See, when I was in high school, in a town ten blocks wide, I discovered the cappuccino. Except my cappuccino came from a metal box in the town gas station, one spigot next to the regular coffee. It cost twenty cents more than the regular coffee, and tasted like coffee with cream-flavored cotton candy mixed in. My high school boyfriend used to buy them for me.
We picked the coffeeshop at random when my father and I went up for the college visit; I think it was the closest restaurant to our parking spot. I'd never been in a coffeeshop before. The gas station sold coffee, all the restaurants in my little town sold coffee, but this was a place with pages of coffees on its menu, the number of coffees by far dwarfing the number of fair-trade sandwiches. There were musical instruments painted in mural around the walls.
I ordered a cappuccino. An iced, mocha cappuccino. It came in a glass eight inches tall, fat and thick as a milkshake. I feel like there must have been a cherry in there somewhere.
This coffeeshop was, in my mind, the epitome of everything I had heard about college. Musical instruments painted on the walls! I knew it would be my favorite restaurant.
But--despite my scholarships and general frugal living--the economies of my own student life meant that I never went back into that coffeeshop, not on my own, not for over a year. I think I went four times during the four years I attended that school, and whenever I went someone else paid, which meant the only drink I dared to order was water.
In grad school there was another coffeeshop, this one utilitarian and hippie and activist, the only decorations hand-painted signs which read things like "meat is murder" and "abortion is not murder." The coffee was much cheaper here and came in water-stained tumblers. The "Mexican" coffee, done up Chocolat-style with the chili powder, was delicious; but the economies of grad school were even worse than those of college and I rarely ever went--and never on my own, just to sit and savor. I've tried to recreate that coffee on my own but it turns out dumping chili powder into a cup of coffee isn't quite the same.
Now I go to Tryst every weekend and drink a chai that is better than any other chai I've ever tasted, with foam two inches thick that can be cut with a spoon, and two animal crackers on the side. I go in with a book and sit next to four other people on a squished couch or at a long table, and we talk sometimes and read sometimes and I scoop up chai foam with the head of a giraffe. I do this in part because I spent eight years not being able to do this, not once, and in part because... it is nice, after all, to sit and read in a warm room filled with other people, and to do it with a cup of something rich and hot and foamy.
Next week I'm going to be back in my undergrad college town for a few days, and I'm going back to that coffeeshop with the musical instruments and the iced mocha cappuccino. It's still there. And for the only time in my life, I'm going to go back as often as I want.
Showing posts with label musings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label musings. Show all posts
Monday, April 13, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
I Am A Twenty-Seven-Year-Old Strange Loop
Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of...
--They Might Be Giants
So I'm nearly finished with Douglas Hofstadter's newest book, I Am A Strange Loop. His middle book, Le Ton Beau De Marot, is one of my favorite books ever, and I have to admit that I've never made it all the way through GEB but am starting it over again and this time I will prevail!
A quick summary: Hofstadter wrote this huge tome called Godel, Escher, Bach about... um... recursive mathematical properties and their associated paradoxes (is that a good way to sum it up? it's a bit more complicated than that, especially with all the Bach canons thrown in). Then he wrote another huge tome called Le Ton Beau De Marot which is all about linguistics and translation (maybe if one says GEB is about the paradoxes of math, Marot could be about the paradoxes of language). Lately he wrote a much shorter book called I Am A Strange Loop which is about the paradox of thought itself (the part of us that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of).
The last book is by far the easiest to read, mainly because it deals with a lot of things that most people have probably pondered at some point in their lives (to wit: how does that mass of cells in my brain churn out thoughts?). In fact, as I read it, it seemed a little unfair that Hofstadter had taken the time to write out all of these ideas that I had, myself, already present in my own mass-of-cells brain. It was like he was stealing the inside of my mind and selling it.
And then, deep within the recesses of this book that seemed to contain my own ideas in Hofstadter's writing, he happened to casually mention that he wrote the 900-page, Pulitzer Prize-winning GEB when he was twenty-seven years old.
That's the age I am now.
There are huge chunks of GEB which explore Zeno's Paradox (Achilles can never catch the tortoise because even in the time it takes for Achilles to reach the tortoise's point X, the tortoise will have moved incrementally forward to point Y, and by the time Achilles reaches point Y, the tortoise will have inched forward to point Z, etc.). Sometimes I look at my generation and think that we're in our own version of Zeno's Paradox; every time we approach the bar of adulthood, it has inched a few years down the road; and when we hit that age, we find the bar is still further away.
Hofstadter was 27 in 1979; he had been an assistant professor for two years already. No one gets to do that anymore. Some people would say that today's twenty-somethings aren't prepared for the job (Hofstadter wrote GEB, but my own peers turn out things like this). That's, of course, a causality loop as much as it is anything else, combined with the unfortunate fact that few people now get the careful, one-on-one mentoring that Hofstadter got as a student.
(For all of education's current emphasis on group learning and group work, and for all of the internet's development of the hive mind, it is interesting to read biographies and notice that most people who are notable enough to have biographies trace their work back to a lengthy period of one-on-one mentoring. Just sayin' is all.)
But I suppose there's another side to all this Zeno Paradoxing: if thirty is the new twenty, as it were, then I have another ten years to create my seminal work. That tortoise is still just a bit ahead of me. I had better start running.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Nerds
So after I wrote what I did about the two nerds I met at the concert, I felt a little badly about it. I mean, what if one (or both) of them found my interpretation of their stories?
I was careful. I changed some of the details. The actual thing that "llama picture" guy wanted TMBG to sign wasn't a llama picture, but something else with similar scansion. I also didn't include enough information in the post for anyone to google, say, the concert location and date and find themselves reading my blog.
The more I think about it--particularly the Apartment 4 guy, whose song title I didn't change because it would take away the meaning of what he was trying to say to me--the more I think how brave he was to go up to a stranger and tell her that his favorite song was this one about a person who doesn't have any friends and wants another person to be his friend, because it was exactly like his life.
