"Moi, je suis une dinosaure EXTRAORDINAIRE!"

Feet in Places.

2010-10-03T00:46:00.000-04:00

I have this great tradition of taking pictures of my feet in places as a "proof I was there" kind of thing. Here are a few feet-tastic pictures from my new, soon-to-be-permanent West Coast life.

Four feets are better than two... or is it two feets are better than one?!

You've gotta be KEEN!!! Or... barefoot... or showing all of your two sets of five toes on Muir Beach.

Feet and seagrass on black(ish) sand.

Seafoam bubbles and sand and toes. Pacific Ocean, you're wetting my feet.

Dirty feets, worn out pedicure, beautiful texture on a huge, huge stone. I was there.

Why yes, yes I did get my Keens wet in the Pacific Ocean. Have I mentioned that the ocean is on the other side in California? Because, really, it is. #imsuchaneastcoaster

Incredible.

2010-09-19T23:38:00.002-04:00

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

Part IV:

This made me cry like no other, each and every part of it.

I haven't quite figured out what to do...

2010-09-16T21:19:00.000-04:00

Oh, autumn. Finally.

I haven't blogged much over the past few months, and I'm not... sure why. Jezebel isn't what it used to be. I was starred over at Gawker, but it just isn't as snarktastically wonderful as it used to be, either. I'm buried in books from sunrise to sunset, and I tweet like a maniac; when I'm not tweeting for myself, I'm tweeting for eight different Middle Eastern leaders for the Plaid Avenger. Maybe it's a lack of inspiration? Maybe it's all of the moving, the relationship changes, the health issues, that I'd rather be playing with the dogs than typing more than I have to in front of a computer all day?

No, no, it's inspiration and the lack thereof. I promise I'll get on it, swears...

Still busy, but so in love with this soft, fleeting melody.

2010-08-11T23:12:00.002-04:00

Get it, First Lady Sarkozy!

I haven't forgotten about my blog... just so/bleeping/busy.

2010-08-06T01:20:00.002-04:00

Pink and freckled.

2010-05-04T13:36:00.001-04:00

Even though I was freshly sun-kissed (partially burnt on my shoulders), sweaty, and totally had the wrong face on for a glamor shot, I love this picture of me. I only wish you could see my ferocious ensemble-- the teal Calvin Klein dress, the flowered frame clutch, and the shoes, oh the shoes.

Me, after two hours under the burning sun watching Pass in Review.

It's the "First of May"...

2010-05-01T08:56:00.001-04:00

...big thanks to Amanda for reminding me!

If you won a million dollars what would you do with it?

2010-04-28T18:41:00.001-04:00

I would do a few things with it...

Fun stuff:
- go on one big shopping at spree at Nordstrom and ignore price tags for just once (Kate Spade, here I come!)
- take a trip with someone I love
- get myself a space in which to build/create a darkroom.

Necessary business:
- pay off my student loans and any other debt I've accrued while in college
- pay off my parents' mortgage or buy them a new house (their choice)
- buy myself a car and give my little brother the one that I currently drive (probably tricked out with a great stereo, though)
- put the rest of the money in the bank until I've decided what I want to do with my life, i.e. where I want to live it and where I'm settling down.

Ask me anything

Part 1: Looking back, 4/16/07

2010-04-22T03:00:00.001-04:00

I've been trying to write this blog for the better part of two weeks and I just couldn't make it happen; I apologize for the delay, especially to those who have so openly shared their experiences about that day with me and whose openness has helped me more than anyone could ever imagine. This will appear in multiple parts, both for length and for the sake of organization.

-------------------------------

I can see the shock between the lines and in my words when I reread what I wrote about what happened here in 2007. From where I sit now, it is so, so painful to read because I remember the girl who wrote it-- she spent five hours in front of her computer, crying, trying desperately to make some sort of sense out of the world she lived in which had been so horrifically, tragically ripped apart. What that girl wrote that day, to me, it feels overwrought. I can see her, tears streaming down her face, so intent on addressing what had happened even though she couldn't say it and couldn't refer to it or the date because she still hadn't found a way to accept it. She sat there grasping at straws, so painfully ill-equipped for the task at hand, grasping at straws to construct a framework upon which she could write down what had happened and try to make sense of it all. As I sit here now, three years later, I can see the shock in my words and even read it between the lines of what I wrote. So, so much has happened since that day in April, since April 16, 2007... that girl, I barely recognize her.

I've never written about my personal experience of April 16, 2007; I've spent three years afraid of recalling the events of that day and putting them in black and white. I told myself that I had refrained for purity's sake-- I didn't want to write down what had happened and end up muddying the details or creating false memories-- but that... that's not it at all. I wanted to forget, to erase it from my mind and try to carry on like it had never happened.

How I thought that I could carry on when that day and the three days preceding it at once feel as if they were yesterday and a lifetime ago, I will never know. I have clung to the phrase, "Silence is so accurate," like a safety blanket, and for the better part of three years I have used it as a way to not talk about that day, about the last few moments of normalcy of my life. Sitting here now, though-- I'm not that girl anymore. So here goes...

The first thing I remember about that day in 2007 is the bleak, grey sky that greeted me when I woke up. I didn't have class until 10:10AM, and I had planned on waking up early to go to ABP (Au Bon Pain) on campus to pick up two iced coffees and two bagels for breakfast with a friend. She had class on the second floor of Norris from 9:05-9:55AM that morning with her next class in McBryde (where my class was) and we had planned on using the fifteen minutes in between for food and whatever gossip that I absolutely, positively needed to know about. I was going to wait for her in the hallway outside of her classroom that morning, breakfast in hand, but I didn't.

When I woke up that morning, I could hear the wind howling around the sides of my apartment building and I could feel the resulting drafts of cold air make their way into my apartment. It was so bleak, so dreary, so bone-chillingly cold that I called off my morning plans at the first sign of snowflakes and decided to stay in bed. I hit the snooze button a few times and finally turned my alarm off-- I'd get out of the house in time for my second class at 12:15, just not my first.

If you've ever heard me describe why grey is one of my favorite colors, or how the beautiful the world looks under a silvery-grey sky, it's because a grey morning's weather saved my life. Were the weather, the one thing that kept me at home in my bed that day different, I would have stumbled out of bed and have been in on the second floor of Norris Hall, smack in the middle of horror, the awful, the everything that happened that morning.

I stayed in bed that morning, safe from harm, warm under my covers, completely unknowing of what had happened less than a mile away from me. I had heard and dismissed the wailing sirens passing my apartment, and I almost ignored the ringing of my phone only to see that my boyfriend's mother was calling me at 10am on Monday morning-- a little peculiar, non? I answered the phone and there she was on the other end, "I heard on the news that there was a shooting at Virginia Tech... you weren't involved, were you? Are you ok?"

I, on the other end of the phone, was all "Um, no... I would have heard about that by now. "

I checked my e-mail and there was nothing. I checked again and again and again... the first e-mail about the first shooting in West Ambler-Johnson eventually hit my Inbox and it didn't seem like a big deal. The second e-mail, the alarming one about a shooter being loose on campus... that one hadn't arrived yet. I don't remember what happened next, I called my family, all of them, Grandma and Ed, Mom, Grandaddy and Granny... and then, because the lines were jammed, I stayed off the phone. I received calls from people I hadn't spoken to in three or four years, since high school, people who were looking to find out if anyone from our high school had been hurt, to find out if I was okay, to check on me and make sure I was safe. I had no idea what was going on at all, and as I had just turned my cable off-- it was way too expensive a luxury to keep around when I was broke and had no roommate with whom to share the cost-- I was glued to my computer for the rest of the day.

I don't remember much of the rest of the day, except for god-awful cry that I let out when the death toll had risen over 20. I was about to take a shower and my computer was on the sink... I heard the number 22... twenty two people, at least, confirmed dead... Norris Hall...

I didn't know my body was capable of emitting the cry, the wail, the keening that came out of it at that moment.

My boyfriend at the time, who in December 2008 would become my fiance, had just started the night shift at work and wasn't yet awake. His mom promised to tell him what had happened, and when he woke up-- she woke him up once the death toll got really high-- he called me immediately and made arrangements to drive down to Blacksburg and "save me" so that I didn't have to be there alone. I was on edge the entire time I waited for him to show up, I had been crying, shellshocked all day, I hadn't eaten a thing, and no matter how hard I tried to fall asleep, I couldn't. When he showed up, I was afraid to leave my apartment, and when I finally stepped outside, I could feel the pain, the despair in the air around me. We went to Macado's for dinner and were glued to the coverage on CNN; he told me about driving down in a convoy of news vehicles and satellite trucks, and I sat there in disbelief. We were in a ghost town.

I asked him to take the long way home from Macado's so that we could take a look at the side of campus closest to my house, the side with the commuter lots. Campus had been closed down, but the Inn, the parking lots... they were full of satellite trucks. I will never forget the haunting, otherworldly image of satellite dishes illuminated by the streetlights in the parking lot, or the flashing blue police lights that pierced the dark sky. I later learned that at the time we drove past campus and saw blue lights emanating from behind McBryde, from near Cowgill Hall (which was next to/behind Norris), the bodies of the dead hadn't yet been removed from the building.

And then we went home, where I spent the night on my laptop, responding to e-mail (responding to my professors who had sent out messages asking if we were safe, unharmed) and on Facebook trying to figure out who had been enrolled in the French class that was in Norris 211 and who had been killed. I was upset that the room where I had decided I wanted to be an art historian was the site of something so awful, so horrible... I remembered the images we had studied in that classroom, the crucifixions and depositions and the images of Madonna and Child from Renaissance Art + Architecture and I was weirdly comforted that those images, holy to perhaps some of those people who died in that place, had been projected onto the walls of that room a year and a half before.

I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning, unable to sleep, reeling from the events of the day that had just passed. Just two days before, I was in the middle of cooking for the French Club's International Week festivities remarking that I never knew who Madame Couture-Nowak was, and that I was sick of not knowing who she was, that I was going to search her out and introduce myself so I could put a name to a face.

Except that day, I had no way of doing just that anymore; that day she died.

Firsts.

2010-04-13T14:51:00.002-04:00

And in the course of minutes, the words "I think I'm falling for you," became "I think I love you", "I think I love you," (when thinking had ceased) became "I love you," and there they were, twenty minutes past the original moment when she, after kissing him, abandoned all reason, leaned into him and barely, softly, almost inaudibly whispered the words "I love you," two weeks and a day after laying eyes on each other for the first time.

Sometimes you just know...

"No one deserves a tragedy."

2010-04-09T02:04:00.003-04:00

[A repost from May 13, 2007, the first day I was able to talk about that day in April. That person I adored-- he's not around anymore, and I'm pretty sure that things are better that way. But the dog who saved me from the deepest depression I ever knew possible? She's here. She has a sister, too. They save me every day.]
-------------------------------

("Untitled", Mark Rothko.)

In art, we talk about an artist being subject to the limitations of his medium. From the moment he picks up a paint brush instead of a camera, mixes pigments to create oil paint instead of tempera, or chooses clay instead of marble to sculpt a figure, the artist is responsible for manipulating his materials to convey his vision or point of view. Sometimes a flaw in the marble or the slip of the paintbrush compromises the artist's original composition, but the manipulations, and therefore possibilities, are endless.

With writing, it's just not so.

Words, as I have recently discovered, are much more limiting than any kind of paint or any choice of marble. When a writer can't find the right ones to express how he feels, he doesn't have the right to rearrange the alphabet and conjure up new ones: instead, he must carefully compromise his feelings to match the rules and regulations of language. If the writer finds a word from a different language that better encapsulates how he feels, he's subject to the limitations of his orignal language's elasticity. Languages, while flexible, are not a "mix-and-match" media. Where in art, there are no rules- with words, rules apply. Silence, according to Rothko, "is so accurate."

Oh, how accurate it is.

Words adequate enough to capture the rise and fall of my emotions have been elusive at best. There is no word precise enough to describe the panic-induced collapse of my chest following the first report of casualties, no sentence construction evocative enough to capture and reproduce the ebb and flow of my emotions, no single idea strong enough to express the horror of finding out a friend jumped from a window to save her own life. I have been silent, but not silenced.

When I was 7 years old, I found a book in a closet written about the assassination of President Kennedy. While I was reading the book, I had no understanding of when the event took place, just that it was very sad, and that the pretty President's wife was wearing a nice pink hat. After I was finished with the book, I couldn't believe that something like this had ever taken place in my country. Upon finishing, I immediately stood up and proudly recited the Pledge of Allegiance as with all of the meaning that my little heart would let me. When I got home, I peppered my Grandma with questions about the assassination: I asked her where she was when she had heard the news, how old she was when it happened, what she was doing when she found out about it, and who she had voted for when he was up for election. In recalling my own flood of questions about Kennedy's assassination, I can't help asking myself how I will explain this to my children. It is said that every generation has its own "where were you when it happened?" event: in my life, this makes two, with the first being September 11th.

So how exactly will I explain this to my children?

At this point, I have years (at least 8) to prepare myself- but if they're anything like me, they will have questions, many questions after they discover that Mommy went to Virginia Tech, and something very bad happened there. Will I tell them how a brave friend jumped out of a window to escape the shooter? Will I tell them how Mommy's friends had classes with the shooter, how Mommy's close friend lived only two floors above him when everything unfolded? Will my words, my memories accurately describe what happened? I haven't figured out the details, but I have kept everything that I could get my hands on to document this for me and for them. If nothing, I can tell them that someone I adore beyond belief came to save me from my deepest fears and from my profund sadness. I can tell them that before they were born, I was thinking about them and the questions they might have. Before they were born, I cared enough about their questions to save everything I could so that they could examine it themselves, so that they could make up their own minds about what happened here.

But what, exactly, did happen here?

Depending on who is asked, the answer varies. Police officers have been gathering and analyzing evidence. Journalists have been pointing cameras at mourning students and poking questions at them for weeks. The Governor of Virginia has created a commission to review the facts of the case, and even closed the loophole that allowed the shooter access to a firearm in the first place. Furthermore, politicians have questioned gun control laws, advocates have proported that violence in video games is to blame, and the gadflies have said that the university's lack of response system was responsible for the deaths in Norris Hall. The only facts that we can agree on are that the shooter was mentally ill, that he killed 32 people, students and professors, and then himself. We know how he obtained his weapons, and through his words, how he perceived the world. To those decrying our system, criticizing our police department and our university president, pointing fingers at gun control laws and championing their video game violence theories- please, shut up. This tragedy is not bourne from politics, censorship, or systematic incompetence. It speaks of mental imbalance.

The key to understanding the "what" and the "why" isn't going to be found in any political agenda: the answer lies in the shooter's inherent mental illness. It is evident that the shooter, perhaps since childhood, suffered from a psychological disorder that skewed his perception of reality, thus driving him to do what he did. If someone is adequately disturbed enough to contrive such a cruel, murderous plan, to break the ultimate rule and commit the ultimate sin, there is little anyone can do to stop him from completing it. Obstacles can be circumvented. Whether they are gun control laws or bans on the possession of firearms in a dorm, if there is will, there is a way; if someone is unsettled enough to plan on killing thirty two other people, it's evident that illegally obtaining a weapon or a shirking firearm ban isn't going to stop him from executing his plans. There is something to be said for the power of determination. The shooter was determined to change the world as he saw it, and to end his suffering. Sadly, killing himself was not sufficient enough to quell his suffering: he took 32 innocent lives, stealing away from us some of the most amazing, innocent, accomplished, dynamic, and promising individuals the world had to offer.

But we are more determined.

A professor by the name of Brian Cloyd lost his daughter, Austin, on that cold April morning. Austin, an international studies major, was known for her interest in the peace process, wanting to one day become a diplomat. When the time came to regroup and contact his students about finishing the semester, he sent them a simple e-mail with their "last assignment" from him. Go home, he told his students, go home and spend time with your families and your loved ones, go and make memories with them. Make memories with them because you never know when they'll be taken from you, and when they're gone, all you will have left of them is those memories. Let this be the most important lesson you take away from my class. Make memories of laughter, so that when your loved ones are taken away, the memory of their laughter interrupts your mourning silence.

Reminiscing is when my silence is most befitting. Every day I remember those I knew, and those I wasn't lucky enough to know. All of their names echo in my mind. I wonder how their parents, their spouses, their families are coping. I think of how easily I could have been any of those students. I think of how my world has changed in those nine minutes. I think of that friend overcoming her fear of heights and jumping to avoid almost certain death. I remember the calm silence of the vigil, the sea of lights around me. I remember loving arms wrapped around me, supporting and protecting me when I needed it most. I see the open and broken windows in my mind's eye. I see the blood stains on the sidewalk with the yellow police tape flickering in the breeze. The silence is only broken when falling tears turn into inconsolable sobs, when I'm alone and that incomprehensibility sets in again.

That silence, when I can hear the tears fall... that silence is so accurate.

This is what happens when...

2010-04-08T20:01:00.000-04:00

... a very near and dear friend calls you to tell you that she did something out of the ordinary. Like, she joined a dating site and she's super shy and doesn't know what to do with this one response she got.

Trust me, this one is for the record books.

