Santa comes early!

I've been longing for a piano for years and was very happy my co-worker lent me her keyboard. 

Quoted on Filmspotting #516

http://www.filmspotting.net/reviews/1245-516-top-5-discoveries-of-2014-foxcatcher-tale-of-princess-kaguya.html

Segment starts at ~31:42, my quote is at 38:00.

Roses and stamps

Look!  It's November and we still have roses!  Hooray!

Also, thanks to the triple threat of finally hitting my saving goal, birthday party and vacation paid for, as well as birthday money means I can start Postcrossing again.  Eliminating the purchase of stamps was one of the ways I funded the vacation/party.  Now I can start sending postcards to strangers around the world. 

While I was there I bought stamps for holiday cards as well as some of Jimi Hendrix.

It's day 14,611

Here's what we sang:
(Who sang what is from my memory, which means it's probably not accurate)

All  // Star Spangled Banner // Cher (I previewed all four version and the Cher one was the winner)
Me // Flowers In Your Hair // The Lumineers
Matt // Personal Jesus // Depeche Mode 
Kelly // LIVIN' ON A PRAYER // Bon Jovi
Jimmy // Tie A Yellow Ribbon // Tony Orlando
Burt // The Letter // Joe Cocker
Someone // Sunshine Superman // Donovan
Jeff // The Witch Doctor // David Seville
Hafidha // I Don't Want To Be // Gavin DeGraw
Jeff  // My Sharona // The Knack
Ameena // Just A Girl // No Doubt
Deborah and me // Galileo // Indigo Girls
Allegra //  Don't Stop Believin'  // Journey
Andrew //  Touch Me // The Doors
MaryAnn & Me // Baby It's Cold Outside // Glee Cast
Matt & Tara // Shake It Off // Taylor Swift
Deobrah & ? // Jack And Diane // John Mellencamp
Chris // Folsom Prison Blues // Johnny Cash
Burt  // New Shoes // Paolo Nutini
Devon // Night Moves // Bob Seger
Olivia // Boogie Shoes // K.C. & The Sunshine Band
Tiffany & crew // Gettin' Jiggy Wit It // Will Smith
Tara and me // Danny's Song // Loggins & Messina
Mark // Taxi // Harry Chapin
Deborah, Burt (and everyone, really) // Bohemian Rhapsody // Queen
John // Wagon Wheel // Old Crow Medicine Show
MaryAnn // Strong Enough // Cher
Cindy & Me (sung like in high school) // You Shook Me All Night Long  // AC/DC
Someone // I Can't Go For That (No Can Do) // Hall & Oates
Tiffany & Tim //  Build Me Up Buttercup // The Foundations
Chris // Town Without Pity // Gene Pitney
Danielle, Deborah & Allegra // Jessie's Girl // Rick Springfield
Burt & Laurie // Endless Love // Lionel Richie & Diana Ross 
Devon  // In The Ghetto // Elvis Presley
Tiffany, Olivia, MaryAnn, Philip & Branka  // Wannabe // Spice Girls
Matt and Me // My Eyes // Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog
MaryAnn & Philip // The Girl Is Mine // Michael Jackson & Paul McCartney
Mark // Moondance // Van Morrison
Danielle & Deborah // Harper Valley P.T.A. // Jeannie C. Riley
Jeff Norton // One Week // Barenaked Ladies
Cindy // Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go // Wham! 
Allegra & ? // Don't Stop // Fleetwood Mac
Allegra, Matt, Tiffany & Olivia // Baby Got Back // Jonathan Coulton

Regular commenter Jan took a bunch of great photos.  Here is one that captures the flavor of the evening.  It's a moment in the excellent rendition of "Jessie's Girl" which had the best karaoke typo of the evening: "the point is mute" (moot).

Early Birthday Wishes

Made by a student whose birthday is very near mine.

Actually, it's part of my personal credo not to.

Unless I am on the way to or coming home from a workout, workout gear is not for general out-and-aboutness.  Also not a fan of sneakers with wedge heels (why?) and track jackets made of silk and leather.

So this is really a thing.

I was reading the paper while waiting for the train and I kept being distracted by something white in my peripheral vision.  It kept being my hair.  

It is strange to think that someday when I see the hair out of the corner of my eyes it will be light instead of dark.

What I did this summer.

In the exercise realm.  I sometimes did the jogging.  I never swam on Wednesdays.  I did walk to work most Thursday mornings.  I did not go berry picking once.  I don't think I had a movie night on Tuesdays at all.  So that seems to be less successful than my general feeling about that part of the summer.  I think my accomplishments walking to work trumped all the other things.

