How my husband became my husband (Part 3 of infinity)

READ PARTS ONE AND TWO BELOW.

In this part, we actually start dating, I promise. But how did that happen, exactly?

Timing.

I had just read War and Peace. This probably seems unrelated, but it’s not. Let’s just ignore what War and Peace is actually about and talk about the character of Natasha. Pre-epilogue Natasha, as the epilogue to this great book nearly made me barf. Of course Natasha is beautiful and elegant and feisty, but the genius of Natasha, the thing that really seems to attract EVERYONE to her, is her unabashed love of life and determination to enjoy it as much as possible. Everything is a great adventure and everyone is assumed to be having as good of a time as she is and she never ever doubts herself. To be fair: she is a bit childish, and this becomes a problem for her later, but the key point for this story is that her power comes from her total embracing of the beauty of life and also the charming nature of herself. No one could possibly convince her that she is not charming. Nor would anyone try.

At this point in my life, I was pretty comfortable with myself and I was just feeling quite Natasha. I was in the groove. I think everyone has these moments and it is best to take advantage of them. My roommate at the time, who is so awesome, planned a relatively chill party and I took it upon myself to make sure everyone I had flirted with of late was invited. I was in the mood to be Natasha. For good measure, I threw LCD into the invite pool. He had seemed a little extra excited to see me of late at social gatherings, so why not?

At the party, I made sure to be very friendly to everyone, but particularly the ones I had added to the invite list. Weirdly, nothing seemed awkward. I was just enjoying life and being charming. I could even introduce these people on my mental list of possible suitors to each other and feel no awkwardness. I divided my time between several people, but somehow it seemed, every time I turned a corner there was LCD again. And then we would start talking and it would suddenly seem intimate. Remembering what my brother had said, I asked him at one point, “How come we never hang out anymore?” It was supposed to be kind of a joke, because hanging out had always been rare between us. But, LCD immediately pulled out his pocket planner (which he is never without) and set up an “appointment” for us.

I know LCD particularly enjoys hanging around to a party’s end, but this one seemed different than normal. (psst. It’s because the magic fairy dust of love was descending.) He helped us do the dishes and then he proceeded to borrow my guitar and we sat down while everyone was in the other room. He taught me blues scales which I had known before but forgot. And it was like everything started to change color. Like my hiking trip in the White Mountains when the afternoon light opened a whole new view of the fall colors that was so vivid I could only think of those over-colorized old black and white movies. He touched my fingers to show me where to put them and it felt so different than anything had ever felt been between us.

So about halfway through our hanging out "appointment" the next week, I realized that it was in fact a date. He paid for me, flirted, and seemed nervous. And by the way we talked with smiles on our faces, and by the way we knew--without really saying it--that he would come in when he dropped me off (so we could keep talking--no funny business), I coudl also tell I would see him again soon.

As wonderful as that was, and as big of a crush as I had two and a half years previous, I was not immediately smitten. In fact, one of my other “prospects,” if you will, was also starting to “bite,” if you will, but he kept asking me out when I had already made plans with LCD. I didn’t know if this guy was serious or he just liked to play the game of asking me out, but I can say that he was a very cool guy and I kept hearing this Clem Snide song play in my head “because I love the unknown, I love the unknown . . .” As I had built up loads of respect for LCD over the past couple years, I did want to give it a serious shot, if warranted, but I also had to get to know the unknown or I would not stop thinking about it. So I gave him a time that I knew I would be free and we went out. It turned out this guy really was really cool. No doubt about it. And it was even a little easier to talk to him than LCD.

My first thought when the mystery guy dropped me off was, I want to call LCD. The unknown was no longer unknown and guess what? He didn’t do much for my heart. That simple. I must have had the inkling even early on of what I would become with LCD, of the fact that he would let me be sweet—I’d never gotten to be sweet with a guy before; it had always seemed so silly. Any earlier time in my life I would have attempted to date the other guy. Turns out I was never the girl for him anyway, but it was an important moment in helping me realize that my heart can actually trump my brain. And it can be wonderful.