He's twice her age with kids. He obviously copy-pasted the message he sent her from a file and dropped in some details of what he read. He lives on the side of a mountain. He's got kids, three of them. HE COULD LEGALLY DRINK BY TODAY'S STANDARDS AROUND THE TIME SHE WAS BORN. Oh, yes, and "Holy axe murderers, Batman!", he lives on the side of a secluded freakin' mountain in the middle of nowhere freaking Virginia.

Rapist much?

So anyway, this, this right here? This is the series of faces I made when she told me the story. Enjoy!

The end.

A short progression...

2010-03-31T03:30:00.000-04:00

"What the fuck?" face...

"Oh my god, I'm going to pee in my pants from laughing!" face. (This face gives thanks to a certain glam woman I know, whose well placed comment about **** punching when a certain someone isn't looking, and then going for Chipotle clearly caused this to be my face for ten minutes!)

"And this is different than any other day, how, exactly?" face.

When I miss people...

2010-03-23T01:33:00.000-04:00

... I typically end up making some kind of food I know they love. Case in point, cheesecake brownies.

Where's the version for what happens when a girl is so, so into a boy?

2010-03-22T23:47:00.000-04:00

"You're way too beautiful ~~girl~~
That's why it'll never work
You'll have me suicidal, suicidal
When you say it's over"

"Hai mom, hao's it going?"

2010-03-22T15:13:00.002-04:00

Yes... yes... yes, OH YES!

2010-03-18T20:07:00.000-04:00

"Great sex means it can go on for hours - and I'm not talking, like, Sting... You take a break. You eat something. You talk, you laugh, you hang out. It's ongoing and it's sexy, and your whole life can be like that," says Dana Delany, adding, "Of course, you end up having a lot of orgasms, which is a bonus."

Just sayin'.

2010-03-18T00:15:00.000-04:00

Test.

Finally, I found it.

2010-03-17T18:15:00.000-04:00

...from "Falling Free" by David Gray.

"...smell that mountain heaven
I don't remember ever
feeling like this before
mercy me, I'm falling free
since you opened up the door..."

Beach Week(end) with Bestie!

2010-03-16T20:10:00.001-04:00

This sure ain't "Fallin' Down the Mountainside"...

2010-03-11T22:55:00.003-05:00

... except for the what, four, five times I fell on my ass? I rarely ever think this of myself, but this action shot? I hope that this is how you see me through your eyes. Always.

Things about which I am very, very happy...

2010-03-07T03:24:00.000-05:00

1) All of the things I was working out for myself a few posts down, the wondering if I'd be capable of being with someone ever again... I'm nowhere near finding out if love could ever reenter the equation, but I have come to the realization that I really have nothing to lose by trying. No one will ever be able to hurt me again in the ways I've been hurt in the past year, and 24 is way too young to give up on anything in life, except for perhaps people who bring out nothing but my absolute worst.

2) The snow, it is melting. The snowdrops that carpet my front yard are starting to peek out of the ground. Slowly but surely, Spring appears to be coming, and how much more beautiful she will be after having been buried under snow for six weeks.

3) My original iPod, Boogie, passed away about a week ago (God rest his hard drive), but a very beautiful, wonderful, awesome, amazing girl sent me a brand new iPod Nano to replace Boogie. Haven't named the little one yet, but am thinking Boogiesaurus Rex.

4) As of Tuesday, I will have had Bella Mimi Irwin (formerly Irwin-Owens) for an entire year. Even though I still get upset when she has seizures, I can't stand that she won't take to potty training, and even though she has eaten multiple Kate Spade shoes, expensive lace bras and has a LOVE for anything Italian, leather, expensive, or all three, loving her and teaching her about love, and seeing her and Avery together and loving one another has been one of most rewarding experiences of my life, and at times, the only thing I've felt I have had to live for. Little dog, I love you so much, I wish you could talk for one day and understand me so that I could tell you all about it.

5) Jezebel. I has a star. I feel unworthy.

6) Netflix's streaming capabilities, I love thee. I will have watched every royalty based, historical movie that has ever existed after the next month is over and that is COMPLETELY okay.

7) Clarity. Whatever fog, whatever haze in which I've been living-- it has finally broken. I know this because every day since Boxing Day, I've listened to David Gray in some form, and every day since January 12th, I've listened exclusively to his music and nothing else, with his newest album being the most frequently repeated. That being said, my next blog will be a list of lines from Gray's songs that I know will be in my mind and in frequent use in the next few weeks.

Something else to aspire to...

2010-02-28T01:17:00.002-05:00

from The Young Victoria.

"You are my whole existence, and I will love you until my last breath."
- Prince Albert to Queen Victoria.

Something to aspire to...

2010-02-27T14:12:00.000-05:00

"And I know there's a light
at the end of the tunnel
'cause I taste it on your lips."

-- David Gray, "Mystery of Love"

A Photo Project

2010-02-23T02:22:00.000-05:00

Everyday for the next week, I will post a few pictures that I love from the weeks we we've been trapped under the snow, and maybe even a little David Gray love to go with it.

It's that time again, time for me to critique AWFUL relationship advice!

2010-02-16T04:06:00.001-05:00

I had planned on doing this Valentine's Day, but I'll admit, I spent the better part of the day in tears due to an awful, horrible, beautiful if it would have come true when I woke up dream. Alas, I didn't want to seem bitter and I literally couldn't see through the tears. This installment of taking down dating advice-- this time it's from The Frisky and it's entitled "9 Reasons it is Better to get Dumped," and Oooooooooooooohhh, will we see about that.

(As usual, my comments are in purple...)

A couple months ago, it was ‘tis the season to be jolly. But now, with Valentine’s Daylooming, it’s more like ‘tis the season to get dumped. Couples are breaking up left and right. January is the #1 month for filing for divorce, and then in February, we all get attacked by heart-shaped candy boxes. Sure, the seductive holiday marketing might make you feel like being recently single is a double burn. But being alone on V-Day is better than being with someone who doesn’t think you’re as awesome as you are. (What happens if you find out that you're not as awesome as you thought you were, huh? Way to feed the egotistical witch crowd...) And let me tell you, hot stuff, getting dumped is truly a win-win situation. (Let me tell you, lady, it isn't always win-win, especially when it can involve the love of your life. )Sure, most people think the dumper has it easy, but they’ve got it all wrong! In actuality the dumper has to be the bad guy, because they can’t admit to feeling sad since it’s their fault and they have to agonize over their decision, plan it out, and bear the brunt of the guilt. (Um... the person doing the dumping? It isn't always his fault. Or her fault. Some people have to look out for themselves because the behavior of others? Well... it has no problem dragging them through hell. I will half-concede this point, as it is hard to break off a relationship, but the agonizing? Bearing guilt? Oh we admit we're sad. Someone's being delusional!) Yikes! As if those weren’t enough, here are nine more reasons it’s better to be the dumpee.

Speechless: You don’t have to explain yourself. They have to do all the talking about their feelings. You can opt to look at them like they’re flattering themselves. This denotes that the dumpee has no feelings in the matter at all. There are breakups worth fighting-- and when you can't get closure, you can't fight it, you have no ground upon which to lay down your side...well... guess what? It doesn't get easier.
No More Mr. Nice Guy: You have every right to get mad, sad, and bitch-tastic. Heck, you can even walk out on the check! You know, being mad does make it easier to get through a breakup, but that's a temporary fix, until things have to be returned and friends pick one side or another. Then the loss sets in and no one wants to be around a bitchy, whiny, moany person.
Free Schwag: Your ex may have left a bad taste in your mouth, but your friends will buy you drinks, chocolate, and ice cream to cheer you up. I concede this point, but on the condition that having someone invite you out for a free drink is better than turning into bitch/bastardzilla and expecting people to buy you things because you just had a breakup.
No Settling: You’re finally free to find someone who will actually appreciate you, rather than being stuck in a one-sided relationship. This happens on both sides, so it doesn't denote being better. No win.
No Doubt: You know exactly how they feel about you and where you stand, perhaps for the first time in the relationship. And do you really want to keep wasting your time on something that isn’t working? I posit that sometimes, even though things aren't working, there is no such thing as wasting one's time if you truly love someone.
Retail Therapy: Especially now that you don’t have to buy your ex a V-day gift, you can buy yourself something pretty, guilt-free! You earned a shopping spree to take your mind off things. While you’re at the mall, pick up some sexy panties for your hot rebound! Yes, yes, let's start a shopping addiction in the same place where a boyfriend used to be... beautiful idea! /sarcasm.
Support Group: You get the sympathy. So, testify! And for the record, Ben & Jerry will always be there for you in your time of need. Ben and Jerry also make your ass huge, especially in large quantities, and the aforementioned 'rebound'? Also, while sympathy is nice-- in the case of one specific ex I know, sympathy gives you room to make up egregious lies on the part of the other party and that's just not nice. Breaking up is one thing, lying through your teeth to come out a hero? Yup, hope that therapy's working for you, bud.
Bounce Back: You get to have carefree, wild nights out on the town. If you never had dated someone, you wouldn’t have the motivation to really let loose. This is true on both sides, not just on the side of the dumpee. Wasn't this article supposed to be about why it is better to be the dumpee than the dumper? Yeah. No point.
Second Helping: There’s a good chance you’ll get to enjoy watching them crawl back to you, eventually. They always come back for more, don’t they? And then you’ll finally get to reject them—and that’s twice as sweet. This happens on both sides, so it doesn't play better to your original point, dear writer, that it's BETTER to be dumped than be the dumper. I'd know that this happens on both sides, by the way, because I've been the dumpee and appealed to the dumper to rethink the decision. In one loving case-- I had an amazing point-- I won. And we had a whole year of absolute bliss together. And then we didn't anymore, but we're still friends four years later and I love him dearly. If we end up getting married, which we probably never will, but I say this for shits and giggles-- I'm telling everyone that story. Grimy details included.

Final score: 2 out of 10. Better luck next time.

Untitled.

2010-02-14T05:37:00.001-05:00

[First and Last (I cried when these roses hit the floor), 2009.]

"Gathering Dust"
(by David Gray, from A Century Ends)

I got no reason
But that I must
Maybe I feel
Like I've been gatherin' dust
I must leave this harbour for the sea
I'm too young to settle down and make a home
But I don't know where I'm wanting to be
I just know I have to be there alone

Stole my time, all my time
Stole my time for you

Pale winter sun
Is beatin' the ground
Why'm I throwin' away
The best thing that I've found
My young heart's in tatters and I'm sure
That it will be a long time healing
It's so hard to see what I'm doing this for
When loneliness is all that I'm feeling

Stole my time, all my time
Spend my time, for you

Now the wind it is blowing
Blowing leaves from the trees
I've got no use knowing
That with time it'll ease
I don't know where I'm going
Hope I get there soon
Cos my soul is hollow
As the sorrowful moon
Na na na na...

The night is raining on my weary head
Taking me back

See the sun spread its wings of gold
As the dawn unfurls
Hear the song that the moon sings
To the darkened world
Feel the fire lighting
In the bitter cold
It's like the light that shines
Through the windows of your soul

"Betty Ford, oh won't you be my valentine?"

2010-02-14T01:30:00.000-05:00

I'm gonna be cuddled with this for the better part of 2/14/10. The rest of my life can recommence tomorrow.

"If only for a moment I can see it twinkling in your eye..."

2010-02-11T03:20:00.001-05:00

I know that I'm over here busting ass on logical fallacies, and laughing my ass off at the way that my professor says fallacious, and that all of the logic that I'm reviewing and imparting in my head says otherwise, but I can't help but sit here and focus on where everything-- and I mean everything-- went wrong. Your little dog is snoring louder than your big dog.

(Fear that I'll spend the rest of my life...: 2, Me: 0)

I should probably mention that this is a long one...

2010-02-10T04:39:00.000-05:00

"I suppose it's no secret that the one remaining love in my life is David Gray; I had a devastating mental breakdown that contributed to the ruination of the first true, grownup love I had, and I was so stupidly dishonest about it that I deserve exactly what happened to me. I stupidly thought I had more love lined up, but it's pretty common knowledge how that ended up. While I feel that the last year of my life, more than any other, has been characterized by loss-- loss of family, loss of friends, loss of the love of my life, loss of my sense of self, in many ways, especially given the way that things (as of late) have played out, I couldn't be happier to be precisely where I am right this moment, back in Blacksburg and absolutely... well, maybe relatively, alone.

It's not really a problem that I'm alone, and I'm not really alone-- I just have limited contact with and limited ability to meet new people. I have friends dotted around town, and I need to do a better job of getting out with them. Two of my uber-difficult classes are online, so I don't get to meet many people there, either. I do have the dogs, who are probably my best friends and greatest companions on this planet-- but I'll never meet people at the dog park with the way that this snow is piling up. With many of my friends having graduated and the varying schedules of my roommates, my first contact with another human being doesn't normally happen until I either show up in class in the afternoon or until I call my Grandmamommy while getting ready for class. I won't lie, I do have days where I call my parents 5-10 times just wanting to talk about the most mundane of things, but I know that they're more than happy to let me blather on and make whatever "We're listening, we promise," noises they need to. That being said, I may even be guilty of reguarly calling relatives with whom I rarely speak. If nothing else, my first/last of semesters will do wonders for my familial relations.

Oh, and did I mention Jezebel? Good lord, Jezzies, how you've saved me.

All of that being said, the thing that I enjoy the most about this big old house, this cold, snowy weather, and this rather sequestered semester is that I have more time than ever to think, to reflect. Above almost anything else in the world, I am a thinker and an observer. I may not be a great at thinking compared to the Erwin Panofsky or Plato or Claude Lévi-Strauss, but I ruminate about everything, from the most minute of tasks to the most complex of concepts (why hello there, anthropology!) that could possibly be hammered into my brain. I get to think, think about everything I want to, to confront thoughts I'd rather forget, to accept mistakes I've made, to plan my next moves and my future, to protect myself from another mental breakdown (oh that is SO never happening to me again), and most of all, I get to choose, choose what direction my life will go in from this point on. While there are many things that are completely out of my control in terms of my future, I'm pretty happy to have some semblance of control of what is perhaps most important to me, my heart.

And... cue David Gray.

It is no secret that his album, Draw the Line, has been on repeat for weeks, that it has had little interruption from other artists. It's a really primal feeling, something between a need and a yearning that I feel from the stirry-place in my chest that makes it so I just can't and don't want to listen to anything else. I've fallen in love with a song here and there, incessantly replaying it until it leaves my system, only to gravitate towards another and repeat the process. If they have done anything correct, my head and my heart and my ears and my soul have all fixated on this album during what has proven to be a crucial time in my life. I don't think it's an accident that I experience every song and every lyric in a new way upon each listen, that so much of this album has to do with leaving things behind, with moving ahead, with change. It cannot be an accident that this album has so much to do with the heartbreak, loss, despair, hope, stubborness, and yet still be able to save something for love, that thing with which I have so many problems.

That's where this comes in.

I've been trying to figure out so many things.. will I spend the rest of my life missing and loving that first love? Can I do it again, can I love another person on this planet and open up every part of myself to another human being? Can I share my deepest losses, my lowest of all points, my darkest of days with another person? Does someone exist who can handle all of my light and my dark? Do I have it in me to build a future with someone else? Can I survive more heartbreak and loss if they come my way? Do I have anything left inside of me, any hope left in any of the cells of my body that I can love someone else?

I don't know about much of that right now, and I think that's okay. It's early dawn and there's just enough light, just enough hope for me to make out the rest of world around me. There's promise, but everything's so damned unclear. I feel like I've spent the past six months of my life in the absolute dark, and while I don't have many answers to anything anymore, I do have one thing I hold dear, a mental image of myself, or at least who I hope to in the future, wearing that white gown, my bouquet of peonies dangling from a ribbon on my wrist, my heart beating a million miles a minute. We're in the middle of a dance floor, I'm finally wearing those shoes I've been saving for forever, and I can hear it, this song floating around me and whoever he may be... my eyes full of tears, the crisp, soft feeling of his white shirt, and my mind goes over those lyrics,

"just you keep it coming
this feeling I ain't never felt before
the way my heart is drumming
well caution just goes flying right out the door
and ain't this really something
we're walking but our feet don't touch the floor
anymore."

I don't know much, darling, I don't know when I'll meet you or if I already have, but can we always have rhododendrons for or in front of our house to mark the day that this, that my Transformation is complete?

It is possible that there are five kinds of soup in my freezer, yes...

2010-02-10T02:08:00.000-05:00

... and they're all homemade, too, but I hate the carrot + parsnip soup. Wanna eat it for me? Thanks!

(L-R: Potage Crecy, Chicken-Orzo, French Onion, Carrot + Parsnip, Potato and Leek)

My Signature Cocktail

2010-02-09T01:15:00.002-05:00

I'm going to be honest, I am a horrible, horrible drinker and because I don't like the taste of alcohol, I don't know much about cocktails. I freak at bars and order a mojito, a hefeweizen, or a Blue Moon if they have nothing else, and as much as I'd like to work my way through the Mad Men cocktail list, I'm afraid of having tons of practically full bottles of alcohol on the shelf, languishing because I have no clue what to do with them. At least now I know, thanks to my most successful concoction, that there will never be a practically full bottle of Godiva Liqueur or Vodka on my shelf at all-- at least as long there's milk in the house.