I did find cost effiencies in food.  That was good.

I did not rediscover my love for gardening. I think I need a buddy or something.

I did submit my book.

I did eat without distractions.  Which is boring, but I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would.

It was a good summer.

There's no getting around it, I'm a paper lists type of gal.

I've just switched my paper planner (seen next to the water bottle) over to my phone calendar, but I still like writing things down and checking them off.

Sometimes it takes two computers to get the job done.

When adding people to the email system my school uses, it's better to have two computers.  Helpfully, I'm ambidextrous in mousing (I'm a righty, though at work I left-hand mouse) so two mice can share one stack of copy paper.

Photo from October 1990, poem by Gary Soto

Another good one taken by Cindy.  That's me on the left and H on the right in Pleasanton, California where we traveled with the marching band for competition during the autumn of our sophomore year.   I'm wearing fishnet stockings with zebra striped glow-in-the-dark Converse high tops. My friends and I were prone to wearing the fishnet/Converse combo from time to time.  That was the band trip that H arranged for all the boys in the band to sing "16 Candles" to me on my 16th birthday.

Also in the same photo album a poem/snippit of a poem by Gary Soto that I really liked when it was handed to me by Mrs. Brown, my awesome ninth grade English teacher.  Thank goodness I kept it, because I can't find it anywhere online.

Photo from August 1994

In my digression, I found this photo, which I'd been looking for now and then for the past few months.  This is boyfriend #4 and myself, shortly before I went back for my second year of college.

We both loved our hair, that boyfriend and I, and I think it was hard to tell if we loved the other's hair any more than we loved our own.  I'd had a fantastic summer with him, the kind of romance that everyone should have at least once in their lives.  I really didn't want to leave to go back to college, but I didn't really want to stay either.  So I had my friend Cindy take our picture, us sitting on the back deck at my house, squinting into the sun while she framed the photo.  This is the first photo of me as part of a couple that I have in my possession.  I wasn't the type of  high school girl who handed off her camera to her friends saying, "Take a picture of us!" while I snuggled into an embrace.

I'm very tan, because I was a lifeguard three days a week, working as a cook at Pizza Hut the other four days.  I had 24 hours off between the end of work on Saturday (6pm) and the start of work on Sunday (6pm).  I'm wearing Tevas (my first pair) which I wore while lifeguarding and gave me a wicked Teva tan.   My baggy t-shirt says something witty and I'm betting I have on the plaid shorts I stole from boyfriend #3.

Boyfriend #4 is 17--there was almost a two-year age difference between us--has just graduated from high school and spent the summer doing this and that.  He didn't have a job, which bugged me, but in hindsight it was convenient, because we only had to plan around one person's work schedule.  He is not tan, because he didn't do much outside stuff, and is wearing socks and sneakers, despite the heat.  He wasn't a sandals type of guy.

Like most of the relationships from that time period, I managed to mess up the breaking up part and spent a good year incredibly angry at him, for which I'm very sorry now, as I realize he was doing what he needed to do.  But at the moment when this picture was taken, I was happy, and some part of me realized this summer was one to be remembered.

A bit of a digression.

I assumed that I had run out of the material I was using to make the bias tape for the Laurel dresses, but after (it's always after) I finished the dresses using a different bias tape for the neckline for one of them, what should I discover but a whole bunch more of said material.

This led to a massive overhaul of the closet, when I was supposed to be doing other things.

Which led to peeking into bins, which led to the discovery of this box, which was a gift from my high school friend, sent to me during college.

It even included fun pictures, of me with her nephew (who is now in his 20s) and a picture of the jazz band my senior year.

I rearranged the closet and even organized my material and patterns.  So that was a good thing.

Quoted on Filmspotting. About Channing Tatum, of course.

Filmspotting is a recent discovery, I stumbled across it last fall and really look forward to the weekly podcast, as well as dipping into the archives.  The hosts, Adam and Josh, spend a good 20+ minutes chewing over the movie they've chosen to review every week and there is always a top-5 list.  One of the other features is a reader poll.  Every other week they announce the results and read comments.  I'm excited to say I've been quoted twice before (both times talking about women and movies!) but the poll for this week was about Channing Tatum.  So you know I had stuff to say about that.  They even linked to my Channing Tatum Personal Film Festival blog post.

http://www.filmspotting.net/reviews/1180-496-top-5-films-of-2014-so-far-the-rover.html

If you would like to listen, click on the above link and then move along to the 25:40 minute mark.