I used to be brave like that when I was nerdier. During my first year of grad school I wrote this guy unsolicited love letters and slipped them underneath his door. (That is a longer story for another time.) At the same time, though, it's a combination of bravery and blindness; the belief that the truth will literally "set you free" without realizing that your own uncomfortable honesty--writing a letter and slipping it under a door, or telling a stranger that you wish you had a friend--is getting in the way of what you actually want.
What is it about nerds that cause us to do things like this?
(And if the Apartment 4 guy or the llama guy ever find this blog, email me. ^__^)
I was careful. I changed some of the details. The actual thing that "llama picture" guy wanted TMBG to sign wasn't a llama picture, but something else with similar scansion. I also didn't include enough information in the post for anyone to google, say, the concert location and date and find themselves reading my blog.
The more I think about it--particularly the Apartment 4 guy, whose song title I didn't change because it would take away the meaning of what he was trying to say to me--the more I think how brave he was to go up to a stranger and tell her that his favorite song was this one about a person who doesn't have any friends and wants another person to be his friend, because it was exactly like his life.
I used to be brave like that when I was nerdier. During my first year of grad school I wrote this guy unsolicited love letters and slipped them underneath his door. (That is a longer story for another time.) At the same time, though, it's a combination of bravery and blindness; the belief that the truth will literally "set you free" without realizing that your own uncomfortable honesty--writing a letter and slipping it under a door, or telling a stranger that you wish you had a friend--is getting in the way of what you actually want.
What is it about nerds that cause us to do things like this?
(And if the Apartment 4 guy or the llama guy ever find this blog, email me. ^__^)
Sunday, February 22, 2009
TMBG And I Are Getting Old And We Still Haven't Walked In The Glow Of Each Other's Majestic Presence
1996
“You have to listen to this song,” my friend said. There were six or seven of us crowded into her parents’ living room, in my small midwestern town, before the day I accidentally spilled Mountain Dew onto their brand-new carpet, before the only boy in the group asked me to prom, before the rest of the group convinced him to try an experiment in which he would see how long he could go without speaking to me before I got angry with him; before I accidentally spilled sparkling white grape juice on my friend’s faux-fur coat and effectively ended my tenure in that particular living room. (The grape juice moment is caught, somewhere, on videotape.)
“You have to listen to this song. There are secret lyrics.”
There were.
Experimental dog
Salivating dog
Good dog.
We were fourteen years old and proud of ourselves for understanding the reference. I think we had just learned about Pavlov in psychology.
2002
I’m being driven across the country from the small midwestern town to the university I attend, three states away, after Thanksgiving break. The driver is a friend of mine whose family lives in a city en route; I am delivered to his home and he delivers me the rest of the way as if I were a parcel on the Pony Express. It’s very late. He puts in a cd: Mink Car. For the first time I hear the song “Older,” which is probably the only way to really hear this song: after midnight, in a car where you haven’t spoken to the other passenger for hours, in hour ten of a fourteen-hour haul. Pitch black outside. Nothing but the two voices:
You’re older than you’ve ever been
And now you’re even older
And now you’re even older
And now you’re even older.
When the CD finishes my friend is too tired to replace it, so we listen to Mink Car twice that night. It also contains the song “(She Thinks She’s) Edith Head,” which I listen to very intently because the lyrics hit a little too close to home (“the accent in her speech/she didn’t have growing up,” etc.).
I’m nineteen years old and, surprisingly, know who Edith Head is, though it’s a bit complicated to explain how I know (it has to do with a Pride and Prejudice-related image search which led to this site which led here). I’d be proud of myself for understanding the reference if the song itself didn’t make me a little uncomfortable.
2005
I see the Homestar Runner “Experimental Film” video for the first time, in a dingy apartment in Minneapolis. For the first time I make the connection between They Might Be Giants, the band; and this song, which is awesome. Every day before I go to my telemarketing job I play this song and rock out.
Oh—and of course I get the reference to Un Chien Andalou. Even though I’ve never actually seen the film. But there’s no one in Minneapolis to tell about it, so it doesn’t matter.
2005 Part Two
On the basis of “Experimental Film,” I decide that TMBG is my favorite band. Even though the only real understanding I have of their oeuvre is this song, plus a few memories of a salivating dog, Edith Head, and getting older. I decide to buy my sister a TMBG album for Christmas because I think that giving other people things that I think are cool is a good idea. On Amazon, the TMBG albums are too expensive (even used) so I compromise by getting John Linnell’s solo project State Songs. My sister loves it.
2005 Part Three
I happen to see a sign for a TMBG free outdoor concert in dingy Minneapolis. The concert, however, happened two days ago. I promise myself that I will go to a TMBG concert someday.
2008
Talking music with a friend; I mention, of course, “Experimental Film.”
“Is “Experimental Film” your favorite TMBG song?” my friend asks.
“Yes,” I say. “What’s yours?”
“Birdhouse.”
“Yeah, that’s a great song,” I agree.
I'm bluffing: I’ve never heard “Birdhouse In Your Soul.” Never knew it existed until that moment. Later that day I google it tentatively, wondering what could be so good that it surpassed “Experimental Film.” I listened to it and understood.
I’m twenty-six at this point and perturbed at the incorrect reference: Jason and the Argonauts were not killed by a faulty lighthouse. Medea guided Jason home safely and no one crashed on the rocks and then Jason married Medea and they had two sons and then Jason started macking on Glauce and so Medea made a magical dress and gave it to Glauce and she put it on and burst into flames ‘cause it was magic and then Medea killed her two children so Jason’s bloodline would end and I’m a dork.
2008 Part Two
Thanks to a combination of YouTube and Seeqpod, I begin to familiarize myself with the entirety of TMBG’s twenty-year career. (Actually, that’s a lie. What I really is listen to “Birdhouse In Your Soul,” “Don’t Let’s Start,” and “I Palindrome I” over and over and over. )
2008 Part Three
Wait: they wrote the theme to The Daily Show???