Dating LCD was so easy for me for the first four months. This is partly because he was doing a lot of the work. I did give him a little reassurance from time to time, but he did a lot of the asking, sharing, even declaring of feelings. I told him I was just rollin' with it. Of course I liked him a lot and I was having a great time and I daydreamed about our future sometimes, but I was pretty determined to NOT overthink anything. That whole Natasha feeling had not worn off and, like hers early on, my actions were mostly effortless. LCD was more affectionate than anyone I had ever dated and after having a talk with myself and realizing that this was okay, I began to follow his lead in the affection department and I really started to like it. Eventually, somewhere around four months, I stopped just rollin' with it.

I began to ask myself whether I was in love--like really in love--and I actually didn't know at first. I liked him a lot and we seemed so compatible in so many ways. He actually got my writing, for one thing. One way we are the same is that we hate being flaky. We hate to say we're going to do something and not follow through--so we generally don't do that. Also, we're both musicians and we love it and we talk about being rock stars, but we could actually never REALLY live that lifestyle (even though LCD is probably good enough). I think now that love is simpler than I thought it was then. It's neither a checklist nor a complex of squishy passionate feelings. The day I realized I was in love with LCD, I was just driving around and thinking about how people say they belong together and how I normally resist that idea, because--you know--I'm like (brace yourselves--nerdy reference) Eowyn in LOTR and I fear a cage. But somehow the idea of me belonging with LCD seemed very natural and non-scary and I realized that was because I love him. It does not mean that we blend completely into one person, but it does mean that we are willing to have permeable membranes and we are ready to surrender our pride. After this realization, something interesting happened: things got a lot harder.

The story after this is actually even more important, but it doesn’t tell as well. It’s about work and love and how they are the same thing. There are a million beautiful memories. Like when my sweetheart first said he was falling in love with me and asked me to please do the same. Or like the time when I was about ready to give up on our relationship . . . because it was so much work and I couldn’t see the end . . . and then I went for a run during which I both cried and prayed . . . and when I got home, quite suddenly, I got a clear picture in my head of our future family—mine and his . . . as a gift, I think, to keep me going. Or months and months of us recording music in his basement room, me being continuously frustrated with how hard it seemed for me in comparison to him, and then listening to what we made together. Or when he tricked me into thinking the reason he was sweaty and stinky was due to a bad reaction to the food we had eaten while camping on the beach, when really it was because he had been carving out the words “Marry Me” in the sand. Or when we sat next to each other waiting to be called into the room where we would be married and everything we had worried about washed away and we beamed with our joy as we held each other's hands and shed a few small tears together. Or how about two days ago when I came home from grocery shopping (which I utterly loathe) for two and a half hours and when I asked my husband to help me unload the car he told me to start putting away the cold items in the fridge first and I very crankily and reluctantly agreed only to find he had bought me flowers for our quarter-anniversary (as in 1/4) . . .

This is the story that continues forever.

interlude

Installment Three is coming--as soon as I have enough time to write it. Right now I am listening to Okerrvil River and doing the dishes, which is actually a welcome change from grading papers and dealing with technological breakdowns on my way to writing a halfway decent lesson plan. In honor of my whole family, almost, who moved to Kansas City in recent times...

How my husband became my husband (Part Deux)

READ THE POST BELOW THIS FIRST

So I failed to mention the inauspicious circumstances of our official meeting, which included someone introducing us at a party and saying to me, basically, "this is the guy we've been telling you about," and then us having a three minute conversation.

To continue the story . . .