I thought of a friend, recently, who was such a huge fan of the White Russian, but I could never get myself to like the taste of Kahlua. I thought of my Grandmamommy, who instead of drinking chocolate milk drinks Godiva liqueur with milk. Then I thought of the half-used carton of heavy cream in the fridge, the way vodka blends into the taste of mixed drinks, and the fact that my skim milk was going out of date rather soon... It's interesting that I come up with nummy things when I miss people... hmmmm...

That lead me to the best tasting damned drink I've ever made, the Chocolate Russian.

6 oz skim milk
2 shots vodka
2 shots Godiva
2 oz heavy cream (this is optional, but I like the depth it adds)
One tall glass
4-6 ice cubes
As much Hershey's syrup as you want to taste!

Pour everything in the glass, use a spoon to blend the Hershey's syrup, and presto, c'est fini!

I'm going to experiment with dusting cocoa powder on top, and I have added a shot of whipped cream when I didn't use heavy cream and that was so-so, but I'm pretty sure this recipe is here to stay.

Don't forget the ice cubes though-- oh do they make the drink!

EDIT: Holy shit, does Van Gogh Chocolate Vodka make it amazing!!!!

I couldn't have said it better.

2010-02-08T02:39:00.002-05:00

"But for now, I miss the children I’ll never give birth to as intensely as I miss the characters in a book after the last page is turned. I love them dearly, and yet they never existed." - Allison Amend

Dear Williams-Sonoma, Thanks for the nummy Caramelized Onion Tart!

2010-01-31T02:13:00.004-05:00

I planned on writing a blog about this explosion in my mouth-- tartgasm '10, as I think I'm going to call it-- but here's the early edition as offered by me, albeit rushed to the press by Jezebel request:

Ingredients:

Technique/more ingredients:

Directions:

I'm a 'poor' college student, so I don't have have half of those fancy things above at my disposal in order to make a tart. I have no food processor, so I used one of the awesome attachments from my new Oster hand blender. I have been drooling at a tart pan from Williams-Sonoma for months, but I definitely can't afford to drop $60 on it, so I cheated and used a springform pan (woohoo, removable bottom) to cook the shell. When my crust bubbled up a bit much, I may have sat a ramekin on the air bubble in order to force it to subside. I didn't have the fancier things, but I've been wanting to make this recipe for years so I did buy a $6 block of Gruyère/Comté from the local co-op that imports butter and cheese from all over the world. I accidentally broke the side lip off the tart when I popped the pan, so there's not much of a lip against which the filling rests, but regardless this thing is probably my favorite thing I've cooked this year. That means lot given the fact that I've got five from-scratch soups in my fridge/freezer.

Here's where I started--- onions, oh onions, you made me cry. Forgive the countertops, they're what you get when you live in a 94 year old house that hasn't seen remodeling since the 1960s/1970s.

The whole caramelization process took a little longer than expected, and I didn't exactly have a deep saute pan or skillet, so I made do with my Wal-Mart T-fal, as left by the ex-fiance, and loved every moment. Said pan makes for awesomely huge crepes.

Also-- I used a blender to make the dough, and that whole cooking it twice thing was almost really complicated. Be careful that the butter makes it into small pieces... I had to knead mine to break up some larger globs of butter, but the crust still turned out to be AMAZING.

Best of luck if you make it! Hope it's nummy!

In which I review girl-blaming, common-sensical dating advice (No. 1)

2010-01-29T02:25:00.001-05:00

(As found on Yahoo!: Dating Tips: 10 Signs He's Not the One ; my comments in purple. )

Some people say they "just knew" that they were dating their future spouse. But what about the rest of us? What happens when you're not sure if he's The One? If you're considering long-term commitment or marriage, it's time to ask yourself some tough questions. Below, 10 signs that may indicate he's not for you. There are more than ten things that one must evaluate when choosing a mate. Even stupid-in-love people like me know this.

1. You have a list of things he needs to stop doing/saying/wearing if he wants your relationship to work. If you're fixating on his flaws, he's either not the one you want or you're not ready for a serious relationship. Cutting him loose allows you time to grow and gives you the opportunity to meet a guy whose flaws you can embrace -- or at least accept.

I will say immediately that I don't like how quickly this article has turned into girl-blaming for "fixating on his flaws." I am a firm believer in not dating a guy to change him-- if you need to change everything about a person, why be with them?-- but there are times when it is necessary for a woman to put a little finish on her partner. Realizing that you hate the way he talks/acts/dresses can be indicative of something more serious than being intolerant of someone's flaws, like a lack of maturity in one's partner or complete unexpected incompatibility. Quit the girl blaming!

2. You don't trust him. A small dose of jealousy can be healthy, but if you're hacking into his email account, and going berserk when he goes out without you, something's wrong. If there's something about him that truly warrants your distrust, then perhaps he's not the right one for you.

More girl-blaming? What is this ridiculousness about hacking into e-mail accounts? I agree with the second part of this explanation, because situations of distrust that don't involve exes or other girls can arise, but wow, this comes outta nowhere.

3. You avoid conflict at any cost. Fighting is healthy. And, when done right (in the non-accusatory, rational sort of way), it can be a great way to air grievances, fix problems in your relationship, and come to a deeper understanding of each other. Ignoring problems is not the same as having no problems at all... even if it looks that way.

While fighting can be healthy, it can also be hurtful. I think what is more dangerous than avoiding conflict is holding back one's true feelings and using compromise as a short-cut or preventative method to avoid or end an argument. Some see this as relationship preservation, I call it bottling shit up so that the crazy can be uncorked at a much later date.

4. When you're sad, you don't turn to him for comfort.When you're a giant ball of tears and snot, do you lock yourself into the bathroom so he can't see you at your worst? If you're worried about scaring him away, one of you isn't ready for total commitment. Mr. Right should make you smile through your tears and be a calming, not stressful, presence.

The flip-side to this is not turning to your partner because he just doesn't even attempt to help or console you, or even worse, he doesn't care. While those things in their own right denote someone who you shouldn't settle for, why must going to someone else be about how a girl looks when she's crying? Or being worried about 'scaring him away'? While Mr. Right, in a unicorn and glitter spangled universe would make you smile through tears, sometimes it's better for him to have his arm around you and tissues at the ready.

5. One of you is struggling with an addiction. He's sweet. He's exciting. He loves you very much. But he loves his alcohol habit or his weekly gambling fix more. Don't fool yourself into thinking that you can change him or that your relationship will be strong enough to withstand the heartache that addiction will inevitably bring. An addict may be able to change, but he'll do so on his own terms.

I absolutely support this.

6. You can't really imagine him as the father of your children. Ask yourself: Would he make a great parent? Is he financially responsible? Would he be an equal partner in your future together? If you have doubts, he's probably not the one.

Should this not be common sense?

7. Your long-term, non-negotiable goals in life are incompatible. You want kids; he doesn't. You go to church every week; he's an atheist. He lives in the country and doesn't want to move; you can't imagine ever leaving the city. Superficial differences can be overcome, but differences in basic values are harder to smooth over. Ask yourself: "Would I be willing to compromise on this?" If the answer is absolutely not, you may not be right for each other.

... this is also common, common sense. Who is the intended audience for this advice, exactly?

8. You don't respect each other. He puts you down in front of your friends and complains about you to his parents. You roll your eyes when he talks because there's just something about him that embarrasses you. A relationship without respect can't sustain itself.

I think that this needs some editing. While rolling one's eyes is sometimes appropriate, if you can't respect him, if you put him down in front of your friends and complain about him to your parents, don't settle down. Because when children come, and they see your lack of respect for their father, well... they won't respect him either. And that is an awful, awful example to set for little ones.

9. You're not attracted to him. Physical intimacy is a hugely important component of a romantic relationship. If he doesn't do it for you, he's probably not your best long-term match.

I think that depending on how long you're with someone, attraction can wax and wane. After being together for a long time, some couples have to work at intimacy, and that's alright. But not wanting to work on it, or perhaps not being able to tackle an issue of hygiene, well... that's more indicative of a serious, don't-settle-down problem.

10. On paper he seems great, but you have this strange feeling... Don't ignore your gut. You may get along on a superficial level, but if your instincts are telling you he's not the one for you, listen. That little voice inside your head does not lie.

If you're with someone because they're good-on-paper... really? This isn't Sex and the City, why quote an episode about being "good on paper" to the exact word? Sure, if this is why you're dating him, you're clearly with him for the WRONG REASONS... but if you're an advice columnist writing this, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel and you need to go find a new calling as a writer. Let me guess, your next article will be "He's Just Not That Into You", right?!

------------------

Rating: 4 out of 10 stars, with 1 being awful and 10 being perfectly wonderful.

Let's call this "Next Year's Love"...

2010-01-29T01:37:00.002-05:00

... because really, let's not shit ourselves, there's no way I can handle anymore love until 2011. *

* I have dreamed of, since I was a little girl, having these lines come true. They almost did once.
" And won't you kiss me
On that midnight street
Sweep me off my feet
Singing ain't this life so sweet"
I will hope until the day I cease to exist that they do again.
I

Dear Dictionary,

2010-01-26T17:10:00.002-05:00

This is what happens when you've had enough.

single |ˈsi ng gəl|adjective1 [ attrib. ] only one; not one of several : a single red rose | the kingdom was ruled over by a single family.• regarded separately or as distinct from each other or others in a group: she wrote down every single word | it’s our single most popular beach.• [with negative ] even one (used for emphasis) : they didn't receive a single reply.• designed or suitable for one person : a single bed.• archaic not accompanied or supported by others; alone.2 unmarried or not involved in a stable sexual relationship : a single mother.3 [ attrib. ] consisting of one part : the studio was a single large room.• Brit. (of a ticket) not valid for the return trip; one-way.• (of a flower) having only one whorl of petals.• denoting an alcoholic drink that consists of one measure of liquor : a single whiskey.4 archaic free from duplicity or deceit; ingenuous : a pure and single heart.

Potage Crécy, otherwise known as "Bwear Soup"

2010-01-21T18:28:00.001-05:00

I haven't made this recipe in about 3+ years-- there's a good reason, I swear!-- but ever since I've decided to radically change the way I eat (i.e. recommence cooking instead of relying on big university's meal plan system), I've been craving this soup. My recipe is straight from Williams Sonoma's French, perhaps one of my favorite cookbooks ever, because the brilliant writers and editors of said cookbook have wonderful tips and glossaries of techniques that would be otherwise unknown to me, she who lacks the knowledge culinary school.

This is the recipe, as photographed from the book--- it is pretty obvious that I used to cook this rather frequently*, or perhaps with the wrong utensils.

And here is one of the nifty sidebars of information about how to clean leeks, one of my favorite veggies.

I will admit that I've been an idiot in making this soup before, most notably by ignoring my common sense and refusing to purchase an immersion blender to help in the blending/pureeing process. I'll spare the boiling-hot, ouch I burned myself with 200+ degree carrots + onions + leeks, and "Oh, shit.... I just got pureed soup on my boyfriend's ceiling... Happy, er, Anniversary?" details, and just say that you WANT an immersion blender for soups of this kind, instead of risking hand and limb to hold the lid on a blender full of burning hot ingredients. And trying to clean them off the ceiling later. Just sayin'.

In case the recipe isn't legible by photograph, here is the adapted version (i.e. the version I ended up making, as I changed some quantities to suit my tastes). Enjoy!
---------------------

Potage Crécy, adapted from French by Williams-Sonoma

4 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tbsp olive oil
2 leeks, including tender green parts, rinsed and thinly sliced
6-8 carrots, or about 1 1/2lbs total weight, diced
2 large or 3-4 small Russet potatoes, or about 1 1/2 lbs total weight, peeled and diced
5 cups chicken stock
2 1/2 tsp finely chopped fresh thyme or 1 1/4 dried
2 cups half-and-half cream
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

Salt and freshly ground white pepper
1 tbsp fresh thyme for garnish.

In large soup pot over medium heat, melt butter + olive oil. Add leeks and saute, stirring occasionally, until softened (for me) 5-7 mins. Next, add carrots and potatoes and sauté until they just begin to soften, about (for me) 7-10 mins.

Pour stock and bring to a simmer. Add the thyme, cover and simmer until the carrots and potatoes are tender, about 25 mins.

In a blender/food processor, purée soup in batches. If you use an immersion blender, just follow the directions until soup mixture is aptly puréed. Once finished, add half-and-half, lemon juice, nutmeg and salt and white pepper to taste and bring to a simmer once again. Taste and adjust as necessary.

Ladle the soup into warm bowls and garnish with thyme leaves*. Serve at once-- this makes 6 servings.
-----------------------

* Be particularly careful to avoid the woody part of the thyme stems if you use fresh thyme. I love fresh thyme so very much, but I only include the top 2/3 of the stem anytime I chop it to include in a recipe.

-----------------------

My final recipe in the pot:

And here's the final, final product that I finished with a glass of wholly inappropriately paired (as I know NOTHING about pairing wines) Am Rhein Traminer wine, made in good ol' Virginia.

For full disclosure, I'm going to try to freeze the rest for later eating pleasure.

IMG_1766

2010-01-17T01:27:00.001-05:00

IMG_1766
Originally uploaded by jessysaurusrex

Mellybean.

An album review, an "I love you."

2010-01-13T01:54:00.000-05:00

It strikes me as ironic that I've been talking about drawing lines, and yet I missed in September David Gray's newest album, "Draw the Line." There are few artists with whom I have such a love affair-- I've had a thing for David Gray's music since I was 10 years old-- and in many ways, I feel that his work as an artist has grown at the same pace and in the same wayas my life and its experiences. It is scary yet enthralling to listen to the new album, to listen as art and life and life and art all imitate each other in such a melodic manner.

I'm a lyric girl at heart because I love words before melody, much in the way a 14th century like a Venetian or Netherlandish painter loved color before line. That being said, I can't listen to a new David Gray album for the first time without lyrics in hand. Even though I'm on my first listen-through of the album, I predict that this song, "Nemesis", will be THE ONE from this album.

Nemesis by David Gray

Neath an avalanche
soft as moss
I am a creeping and intangible sense of loss
I’m the memory you can’t get out your head
but if I leave you now
you’ll wish you were somewhere else instead
I’m the manta ray
I’m the louse
I am the photograph
They found in your burned out house
I am the sound of money washing down the drain
I am the pack of lies
Baby that keeps you sane

Gates of heaven are open wide
God help me baby I’m trapped inside
Feels like I’m buried alive
I’m the bottom line
Of the joke
I am ecstasy
Spilling like bright egg-yolk
I’m the thoughts you’re too ashamed to ever share
And I am the smell of it
You’re trying to wash out of your hair

Gates of heaven are open wide
God help me baby I’m lost inside
Feels like I’m buried alive
Possibilities limitless
Just give me something that’s more than this
One shot and I’ll never miss
Yes

I’m the babe that sleeps
Through the Blitz
I am a sudden and quite unexpected twist
I am your one true love
Who sleeps with someone else
I am your nemesis
Baby I’m life sweet life itself

---------

I'll post the video later, I'm a little busy crying all over myself like a girl.

Things I want to/should have said, #1, 2, 3, 4, 5,...1000

2010-01-11T03:03:00.001-05:00

"I love you and I'm sorry that I made a royal mess out of my life and of yours. It's okay if it's too late to fix or to salvage anything-- I had the depression, I had the issues and I never came clean about any of them. I know that it's too late, but I have no problem spending the rest of my life in love with you, even if you can't ever feel that way about me again. I miss you, I miss everyone, and if there were anything I could do to get my life back, I'd do it. I'm out of the haze and I'm never going back there again."

Regrets win every time.

"Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace."

2010-01-10T12:03:00.002-05:00

And I'm drawing it right here, right now. Things will never be the same again.

Love: A New Definition.

2009-12-28T03:31:00.000-05:00

I'm a recent convert to Doctor Who, and while there's a whole backstory, I'll make this simple-- Rose and the Doctor are forbidden by the laws of the stable universe to be together. The universe loses stability, they're reunited after thinking they'd never, ever see one another again... and this.

I could be wrong, but I'm not going to settle for anything less than this.

I was thinking about Vermeer, not long ago, and this happened.

2009-12-11T03:22:00.000-05:00

Is my tutu big enough for you?

2009-11-01T21:13:00.001-05:00

IMG_1138
Originally uploaded by jessysaurusrex

If only little Mella had made it into this shot.

Cuddlebups, anyone?

2009-10-07T22:08:00.002-04:00

The buppits, the buppits, the buppits!

2009-09-30T23:54:00.000-04:00

I did some playing with the camera to get a really saturated color on little Bella's head and ears. I cannot explain how hard it is to get both of them in the viewfinder at the same time. Sillies.

"I think this has something to do with art.. " #7,898

2009-09-27T19:18:00.001-04:00

"Untitled", 2009.

Pop goes the... weasel?

2009-09-24T22:30:00.003-04:00

I woke up this morning with my ass on the ground. There goes the airbed... stay tuned.

I think this might have something to do with art-- classroom industrialism version.

2009-09-23T23:28:00.002-04:00

"I think this has something to do with art... " #7,897

2009-09-20T22:10:00.007-04:00

"Can I call you Adonis? You're awfully headstrong..."