2008 Part Four
When my sister graduated from college, she got a book titled Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff: After Graduation, which contained such gems of advice as “Give Up Your Political Ideology” and “Get A Haircut.” (The book advised graduates to, quite literally, give up their hobbies, beliefs, and friends in order to start a new life as a working adult; it says that after six months into the job you are allowed to go back to one hobby and call up your college friends to ask how they are doing. It’s an extremely depressing book to give to a new graduate.) The one piece of advice I liked was the one that said “Every time you get a new job or a promotion, buy yourself a present.”
I decided that when I got my new job I would buy myself a copy of TMBG’s Dial-A-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants. I got my new job. I decided it would be better to build an emergency fund. I never bought the CD.
2009
I made a New Year’s Goal to attend a TMBG concert. They were still, after all, my favorite band—even though I only knew a few of their songs and had never bought any of their CDs.
2009 Part Two
I buy my first TMBG CD. It’s the “greatest hits” album A User’s Guide To They Might Be Giants and it is used, on super-sale in the back bin of Melody Records. I listen to the CD like, a jillion times.
2009 Last Week
I do a quick search to see what TMBG concerts are coming up in the next few months and end up buying tickets for the Flood Concert coming up this Saturday. ^__^
2009 This Morning
Using Seeqpod, I listen to (and record) the Flood album for the first time. I'm twenty-seven and the album is twenty years old exactly.
“You have to listen to this song,” my friend said. There were six or seven of us crowded into her parents’ living room, in my small midwestern town, before the day I accidentally spilled Mountain Dew onto their brand-new carpet, before the only boy in the group asked me to prom, before the rest of the group convinced him to try an experiment in which he would see how long he could go without speaking to me before I got angry with him; before I accidentally spilled sparkling white grape juice on my friend’s faux-fur coat and effectively ended my tenure in that particular living room. (The grape juice moment is caught, somewhere, on videotape.)
“You have to listen to this song. There are secret lyrics.”
There were.
Experimental dog
Salivating dog
Good dog.
We were fourteen years old and proud of ourselves for understanding the reference. I think we had just learned about Pavlov in psychology.
2002
I’m being driven across the country from the small midwestern town to the university I attend, three states away, after Thanksgiving break. The driver is a friend of mine whose family lives in a city en route; I am delivered to his home and he delivers me the rest of the way as if I were a parcel on the Pony Express. It’s very late. He puts in a cd: Mink Car. For the first time I hear the song “Older,” which is probably the only way to really hear this song: after midnight, in a car where you haven’t spoken to the other passenger for hours, in hour ten of a fourteen-hour haul. Pitch black outside. Nothing but the two voices:
You’re older than you’ve ever been
And now you’re even older
And now you’re even older
And now you’re even older.
When the CD finishes my friend is too tired to replace it, so we listen to Mink Car twice that night. It also contains the song “(She Thinks She’s) Edith Head,” which I listen to very intently because the lyrics hit a little too close to home (“the accent in her speech/she didn’t have growing up,” etc.).
I’m nineteen years old and, surprisingly, know who Edith Head is, though it’s a bit complicated to explain how I know (it has to do with a Pride and Prejudice-related image search which led to this site which led here). I’d be proud of myself for understanding the reference if the song itself didn’t make me a little uncomfortable.
2005
I see the Homestar Runner “Experimental Film” video for the first time, in a dingy apartment in Minneapolis. For the first time I make the connection between They Might Be Giants, the band; and this song, which is awesome. Every day before I go to my telemarketing job I play this song and rock out.
Oh—and of course I get the reference to Un Chien Andalou. Even though I’ve never actually seen the film. But there’s no one in Minneapolis to tell about it, so it doesn’t matter.
2005 Part Two
On the basis of “Experimental Film,” I decide that TMBG is my favorite band. Even though the only real understanding I have of their oeuvre is this song, plus a few memories of a salivating dog, Edith Head, and getting older. I decide to buy my sister a TMBG album for Christmas because I think that giving other people things that I think are cool is a good idea. On Amazon, the TMBG albums are too expensive (even used) so I compromise by getting John Linnell’s solo project State Songs. My sister loves it.
2005 Part Three
I happen to see a sign for a TMBG free outdoor concert in dingy Minneapolis. The concert, however, happened two days ago. I promise myself that I will go to a TMBG concert someday.
2008
Talking music with a friend; I mention, of course, “Experimental Film.”
“Is “Experimental Film” your favorite TMBG song?” my friend asks.
“Yes,” I say. “What’s yours?”
“Birdhouse.”
“Yeah, that’s a great song,” I agree.
I'm bluffing: I’ve never heard “Birdhouse In Your Soul.” Never knew it existed until that moment. Later that day I google it tentatively, wondering what could be so good that it surpassed “Experimental Film.” I listened to it and understood.
I’m twenty-six at this point and perturbed at the incorrect reference: Jason and the Argonauts were not killed by a faulty lighthouse. Medea guided Jason home safely and no one crashed on the rocks and then Jason married Medea and they had two sons and then Jason started macking on Glauce and so Medea made a magical dress and gave it to Glauce and she put it on and burst into flames ‘cause it was magic and then Medea killed her two children so Jason’s bloodline would end and I’m a dork.
2008 Part Two
Thanks to a combination of YouTube and Seeqpod, I begin to familiarize myself with the entirety of TMBG’s twenty-year career. (Actually, that’s a lie. What I really is listen to “Birdhouse In Your Soul,” “Don’t Let’s Start,” and “I Palindrome I” over and over and over. )
2008 Part Three
Wait: they wrote the theme to The Daily Show???