So I got over my crush, moved on with my life, tried to make a living (a whole other story but the synopsis is I had a really hard time paying the bills for my first year and a half in DC), and started to regenerate my sense of self. One thing I did was go on a super-rejuvenating backpack trip to the Presidential Range of the White Mountains in NH. It was one of the more beautiful things I have ever seen--we timed it perfectly to catch the fall colors. Another thing I did was start volunteering at the Food Assistance Center. At the time I was only a paycheck removed from the people that came there. It made me really humble, but really grateful at the same time. I also made an effort to focus on my personal spiritual development (aka: get right with God). Even though I was barely scraping by I started to feel more like myself than I had in a long time.

Next, the roommate that was dating LCD moved out and I also moved somewhere else, which was a welcome change from the dank basement life I had been enjoying.

Next, I met a really intersting and cool guy who I am still a big fan of, and he asked me on some dates. Our relationship was one of those amorphous things. It was hard to tell on a given day if we were actually dating, but it was always obvious that we really liked each other. Anyway, he kept me very entertained for the next five or six months. I even flirted with the idea that he might be the one, but guess what? He wasn't. Still it was really fun sometimes to pretend and to live in this bizarro world where everything is ironic and weirdness is the goal and being standoffish is a kind of affection. One thing that I learned from this was that standoffishness is not REALLY a kind of affection. Anyway, later he called me his ex-girlfriend, so I guess that's what I was. I was pretty disappointed that it didn't work out, but I think the reason I took it hard was because the timing of our dating conincided so nicely with the time I started feeling good about myself and so I wanted it to mean something. It was a version of love but not the real kind. He's an awesome guy and still one of the most intersting people I know, we just weren't an awesome couple.

Fast forward to me getting a real job, putting money in the bank, having lots of fun, and eventually forming a super-fun band with my little brother. Writing songs with my little bro is one of the choice experiences of my life. As he lives in AZ now, I mourn those days sometimes. In the meantime, LCD was always in the background. He stopped dating my former roommate but ended up dating other people. I had wiped nearly every trace of romantic leanings re: him from my mind. I would always see him at little music open mic things we both played at or other parties. Every once in a while when my house had a party I would make sure his name was on the list and he would always come. What's more he would always bring something. I developed a strong opinion of him--that he was a trustworthy and dependable person. He was high on my list of people most of the time, but sometimes he was scarce and we were not really intimate in any way. We did not hang out.

Sometimes I asked LCD for favors. Like when my little band wanted to play a little show I asked him to do the sound. He was always willing. Slowly I was realizing that he was not some hipster rockstar, but he was just a truly decent human being--and even kind of nerdy. Case in point: I invited him to come play board games over at my house one time and he showed up. My roommate had doubted it because he seemed too cool, but I guaranteed her he would come.

Sometimes people would ask me if I had ever thought of dating him and I would say yes I thought about it before, but I didn't think it would work out.

Then one day, oh about 2 1/2 years after we met, I was talking to my little brother and he asked me, "Why don't we ever hang out with LCD? I feel I should be good friends with him but we never hang out." I told him I wasn't sure that LCD was actually into the stuff we were into--going to shows, wilderness hiking, etc. But my brother had planted a seed.

END PART TWO

How my husband became my husband (Part One)

So, I stole this idea from a certain blogger, whose hilarious blogging I have admired for these past couple of years. I suppose this is going to be pretty confessional or something, but the thing is it's a really great story, better than most other stories I could think of to tell.

I actually remember when I first saw my husband from a distance. End of this May or early June will be five years since that moment. I had just moved to the DC area for a summer internship (not at all related to politics) from grad school and Colorado. This was right after giving most of my heart and soul to a master's thesis for the previous many months. I had also recently fell in with a group of hippies in the months before I left Colorado and had accidentally had a number of really weird experiences such that I was very very unsettled in my life. Anyway, I had hoped the escape to the nation's capital would provide for some normalcy and eventually it did--but it took a while. I moved into an apartment for the summer and the first time I saw LCD was in the lobby of that apartment building on my way to the store for some groceries. He was leading a group of some kind and standing on a chair to give them instructions. It was for a singles church activity that I had heard about but not planned on attending because I had a list of things to do. There he was, wearing a hipsterish straw cowboy-style hat and grinning with those pretty snaggly choppers. The sight of him made me smile and I watched for a few extra seconds before going on my way. I thought he was pretty cute.