I realized... (#1)

2009-09-20T21:04:00.002-04:00

... that I love my football seats not because of the extra room that I get since I'm on the end of the aisle next to the stairs, but because the design of the North End Zone makes it feel like I'm in a snowglobe, and to my right are all of the landmarks of Blacksburg, the smokestack at the power plant, my first dorm, the place where I had my first college kiss, the basketball coliseum where I cheered so loudly and adamantly for the Hokies, the jumbo-screen where I watch the image of the former President of the US express his condolences for our very, very large loss on that terrible day, the tower (Slusher) that started it all, the town where I fell in and out of love , the parking lot where I got my first ticket, the general vicinity in which my beagles grew up, and the beautiful, beautiful blue mountains that are the most appropriate proscenium for where it all took place. Blacksburg, we've got a date for most of the rest of football season, I can't think of a better way to say goodbye to the last 9 semesters of my life.

I love technology...

2009-09-18T13:39:00.002-04:00

... when it means that I have had an advanced copy of an album that doesn't come out for another four days, for, oh, a month. And we won't get into how amazing Brand New is or why they're making their way onto the 9/25/10 playlist. Just saying.

Growing up, bitch style.

2009-09-17T13:53:00.003-04:00

... you know who you are. You've done enough, with the comments on Facebook and the trashing you're doing to people I'll never know or see again. But my blog? Come on. Leave another comment and I'll show you what nuclear winter is and how much fun it can be to try to survive.

My Fall Must-Haves, Installment #1

2009-09-15T17:41:00.003-04:00

These Nina Dinoff .5" Orechiette Earrings are absolutely amazing for everyday wear. I have had problems with my earlobes since I used to wear pretty heavy earrings, and these feather-light silver discs are the perfect size and texture to add a point of light to anything I wear.

I'm not one to typically match my earrings to my necklace, but I received this Nina Dinoff Orechiette Pendant as a gift/prize for being Nina's 400th customer on Etsy and I have worn it almost daily with the earrings, or layered with other necklaces, albiet as seen here with pearls, chains, or even pendants on silk cord. I'm in love with it and I can't wait for my next Nina purchase!

Even though I'm not a fan of Rainbow sandals-- yes, I actually think they're too expensive-- I received these in Grey as a gift and I've worn them quite frequently since I got them in August. I particularly enjoy the color, as it's my ultimate must-have color of the season.

This ring was a lucky find for the person who gifted it to me. After falling in love with the texture of Nina's earrings and pendant, this brushed silver ring with whatever the stones are is a beautiful, quirky, dynamic ring that I love wearing.

Peace, quiet, and candles. This is a must-have given the hectic nature of this fall.

A sense of humor and a keen eye. I found this charming bit of fan-mail at the Five Guys Burgers and Fries in Blacksburg. Hilarious, no? Given that it's my last semester in Blacksburg, I've got to make sure there's a camera at hand so that I miss nothing.

A Twittering Sunset

2009-09-09T20:05:00.004-04:00

It just so happens that this picture that I took last night, mid-ice-cream run, was Twitpic'd by me an hour later, and was picked up Twitter and broadcast on the 10 and 11pm news on channel 7. I started keeping a camera on me at all times in case I caught something beautiful that needed to be captured and saved for later; I didn't see my work up on the news, but at the same time, I don't feel like it was my work. It just so happened that I was in the right place at the correctly appointed time-- Mother Nature did the rest.

She sells seashells, a small project of sorts.

2009-09-08T20:25:00.006-04:00

While I was home from the end of July to the beginning of what now is my last undergrad semester, I went to the beach multiple times with my parents and friends. Given that has been years-- literally-- since I have willingly jumped into the ocean, and the weather was exceptionally fine (Who wouldn't love 84 degree weather on the beach?), I spent quite a bit of time digging for shells with my Grandma(Mom). What struck me the most about this beachcombing was the fragility, the thinness, and the sparse distribution of shells on the beach at Sandbridge, especially down at Little Island, a park that is located next to Back Bay Wildlife Refuge.

During our beachcombing sessions, when Grandma(Mom) would beg me to dig up such and such seashell or wade into the freezing cold water to snatch a precious colorful fragment of shell, I was brainstorming of ways by which I could remember the awesome days we had at the beach. It is no secret that I am an object person, I attach meaning and significance to objects rather than photographs, that I prefer relying on memories than camera pixels and photographs. I'm not really a huge fan of having framed snapshots of family members, all over the house. Don't get me wrong, I love photography and I'll put good pictures everywhere-- but some snapshots age way too fast and I do tend to run out of wallspace. When I was thinking about how I would make some sort of souvenir for our beach days, therefore, I had three criteria: one, that the souvenir couldn't come from a snapshot, two, that the souvenir had to be made from things that were found that day, and three, that the souvenir wouldn't, against much protestation, involve hot gluing seashells to some god-awful inane, inanimate object that would more likely than not be thrown away.

And then I came up with the concept of a found-object still life composition (i.e. shell arrangement) that would be the perfect gift for my parents and the perfect way to remember the day. I present you:

The glass vase was inexpensive ($4), and the sand didn't come from the beach, though I could have easily shaken out my towels and filled three glasses, and I did cheat and add the starfish because the piece needed a bit more visual intrigue. I also suggested to my Grandma(Mom) that she could replace the starfish with a small votive candle, preferably in a sun-kissed cotton scent because... well... that's my favorite. I do feel, however, that I achieved a huge victory with my parents because I managed to make them something that-- gasp -- lived up to their interior design criteria to the point that it is displayed in perhaps the most used room in the house. I hope they enjoy it as much as I enjoyed spending my last month of summer with them.

Art and life, what imitators!

2009-09-01T23:59:00.000-04:00

Fast forward to 1:13 for the beginning of the song.

Between this and long nights reading French, I'm going to end up an artist one day.

2009-09-01T00:49:00.001-04:00

Guess who ate my homework?!

2009-08-31T16:36:00.000-04:00

Credo che questa ha a che fare l'arte, editione Venezia

2009-07-27T03:22:00.006-04:00

John Baldessari, Venice Biennale 2009.

On how the phrase, "I think that has something to do with art" entered my vocabulary.

2009-07-26T16:12:00.004-04:00

John Baldessari, "Pencil", 1970s. (Not part of the Biennale)

I'm still reflecting on the entire whirlwind experience of the Biennale, where Bruce Nauman and John Baldessari were really front and center (and well done!), and while even though I've had a hard time with understanding their work from the art historian's point of view, this particular Baldessari encapsulates and explains in every way how I feel-- unsure, uncertain, but hoping I've got it-- about the conceptual turn that art really started to take in the 1960s-1970s, a conceptual turn that has landed us into whichever post-post-post-post-post modernism we are in.

My NYC weekend, but not.

2009-06-21T01:41:00.005-04:00

Before it even started, I chalked this weekend up as an immense loss. I couldn't fufill my Friday morning plans of accepting a gracious invite and jumping on a plane to NYC with the two beagles to make it to NYC for cocktails on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art-- my dream weekend was gone. I had the dog carriers ready (could you imagine me pulling my psycho, crate-hating beagles through an airport in dog carriers?), the suitcase (just one!) packed, and even the laptop and phone charger were waiting to go. As tends to happen, life interrupted my plans, the tickets are now on hold for a trip in the near future, the dresses and the shoes (oh the shoes... ) have returned to the closet, and the dog carriers have gone back to the dear heart from whom I borrowed them.

I picked out a book for the flight, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a re-read that would have been perfect since my Friday-Wednesday stay would have involved a trip to the Hamptons. I picked it for many reasons, but mostly for its quote by the resident damsel in faux-distress, Daisy, regarding the summer solstice, where she remarks on the upcoming day and says,

"Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."

I spent my Friday dreaming of the late evening hours of longest day of 2009, maybe frolicking in Central Park with the dogs or feeding them table scraps on the patio of some bistro. Perhaps we'd all go to Bagatelle or Merkato 55 for brunch that morning? Take a tour of the MoMA where we'd run into David Gray on vacation with his family in the city sans sleep? Or better yet, have a run-in with a famous curator who hires me after hearing about my work? If only. For now that weekend is dream deferred, but there is nothing more medicinal to a traveler's broken heart than the fun in the sun during the Solstice Festival with precious gaggles of little children running in my direction, eyes alight with happiness at the sight of two beagles leashed in pink. "Hi Lady!" they'd say, "Can we please pet your dogs?"

It is no surprise that the girls licked just about every kid in town-- after sniffing them to death, tickling them until they squealed with delight.

Curator's Notes.

2009-06-18T20:19:00.004-04:00

I'll scan the article later, but it will suffice now to say that I made the cover of the New River Valley Current, the local section of the paper. Here is the link: "Displaying pieces of Virginia Tech History"

It just so happens that... *

2009-05-31T04:13:00.007-04:00

*And this version of this song, by the way, is my absolute most favorite ever of my favorite David Gray song of the moment. I wish that the last time that I saw David Gray in concert wasn't ten years ago, right after White Ladder came out and I had my first crush on a musician... pretty sure I'm still swooning.

** I never, ever watch videos online, ever, ever, ever, so the finding of this ridiculously beautiful version and beautifully shot video of the live performance has given me reason to start poking around.

Curator's Notes

2009-05-29T10:23:00.003-04:00

My show goes up on Tuesday, so until then I will be severely MIA. I will blog about the art heist-- the priceless sculpture I needed for my exhibition is missing-- and I promise to dish everything I know, as well as shine a giant spotlight on those who were so irresponsible as to lose a priceless piece of Virginia Tech history.Until then, I leave a quote whose most beautiful and genuine sentiments floored me in the middle of my research:

"I am living alone now without the company of young people like last year, but I find it no hardship as long as I live in the company of my husband's work as intimately as I have been doing now and that is still the most stimulating and dearest company."

- Mrs. Walter Gropius in 1970, on the experience of organizing the Bauhaus Exhibition for the Berlin Museum in 1971. Mr. and Mrs. Gropius had been married for more than 45 years when when he passed away in 1969, and very shortly after Mrs. Gropius curated a retrospective of his life's work, from Weimar's Bauhaus, to Cambridge's TAC. This was found in a letter from Mrs. Gropius to George Preston Frazer in December of 1970, which can be found In the Walter Gropius archive, MS92-042, Virginia Tech Special Collections, Blacksburg, VA.

Ding-dong, the crazed Keebler elf with the cookie cutter is dead...

2009-05-11T02:26:00.003-04:00

But you won't be getting in
(You know by now)
You won't be getting in...
All sold out in heaven.

- "Souled Out!!!", Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band

Because people keep trying to push me in a cookie cutter...

2009-05-02T13:08:00.005-04:00

"some would spend their precious time
trying to decorate their lives
taking measurements for some new look they want

so from one to ten
ten's exactly what i am
zero being everything i'm not
tell me what you like
is it less than five?
is it less than five?"

- conor oberst and the mystic valley band, "moab"

Bye bye, baby.

2009-04-29T01:59:00.000-04:00

I'm sending my computer, against my will, to Apple for some warranty repairs. As I have 4 papers and a book due by May 14th, this does not bode well...

I was introduced to a VIP as a curator, and now I can die happy

2009-04-18T14:39:00.004-04:00

A little more than two years ago, I realized that I wanted to be an art historian when I grew up. I have learned many things since I made that decision, things about art and things about life that I will never forget. I discovered that I could be a fabulous art critic if I set my mind to it, that perhaps a degree in arts journalism might need to follow the Ph.D. in Art History upon which my mind and heart are set. Most importantly of all, I realized that my love of art has no bounds, that even though Medieval/Renaissance art will always be the art with which I am most passionately in love, I am no art snob. I do have stringent standards for what I consider art, and while I have even stronger standards for what I consider good, or even amazing art, I have no problem using the full force of my art historical training and research skills to further the cause of that thing to which my life has become dedicated. Some people dedicate their lives to medicine, to sustainability, to science, to service; my greatest legacy, I hope, will be my love of art and making it more accessible, transforming it into an educational took for others. About this I am unapologetic. I'm not the kind of person who is defined by her job. My biggest goal in life is to contribute something, anything to our understanding of life and the world in which we live, something that can better our knowledge of history, of letters, of anything.

In the middle of this crazy spring, in which babies have been born, and in which members of my own family are close to dying, I haven't had time to sit back and to contemplate. I have wanted to be an art historian, and a good one for so long that I haven't taken stock of the projects I'm working on and the projects that are in store for the future. I haven't felt like I'm allowed to call myself a curator, although I'm curating three shows with another four in the works. My shows both open in May. Another will open in July. I'll have a bigger exhibition cycle opening in August. I haven't felt like I'm able to call myself an art historian or a curator because I have been so up to my eyeballs in research that I'm not even aware of what I'm doing.

That being said, imagine my surprise when my mentor, my boss, introduced me to a very, very important person as both a curator and an art historian. Imagine my continued surprise when I walked in on her setting up a meeting for me in the workshop and gallery of a prominent art dealer in town, downright bragging about my work over the past year. Until informed otherwise during our meeting/interview on Friday, he thought that I was a young faculty member with impeccable professionalism and outstanding research skills. Perhaps I shouldn't have burst his bubble?

I don't get to hear good things about my work and my love of art very often, partially because those around me don't understand the arts system and the work that I do, and partially because of the high, sometimes complicated level of work that I have been doing. I still argue with my grandmother about what art deco is, and about the difference between decorative art and actual art... it's a work in progress. My parents have no idea what I am doing, they just know that I am happy. Sometimes I don't know what I'm doing, but I know that I am happy. Of this I am sure-- I am curating shows, and the dictonary says that people who curate shows are curators. This makes me a curator. I am researching and writing about the history of the art our university collection. According to the dictionary, people who do this are art historians, therefore by definition I am an art historian.

I'm still not the kind of art historian or curator that I would like to be, but only because that will require a few years of graduate studies and quite a bit of money.With a little in-house publishing of the non-vanity sort, I'll be on paper before I'm 24 years old. Can someone please explain to me why everything in my life has turned into something on paper?!

Oh, and a little caution-- no one, and I mean no one, is allowed to talk s*it about the other love of my life.

That day in April: A recount, but we're still 32 down...

2009-04-14T13:49:00.004-04:00

Disclaimer: This blog is my recount and my memories of the events surrounding April 16, 2007. It is a brutally honest, accurate account of some of my processed memories and current feelings regarding what happened that day. It may be painful to read.
---------

I remember this week from two years ago, when on Sunday, April 15th, I saw people who wouldn't be alive by the time I was supposed to see them in my 10am class the next morning. April 16th was a Monday morning, a morning that I didn't know that I would always remember, a morning that however hard I try, I will never, ever be able to forget.

I woke up on that Monday, trying to decide whether I should go to class or not, trying to figure out why it was snowing in the middle of April. By the time I would have gotten on the bus to go to class, the busses were shut down. I had just cancelled my cable because I couldn't afford it, and I didn't get any of the e-mails that told me to stay put, a shooter was on the loose. I had no way, except for through what local news and CNN I could watch through my computer, to find out what was going on. I cried at first, when they said that 9 people had been shot. I wailed when the number went up to 12. I was practically keening when the number went up to 21. I knew that, when the number hit 32, something had gone horribly, terribly wrong. I cried for 6 solid hours. Jeff arrived, and we left the confines of my small apartment, driving past a campus parking lot that was full of sattelite trucks and flashing blue police lights. I found out later that the bodies had taken 18 hours to remove from the building. They were still in there when we had driven past.

I woke up Tuesday, hoping to find that what had happened the day before was a dream, and that the exhaustion I had felt from my emotions was unnecessary. It wasn't. We didn't yet know who had died, though I had received MANY calls from news organizations for information. I had been doing research the evening before to determine which classes had been in the building at the time and whether or not any of my friends had been in them; I had found out that Henry Lee had died and so had Matt LaPorte and Ross Alameddine. I didn't know them, but I knew that they were in a French class. I was scared. My fried Sarah had jumped out of a second story window and had been shot three times. I was wondering why the shooter hadn't come to McBryde instead, what would have happened if he waited an hour and showed up in my classroom with a gun. I was wondering what might have happened if I had met Sarah after class inside of Norris Hall. I might have been shot. I might have been killed. The very room in which I had fallen in love with Renaissance Art, the room in which, two years before, had been used to project images of Christ's deposition from the cross... It wasn't there anymore. I don't remember very much from Tuesday. We still didn't know who had died and I spent another six hours in tears. If I had gone home to be with my parents, I would have been home alone because they were going on vacation. I could have been killed. Why didn't they cancel their trip?

On Wednesday morning, the campus was open again. I had sent e-mails the night before to try to organize a candlelight vigil on Drillfield. I didn't know if anything would happen. President Bush, then-President I should say, came to campus. The governor of Virginia had been in China and he returned to be there to speak to us. Dr. Zenobia Hikes took charge, giving a sermon for those we had lost, though we had only that morning found out who had died. Reema Samaha. Erin Peterson. You were in my 10am class on Monday, but you were dead before class would have even started. Nicole White, we went to Sunday school together when we were little girls. Madame Couture-Nowak, you left two daughters behind. I walked past your office all the time. Jamie Bishop, I had e-mailed you to ask about a German for reading course that I should take before grad school. You were nice in words. Emily Hilscher, you sat in front of me in my Agricultural Econ class. How wasn't I killed? At least Sarah had jumped out of a window. Had he come into my class in McBryde, I wouldn't have had a window from which to jump. I would have died. I sat in an aisle seat close to the classroom door. I would have died. I would have been one of the first to die. Police tape cordoned off large swathes of our campus. We had a candlelight vigil that night, where instead of being quiet, someone started screaming "Let's go", "Hokies", in a chorus that was so beckoning that we all joined in, no matter how much it hurt. Satellite trucks were parked all over our War Memorial Chapel. Candles and flowers piled up around the Viewing Stand. The wind blew so hard that we fought to keep our candles lit. We stayed on Drillfield that evening as long as the cold would permit. Sarah jumped from a window. I would have died.