2008 Part Four
When my sister graduated from college, she got a book titled Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff: After Graduation, which contained such gems of advice as “Give Up Your Political Ideology” and “Get A Haircut.” (The book advised graduates to, quite literally, give up their hobbies, beliefs, and friends in order to start a new life as a working adult; it says that after six months into the job you are allowed to go back to one hobby and call up your college friends to ask how they are doing. It’s an extremely depressing book to give to a new graduate.) The one piece of advice I liked was the one that said “Every time you get a new job or a promotion, buy yourself a present.”
I decided that when I got my new job I would buy myself a copy of TMBG’s Dial-A-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants. I got my new job. I decided it would be better to build an emergency fund. I never bought the CD.
2009
I made a New Year’s Goal to attend a TMBG concert. They were still, after all, my favorite band—even though I only knew a few of their songs and had never bought any of their CDs.
2009 Part Two
I buy my first TMBG CD. It’s the “greatest hits” album A User’s Guide To They Might Be Giants and it is used, on super-sale in the back bin of Melody Records. I listen to the CD like, a jillion times.
2009 Last Week
I do a quick search to see what TMBG concerts are coming up in the next few months and end up buying tickets for the Flood Concert coming up this Saturday. ^__^
2009 This Morning
Using Seeqpod, I listen to (and record) the Flood album for the first time. I'm twenty-seven and the album is twenty years old exactly.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
To Quote Both Bronte And Skunks
Once there were two skunks named Out and In.
Whenever Out was Out, In was In
And whenever Out was In, In was Out...
Now that I am not at Tryst, I wish I were at Tryst. Actually, I don't, because Tryst is the sort of place where you have to wait 1/2 hour to get a glass of water, and by then you've already gotten up and gone to the counter yourself and just taken one.
But I wish I were somewhere.
Do you remember that sentence, from Jane Eyre? The one where she tires of her routine of eight years in a single afternoon? I feel a little like that. It's not that I'm tired of my job, because I love my job. It's not that I'm tired of doing Ashtanga every morning, because I love that too. But I'm starting to feel like I come home every evening and watch Hulu and eat dinner and check my Google Reader and go to bed. That's what I'm tired of.
(That whole thing about my "not having an evening routine" isn't true, btw. I come home. I shower, cook dinner, eat while watching Hulu, check the internets, maybe play some Super Famicom, and go to bed. That is teh lame.)
So I need somewhere to go.
Actually, finding somewhere to go is the easy part. Tomorrow Dalton Conley is giving a talk at Politics and Prose about his book Elsewhere, USA and I will go there. Today I went to Tryst and to the Farmers' Market and to the zoo. I also did two loads of laundry, one load of dishes, cooked meals for the entire week, packaged them in bento, and baked a loaf of bread. And wrote a short story and three blog posts. And hung out in Idle Time Books for a while.
Okay, let me rephrase this:
I need somewhere to go where I have to talk to other people. ^__^
Every time I go to Tryst or wherever I do kinda hope I will maybe talk to someone. If I didn't, I wouldn't bother putting on lip gloss or brushing my hair. But I don't know how to gracefully jump the chasm from "sitting next to six other people on a ratty coffeehouse sofa" to "starting a conversation that is enticing enough to draw their gaze away from their laptops, and to ensure that gaze is interested rather than murderous."
So--before you all jump with the suggestion--I spent some time this afternoon flipping through Meetup.com. Whenever I found a meetup group that looked interesting (like the cooking ones) I checked the stats on the previous meetups. There weren't a lot of repeat visitors. People would come to one meetup only and then quit the group. That didn't bode well for the success of the enterprise.
Still, I signed up to receive messages from a cooking group and a Scrabble group (Scrabble is fun, and more importantly, free), and tried to find a writing group but most of those seemed to be out of commission. (That was the other weird phenomena of Meetup.com. Groups would form, have three meetings, and die.) And then I thought about groups I would like to start, including:
Sigh. I still haven't put that "yoga happy hour" sign up on the wall of my Ashtanga studio. That might be an easy next step.
And I am going to hear Dalton Conley tomorrow. If all else, his book is about how we don't talk to one another anymore. ^__^
Whenever Out was Out, In was In
And whenever Out was In, In was Out...
Now that I am not at Tryst, I wish I were at Tryst. Actually, I don't, because Tryst is the sort of place where you have to wait 1/2 hour to get a glass of water, and by then you've already gotten up and gone to the counter yourself and just taken one.
But I wish I were somewhere.
Do you remember that sentence, from Jane Eyre? The one where she tires of her routine of eight years in a single afternoon? I feel a little like that. It's not that I'm tired of my job, because I love my job. It's not that I'm tired of doing Ashtanga every morning, because I love that too. But I'm starting to feel like I come home every evening and watch Hulu and eat dinner and check my Google Reader and go to bed. That's what I'm tired of.
(That whole thing about my "not having an evening routine" isn't true, btw. I come home. I shower, cook dinner, eat while watching Hulu, check the internets, maybe play some Super Famicom, and go to bed. That is teh lame.)
So I need somewhere to go.
Actually, finding somewhere to go is the easy part. Tomorrow Dalton Conley is giving a talk at Politics and Prose about his book Elsewhere, USA and I will go there. Today I went to Tryst and to the Farmers' Market and to the zoo. I also did two loads of laundry, one load of dishes, cooked meals for the entire week, packaged them in bento, and baked a loaf of bread. And wrote a short story and three blog posts. And hung out in Idle Time Books for a while.
Okay, let me rephrase this:
I need somewhere to go where I have to talk to other people. ^__^
Every time I go to Tryst or wherever I do kinda hope I will maybe talk to someone. If I didn't, I wouldn't bother putting on lip gloss or brushing my hair. But I don't know how to gracefully jump the chasm from "sitting next to six other people on a ratty coffeehouse sofa" to "starting a conversation that is enticing enough to draw their gaze away from their laptops, and to ensure that gaze is interested rather than murderous."
