America, November 4, 2008
For the last election — my first to vote in person — I made an aspirational Blue State Blue Velvet cake, inspired by the Obama-centric blog Yes We Cake (which later featured my creation). Georgia didn’t go blue — surprise — but the country did. I’m hoping for the same outcome this time around. Four more years!
The camp/friend reunion over the weekend was super awesome (and super hot, even up in the mountains of Western NC). Here are a few pictures from the trip accompanied by one of my favorite quote/poem things that I read as a camper:
This is the land I love, these pine-clad hills
and ancient granite peaks, cloud-rimmed above.
There is a peace up high among these hills,
a solitude of soul, and God is nigh.
The valley down below may call to some;
but mountains beckon me, and I must go.
Yeah, it’s a little cheesy, but it holds up. Hope y’all had a beautiful weekend too. Bring on the mid-week holiday!
Posted in deep thoughts, friends, love, nerdery, nostalgia, things southern, travel
Last Friday marked a year since I began my new job. In most ways, this is the first real job of my career; I feel like my initial 3.5 working years out of grad school led to brain atrophy and little else. (Well, that’s not true — it did good things for my salary history, and I learned some new parts of my hometown.)
I was really excited to start this job, because there was basically no way it wouldn’t be a thousand times better than my first one. Happily, that has been the case, and not merely by default. It comes as no surprise to me that I really enjoy working in a university environment. I’m writing stories and connecting media people to experts, meeting with faculty and proofing pages, and the subject matter I’m dealing with is constantly changing. I feel productive most days, which rarely happened before. Above all, I have a kickass group of coworkers who are not only great colleagues but people I want to hang out with after hours.
It isn’t all bunnies and moonbeams, of course — I am nowhere close to being past my frequent fits of writerly agony, and I still have plenty to learn on each of my beats. Someone told me shortly after I started that it takes a full academic cycle to get your bearings, so by that measure I’m just about on track. Regardless, I’m happy to have landed in such a nice place. Go Panthers!
Posted in deep thoughts, grown-up stuff, higher ed, HUZZAH, observations
[Oops! Forgot to publish this one on Friday...]
Last night my favorite shop, Young Blood Gallery & Boutique, hosted an event with Meg Keene of A Practical Wedding, the blog and now the book. While I’m not a daily reader of A Practical Wedding (as I write this I have 54 unread APW posts in my Google reader… so very behind on so many things), I am a frequent one, and I was interested to go and hear her speak — and, yes, to buy her book. I figure I’ll feed my interest in weddings for the moment, and I’ll lend it and One Perfect Day out to my marrying friends in the future.
As it happened, the event had very little to do with weddings at all, beyond Meg’s initial spiel about how odd it was that this book hadn’t been written already. The rest of her remarks and the subsequent discussion were focused on female entrepreneurship. It made sense, I guess; most folks there were already married.
There was, however, one question from the crowd about submitting weddings to be featured on APW. A theme that ran throughout Meg’s response was that you shouldn’t write about your wedding with the sole purpose of landing yourself a feature on a popular blog like APW. You should write about your wedding for you, for any number of reasons: to chronicle the process; to stay organized; to recollect; to ease the transition from single to engaged to married; the list goes on. (I wish I had written down whatever Meg actually said — I’m certain it was more concise than that.)
I kept a wedding blog from about 11 months out from the big day on. It’s already been interesting to look back over what I wrote and remember what life felt like or what was going on at any given stage in the process. I’ve never been big on keeping journals, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve found myself writing about significant travels or transitions so I can recall them with some detail later. In addition to serving as a memory aid, my blog was a repository for ideas and a way to keep myself sane. (I also like to think of it as a resource for Google-happy Atlanta brides.) Some of my friends and family followed along; many did not. I never shared the link on Facebook because I didn’t want the random people I’m friends with all up in my business for the sake of more page views; It may also have been a teeny bit because I didn’t want my coworkers to get wise to the fact that I was planning my wedding and blogging about it from my desk. Ha!
The other recommendation Meg had that I really liked was to write about your wedding (for yourself) before you get the photos back from your photographer. Sift through your own memories while you wait, because, lovely and intimate as they can be, the images will only tell the story of your wedding from an observer’s creative perspective and can color what or how you remember once you’ve got a disc of photos to click through. Write down the things that stood out in your mind from the day so you can hang onto them over the years. (I’m sure it helps put the photos in context when you look back, too.) Even if you don’t fancy yourself the writing type, this seems like a worthwhile exercise. I hadn’t thought of it in these terms before, because it was something I was doing anyway.
I haven’t cracked the book yet, but I’ll be interested to see how it differs from the website. Have any of you out there read it? Thoughts?
Posted in deep thoughts, grown-up stuff, weddings
Jon has recently picked up a habit of going thrifting on his lunch breaks. There are apparently quite a few stores in the vicinity of his office in a fairly well-to-do suburb north of town, so he’s developed something of a circuit he’ll follow every few weeks. Today, along with a half-dozen questionable neckties, he brought home a near-mint condition record, released in 1983 (a very good year), that he scored for $.77. If you’re close to my age, you might remember this guy:
Come on, who doesn’t love Raffi? (As we gave it a listen this evening, I heard tinges of Sufjan Stevens in the timbre of Raffi’s voice… perhaps Raffi’s an influence?) As awesome as the album cover and the holiday tunes were, my favorite part of the package was on the interior record sleeve. Check this out:
Dancing Cat Records! That looks more like a conducting cat to me, but either way, I like it. Through the wonders of the internet, I learned that Dancing Cat Records still exists today, although the cat in the logo now sports a grass skirt and flower leis: Since 1985, the label’s focus has been Hawaiian slack key guitar music (and, of course, whatever George Winston feels like releasing). Apparently many of the tracks on the delightful soundtrack to The Descendants can be found on Dancing Cat recordings. Who knew?