I saw Brittany on Thursday; Ben and Jerry's had postponed Free Cone Day in Blacksburg, and we met there, Downtown, and stayed as long as we could. Jeff had to be home for work. My parents were in the Caribbean. I couldn't stay alone in Blacksburg. I couldn't go home. His image was plastered all over the television, he kept reciting his manifesto and waving guns in the air at the camera, trying to legitimize his killing spree as a punishment for the excesses of society. We aren't society, we're college students; my kitchen cupboards were practically empty, what punishment would that have enacted on society? He had been planning for this to happen. He was in pain and he wanted revenge. I couldn't stop thinking of the sick pleasure he must have enjoyed on Sunday night, when he was writing letters and loading guns. We drove to Manassas. I fell apart.

I went back to Blacksburg, though I don't remember when. I remember the Foreign Language Department's Memorial Service, where we shared memories of those we lost and how we had lost them. I remember that Fred Phelps and his hate church protested at Ryan Clark's funeral. I remember they tried to protest at Madame's. Letters, flowers, quilts, banners, teddy bears, crosses, bibles, condolences, works of art were sent to our campus. State police officers stood in front of the police tape, in front of our building, all yellow, caution, don't pass. Bomb threats were called into the various buildings. Classes were cancelled for the rest of the semester. Flowers collected for the dead on Drillfield. It rained. It poured. Thirty two people had been killed; the thirty third killed himself. How had this happened to me? I had always figured that I would be part of something bigger than myself, something historic. I didn't figure that it would happen in this way. How will I tell my kids? Will I always feel like this? If he had gone to McBryde, I would have been one of the first to be killed. April 16, 2007 was not just one single day for me. It was a week. The most painful week of my life. The scars are inside of me, not external like Sarah's. I may never heal. I could have died.

I know more things now than I did back then. I still don't refer to the event by its date, it is that bad thing that happened. I can't bring myself to speak of it in that manner, not because I want to forget it, but because I still acutely remember it. I took classes in Summer 07, and had to pass that building everyday. I got a dog because I wasn't coping with my depression or anxiety or panic attacks very well. She saved me in every way possible. I have, and maybe always will have, PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. When I walk into rooms, I look for every possible exit in the case that someone enters with a gun. I worry when we have loud noises. I panic when I hear too many sirens or see too many ambulances headed in one direction. The critics blamed the university for what happened; don't they understand that he was determined to kill, and that nothing could have stopped him? When I hear loud noises, I panic. Is someone coming to kill me? Why? I have been neurotic for two years as of Thursday, and since Monday, it has all begun to replay in my mind.

Artbeat/Heartbeat: Haloed and Hallowed

2009-03-31T14:07:00.005-04:00

I was perusing the news when I found this image which reminded me of some of my most favorite Italian Renaissance devotional images:

Copyright Reuters/Jason Reed

And here's an example of the original use of the halo...

Andrea di Bartolo, "Joachim and Beggars", c. 1400; Detail; Samuel H. Kress Collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

I'm not attempting to deify our president (I'll leave the deification and apotheosis of democracy to the sociologists and political scientists), but I find it interesting that in the middle of our economic crisis, the photographer was able to trap our president in a presidential halo-- perhaps hoping that he is our postmodern savior? I find it interesting and quite telling.

Daydreaming, wedding style

2009-03-26T15:10:00.003-04:00

via the Cakewrecks blog.

We haven't been doing much, if any wedding business as of late, but I showed to this to Jeff and realised that he would probably give his left arm to have this as our wedding cake.

Double dogs, single blog

2009-03-10T16:38:00.004-04:00

We haven't had our second daughter for very long, but her progress in the two short days we've had her has been amazing. Since we brought her home yesterday at noon, she has:

- been an impeccable doggie to walk-- no pulling!
- learned what it means to go out (not the pee part, just the outdoors part).
- given us multiple kisses.
- taken about six naps on the couch.
- learned to close her eyes when she's behind Avery to avoid being hit by her wagging tail.
- figured out where we put the water bowl.
- sniffed the entire downstairs of the house, twice,
- gone up the stairs by herself, but hasn't figured out how to go down.
- tried unsuccessfully to climb (instead of jump) up the side of the couch.
- discovered the joy of the octopus toy(s) we got for Avery.
- started wagging her tail when Jeff or I come in her direction.
- growled at Avery once or twice over toys or not wanting to play.
- slept in the middle of the bed, just like her sister.
- gotten a brand new Montgomery County dog registration tag that's shaped like a doghouse with a doggie inside of it.
- participated in reciprocal butt-sniffing with her sister.
- completed our little family in the best way possible.

Even more amazing to me, specifically, is that with a little bit of calendar research, we found out that our doggie was born two years to the day before we had our first kiss. It's pretty amazing to think that two years and eight months later, we've had one unforgettable Christmas together, two dog-ters, (almost) three degrees between us, and we're fast-approaching the beginning of our fourth year together. I'm not very good at math, but those numbers... those numbers I love.

Il y a... [a blog en français]

2009-03-07T23:06:00.006-05:00

Il y a....

- deux amis au Japon qui viennent de célébrer leur premiere semaine mariée avec leur mères.

- des nuages au ciel.

- un chien qui m'attend jusqu'a lundi quand je deviendrai sa mère.

- des fautes qui ne sont pas des miennes.

- seulment un chanson... ah, je monte... deux chansons qui me font sentir mieux.

- une fête qui sera annulé demain.

Il faut que...

- quelques gens apprennent à lire même en français et en anglais.

- j'ecoute plus de chansons de David Gray.

- nous nettoyions notre maison avant que le petit chien arrive.

- je fasse mes devoirs.

- je mange.

A word from Claire, guest blogger extraordinaire

2009-02-23T23:38:00.005-05:00

Hi there, Claire here. I'm one-time-only guest blogging while the person who normally occupies this space is busy doing whatever she does (read: figuring out how to take the art world by storm), and since I've known her for 8 years, I've got a carte blanche to write whatever I feel like. Most of you have probably seen her list of 25 things on Facebook, but I've decided to write a new and more interesting 25 things post about her and our friendship.

25 Things that Jessy might not want you to know

1) She can't do math, but she counts incessantly. Steps, breaths, any repetitive motions thinkable. This math disability is surprising because she can do arithmetic better than anyone I know.

2) She sings loudly when she's in the car by herself, but not when she's in the car with people she doesn't know.

3) I don't use punctuation and/or capitalization when I type, which means that my assistant is taking dictation from me in English to help her with her own English. Jess only thinks that this is appropriate because I take dictation in Japanese from my assistant in the afternoon because I need help with my Japanese.

4) Jess is pretty fearless with fashion, but has a collection of vintage hats that she is afraid/nervous to wear in public. I tell her to go for it, but so far she has worn only one hat to a wedding.

5) In high school, we were mortal enemies because we dated the same guy back to back. We forget who the guy was (literally) but we made up when I quit dating him. Jess and I are going to be celebrating our 7 year anniversary soon.

6) She has always wanted to try short hair but either can't make the commitment to stay with it or chickens out at the last minute.

7) We had a wonderful first semester of college together until I moved to NYC. We both get caught up in "what might have been" if we had stayed in school together, but we both know that our lives wouldn't be as happy as they are now if we had. (Our friendship would have been the "no boys" club, and we would have ended up like Romy and Michelle in that movie with Mira Sorvino and Phoebe from Friends.)

8) There is a 100% chance of any of these three things happening when she gets drunk: 1) crying 2) intense laughing fit 3) exclamation of surprise that it only took (1-2) drinks to get her drunk.

9) One day when we went to her house (back in high school), we opened the front door and a bird flew out of the wreath on the door. Jess thought the bird was going to attack her and peck her eyes out, and has been afraid of birds ever since, despite the fact that her parents used to own birds when she was growing up.

10) The first time that she had ever drank alcohol she ended up falling into a quay in England. Apparently there were no rails on the promenades that drop off into little sludge canals, and Boddingtons + hard cider (Strongbow, I think) = a 15 foot fall into dark, murky, dirty water below in December. She has been afraid of the dark and heights ever since.

11) Jess doesn't like most shades of pink. I love all shades of pink. Our friendship was a constant battle of tasteful vs. tasteless pink because I love Hello Kitty and she only likes pastel/rose quartz pink.

12) Jess went to my high school prom, but we had a hard time getting her there. The guy that asked me to go with him had to pretend that she was his 'date' in order to get all of the forms signed, while his sister smuggled in my now-husband who had graduated from my high school a few years before. My date's sister had her date smuggle in another one of our friends who was homeschooled. The chaperones had no idea what to think of us when we all showed up in a limo and switched dates as soon as we got there.

13) Before she started dating Jeff, all of her favorite colors were deep reds and vibrant jewel toned colors. After dating him, her favorite colors are blues, yellows, and calming pastel shades. I attribute this to Jeff's calming influence on her.

14) During our first Valentine's Day as college students, we sent each other the same bouquet of flowers at the same time. Our flowers died the same time, about a week and a half later. We both broke the vases on the same day, which happened to be the day we were moving out of our dorms, and both cut the same foot in the same place with the glass from the broken vase. This spooks us out to no end.

15) When she was 15, Jess slipped and fell down on the Spanish steps in Rome. She has been dying to go back and make it down the stairs without falling ever since.

16) I have never met her friends from high school. I was from a rival school and while I could stretch the rules to be able to be friends with her, I thought that I was too cool to meet everyone else, and that her friends were total snobs. This might have been a good thing because there are one or two people who I can't stand just from what she has told me.

17) Jess was a captain of her academic bowl team and used to make cupcakes for them every week. The cupcakes were iced in white icing and had little Teddy Grahams on them that waved blue and gold pompoms. The other teams were envious; I wanted to transfer to her school just for the cupcakes.

18) Jess broke her toe once by dropping a huge mirror on it. Soon after, she broke 5 more toes and is proud of her crookeds.

19) Jess used to have a swimming pool in her backyard and would swim in it all summer until a squirrel fell into it and... well, you know what happens then. Her corgi jumped in the pool after her one day when she was underwater for longer than he liked, and she cries every time she tells the story because she misses him very much.

20) If she were allowed to, Jess would wear a tiara all day long every day for forever. It isn't a princess thing at all-- she loves jewelry and would put it anywhere acceptable if she were exempt from judgement. When she had a bad day in high school, I'd come to visit and she'd be cleaning her room while wearing a tiara... I used to think it was weird but I find myself wanting to do that sometimes too.

21) When I told Jess the above story, she found a website that shipped tiaras that said "Preggo Princess" on them to Japan. My tiara was custom designed with a hello kitty on it, and has pink rhinestones. Apparently it cost $3.

22) When we were in high school, we went to the same hair salon and the same stylist and got the same haircut. It looked completely different on both of us, and equally terrible. We will never, ever do that again.

23) During the summer, Jess and I used to go to the beach every week. We stopped going to the beach after she got bitten on the toe by a crab. The story is almost too good to be true. I heard her screaming while she was in chest-deep water, and I saw her scramble to get out of the water. When she came out, she had a crab whose claw was basically trying to remove her big toe from her right foot. It took three people to get the crab off of her while she was screaming. The bite ended up getting infected because of the high bacteria levels in the water at VB, and the antibiotics that Jess went on were the type that meant she couldn't drink milk until she went off the antibiotics. She couldn't drink milk for six months, and we haven't been to the beach for water/swimming purposes since. (Pools only!)

24) Jess has never been in a real car accident, but has hit about 12 garbage cans since she got her license. I know this because I have heard about or been in the car during these garbage hit-and-runs, and each time she thinks she has backed over a person instead of a garbage can. The freakouts are hilarious.

25) During our first football game together at VT, we managed to cheer for the wrong team about 10 times. Later that night, we went out with a group of football players from her dorm and decided that football and partying weren't for us. This was probably the best decision we ever made in our lives, because the next semester, almost every girl at that party had either dropped out of school or had been put on academic probation.

Bonus:

26) I believe that Jess will be one of the most famous art historians ever, not just because she wants to, but because she is passionate about art and making art accessible to people from all walks of life. I wish that she didn't take the flack that she does from people because of her alternate, unusual, unique career choice, because I think that her having the nerve, the courage to pursue her dream job is something that is admirable and something that should be praised. If there weren't people like Jess in the world, people who weren't afraid to follow their dreams into less-trodden career paths, our world would be the lesser for it.

cma:xiy

0 enclosures

Acquired taste: My new life plan, in food.

2009-02-02T20:47:00.002-05:00

Greek yogurt with a sidecar of cherry confiture, because even if it is a newly acquired taste (I couldn't stand much of it while I was in Greece), and even if I don't get all of the calcium I need, it'll help me avoid the osteoporosis running through my family and it's wonderful for my health.
One (or three) square(s) of dark chocolate, you know, because its antioxidants and flavinols are really good for my heart and my blood pressure.
A cup of green tea, just in case its antioxidants are proven to fight the Alzheimer's disease that runs in my family-- I don't want my kids watching me disintegrate the way that I have watched my great-grandmother disintegrate, especially if I can help or prevent it.
Olive oil, extra virgin, everywhere-- in terms of my cooking, of course. Despite the calories, it's pretty healthy and very good for the heart.
Mineral water spritzers, 2 parts mineral water, 1 part fruit juice-- any fruit juice from the produce section will do. I tried blood orange, and I loved it. I'm a huge fan of Izze soda, but it's definitely expensive, and after looking at the ingredients, I realized that I could "make" something like it at home. Since I love the fizz of soda, and have learned to like mineral water (even by itself) I'm hoping that this low calorie alternative will continue to become a staple in my liquid diet.

Even though dieting is supposed to be misery, more than anything, I'm on a quest to become healthier-- even if it means that I lose weight more slowly than I would have if I were doing intense dieting. I have someone that I can't wait to spend my entire life with-- if starting now means that we get to be together longer, I'm all for it.

Oh, and--- I love to eat my fruit and veggies. Stuffed vine leaves and stuffed cabbage are my favorites, and you'll never guess who liked the stuffed cabbage (in Greece, it is called "loukousarmades).

On Engagement: Does this feel different?

2009-01-14T18:47:00.006-05:00

I did a little thinking today, thinking about the the time that someone asked me a very, very important question when he went down on one knee on Christmas morning. I was thinking about how I felt that day-- panicked, shocked, surprised, stunned -- and how I kept looking down at my finger in a "Did that really just happen to me? Did he really just ask that?" kind of way. I meandered through that day, dazed from what had happened that morning, full of questions as I asked myself whether being engaged "felt different."

I remember ambling through a few phone calls that day, trying to steal a quiet, private moment where I could ask my grandmother why I didn't feel different, and whether engagement was supposed to change things, and whether I was correctly feeling all of the things that I "should" have felt at that moment. I don't know why I thought that it would feel different-- perhaps I have seen a few too many Disney movies? Maybe I had listened too closely to a friend who is somewhat obsessed with how being engaged will change her life? I hadn't been engaged for too long at that point, and for me, the moment hadn't felt too life-changing.

In the days that followed, I still didn't feel very much change. I didn't know how to fit the word fiancé into my vocabulary, and struggled to really use it. My ring didn't fit, which was the artist's fault, so I had to ship it back (the day after Christmas) to the MoMA for a larger size; not having my ring, and just the general waiting for it to come in the mail, I discovered, really made me feel like none of it had really happened. Even though I was elated to tell people that Jeff had asked me to marry him-- I mean really, HELLO, he thinks enough of me to want to MARRY me, and really, that means he wants to live with me for like... the rest of his life-- I hated not having the ring, a ring that was very much "us", to show for it. I hated not having my ring, and was quick to take offense to anyone who made the wrong comment or had the wrong attitude about our being engaged. I didn't take well the suggestion that Jeff and I were "just playing", and we weren't really, really engaged until we had the "real" ring-- who in the hell was that person to judge our relationship because the dream ring, the one with the aquamarine that's the color of his eyes, is still sitting in the case at Tiffany's??? Needless to say, I was ecstatic to see my new ring come in the mail.

I said that it began to feel real when the stress began and announcements were being sent out, but I might be lying. Seeing our names printed in a pretty font on ivory paper, seeing our engagement in black and white helped what I had been feeling. But why didn't I feel different? Before he had really asked me to marry him, I knew that we were going to spend our lives together. I don't know when I knew it-- maybe it was the day that he told me he wanted to go back to school, and in return, asked him if he wanted to live with me? Maybe one of those days when I couldn't wait to get home to our little cave from work to see him? I don't know when I knew it, but I knew that it was as true as the law of gravity, the law of inertia, and whatever law tells us that the earth is round.

Little has changed since the day we were engaged, except that now we are supposed to refer to each other as a fiancé and fiancée, and I have another ring from him to wear on my left hand's ring finger. There aren't anymore hushed phone calls to my grandma, worriedly asking her if I'm feeling the way that I should feel about getting engaged. I knew before we were engaged that I'd be marrying my favorite blue eyes one day-- engagement, well, that just proves that we're on the right track to get there... eventually.