So--before you all jump with the suggestion--I spent some time this afternoon flipping through Meetup.com. Whenever I found a meetup group that looked interesting (like the cooking ones) I checked the stats on the previous meetups. There weren't a lot of repeat visitors. People would come to one meetup only and then quit the group. That didn't bode well for the success of the enterprise.
Still, I signed up to receive messages from a cooking group and a Scrabble group (Scrabble is fun, and more importantly, free), and tried to find a writing group but most of those seemed to be out of commission. (That was the other weird phenomena of Meetup.com. Groups would form, have three meetings, and die.) And then I thought about groups I would like to start, including:
- A cooking group which didn't require a $75 per-meeting fee; maybe one more like a potluck group where people brought dishes and talked about how they were made and then we talked about how they tasted and offered suggestions, or maybe a group where everyone learned how to cook by all trying to make the same recipe and comparing results
- A group for people who still play Super Famicom ^__^
- A group for people who want to listen to This American Life together on Saturday mornings and talk about it and maybe there would be food too
Sigh. I still haven't put that "yoga happy hour" sign up on the wall of my Ashtanga studio. That might be an easy next step.
And I am going to hear Dalton Conley tomorrow. If all else, his book is about how we don't talk to one another anymore. ^__^
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Daily Routines (Maybe It's A Meme?)
So I'm sure most of you out there trolling the blogosphere and twittersphere and Facebookectangle have already been alerted to the existence of Daily Routines, a blog which collects and posts the daily routines of famous people.
Today, for example, we learned that President Obama (it is so awesome to type that) "shows up at the Oval Office shortly before 9 in the morning, roughly two hours later than his early-to-bed, early-to-rise predecessor. Mr. Obama likes to have his workout — weights and cardio — first thing in the morning, at 6:45." (Full story is here. He eats breakfast with his family every morning. Obama is so friggin' cool.)
What's interesting is that nearly everyone profiled is a morning person, in that they do something substantive and meaningful (usually exercise, writing, or exercise then writing) first thing in the morning. In fact, when one calculates the aggregate, it becomes clear that most of the profiled individuals do their most important personal item as soon as they wake up.
I'm terming it a "most important personal item" because, for example, President Obama's exercise is probably categorically less important than most of the other stuff he does all day; but it is probably top-of-his-list in the category of "things he needs to do to take care of his person; things that no one else can do but him."
Exercise and writing.
(I exercise every morning. I don't write. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I did write, but I haven't made time for both and so I choose exercise.)
Anyway. The point of this is that, about a year ago when I was all career-search-angsty, I tried to do an exercise in which I wrote out my ideal daily routine (in the hopes that it would illuminate the types of jobs I should pursue). I was going to poke fun at that post, since--before I re-read it--I could only remember that my then-ideal daily routine consisted of starting every day with eggs for breakfast. (I was a starving grad student at the time. Eggs were a novelty.)
But when I went back to check, I had actually written that I would start every day with yoga, then eat eggs, then bike/Xootr to work.
And here's my current daily routine:
6:00 a.m. Wake up. (I used to wake up at 5:45, then realized that it actually took me longer to get ready with less sleep.)
6:02. Drink large glass of water. I learned this one from French Women Don't Get Fat. It changed my mornings.
6:15-7:30. Yoga, either at yoga class or in my apartment.
7:30-7:50. Check Twitter, email, Google Reader. Tweet.
7:50-8:30. Shower, etc.
8:30-9:00. Walk 1.7 miles to work. 3,900 steps from apartment to office.
Breakfast isn't eggs, but has become a ritual of Kashi GoLean! Crunch with homemade yogurt. In the evenings I walk the 3,900 steps back to my apartment, and I don't have a true evening "routine," though there's usually cooking involved and I'm experimenting with trying to read something substantial before bed (instead of reading internets).
So there you go.
But now I'm curious: what are your daily routines? Can we meme this thing out? Do you also get up and do something vital first thing, or is yours more of an XKCD morning?
Today, for example, we learned that President Obama (it is so awesome to type that) "shows up at the Oval Office shortly before 9 in the morning, roughly two hours later than his early-to-bed, early-to-rise predecessor. Mr. Obama likes to have his workout — weights and cardio — first thing in the morning, at 6:45." (Full story is here. He eats breakfast with his family every morning. Obama is so friggin' cool.)
What's interesting is that nearly everyone profiled is a morning person, in that they do something substantive and meaningful (usually exercise, writing, or exercise then writing) first thing in the morning. In fact, when one calculates the aggregate, it becomes clear that most of the profiled individuals do their most important personal item as soon as they wake up.
I'm terming it a "most important personal item" because, for example, President Obama's exercise is probably categorically less important than most of the other stuff he does all day; but it is probably top-of-his-list in the category of "things he needs to do to take care of his person; things that no one else can do but him."
Exercise and writing.
(I exercise every morning. I don't write. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I did write, but I haven't made time for both and so I choose exercise.)
Anyway. The point of this is that, about a year ago when I was all career-search-angsty, I tried to do an exercise in which I wrote out my ideal daily routine (in the hopes that it would illuminate the types of jobs I should pursue). I was going to poke fun at that post, since--before I re-read it--I could only remember that my then-ideal daily routine consisted of starting every day with eggs for breakfast. (I was a starving grad student at the time. Eggs were a novelty.)
But when I went back to check, I had actually written that I would start every day with yoga, then eat eggs, then bike/Xootr to work.
And here's my current daily routine:
6:00 a.m. Wake up. (I used to wake up at 5:45, then realized that it actually took me longer to get ready with less sleep.)
6:02. Drink large glass of water. I learned this one from French Women Don't Get Fat. It changed my mornings.
6:15-7:30. Yoga, either at yoga class or in my apartment.
7:30-7:50. Check Twitter, email, Google Reader. Tweet.
7:50-8:30. Shower, etc.
8:30-9:00. Walk 1.7 miles to work. 3,900 steps from apartment to office.
