous annual Karaoke to the Death competition.  I'm going for sure, and am looking forward to meeting other Voxers there.  Hopefully M-----l will be part of that weekend, too. 

Happy holiday wishes, dear Vox neighbors!

Zardoz Claus is checking his list.  Twice.

Zardoz Claus