A follow up: To Do, 2009

2009-01-07T22:37:00.002-05:00

We're only in the first week of 2009, but here are the things I've worked on so far:

1) Get in shape: I've been watching portion sizes, drinking no more than one soda a day, and I'm 2.5 pounds lighter for it. (37.5 more to go...)

2) Be a protective Mama Bear: So far, I'm not taking $%!^ from anyone!

3) Spend more quality time with Jeff: We went on a date Monday, to our favorite restaurant where we had our first date ever, and to Tiffany and Co. to try on my future engagement ring and our future wedding bands. Then we discussed how we're gonna buy them when we grow up, and how we're buying the ones we really, really want so we aren't one of those couples who upgrade rings every 5-10 years-- instead, we'll be one of those couples who wear that ring for our entire lives. It was positively "romantical."

4) Make a contribution to the scholarly world: So far, I'm preparing my research projects and writing abstracts so that they're ready to be submitted when school starts. Conference circuit, here I come!

5) Stop crying at the drop of a hat: Instead, I've just only cried when someone really severely pissed me off...

6) Take a trip somewhere, anywhere: I'm not currently on a trip, however, I'm researching places to go and things to do. I found Vegas for 4 days, $470 for two people. Spring Break, anyone?

7) Keep in better touch with people: I've caught up with two people from high school of whom I have always had fond memories. YAY!

8) Work on my dress collection: Thanks to a wonderful gift of a Banana Republic gift card, and a terrible economy, I found a wonderfully reduced dress on sale. It's b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l!

9) Becoming a personal finance aficionado: After gift card, my dress was $3.99, which isn't bad at all.... AND, I've been reading all of the information that I can get my hands on about budgeting. Yay!

So far, I'm thinking that 9/15 isn't bad, especially as most of the other things I've put on my "Work In Progress" list are things that I can only do in Blacksburg. Technically, because I made wicked Garden Veggies with Roasted Chicken and pain-au-chocolat for dinner/dessert yesterday... I'm really up to 10/15. Cooking at home more often? Well, that just means I'm doing 2 out of every three things on my list. As Jack Nickelson says in that movie that I can't quite remember, "two out of three ain't bad!"

To Do: 2009

2009-01-02T18:51:00.003-05:00

Earlier today, I found myself commenting on a blog about New Year's Resolutions, an odd thing to do because I don't really believe in resolutions at all. That being said, I do have a "To Do" list for the year of 2009, and even though none of the goals on it are new (some have been in mind for a couple of months, if not years), I do hope that they restore balance to my life, to our life, and maybe even to a certain little doggie's life. In no particular order, here is my un-prioritized "To Do" list for 2009.

1) Walk the dog. For 30 minutes a day. And better yet, train the dog to not pull while she is on her leash. (Avery doesn't pull or strain when she is off the leash, but the minute that she is put on it, she's dragging me all over. I don't understand?!)

2) Get in shape. I'm not stupid. I know that our cohabitational bliss has lead me to put X amount of pounds and flab, and I know that I need to be more active to return to pre-Jeff form. I do have personal goals -- oh, I'd love to see the return of my 6 minute mile-- but I also know that I'm getting older, and the bad habits that I don't take care of could potentially become a ticking time bomb, or worse, negative traits passed on to my children.

3) Become a protective Mama Bear. I feel like I had to deal with an inordinate amount of negative gossip I've heard from other people during 2008, whether it was about me, my family (from a party that was not introduced to them, no less), or someone that I deeply care about. I've been told that certain parties enjoy lambasting me because I got fat in 2008 (shit happens), that there are questions regarding whether I'm pregnant, etc. Even worse? Negativity about the situation with my little brother. I have decided that, in 2009, I'm going to have to have to change my usual pattern of diplomacy and start calling things as I see them. Being a bitch to me? You can have a piece of my mind, free of charge. Saying something negative and untrue about Jeff, my brother, or my family? You should probably run for the hills.

4) Join a local farm co-op. I've heard a little bit about co-ops in the past year, where one is allowed to buy a "share" in a farm or farmer's group and receive weekly deliveries of eggs, milk, veggies, and fruits. I'm a big fan of the local foods movement, and living in Blacksburg gives Jeff and I extraordinary access to this kind of service.

5) Cook more meals at home. This will help out with # 2, and be helpful with #4. There are many things that I enjoy cooking, or I enjoyed eating during my travels to other countries.

6) Cook more exotic fare. I have a shelf full of cookbooks, French, Greek, and Indian among them, that I have barely used over the past few years. With better supplies to cook with (#4), and cooking more meals at home (#5), I hope to recreate some of my favorites, like dolmades from Greece, French Onion soup (or Potage Crecy, mmmm), bougatsa from Crete (MMMMMM!), lamb pasanda (mmm, Indian food), and Moroccan couscous. I know that some of these things aren't the greatest in terms of calories, but with a less sedentary lifestyle, I think that they'll beat fast food fare any day of the week. Plus, introducing new foods to Jeff, new ones that he might like = priceless.

7) Spend more quality time with Jeff. Living together affords us a large quantity of time together, but even though our class schedules and work schedules allow us to be together for a majority of the day, I really like planning a date night for once a week or having something like a class to share together. I hope that in the next year, we do something like take a pottery class together, take a cooking class together, plan on taking a bike ride or hike down the trail every weekend. Or we could take a dance class, you know, to surprise everyone at our wedding reception and show them that we've got moooooves, yeah.

8) Make a contribution to the scholarly world... by writing a book. I have unprecedented access to the collection of an Appalachian couple who bought and donated a large collection of works to the school, and I'm going to do EVERYTHING that I can do with it. Photograph it. Catalog it. Win grant money for it. Conserve it. Exhibit it. Research it. Put it on the map.

9) Stop crying at the drop of a hat. 2008 was a pretty emotional year for me, and whether it was a sappy movie, a sappy song, and sometimes, just sometimes, a sappy news article, I was probably in tears or tearing up at something. Say something super nice to me? Tears. Scare the hiccups out of me? I was probably having a breakdown. I probably bought enough waterproof mascara to supply the makeup artists at Fashion Week.

10) Take a trip somewhere, anywhere. New York City? Los Angeles? Las Vegas? Paris? Athens? Santorini? Florence? Rome? London? the Carribean? I don't know. But I do know that I need to get out and go somewhere, because there's a whole wide world out there and a man who loves me enough to ask me to marry him... we have some conquering to do!

11) To keep in better touch with people. I don't know where all of my time goes, but it goes away and at some point I forget to call people, like friends I love, family I whose behavior that I don't always love, and I forget to use the boxes of stationery that I so love to collect. Basically, if I ask for your address, shut up and hand it over-- I'm a huge fan of handwritten notes on pretty cards, and there will probably be one coming to a mailbox near you.

12) Take more pictures. When I get old, or just as I age in general, I know I'm going to love looking back at the places I've lived, people I've known, and place I've traveled. I had better start working on it now.

13) Make some art. I have some cool ideas, but I have yet to execute them. It'll happen.

14) Work on my dress collection. I'm a huge fan of dresses, and I can't wait until weather warms up so that I can find pretty ones on sale, wear them with comfortable sandals, and generally just enjoy being done up in my favorite, girliest clothes. I have a few great ones now, but most of them are for fancy occasions (or they don't fit, boo!). A dress a day? Mmmmm.

15) Become a personal finance and money aficionado. We've had a rough year, and since we'll be adopting a little brother, I'm reading everything I can about budgeting, planning, and saving, and I plan on doing all three things to the best of my ability. Hopefully joining a co-op cuts down on our grocery bills, eating out less saves us money, and spending quality time walking the dog and learning to do things outside of watching TV will help us get on track and have one of our best years together so far. Even though 2008 was a crazy year, I still posit that it will be a tough one to beat.

Artbeat/Heartbeat: Our dog, the odalisque.

2008-12-30T20:38:00.008-05:00

top left, "Valpinçon Bather" by Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1815ish

top right, Avery Charlotte Irwin-Owens by her mother

bottom, Half-figure of a bather by Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1805

In the 19th century, there was a movement within French painting named by scholars as orientalism. In the beginning of the century, following Napoleon's conquests of Africa, artists would sometimes voyage into the Middle East and Northern Africa to paint both the exotic locales and the peoples. The odalisque, a female figure who is part of the king's harem, is a frequent personage featured in 19th century orientalist paintings.

Interested in more orientalists? Check out Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, and Eugene Delacroix.

"Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but of looking together in the same direction." - Antoine de Saint. Exupery

2008-12-25T23:16:00.007-05:00

"Diamond Ring" by Alissia Melka-Teichroew, 2003

----------

I'm a little worried that I'll wake up and find out that this morning was a dream.

This morning, on the very first Christmas that we have ever spent together, a certain someone asked me a very, very important question. Everyone was wearing the same pajamas, and we were all scattered around the living room opening our Christmas presents. I had been itching to open my present from him, so I grabbed my present from the pile without him knowing. As I began to open it, he immediately ordered that I stand up... and then he took a knee... in front of me, in front of my brother, in front of his brothers, his two sisters-in law, in front of his parents. He took a knee and asked me a very, very important question to which I said "Are you asking me right now?", then I began crying, and then I started shaking, and then I said yes. He told me that he never wanted to spend another Christmas away from me, and on the condition that we work out the actual ring details later, he asked me to marry him. *

I said yes.

I said yes because I can't imagine a single part, a single moment of the rest of my life without him in it. I can imagine buying a diamond ring-shaped Christmas ornament one day, and holding up one of our children to see it, explaining how Daddy asked Mommy to marry him on Christmas morning. I can see our future dinosaur/Virginia Tech/cars Christmas tree (you know, the "fun" tree) in our future home. I can imagine what it will be like to drive past the places in which we used to live, remembering our days in college, our little doggie named Avery, and both the good times we had when we lived in Blacksburg. I can imagine what our future together will hold, but more importantly, most importantly of all, I'm in no rush to get there at all.

We'll get married eventually, but for now and for the next couple of years to come, we're more than happy being where we are. We have things to do, places to go, and people to meet. Furthermore, this relationship has a paper clause-- no diplomas, no marriage. That's our story, and we're sticking to it.

----------

* The current ring, which is held in the collection of and sold at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC is one of my favorite avant-garde pieces of jewelry in the world. What could be more appropriate for a budding art historian/curator?!

Things I can do without, in no particular order [Vol. 3]

2008-12-15T21:13:00.002-05:00

10) My boss (library) getting all high and mighty about me taking two hours off to attend Norm's thesis defense.... which lasted all of 45 minutes. When telling her that none of the other managers could cover me, she said, "You've gotten yourself into this mess..." when really, there were non-managers capable of covering for me without a problem. For... oh... what... 2 hours?

9) Norm insisting that his thesis project building is neo-baroque when really, REALLY, really... REALLY... it isn't. Hi, I'm an art historian. Have we met? Do you know the underlying tenents of the Baroque period in general? Because your structure isn't Baroque. I understand that the dictionary says "bold curving shapes", however, your structure, a BOATHOUSE, lacks the undulating forms, columns, statuary hanging off of every corner, and general air of opulence that anything baroque has. In concept, it is utilitarian, something that Baroque structures are not! Your structure has more to do with Corbusier, Modernism, Rationalism (RICHARD MEIER!!!), and the International Style than Borromini, Bernini, and even the postmodern baroque MASTER himself, Frank Gehry. Please, please, please take a course in architectural history. Do it before I have to kick you out for being ignorant, because I swear that I will kick you out for that. (Our house = smart people only.)

8) Exams. I didn't really have that many, but still....

7) School. Can I please have a break from you for like two months?

6) Being bitten by the travel bug. Every two years (or so) I somehow end up going abroad... two years ago I went to Greece, two years before that I was in England, and then for the two summers preceding that I was also in England. A year before the England trips, I spent a month on the continent going from Italy to France to Spain. I have a long history of being bitten by the travel bug, no? This two years, I want to go back to Greece or spend some quality time in Italy. I have a to-do list for Italy -- I've never been to Venice, and even though it would be great to go there for a honeymoon :

a) it's not like I'm going to be married to Jeff before the whole damned city sinks to the bottom of the canal (though by the time we get married, we will have the right to say that we have been "together for years" i.e. more than just two of them) and

b)and there's just way too much art to see before it does sink to the bottom of the canal, so I need to start early. And we all know how great Jeff is going to react to being dragged around churches, museums, palaces, etc. for a honeymoon... though by that time, he may react differently as we wouldn't be "living in sin" anymore... hmmmm....

If all of that is not "bad" enough-- my symptoms are killer, aren't they?-- I haven't been to France since my England summers in high school, when we'd hop a ferry or the Chunnel to Calais or Le Havre... and I've been studying FRENCH for four years while at college. Must.... travel.... this... year... sometime... or I might die from the travel bug!

5) Hearing that Michelle Obama is the new Jackie O. I'm watching Jackie O, right now, on C-SPAN because it is "White House Week"and they're re-airing "A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy"... and there's just no way. I get that she's chic because of the hair, because of the clothes, because of whatever our current society thinks is "sooooo Jackie O", but there is only ONE Jackie O. She's sitting next to JFK at a table in the Grant Room, wearing a three stand pearl necklace with a little suit and kitten heels, explaining how they found chairs in storage and identified them in old engravings and she's absolutely regal while doing such. I get that everyone wants to "Mich-y O." to be the next Jackie O., but you've got to really SEE the original in action to understand that there's no topping her in my book. The original is so great, well... we don't need another... we don't need an impostor, either.

4) Lady Bird... I might men Crazy Bird... Johnson's explanation of the "reesunt acckqizishun" (recent acquisition) of a Mary Cassatt painting for the "Permanent White House Collecshun". And her weird enunciations and emphaseis. And her spooky eyebrows. Maybe I'll change the channel...

3) Belligerent drunks.

2) Seeing Jeff Conoway shaking bottles of pills at the camera after being kicked out of rehab. Come on Jeff, I've seen you call 911, and I'm with the rest of the country just rooting for you to get better. You can do it dude--- and please, please, please dump (and quit kicking!) Vicki.

1) My parents perception of me being "stupid" and living off in "never never land." So glad to see that you haven't changed, ever. Maybe I'll stay in school for ANOTHER year and get a THIRD degree just to piss you off.

Tinkering, Round 2...

2008-12-14T19:18:00.003-05:00

It is possible that, after staring at the same mantlepiece for the past week, I have done a little renovation and sprucing, perhaps a little Hokie-fying, and maybe even some bannister-decorating.

Pictures later.

Recycling, holiday style: Sharing a favorite, most enjoyable habit.

2008-12-06T23:29:00.019-05:00

During one of my typical 3am Blacksburg-Tokyo/Osaka iChat summits with Claire, it occurred to me that most people don't know how much I enjoy creating. I have no problem expressing my problems with trying to create art-- I'm an art historian, and studying art makes actually creating it an intimidating task about which I sometimes whine -- but I have always enjoyed "crafting." While I can't begin to explain the line between the two, i.e. what makes one object a work of art while another similar object is classified as a craft, I can say that the idea of crafting doesn't intimidate me.

I can say that because I LOVE to make wreaths.

I can't begin to fully explain why I think that wreaths are a necessary object that help turn a house into a home. It might remotely have something to do with a lesson on the Roman goddesses of the hearth, Vesta and someone else (sorry AMK, I went to GREECE with you, not Rome) who were supposed to protect a home and its inhabitants. I remembered being fascinated not by the idea of hearth gods, but by a floor mosaic that illustrated the two goddesses holding a wreath between themselves. As both ladies were goddesses of the hearth, I imagined, sitting there in my 6th grade history class, a beautiful wreath being hung above the hearth of an ancient home or castle, marking that spot as the heart of a home. That image, that idea, has always stuck with me, and from the time that I had my first apartment (the one where I lived all by myself), I've always had a wreath on my door.

Most importantly, I've always made the wreath that was on my door. I've always made the wreath that was on my door out of things that I have found in my house... in my kitchen... or in my yard. If my wreaths were considered art (not crafts!), I could see them being called "found object assemblages", or some other flowery term that explains my tinkering with ordinary objects and transforming them into something else.

Maybe I like wreaths so much, you know, as a symbol of home... because I like to make them so much. I'm sure that's it.

I bring this all up because, for a long time, I have only had a Virginia Tech wreath on my front door. The wreath that came to life before it, a vine wreath with fall leaves that I had collected going to and from classes, had "died" (i.e. desiccated to the point that I was hanging dead, crunchy leaves on my door that fell off every time that I opened it) had seen its time. Not being a fan of throwing reusable things away, I kept the wreath, which I had stripped bare, until I had a better idea.

This is what I came up with.

I know that I used to blog about serious things, like how fifteenth century last judgment scenes really make me philosophical, or how really love, love, love Medieval/Renaissance art and all things Jean Fouquet, and being my audience, well, maybe knowing those things about me might not lead you to think that I'd have a foam-fingered maroon and orange wreath on my door, pom-pom included. It might be a surprise that I have had this wreath on my door for three years-- GO HOKIES!!! -- or maybe it's not a surprise at all. In those three years of being bedecked in team spirit, I have learned something important.