Breakfast isn't eggs, but has become a ritual of Kashi GoLean! Crunch with homemade yogurt. In the evenings I walk the 3,900 steps back to my apartment, and I don't have a true evening "routine," though there's usually cooking involved and I'm experimenting with trying to read something substantial before bed (instead of reading internets).
So there you go.
But now I'm curious: what are your daily routines? Can we meme this thing out? Do you also get up and do something vital first thing, or is yours more of an XKCD morning?
Friday, November 21, 2008
Signals
A good chunk of my cultural education, as a child, came from the bi-monthly Signals catalog that arrived at my parents' house.
We never bought anything from it, but I read it cover-to-cover, and thus learned that Rumpole of the Bailey's wife was called "She Who Must Be Obeyed," and the names of all of Jane Austen's books as they corresponded to their giant boxed VHS miniseries sets, and that hobos drew drawings of smiling cats next to the homes of friendly women, and for only $29.95 you too could have a smiling cat to hang outside your home.
I learned, from the Signals catalog, that there were shows called Fawlty Towers and Are You Being Served? and Doctor Who, and the details of old-timey radio programs like The Shadow, and that Madame Alexander had made a set of very ugly dolls based off of the characters in Little Women, and even though they were very ugly dolls I wanted them anyway because I liked anything to do with Little Women.
(I think, actually, we did buy something from the Signals catalog once. I convinced my parents to buy me a giant puzzle which featured images from all thirty-seven of Shakespeare's plays, for one of my birthdays.)
I hadn't thought about the Signals catalog in years until I saw one, addressed to "occupant," arrive with the mail at work (and get dumped, with the other catalogs, on the lunchroom table).
I brought it home with me and sat down to read it cover-to-cover.
Some things never change. They're still selling that "hobo cat drawing" woodcut. They're still selling the umbrella that looks like a bouquet of roses when it's folded up. They're no longer selling the personalized "authentic Egyptian hieroglyph" necklace where the hieroglyphs, miraculously, spell out your name; or the Jane Austen sets; or anything to do with Rumpole of the Bailey.
They no longer have the full page of iron tavern knots which they advertised would take hours to "untie;" I used to study them and try to figure out how the metal would have to be manipulated to separate the pieces.
The abundance of Celtic kitsch is now sharing space with a fair segment of Indian kitsch; I could have purchased a wooden plaque that read "Namaste," or a bracelet that read "Karma: What Goes Around Comes Around." They also had figurines modeled in "yoga poses" that looked nothing like anything I've ever done in my Ashtanga class.
After fifteen years the Signals catalog no longer reads like a cultural repository but instead appears like an effete Skymall (not to mention that all pop-culture references older than 2006 seem to have been removed -- Harry Potter claims some page presence, but there is no Rumpole or John Cleese or even Doctor Who, to say nothing of The Shadow). This is truly disappointing.
But it amuses me that they're still selling that hobo cat picture to hang outside your door. There must be a lot of women out there who want the neighborhood to know that they're the kind of person who would give a hobo food, at least in theory. ^__^ I wonder what happens when the real hobos show up?
We never bought anything from it, but I read it cover-to-cover, and thus learned that Rumpole of the Bailey's wife was called "She Who Must Be Obeyed," and the names of all of Jane Austen's books as they corresponded to their giant boxed VHS miniseries sets, and that hobos drew drawings of smiling cats next to the homes of friendly women, and for only $29.95 you too could have a smiling cat to hang outside your home.
I learned, from the Signals catalog, that there were shows called Fawlty Towers and Are You Being Served? and Doctor Who, and the details of old-timey radio programs like The Shadow, and that Madame Alexander had made a set of very ugly dolls based off of the characters in Little Women, and even though they were very ugly dolls I wanted them anyway because I liked anything to do with Little Women.
(I think, actually, we did buy something from the Signals catalog once. I convinced my parents to buy me a giant puzzle which featured images from all thirty-seven of Shakespeare's plays, for one of my birthdays.)
I hadn't thought about the Signals catalog in years until I saw one, addressed to "occupant," arrive with the mail at work (and get dumped, with the other catalogs, on the lunchroom table).
I brought it home with me and sat down to read it cover-to-cover.
Some things never change. They're still selling that "hobo cat drawing" woodcut. They're still selling the umbrella that looks like a bouquet of roses when it's folded up. They're no longer selling the personalized "authentic Egyptian hieroglyph" necklace where the hieroglyphs, miraculously, spell out your name; or the Jane Austen sets; or anything to do with Rumpole of the Bailey.
They no longer have the full page of iron tavern knots which they advertised would take hours to "untie;" I used to study them and try to figure out how the metal would have to be manipulated to separate the pieces.
The abundance of Celtic kitsch is now sharing space with a fair segment of Indian kitsch; I could have purchased a wooden plaque that read "Namaste," or a bracelet that read "Karma: What Goes Around Comes Around." They also had figurines modeled in "yoga poses" that looked nothing like anything I've ever done in my Ashtanga class.
After fifteen years the Signals catalog no longer reads like a cultural repository but instead appears like an effete Skymall (not to mention that all pop-culture references older than 2006 seem to have been removed -- Harry Potter claims some page presence, but there is no Rumpole or John Cleese or even Doctor Who, to say nothing of The Shadow). This is truly disappointing.
But it amuses me that they're still selling that hobo cat picture to hang outside your door. There must be a lot of women out there who want the neighborhood to know that they're the kind of person who would give a hobo food, at least in theory. ^__^ I wonder what happens when the real hobos show up?
Saturday, October 25, 2008
So I Promised You A Picture...
In an earlier post, I sent out a challenge to my mom: send me a picture of me-as-a-little-girl wearing a dress made out of the same fabric as a shirt I recently found at ATL.
She called me and said "I don't think we have any pictures of you wearing that dress."
I thought about it, and she was right. I don't think we have any pictures of me wearing that dress. Never mind that I have a romanticized memory of wearing it for what seems like an entire summer, visiting my cousins at my grandparents' house in Portland, OR and eating fresh blueberries off of a bush in their backyard.