Thanks Filmspotting for making my to-see movie list long, giving me something to listen to when I clean the house and also making me famous!  You know, in that internet way.

Kid thank you

So sweet.  This is from one of the K/1 classes.  My favorite is "she has her own style" which is a comment that another co-worker also got.  I laughed because the other co-worker has a very fun sense of style, while mine involves wearing the same thing every day of the week.  But to a K/1, I guess that counts as "own sense of style."

Ah, the illusion of control

It's summer!  And that means I have things to do at work.  So I've put things in order and have goals for all the weeks I've worked.  Nicole, from First Unitarian introduced me to this planning method. It's great for when you have specific tasks to do over a set amount of time, not all of which are date specific. My summer tasks mostly just need to get done, and some can't start before I finish others, so this system works fabulously for me.  Whatever doesn't get done in a given week gets moved down to the next week.  The trick is to keep July 21-25 from getting to full of too many un-done post-it notes.

Another way to do this is to use index cards instead of post-its.  Then you can save the index cards, make notes on the backs, and throw them in a folder to retrieve for the next summer.

Sorting the letters.

Along with the journals, the letters from the first two years of college were recovered.  They are all a jumble and I'm sorting them.  I have another tub of letters which I went though a few years ago, so I hope to get everything in neat piles of people.  It's been fun to see what I can find.  They are especially nostalgic because after my first two years of college I got an email account. Though the letters still arrived, it wasn't with the same frequency.  All of that early electronic communication has been lost and I mourn it.  That makes these letters all the more wonderful to read now.

KRPS schedule in 1994

Just in case you need to know what I was listening to my first two years of college.  Friend Sue and I especially enjoyed the Bob and Bill show.  That's the first time I can remember a radio show giving an email address to write to, along with the regular postal service address.  We also loved the Radio Reader, though Friend Sue got to listen to him more than I did as she was always doing something in the Art building, whereas my hours were spent in the library.

Exercise goal for April.

I get a goodly amount of exercise, but I would like to do better.  My goal for April will be to average 60 minutes of exercise over six days.  I've just tallied up my exercise for the 12 weeks since January 6, and I averaged 45 minutes per day.  So I have a good foundation built.  Exercise can be anything but will most likely be the following things I do:  walking, jog/walk, Pilates, exercise class.  The only thing I'm not counting is restorative yoga, which I love, and is very good for me, but I cannot in good conscious call exercise.  I don't have to complete 60 minutes all at once, can break the sessions and scatter them through the day.

I'll check in at the end of every week.

Week of March 31
I did 370 minutes of exercise over seven days, but since I've decided to divide 370 by six and not seven, I made my goal.

Week of April 7
380 minutes over six days.  Goal achieved!  Also, I walked home from work for the first time.  It took 85 minutes.  Which is not really that long, in the grand scheme of things.  I might think about doing this more often.

Week of April 14
365 over six days.  I took Easter off.

Week of April 21
Despite the fact I did no exercise on three days, I still clocked 360 minutes this week.  This makes me think that 360/week is a reasonable number to shoot for on a regular basis.

Week of April 28
Although this week I only did 165 minutes over four days.  I did run a 5k on Saturday though, which meant I skipped my walk to the gym and the gym which meant 80 minutes of usually automatic exercise I did not obtain. Not such a great finish to the experiment, but still successful enough that I will continue to strive for 360 minutes of exercise per week.

Picture from long time ago.

This is E.F. and myself sitting in downtown Amherst in November of 1997.  I had traveled back to Amherst for Thanksgiving, or perhaps a fall visit.  The two of us had been roommates the previous summer.  Excellent mid-90s details include the red point-and-shoot camera held by EF, her short hair the fact that she's smoking.  I am not smoking in this photo, but I'm guessing I have either just finished a cigarette or am about to have one.  I'm wearing my dad's army pants, left over from the national guard, a spanking new pair of Doc Martens, my green sweater, which once upon a time belonged to Sara's Great Aunt Hazel.  I'm also wearing the coat that kept me warm through many a freezing cold New England Winter.  On my hand is a ring that I gave myself, so as to be engaged to me and not any guys.  The backpack carries my things for the weekend.  I will take the Peter Pan bus back to Boston to work my first post-college job as a receptionist.  It is a job that is boring and lonely and I travel an hour each way to get to there.  I am lonely, and this weekend has been a very good one.