And now, I have to ask: If you were to start a record label, what would you call it?
Posted in deep thoughts, music, nostalgia, pop culture
Pageant watching is a favorite pastime of the ladies in my immediate family, so we were all excited for the Miss America pageant, which took place this past Saturday night. My dad has even been sucked in over the years, so much so that when I call mom over commercial breaks to talk catty about the contestants he picks up on another phone and chimes in. I haven’t yet convinced Jon that watching these events is fun (though he did come to a Miss America party I hosted in grad school before we got together), but I’ll wear him down eventually.
Note to Miss Wisconsin: Waterproof mascara is great for all kinds of emotional occasions, not just weddings or funerals! (source)
For years I joked that I was going to sign up for the pageant at the North Georgia State Fair ($75 for day-of registration!), but I never followed through. There’s no way my prom or recital dresses would have held a candle to those of the serious pageant girls, so I was going to slay the competition with an impassioned performance of Memory from Cats — only the funniest, most overwrought and pageant-tastic showtune ever. (Never mind that there is no talent portion in the North Georgia State Fair pageant.) On My Own, immortalized by Katie Holmes, is a close second.
The talent competition is far and away the best part of Miss America — and by best, I mean most painful to watch. This year’s display held no shortage of cringe-inducing moments, including but not limited to butchery of opera, ballet en pointe, “classical” piano and even Josh Groban schlock. Miss Oklahoma’s Irish step dance routine was a breath of fresh air and a reminder that some of these girls are legitimately very talented. (Riverdance for the win! Or, you know, first runner-up. Doh.)
The height of hilarity this year was without a doubt Miss Tennessee. Not only did she sing Memory, a throwback cliche from the pageants of my childhood, SHE SANG IT IN ITALIAN. Lipstick on a pig, much? I’m quite certain we all know this song is normally in English and is from Cats, not some highfalutin’ opera. There are so many things wrong with this I don’t even know where to begin.
With that, please watch this deeply befuddling performance. She’s up first. (After that, read this preview and bemoan the fact that Hawaii didn’t make the cut.)
Posted in deep thoughts, events, pop culture, Whaa?
You may think you’re being clever and getting around last-minute shipping fees by ordering something site-to-store, but I can assure you that it is worth the extra $20 to have whatever it is delivered to your doorstep and avoid the organizational shitshow that is the service department of a big-box store.
This morning I got email notification that my purchase was ready for pickup at Walmart. About 20 minutes ago, after two separate visits to the store today amounting to about an hour of waiting with no result, I received this email:
Wah wahhh. So, to recap, not only do I not have the thing I ordered (a toolbox to contain parts of a present), I also wasted at least an hour of my day draining my phone battery in an effort to entertain myself in the back of my local Walmart. Next time I’m paying for overnight shipping!
Posted in deep thoughts, holidays, mistakes
I consider myself a careful spender, but while I’m generally frugal person I’m also not above the occasional impulse buy. I’ve been trying to avoid those purchases lately, though, because my finances are still settling after a switch to a once-monthly paycheck (part of which now goes into a joint account) and the holidays are practically upon us (think presents AND cross-country travel). So much spending in my immediate future! Most unfortunately, my reluctance to spend on myself at this point in time finally bit me in the ass last night when I learned that this is no longer available:
NOOOOOOOO!!!! I honestly have kept this tabbed in my browser for days (weeks?) but hadn’t actually purchased it yet. In fact, late last week I was wondering if I should tell my mom (to tell Santa) that this was a top priority and to shop ahead so I didn’t have to feel bad about dropping $80 on myself right now. Doesn’t matter now because it’s too late! Now if I’m ever going to own the magical deluxe limited edition PJ20 Blu-ray, I’ll have to spend twice as much to buy it off someone on eBay. Great job, self.
Moral of the story? If you want it, JUST BUY IT ALREADY.
Posted in deep thoughts, gift ideas, kvetching, mistakes, ROCK
I’m in concourse E of Atlanta’s airport (aka the international terminal, aka the one with all the public art) waiting to catch a flight to New York for a work trip. I thought I’d check in briefly since I’ve only managed like three posts since September began. Needless to say, I’m working through some work-life-singing-internet balance issues. This month has been noots, but I’m feeling good about October!
Look out for Old-Timey Tuesday tomorrow and (hopefully) more posts by the end of the week. In the meantime, light a candle for my Bravos! Or, you know, stab a Cardinals voodoo doll, whichever you prefer.
Posted in deep thoughts
On Monday I posted a photo of my mama and the three generations of women that preceded her. She mentioned that there was a newer version of this picture in which my older sister was the baby pictured with her mama, grandma and great-grandma; obviously I had to retrieve it and scan it. Here’s the late-’70s edition. I especially love the jaunty Frenchman/gondolier on mom’s t-shirt. I wonder if she still has that one in her closet somewhere…
Here’s the original again, for comparison:
***
I realized the other day that this is becoming a blog almost exclusively devoted to nostalgia and cats (sometimes even cat-nostalgia). I swear I have other things to write about. However, before I get to those other things, I want to drop this in so I don’t end up writing another cat post. Last night my dad surprised my mom by bringing home new kitten. It’s actually the third time he’s done this, so we might have to stage an intervention soon. Regardless, the kitty is really cute! Looky:
Mom named him Puck after just a few minutes (he was born on April Fools’ Day and mom’s a book nerd — and a woman of action!). I think it will stick, but a few other names have been bandied about since he arrived, so we’ll see.
Alright, I promise, no more cats this week! Oy.
Posted in deep thoughts, family, nostalgia, Old-Timey Tuesday, pets