It was probably the same summer where my grandmother bought me an entire Charleston Chew bar at a grocery store and then kept it in the freezer for me, doling it out piece by piece.
It may have been the same summer in which I ran around with another set of cousins at their home in Washington, re-enacting Grimms' Fairy Tales because we were dorks like that.
It was likely it was the same summer in which another uncle in Idaho (we were taking the extended-relatives tour) promised my sister and I that if we climbed to the top of Moscow Mountain we would find a McDonalds at its peak and he would buy us ice-cream cones. (We didn't believe him; we knew it was just an excuse to drag kids along on an extremely boring all-day nature walk, and no, he didn't buy us any ice cream at the end.)
But I know it was the summer in which, at the end of the vacation, my mom told me it was so good to see me running around and acting like a little girl instead of a like a miniature adult. ^__^
Here's the ATL shirt, again:
And here's the dress.
(Which my mother MADE. By HAND. Just so you know.)
She called me and said "I don't think we have any pictures of you wearing that dress."
I thought about it, and she was right. I don't think we have any pictures of me wearing that dress. Never mind that I have a romanticized memory of wearing it for what seems like an entire summer, visiting my cousins at my grandparents' house in Portland, OR and eating fresh blueberries off of a bush in their backyard.
It was probably the same summer where my grandmother bought me an entire Charleston Chew bar at a grocery store and then kept it in the freezer for me, doling it out piece by piece.
It may have been the same summer in which I ran around with another set of cousins at their home in Washington, re-enacting Grimms' Fairy Tales because we were dorks like that.
It was likely it was the same summer in which another uncle in Idaho (we were taking the extended-relatives tour) promised my sister and I that if we climbed to the top of Moscow Mountain we would find a McDonalds at its peak and he would buy us ice-cream cones. (We didn't believe him; we knew it was just an excuse to drag kids along on an extremely boring all-day nature walk, and no, he didn't buy us any ice cream at the end.)
But I know it was the summer in which, at the end of the vacation, my mom told me it was so good to see me running around and acting like a little girl instead of a like a miniature adult. ^__^
Here's the ATL shirt, again:
And here's the dress.
(Which my mother MADE. By HAND. Just so you know.)
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Not Meeting Famous People
I've twice missed the chance to meet Salman Rushdie, and today I skipped what would have been a great opportunity to meet Kate Beaton.
I thought about it, really I did. But the only way I would have gotten to meet either of the above was if I had bought one of their books for autographical purposes.
And, first of all, I don't want to shell out for hardback, and secondly at the end of it all it would be me standing in some line waiting for a famous person to write my name in something so I could say "I really like your work" and they could say "thank you."
So... well, there's always the opportunity of skulking around without buying a book, but then it would be like going to some event just to stand at the back and get the glimpse of the top of a famous person's head.
So it makes sense not to go.
At the same time it feels weird. Like, shouldn't I be at SPX so I can say hey to Kate 'cause I read her webcomic, like, every single day and I've even bought some of her merch as gifts for friends? (And, like, Jeph Jacques was going to be there too but he totally bagged at the last minute, so like, if he had been there I could have met both of them!)
And then my economical head says "and you're going to pay the SPX entry fee so you can stand at the back of a crowded room and see the tops of their heads? Or, at best, go up to one of their booths and paw through the merch even though you're not going to buy anything and then be too embarrassed to actually say anything to them if they happen to be at the booth at the time? And what exactly would you say? "I like your comic?" Obviously. You don't need to pay money to be the 100th person to tell a webcomic artist you like his or her work."
Meh.
What would you do?
I thought about it, really I did. But the only way I would have gotten to meet either of the above was if I had bought one of their books for autographical purposes.
And, first of all, I don't want to shell out for hardback, and secondly at the end of it all it would be me standing in some line waiting for a famous person to write my name in something so I could say "I really like your work" and they could say "thank you."
So... well, there's always the opportunity of skulking around without buying a book, but then it would be like going to some event just to stand at the back and get the glimpse of the top of a famous person's head.
So it makes sense not to go.
At the same time it feels weird. Like, shouldn't I be at SPX so I can say hey to Kate 'cause I read her webcomic, like, every single day and I've even bought some of her merch as gifts for friends? (And, like, Jeph Jacques was going to be there too but he totally bagged at the last minute, so like, if he had been there I could have met both of them!)
And then my economical head says "and you're going to pay the SPX entry fee so you can stand at the back of a crowded room and see the tops of their heads? Or, at best, go up to one of their booths and paw through the merch even though you're not going to buy anything and then be too embarrassed to actually say anything to them if they happen to be at the booth at the time? And what exactly would you say? "I like your comic?" Obviously. You don't need to pay money to be the 100th person to tell a webcomic artist you like his or her work."
Meh.
What would you do?
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Do, or Do Not. There Is No Consume.
So I was all set to write a angsty-sad post about how my world seems to get smaller every day without a job... how I used to dream that I would do XYZ with my life, and then I dreamed about having enough money to take a yoga class, and now I'm just hoping I get paid enough to get a subscription to Fitness Magazine. (Actually, at $17.95 for eleven issues, I could probably afford it on my temp salary... except I don't yet have a permanent address.)
The thesis of my post was going to be something horrifically dreary, along the lines of "I used to dream about doing things... now I dream about consuming things."
Except -- Gaurav, take note! 'cause this post's addressed to you -- I realized that I'm still dreaming about doing things. Everything I dream about is still a doing.
Example: I spent last Sunday afternoon walking through Dupont Circle and going into every single shop, just to see what was there. I saw a lot of cute stuff, and a lot of weird stuff, and a lot of expensive stuff.
The one thing I saw that sticks in my memory was a gravy bowl shaped like a gray cat with black stripes. (The gravy did, of course, come out through the cat's mouth.) It was on a random shelf filled with random kitschy kitchenware, and I looked at it for a moment, because I like kitchenware and I like kitties.