If you're the only person in your apartment complex with a wreath on your door, anyone and everyone who is lost in your complex (think pizza/chinese/wings/sandwich delivery boys, drunken sorority girls, UPS men, and even utility people) will knock on your door. Even if you live on the second floor. Even if the stairs are covered in ice. Even if you're from some crazy church group that likes to knock on doors at 8pm to try to get new congregants. Anybody will knock. Everybody will knock.

I don't know if it's because a wreath made my place (and later on , our place) more cheery, more welcoming, or more of a billboard to announce, "Hi! We're nice! We're neighborly! Someone might be home! KNOCK!", but we certainly had tons of people knock on our door. I didn't mind at all, however, we don't have that problem anymore. We don't have that problem, despite the fact that as of about a month ago, we've become a two-wreath (technically three-wreath, because there's one on the back porch that was left here by the previous tenants) family.

Here's our second wreath.

Some of this wreath may look familiar to anyone who attended the last Owens wedding in November. Because of how quickly the fall had passed, and how much stress had been pushed on us by the date of the wedding (we're still in college- if I hear another snide remark about being late to ANYTHING regarding the wedding , you'll be hearing from me), I had missed my window of foraging opportunity in our yard. I had no walnuts, no buckeyes, no fresh leaves, no twigs, nothing whatsoever autumnal with which to add cheer to our front porch. (Trust me-- it needs cheer!) I had nothing... but I did have a completely dried out wedding reception centerpiece. Considering that I enjoy the dried-flower look for wreaths, I pulled apart what viable dried foliage was left of the centerpiece, stuck a dowel into the styrofoam pumpkin, and threaded it through the vine wreath. Presto! I only hope that I store this thing responsibly so that I don't damage the delicate dried flowers.

Now that it's the end of the semester,the season is changing, and it's so close to Christmas, I've been bitten by the procrastin---, er, I mean Christmas decorating bug. After about 20 minutes in the snow... out in the yard, of course, with pruning shears and a large disc sled with which to gather trimmings, pine cones, berries, and a few twigs, I managed to forage enough supplies to keep me busy for an entire afternoon. Do you have a pine tree in your yard? Do you have nice neighbors? A roll of floral wire? A craft stash? I had a few of those things (didn't need the neighbors, though), and here's my made-for-free-because-I-already-had-the-supplies decorations. I considered making small swags for each of the windows on the front/sides of our house, our mailbox, above our screen doors, etc, but I haven't quite gotten to all of that yet. For now, here's the "garland" (maybe it's more of a small forest?) that I made for our mantle, and the wreath-thing I made for the front door.

If only I could make something this cute into a wreath...

P.s. I cross-posted this on this blog and on two j's, one apartment because it was a "home" thing. It kind of involves lots of words like ours, us, we, and our family, so I figured that it was pertinent to both. :-)

As an extra note, I'd like to thank Blogger for making pictures IMPOSSIBLE to deal with in terms of this post. I spent more time putting pictures in and getting everything aligned somewhat understandably than I did actually WRITING this blog.

A double blog: Things I can do without, Vol.2, etc.

2008-12-04T19:10:00.002-05:00

In no particular order, the things that I can do without....

10) Being sick during exams. Thanks, whoever's in charge up there, for ruining my semester. I needed a lot of energy to make it through this week and next week, and I've been rendered useless by the icky, yucky, nasty, gross sinus infection of the century.

9) Bleaksburg. This time of year, the weather turns into a ridiculously windy, cloudy, rainy, snowy mess. I'm over it. Some places, despite being frigid, get sunshine. Why can't we? I think I might actually be suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder... if I'm not, this weather will give it to me.

8) The dogs. Despite behaving for the entirety of break at my parents' house, Avery has gotten up to her old garbage eating, paper shredding, climbing on top of tables and desks tricks this week. I'm more annoyed with Duchess than Avery-- a certain white Siberian Husky has eaten about $160 worth of toys-- and I am so, so, so, so over her.

7) ABC canceling Pushing Daisies (and Dirty Sexy Money.) Those two shows were my favorite reason to do nothing on Wednesday night. Why must they take away all of the good TV?! Bring them baaaack..... please?

6) The university not giving me appropriate funds for my art collection. For a place that wants to "establish" its programs in the liberal arts, Virginia Tech keeps taking away guaranteed spaces to show art (the Torgerson museum might be turned into a faculty lounge...), the very core of a LIBERAL ARTS program. I happen to believe that each and every object that the university has in its possession can be used as an educational tool. Apparently they don't.

5) Ass kissers. What is the point of kissing the ass of someone who has clearly demonstrated his/her dislike for you? Kissing that person's ass isn't going to make them like you anymore than they did before, so quit it. You look ridiculous. [Steps off soapbox.]

4) Misogyny. I really can't stand it when someone treats me as less of a person because I'm female, not male. It pisses me off that I can say something and have it completely ignored only for Jeff to repeat it verbatim a few seconds later and be applauded for such a "brilliant" idea.

3) A certain biological family member's treatment of my little brother. I get that everyone is so happy that you're getting married-- at least I won't be in charge of taking care of you when I'm older now that it will be someone else's problem-- but getting married doesn't make you, nor anyone, a better person. Everyone knows you're getting married and blah blah blah, but I know who you are and what you're capable of. I know how much you've been lying to your fiance, I know how much history you've tried to rewrite to make yourself a "victim", and I know what REALLY happened in your life before you dragged home someone who put a ring on your finger. And by the way, if my brother is so "bad" and "in the way", why not just give him to me? Have you ever heard of being supportive of your son? Helping with homework? Are you afraid that he's going to live with his sister and actually do well and get the support he needs? I know that you have everyone else snowed, but despite your own beliefs about me, I'M NOT STUPID. (Being stupid is your job.)

2) Stupid people and bad drivers. GO AWWWAAAAAYYYY! I'VE HAD ENOUGH!!

1) All of this economy business as broadcasted by CNN, FOX, MSNBC, etc. Could you stop talking about being a "recessionista" and shopping at Old Navy instead of Neiman Marcus or Nordstrom? Because really, really, some people consider shopping at Old Navy a privilege, and I can't shop at Neiman's or Nordstrom unless something I've wanted for two years has gone on the clearance rack... What happened to responsible reporting? Can you please just return to responsible reporting instead of making non-news? What happened to holding people accountable? Why be a 24-hour network if you can't do enough responsible reporting to keep you from repeating the same story every thirty minutes? Can't you be a solution instead of a problem? Because I want to be able to buy a house, buy a car, and be able to afford to get married when it's time. I want to not have to worry about how I'm going to be able to afford graduate school because no banks are offering student loans. I want to not have to worry about whose insurance will be good enough to cover our having children without having to declare bankruptcy each time we have a kid. And you, media, if you don't get off of your asses and quit making non-news, how are you going to inform the rest of the country of what is going on? Or how it affects us? When we watch the news, we want the news, not some newscast that has more in common with a celebrity tabloid show than responsible reporting. [Steps off soapbox again.]

Things I could do without, in no particular order. [Volume #1]

2008-11-16T20:12:00.003-05:00

10) Looking at old Facebook pictures, ones from about the time that I started dating Jeff... and knowing that those pictures are about 30-40lbs ago.

9) Thinking, in the aftermath of all of those skinny pictures, "Oh goodness, I have really let myself go."

8) Family drama, a.k.a. "if you tell something to Grandma that you don't want anyone to know, Ed will find out, and then they'll talk to your mother (the one you don't get along with or speak to) about it so that it's just another topic to murder me over behind my back."

7) Wind and ridiculously cold weather killing our bonfire. Thanks mother nature, let me just tell you how much we love you.

6) Our landlord saying, "well your house is... neat... well, I guess it really isn't neat, but it at least it is clean."

5) Our landlord asking, "What if you two break up? What do I do with the lease?"

4) Not having a quick enough brain to ask, "What if your previous tenants divorced? What would you have done then?" as a retort.

3) Discrimination against a person, or people, due to a lack of marital status. Because really, really, this issue has come up frequently as of late, not just in the news because of Proposition 8, but in my own every day life and I'm so, so, so sick of it. If I can figure out how to discuss it appropriately, it'll be here for everyone's reading.

2) Avery and Duchess refusing to use the front and/or back yard as a bathroom whenever it is windy, rainy, snowy, or cold. There are not enough paper towels in the world...

1) The impending stress of exam week.

I got an e-mail today.

2008-11-13T14:17:00.002-05:00

I know that everyone speaks of the post-9/11 world, but there is another date whose passing stays marked in my world. I am part of the post-9/11 world, but I am also a member of the post-4/16 world, a world where I worry whether someone's going to come into my classroom with a gun and kill me.

Or worse, kill Jeff. Right in front of me. (I knew it was a bad idea to take classes together.)

We did our Tuesday/Thursday routine. We scrambled to get ready for our 2:00pm class, got dressed, ran to grab lunch, and drove to campus. We put money in the meter, we walked to class, and all was normal.

And then we were asked if we had "heard the news."

The university has spent $10 million installing these clocks in our classrooms... they're hardwired to some central computer that gives us the date and time on normal days, and on days like today, they beep and flash and change colors to tell us that there's an Alert going on. We've been on our way to class, so whatever news there is, we hadn't heard it yet.

Apparently there were some suspected gunshot sounds in Pritchard Hall, one of the dorms on campus. The dorm has been locked down. Suspected gunshots, building locked down... we don't find this out AFTER we've gone to class.

That e-mail, the one I received today, was from VT Alerts, our campus-wide alerts system that is supposed to warn us if anyone is running around with a gun with the intention of harming other students. Titled "Pritchard Secured, Sounds of gunshot", it was sent at 1:52 PM. One minute after its' sending, I received a phone call-- yet another notification from VT alerts-- while I was sitting in class with Jeff. It reads like this:

"Policeare [sic] investigating reported sounds of gunshots in Prichard Hall. Building is secured. No access in or out. Police searching room by room. Virginia Tech PD and BlacsburgPD [sic] are investigating reported sounds of gunshots in Pritchard Hall. Building is secured. No access in or out. Police are searching room by room. Two people reported hearing sounds like gunfire at 1pm."

(Emphasis mine.)

Our class schedule is pretty specific on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The class before ours would have been from 12:30 to 1:45; ours lasts from 2:00 to 3:15. The sound of the gunfire was reported as having taken place at 1:00pm. This gives them-- whoever they are over at VT Alerts-- forty five minutes before the start of another class to notify the university community of what is happening, and whether movement is restricted or not. They had alot of time, but no such thing happened in a timely manner.

The Alert was put out at 1:40pm. The clocks didn't start freaking out until about 1:50. I didn't get an e-mail until 1:52. I didn't get a phone call until 1:53. Thousands of students were moving around the campus.

I don't get it.

I support everything that my university did following the early morning hours of April 16, 2007. I believe that they read the signs correctly-- the statistics pointed out that there was a 0.06% chance that the shooting that happened in the morning would turn out to be anymore than a domestic dispute. They had no way of knowing anything else. I believe that if they had shut down the university, just because of that event, the guilty one would have gone through his dorm and started shooting, he would have killed even more people. I don't know that sending out e-mails would have made much of a difference that day, because the guilty one was capable of doing much, much more. But I do know that if I had spent $10 million, I'd make sure that my damned alerts system worked, and it worked in a timely manner.

We were lucky today. Right now, there's a message on the clock saying, "Police now believe that sounds from Pritchard were not gunfire. Investigation still ongoing." The clock beeped about 15 minutes into class. It's still beeping once in awhile now. During the writing of this blog, they've sent out another one, titled "Pritchard Hall Update", sent at 2:44pm, that says this:

" Police now believe that the sounds from Pritchard were NOT gunfire. Investigation still ongoing. Police have interviewed witnesses who saw and heard people, possibly students, exploding something outside Pritchard Hall.

"At about 12:50 p.m. Thursday VTPD received a report of sounds like gunfire in the vicinity of Pritchard Hall. Police immediately secured the building and began a floor by floor and room by room search. During the course of the investigation, eyewitnesses reporting seeing people, possibly students exploding firecrackers or something else in or near a dumpster near Pritchard. Police have found no evidence of gunfire from within or outside the building and believe the noises likely came from something other than gunfire." (Emphasis mine.)

Oh, yes, and we're definitely getting the beeping again.

"Pritchard Hall as been reopened. Police have completed their search and found no evidence of gunfire. Check web for more information."

They had ten extra minutes to tell us what was up. Ten extra minutes... ten million dollars.

Couldn't they have spent the money differently, in a better way?

Things that happen #1: Ways that I know Avery really is my "dogter."

2008-10-20T16:21:00.007-04:00

This weekend, I decided to sneak Avery into work at my "art office" in Downtown Blacksburg. Considering that there really is art, like, all over the place, I was worried that she would start nosing around, and leave a big, wet, cold nose mark on some work of at that is anywhere from one thousand to one million times her original cost of $5. She did nothing of the sort.

As I sat down at my desk and began cataloging some AWESOME works, which really, really ... I'll stop that thought here... , I noticed that Avery was sitting down next to my chair. When I looked down, I saw her staring intently into the face of a work by Joanie Pienkowski, her face just a few inches away from the glass of the work's frame.

I looked down twenty minutes later. She was still doing the same thing.

I don't know if she was really looking at the work, or just admiring her reflection in the glass that was protecting it from the aforementioned cold nose, but she got up and started walking around the room, pausing in front of each work for a minute or two, sitting on her butt, and cocking her head back and forth as if she were trying to comprehend what she's seeing. I don't know if she was intrigued that her reflection changed a little depending on what color work she was standing in front of, or if she really thought she was "people", pausing as if she's at a doggie-level museum exhibit, but it was priceless.

Twenty minutes later, she did this.

And I did this.

The End.

------------------------
I've been terrible at keeping up with "This Week's..." posts, mostly because of the strict format, and also because I just fell behind. Sometimes those random categories are WAY too hard to come up with. Since I do miss having some kind of weekly, small, little post, I'm starting a new set of posts about things- whatever things they may be- that happen. I don't know if they'll be important things, big things, little things, stupid things, or silly things, but I'll be sharing them with whomever actually does read this thing. This is your cue to look for the next post of this series," Things that happen #2: I'm not even out of college- yet!- and my craziest dreams are coming true!"

- Jessy

This week's... I'm so happy to be home edition, aka #9

2008-09-25T21:10:00.002-04:00

... thing about which I'm most happy: Dad is home from the hospital, and doing pretty well. I know that almost everyone who reads this blog knows that, but I'm just really, really glad that I could be there for him and take care of him by helping take care of Mom.

... funniest thing said by a roommate: This actually happened a few weeks ago, however, this is a catch-up blog. When asked about whether he had ever had a girlfriend (he hasn't), our roommate Scott said," Do you know why I look so young?... Because I haven't had some she-devil suck the life out of me yet!"

... thing I probably shouldn't be doing: After all of this hospital visiting, I probably shouldn't be watching Grey's Anatomy right now. Lots of blood? Check. Lots of gore? Check. Talking about aortic problems? Heart surgery? Probably. I really, really shouldn't be watching this.

... proudest moment: I will be gainfully employed after graduation. Working with art. Do you KNOW how rare it is to be employed after graduating from undergrad IN an art history job? Yeah. It's that awesome.

... cutest moment: Date night, yesterday, Jeff and I got "dressed up." He ordered me chocolate lava cake, my favorite thing in the world, for dessert. And held my hand when we left the restaurant for the car. And opened the door to the car for me to get in. And held my hand again.

... biggest surprise: The autumnal weather. I left here when weather was in the upper 70s, and now it's dipping into the 50s at night. I can't believe it, but I love fall. (It might just be my favorite season.)

... biggest Dad-inspired change: Someone named Jeffrey might have eaten salad a couple of nights in a row, and he also might have been cutting down on Dr. Pepper and eating out. Alternately, we may have gotten fruit for late night snacking, and might have also planned on watching what we can eat a little closer so that we're in good shape, too.

... cutest doggie picture: I couldn't choose.

The Orange Effect: Less Stressful Times

2008-09-18T10:33:00.007-04:00

The boy. The hat. The madness.

The Orange Effect game is the one home game of the year that everyone is supposed to wear orange and paint the stadium that specific Hokie Color.

The perfect demonstration of a Hokie Nation.

At third down (whatever that means), we shake the crap out of our keys and call it a "Key Play." I just thought it this was a great picture.

The other J, and of course, his hat, through my lovely Christian Dior anniversary present. (Hint: It's probably a pair of giant sunglasses.)

I can't wait to see Dad when he wakes up.

This week's.... I'm late by two weeks, and I'm not going to catch up anytime soon.

2008-09-16T17:14:00.004-04:00

I'm behind. I'm not going to catch up this week- things are going crazy. Until things calm down, we'll be here, in our house, hunkered down with the dogs we're babysitting until things get better.

9/11/2001::4/16/2007

2008-09-11T16:16:00.007-04:00

I was thinking about why we stop, why we remember these things that happen, why parents bring pictures of the children they lost, why husbands bring photos of wives they lost, why even though some people think we should "get over" these things that happen, why we still revisit them. If we don't revisit them, don't remember those who were lost, we will forget that they happened. And forgetting, not learning the lesson, the loss of the event in the first place- forgetting sets us up for that same tragedy to happen again.