But even while I looked at the gravy bowl, and admired its cuteness, I never really wanted it. What would I do with a cat-shaped gravy bowl? I had no real interest in picking the thing up and taking it home with me; I was simply appreciating it as an objet d'art.
Compare it to the things I actually want. Yoga class. Fitness Magazine. A set of 5 lb weights so I can tone my upper arms. Madhur Jaffrey's World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking. An apartment with a decent kitchen. The chance to do open-mic night. The chance to volunteer for Barack Obama. The chance to meet people while volunteering or yoga-classing or open-micing.
About the only non-doing thing I want is clothing, which (I've already mentioned) is partially a tool to get me towards people, which will result in interactions/conversations/etc. which in itself is doing. (Also I want clothes because I want to look professional; which, right now, I don't.)
So, Gaurav. A month ago I argued that it was the desire for stimuli which prompts consumption. Now I'm arguing that it's the desire to do things that prompts us to buy products. Whether it's a Wii, a car, or a cat-shaped gravy bowl (which inspires us to host a dinner party), we buy because we need accessories to do.
Otherwise we're bound by what we can do for free, without accessories... which limits us to sitting in front of televisions (or sometimes laptops), or, as you and I both found out, taking long scenic walks to pass the time.
Am I right?
The thesis of my post was going to be something horrifically dreary, along the lines of "I used to dream about doing things... now I dream about consuming things."
Except -- Gaurav, take note! 'cause this post's addressed to you -- I realized that I'm still dreaming about doing things. Everything I dream about is still a doing.
Example: I spent last Sunday afternoon walking through Dupont Circle and going into every single shop, just to see what was there. I saw a lot of cute stuff, and a lot of weird stuff, and a lot of expensive stuff.
The one thing I saw that sticks in my memory was a gravy bowl shaped like a gray cat with black stripes. (The gravy did, of course, come out through the cat's mouth.) It was on a random shelf filled with random kitschy kitchenware, and I looked at it for a moment, because I like kitchenware and I like kitties.
But even while I looked at the gravy bowl, and admired its cuteness, I never really wanted it. What would I do with a cat-shaped gravy bowl? I had no real interest in picking the thing up and taking it home with me; I was simply appreciating it as an objet d'art.
Compare it to the things I actually want. Yoga class. Fitness Magazine. A set of 5 lb weights so I can tone my upper arms. Madhur Jaffrey's World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking. An apartment with a decent kitchen. The chance to do open-mic night. The chance to volunteer for Barack Obama. The chance to meet people while volunteering or yoga-classing or open-micing.
About the only non-doing thing I want is clothing, which (I've already mentioned) is partially a tool to get me towards people, which will result in interactions/conversations/etc. which in itself is doing. (Also I want clothes because I want to look professional; which, right now, I don't.)
So, Gaurav. A month ago I argued that it was the desire for stimuli which prompts consumption. Now I'm arguing that it's the desire to do things that prompts us to buy products. Whether it's a Wii, a car, or a cat-shaped gravy bowl (which inspires us to host a dinner party), we buy because we need accessories to do.
Otherwise we're bound by what we can do for free, without accessories... which limits us to sitting in front of televisions (or sometimes laptops), or, as you and I both found out, taking long scenic walks to pass the time.
Am I right?
Friday, June 27, 2008
A Perfect Evening
Tonight was the best night I've had since coming to DC.
The weather was beautiful and the sky was pretty and the architecture of all the buildings in Dupont Circle with their turrets and towers were just fun to explore, and I had a nice meal in a cute Greek restaurant with a glass of white wine, and a bird sat next to me on a blue-painted fence and watched me, head cocked to one side, as I ate my dinner.
And afterwards I walked around for a while, and sat by the fountain and eavesdropped on two middle-aged men trying to remember how the rules of Pig Latin worked (they got it wrong), and wandered into stores and looked at these weird shoes that have soles like rocking-chair balances and claim to add "+9 Resistance To Your Abs, Thighs, And Butt!" (I wanted to take out my pen and add "And Ogres!" to the sign... but resisted. +9 resisted.)
And I kept thinking that, even though I don't yet have a real job, I'm so glad I picked DC -- if only because when I look up, I can see the sky. When I lived in Minneapolis, the buildings were too tall. The streets were always in shadow.
But the best part of the whole adventure was that, for the first time since my arrival, Anne was dressed like the other girls. I was wearing my black linen dress, the one that, where I come from, would have been reserved for "special occasions" but is, of course, de rigueur for the young women in the city. I wasn't walking around in a man's white undershirt and blue jeans cuffed at the ankles. And that, my friends, made all the difference.
The weather was beautiful and the sky was pretty and the architecture of all the buildings in Dupont Circle with their turrets and towers were just fun to explore, and I had a nice meal in a cute Greek restaurant with a glass of white wine, and a bird sat next to me on a blue-painted fence and watched me, head cocked to one side, as I ate my dinner.
And afterwards I walked around for a while, and sat by the fountain and eavesdropped on two middle-aged men trying to remember how the rules of Pig Latin worked (they got it wrong), and wandered into stores and looked at these weird shoes that have soles like rocking-chair balances and claim to add "+9 Resistance To Your Abs, Thighs, And Butt!" (I wanted to take out my pen and add "And Ogres!" to the sign... but resisted. +9 resisted.)
And I kept thinking that, even though I don't yet have a real job, I'm so glad I picked DC -- if only because when I look up, I can see the sky. When I lived in Minneapolis, the buildings were too tall. The streets were always in shadow.
But the best part of the whole adventure was that, for the first time since my arrival, Anne was dressed like the other girls. I was wearing my black linen dress, the one that, where I come from, would have been reserved for "special occasions" but is, of course, de rigueur for the young women in the city. I wasn't walking around in a man's white undershirt and blue jeans cuffed at the ankles. And that, my friends, made all the difference.
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