So today, we remember because we must. Today, we are thankful for this day, hopeful for tommorrow, but still digesting what happened to us yesterday... that day.

<3

This week's... #6: The 5 day late, Football edition

2008-09-02T21:59:00.002-04:00

... coolest thing ever: Walking into a professional stadium, and seeing it over 2/3 full of Maroon and Orange.

... second coolest thing ever: Walking up to the stadium, hearing "HOKIES" echoing from within. Unbelievable.

... loudest screamfest: On the way to the game, I might have waved my orange feather boa out of the window, and I might have let out a couple of bloodcurling "HOKIES" cries around the window.

... most confusing moment: I'm used to only being able to hear HOKIES cheer, not the opposing team's fans. Imagine the problem I encountered when I heard the ECU fans, and their marching band, when something good happened for their team. That should tell you about the atmosphere in Lane Stadium.

... game regalia: Two football helmet magnets on each side of the car, and a window flag for the way there. A feather boa, VT earrings, a "It's a HOKIE thing" t-shirt, VT flip flops, and VT hair ribbons. And of course, a Jeff wearing a jersey and his... I don't know how to describe it... hat.

... best sidekick: Carmin, our trusty Garmin, who told us that we should immediately turn right as we hit the state line on Interstate 77. Can you tell me what's wrong with this situation>

...not so good thing: the part where we lost. Oops.

This week's...#5

2008-08-22T00:58:00.002-04:00

... most empowering moment: Finding out that an issue that I opposed, and wrote a letter of opposition for, didn't happen. Basically, a company applied for an oil drilling permit near a famous work of land art by Robert Smithson, and the permit was denied. VICTORY! The story is here.

... blog I disagree the most with: This piece about the local foods movement being an issue of "class." I'm sorry, but really, local foods and farmers market veggies and fruits in this town cost the same as, or much less than, the fruit and veg at the Kroger. Things like avacados, tomatoes, and fresh from the tree peaches are a few dollars cheaper at the Natural Foods Co-op than the chain grocery store, and quite frankly, knowing where to buy local food isn't an issue of "class" or "income"- it's a clue on how to be savvy. (I mean really, girls, there are MUCH BETTER THINGS to blog about.)

... thing I'm looking forward to: our last roommate moving in the house!

... thing I'm not looking forward to: taking the little brother home.

... most fun thing I scratched off the "things to do before I graduate, for real" list: I went tubing with J and the little brother on the New River. Despite the shallowness of the river, and the rocks on which we kept running aground, the mountains, trees, and sky were beautiful. The sunburn? Well...

... stupidest thing I did this week: I forgot the SPF 6,000 (aka 60) sunscreen that I need to keep my skin from getting third degree burns from the sun. The sunscreen was forgotten before a 3 hour long tubing trip, and, needless to say, the whole front half of my body appears to have turned the color of a lobster- a cooked one- especially my legs. There are no words to describe how painful walking has been for the past few days. None.

... thing I'm paranoid about: That I'll get skin cancer from this one bad sunburn. I know, I know... but really.

... funniest sunburn-related words that came out of my mouth:" Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow... my skin won't move, my skin won't move!"

... thing that disappointed me the most: the revelation of John Edwards' mistress, who he started seeing after his wife's problems with cancer. I cannot believe how much of a bullet the Democrats dodged- what if he had been the nominee? Or a VP? I could see this blowing up in September, and the media, and Republicans would have a field day.

... thing I won't miss: I got on the scales and discovered that I lost 15 pounds! YAY!

... favorite purchase: I have three. I have recently began having a love affair with Kate Spade, and a couple of pairs of shoes and a handbag I've wanted for years finally went on sale for dirt cheap prices (I love it when this shoe store has sales!). I finally, like a big girl, broke down and bought them, and I can't wait to carry the bag for years to come... starting, you know, the minute it gets here!

... happy moment: getting rid of the cats, and bringing our new foster dog into the house! Her name is Duchess, and she is a beautiful Siberian Husky who belongs to the family next door. Since their lease only allows them to have one dog, and ours says we can have as many pets and animals of whatever type that we want (Can we please get a DINOSAUR in the house?!), we are taking her in and loving her as if she is our own. And, you know, laughing when her and Avery start playing tug of war over toys.

... favorite movie scene: I've decided that my favorite animated movie scene EVER is the "dance" that Wall*E and Eva do during the movie Wall*E. Jeff and I took the little bro and neighbor's daughter to see it, and all I have dreamt about since Sunday night is the two little robots dancing among the stars, and sharing their little lightning kiss. Even though I don't get to dance in space, or create lightning by nuzzling up to my someone special, I feel like they must have felt (during the dance) every day.

<3

*P.s. Can someone bug Mom about not blogging? If she doesn't write one soon, about OBB, or something, I'm going to post my supersecret guest blog about her birthday party right here. Pictures or not.

This week's... #4

2008-08-14T20:43:00.002-04:00

... best song/lyrics: "Cape Canaveral" by Conor Oberst. Part that gets stuck in my head" Please, please, please sister Socrates/ You always answer with a question
Show some kindness to a petty thief "

... funniest comment whose context cannot be explained without incriminating another party: "On your mark, get set, go!"

... comment which, when taken out of context, sounds very, very dirty: "It was an animal... I can feel it in my butt."

... biggest surprise: Jeff came home early! The original plan was for him to work on Wednesday, rest, and pack up... and come home Thursday. I was even going to ask him if he would consider coming home Wednesday evening, you know, because I missed him, and I wanted him home immediately. Apparently he had already thought about that- he walked in at about 9pm, to a very happy, possibly shrieking in joy, me.

... favorite moment of the day: between dinner and dusk, when the sun starts to set, the moment that I set foot on the Huckleberry Trail with the dog. I love watching the sun set, the sky turn pink, lavender, orange, and blue with the burning sun in the middle. And the foliage? The time with the dog? With Jeff? Priceless.

... biggest step out of the box: I have an art project, a work of art, that I've been thinking about for a year. And I can't really explain it, I can't describe it, but I've got the nerve to do it, and I'm going to do it, and I think that I might be able to show it. In a real gallery. And I couldn't be happier.

... biggest improvement: our office. I managed to put the bookcase up, put the books on it, and generally unpack almost every box that was in there. It's coming together!

... most awesome discovery: figuring out that I can see the moon and the stars from the bedroom window... while laying in bed.

... newest dog trick: I made Avery a bed (YAY!), and instead of sleeping with Mama (and/or Daddy), she has been sleeping on her giant block of memory foam. She's kind of figuring out what "Go to your bed!" means, but she's not quite there yet.

... best thing ever: watching TV with the Daddy and the Puppy, with all three of us on one couch.

Another dog picture blog: The Corny Edition

2008-08-09T20:56:00.003-04:00

After an hour of begging in the kitchen, I finally gave in and gave Avery a corn cob to chew on. This is what happened.

She settled down with the corn cob, giving it a casual chew and lick.

Once she gets her paws wrapped around it, she starts going to town.

There are no words to describe, appropriately, what is probably the funniest picture to ever be taken of our dog.

A little more serious gnawing.

The chewed up remains to a fun and tasty treat.

This week's.... #3

2008-08-06T20:14:00.009-04:00

... funniest story: My boss at the library, Donna, told me about seeing a girl talking on her cellphone. The girl was riding her bike, and, due to her lack of attention, ran straight into a wall. On a bike. With a cellphone in her hand. The end.

... cutest dog moment: The moment just after I had finished making the bed and putting on the fancy pillows, the dog jumped in the middle of all of them. Only her head was visible, and she immediately began snoring... even though she was awake!

... biggest improvement: Our house. I've begun making some progress out from under all of these boxes, all of it being mostly today, when I swept the porch, organized the kitchen, moved furniture, put slipcovers on couches, cleaned up the closet, and threw a few boxes out. Oh, and, yes, I've been clipping and pulling and cutting vines like nuts.

... favorite thing: the OBB. I think that, though I didn't get to spend as much time with friends, I was really glad to get some good, stress-less time with my parents, and my little brother.

... biggest surprise: My parents bought both Jeff and I BIKES. We like to think that, because they were bought concurrent with our anniversary, they're anniversary presents. From my parents.

... biggest annoyance: Having to go to work. I don't mind going to work, I usually love my job, but being (now) the only person there this summer, I can't even begin to explain how frustrated I am with some of the inane things I end up having to do.

... moment I can't wait for: I can't wait to get in the car and pick up my little brother on the 15th!!!

... reason to celebrate: I have two. 1) Our roommate, Norm, just got an awesome job today. 2) A two year anniversary

... person I should marry: Jeff Owens. (Edit: Even though he said about our relationship, just a few weeks after we started dating, "It's not like I'm going to marry you or anything." Can you people SEE the speech I'm gonna make one day?)

--------

Edit: Last minute find: 15 bottles of GOOD wine, as well as a bottle of pear (that means pear inside the bottle) brandy.

.... best meal: roasted chicken with a rub of fresh rosemary, fresh garlic, amish butter, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and a dash of paprika, accompanied by my 2 hour french potatoes savoyarde, and, of course, homemade organic guacamole with serrano chillies, heirloom tomatoes, organic onion, fresh cilantro, and a half of a freshly squeezed lemon. With a giant cupcake for dessert.

... worst thing ever: Getting my freaking nose fixed. It's a long story, but if a nose bleed lasts more than 15 minutes, one is supposed to go directly to the doctor in case of an arterial rupture way up far in the sinus cavity. After 15 minutes, I ended up driving to the ENT specialist, and, 30 minutes later, my nose quit bleeding. Then he cauterized the freaking artery or god knows what, and I can't sneeze for quite awhile. Oh, yes, and, for good measure, my freaking face looks like I was hit by a softball.

... best album lyrics: Conor Oberst, the dude whose one man band is Bright Eyes, put out an album on our anniversary, and, well... you know. I can't recommend the album any higher, it's definately got some phrasing and lyrics reminiscent of Tom Petty. (And a possible first dance at wedding reception song?!)

The song is called "Get Well Cards", and the lyrics I love the best are these four verses. I love how I can put this album and get lost in its stories.

"I thought about you in your little house
Think you're lonely but I could be wrong and

I wanna be a bootlegger
Wanna mix you up something strange
Braid your hair like a sister
Maim you like a hurricane"

and for good measure,

"But in a town like this, in the chequered flag dawn
It's so empty you could make somebody dream
So maybe it's you, in your four-post bed
Found asleep with still blood in your teeth and

I wanna be your happiness
I wanna be your common sense pain

Wrap your head in a picket fence
Rebuild after the hurricane"

and hopefully, for this week, this will be the end.

This week's.... #2

2008-07-31T22:49:00.006-04:00

... biggest pain in the ass: This should not be a surprise for anyone that knows any of us and has spoken to us- moving into our 120ish year old, 3500 sq. foot house in Blacksburg.

... best change: Moving from a 300 square foot apartment into a historic, beautiful, huge house.

... most crude BUT funny words that came out of my mouth: " [Her] finding him a divorce lawyer is like a guy buying a one night stand an abortion..."

... number of cuts, scrapes, bruises, and bug bites: 23. Yowza.

... most dreaded task: Yardwork.

... last minute save: Our other roommate, Norm, got a last minute save when John (roommate) and I went over to his place and helped him pack. Norm took a giant fall off of a ladder this week, and ended up tearing ligaments, cracking ribs, and generally doing very no good, bad, terrible things to his shoulder and upper part of his body. We all wish him a speedy recovery.

... most confusing thing ever: A lunch invite that I got today... didn't expect it, way bizarre.

... best development: We're getting rid of the cats!!! Our neighbors needed a foster for their Siberian Husky named Duchess, and we found a way to get them one. I negotiated with the roommate who has two cats, and told him that he could send the cats home and foster the husky, a dog that he has always wanted, for the school year.

... best Avery picture.

I couldn't pick.

I'm tearing up my photos because I wanna forget... it's over.

2008-07-26T16:27:00.003-04:00

I have the ghost lyrics from a song stuck in my head. They're on constant repeat, and I don't know how to get rid of them.

If anyone out there wants to take mercy on me, please, kill me now. I keep hearing those words, and they won't go away.

I blame it on the band, Brand New. To make a long story very much shorter, I have loved them since I was about 15 years old, and they have rocked my socks off ever since. I can't do anything but think fondly of them, because their albums (god, their albums... *swoon*) were the soundtrack to my high school life, to my first real love, and to one of my best friendships ever, with Phil, who might have been addicted to them, too, and it might have even been my fault. I might be crazy, but at some point in our "we're dating" and "no we're not dating, yuck" stages, watching "Lord of the Rings" way too many times, and plotting to go to concerts all of the time, we might have even had songs that made us think of each other. (I might be lying about that, I'll go back and fact check later.) I loved Brand New because whenever I was fighting with my boyfriend and whenever I was having a bad day, I could up them in the CD player and transport myself the magical little place that they created with their albums. And this one time, right before my 18th birthday, I might have actually kissed the lead singer (best friend, Claire, dared me)... and his first name might have been Jesse. (I'm only admitting that because she'd write it all over the comment section of this blog, and I'd NEVER live it down. )

I've been able to get their songs out of my head for years, but this time, it just isn't so.

I remember, the night before I turned 19, I turned on their song "Soco Amaretto Lime", which was all about "I'm gonna stay eighteen forever." At the time, I didn't want to get older because all of the changes I had gone through, graduation from high school, moving to college, saying goodbye to friends, and reconnecting with old ones, it was all just hard. And I just couldn't do it anymore, I couldn't get older because the first few months I had been in college were lonely, and it was too difficult to imagine having to start life all over again and live in Blacksburg for three and a half more years. I didn't know where my life was going, at the point, because it hadn't been anywhere fantastic in a few years, and that song was my declaration that I was not going to get older until getting older meant something good, something special. I was going to stay eighteen forever, just like the song says, because "[I'll] never have to listen, to anyone, about anything," and that was just fine with me.

Fast forward to four years later, and I've been singing "I am gonna stay eighteen forever" for about three days. (Even though I'd like to stay at least 21, forever, instead.) All of the situations, now, are different, but I can't explain why this song is back. I guess it's all denial over my resistance to changes.

I used to just listen to the lyrics that were on the surface of the song, until I came to college, and I guess I learned how to start looking at things in a deeper way. I remember the first time I noted the background vocals, something that the band tends to play with in order to layer lyrics and give a song much deeper, sometimes more nostalgic, meaning. I guess after four years, I'm over the learning curve and I'm starting to concentrate on the details, the little things that are between the lines. The problem is that I concentrated so hard, all I can hear is those background vocals, on repeat, on my head.

I loved that song when I was younger, when it was about refusing to grow up, when it helped me through some difficult transitions and painful times. And I don't want to refuse to grow up this time, I love, right now, growing older. I think that if I tried really hard, I could admit to myself, very truthfully, that it is because because so many things are changing, once again. Another year, another move. Friends graduating, marrying, divorcing, and being tossed all over the globe. Friends dying. Friends refusing, like I am right now, to graduate, sticking out another year for another diploma and another year, another chance to just be a college kid again.

I guess I can't erase those background lyrics because everyone I've met this summer, everyone who I have had a great time with and loved hanging out with, who I went to class with for years, well, they're all leaving. All of them, now graduates, who hung around for one last Blacksburg summer to live the dream for a few months longer. But in the end, with just a few weeks to go, It's too late, for me, for them, for us, because we can't stay in college forever, because leaving this place is inevitable. We can't stay eighteen forever. We're all leaving soon enough, and for some, it's more painful to be attached to someone who won't be around in just a few weeks than it is to just be alone.

Everyone, all of them, the ones that are staying for that last summer of freedom- they say that they're all jealous, that they wish that they could stay here for another year and not worry about growing up. And I guess that I just didn't realize, when I chose not to graduate, when I chose to stick around for a double degree (read: last chance to be young and free), I didn't realize that I was doing just that, staying around here for another year and not worrying about growing up. Now that I could have graduated, but didn't because I wasn't quite done yet, I realize that I'm trying to stay eighteen, or 21, or in college forever, and I'm just not going to win this battle.

---------

The lyrics that are stuck in my head are the ones in parentheses... but this is the part of the song that's stuck in my head.

"Soco Amaretto Lime" by Brand New

I'm gonna stay eighteen forever (cut me open)
So we can stay like this forever (sun poisoned)
And we'll never miss a party (this offer...)
cause we keep them going constantly (...stands forever)
And we'll never have to listen (new haircut)
to anyone about anything (new bracelet)
cause it's all been done and it's all been said (eyeliner)
we're the coolest kids and we take what we can get (wait forever)
(you're just jealous cause I'm young and in love)
Eighteen forever (first kisses)
(your stomach's filled up but you're starved for conversation)
So we can stay like this forever (new stitches)
(you're spending all your nights growing old in your bed)
And we'll never miss a party (collar weekend)
(and your tearin up your photos cause you wanna forget... it's over)
cause we keep them going constantly (appearance ticket)
(you're just jealous cause I'm young and in love)
And we'll never have to listen (November to...)
(your stomach's filled up but you're starved for conversation)
to anyone about anything cause it's all been done (...remember)
(you're spending all your nights growing old in your bed)
and it's all been said (nightswimmers)
(and your tearin up your photos cause you wanna forget... it's over)
we're the coolest kids and we take what we can get

Just jealous cause we're young and in love ....