In the meantime I was hearing about him from everyone that stopped by our apartment and saw my guitar. Everyone asked me if I had met this guy yet who also played the guitar. They said he was really good. Since I didn't really know these people I wasn't sure whether to trust their opinions and I did not realize they were talking about the same guy I had seen standing in the lobby of my apartment building, so I was only mildly interested.

When we met I found him to be one of the most amiable people you can have a first conversation with. He was and I'm sure will always be really easy to like. So I liked him, but I only really started to be interested in him when I saw him play. I have many times in my life heard people talk about how great some musician they know is only to hear them and think "yeah he/she's okay" . . . As it turns out, the rumors were true. Not only that but he played Jeff Buckley, which was almost too overwhelming for me. I had specifically taught guys I knew to play Jeff Buckley in Colorado, and this guy did a better Jeff Buckley than any of them by far.

Honestly, it freaked me out. I knew I had been through too much weird stuff recently and I was pretty depressed at the time so a big part of me did not want to develop a big crush on some guy that had all the outward appearance of being someone I would be really into. The timing sucked too much. I remember telling my friend from Colorado on the phone that I met this really seemingly awesome guy and it was a hopeless situation but I did not know if I would be able to keep myself from being really into him.

So I decided we would just be friends. I even went so far as to send him an email asking if he would be my friend. Yes it's true. Not very tactful, but true. I figured I would set it up from the beginning as us being just friends and that would a) make me happy to have such a nice hip guy as my friend when everyone around me seemed so frustratingly type A and b) keep my little wounded heart safe.

We became friends which was great, and my crush got a little more serious which seemed unfortunate but I figured it wasn't really hurting anybody. Then...oops...it started to hurt. You see my hip, new friend started dating my hip, new roommate. That's when I realized that the crush had really gotten away with me because it hurt like the dickens.

Later I was so grateful for this because it allowed me to get over my crush fast and decide he wasn't the guy for me. I decided I had been looking for the wrong thing--an image, an idea--when really I just needed a nice guy. This in turn gave us both the time we needed to develop a little more self confidence and become...well...happier. Because guess what? A relationship is a lot more likely to succeed if you are already happy.

End Part One

Vote EARLY, vote often, but mostly EARLY

I learned a little lesson yesterday. The specific lesson was if you want your vote to be counted, vote in the morning. The generic lesson might have been the early bird gets the worm, but I don't think so.

My husband woke up early yesterday and put on a dapper suit. He looked very good. It was his birthday and he had to be in court as a potential witness (the potential was small). He ran across the street, voted in the VA primary, and was back by the time I was ready to leave for work. I shrugged. I would be voting in the evening and would make sure I got out of work early enough to make it before they closed at 7:00.

I left work around 4:30, took the metro as usual, got on the bus as usual, and sat in the parking lot for a good long while. Odd, I thought. Annoying, of course. But I had plenty of time. I graded a few papers, and then, when I looked up from my papers I realized I was still staring at Pentagon City. I looked at my watch and realized I had been sitting next to Pentagon City for the last half hour. Around 6:20, I started to get really worried and started calling people to see if they had voted yet. Everyone had. Long story short, I went on a four hour long bus ride to go six miles. It was easily the most ridiculous commute of my life. To add insult to injury, at 9:00 when I finally stepped off the bus I immediately fell down on my hands and knees. I was on a sheet of ice that stretched across the sidewalk, up all the steps through my complex and across the driveway, etc.

I did not get to vote. The good news was that the guy I was going to vote for won anyway, but I felt like a little slug. To be fair, I don't know how slugs feel, but knowing you can be destroyed by something as simple as table salt can not be an exhilirating feeling. The thing is, I really like voting. Anyway, I have resolved to always vote in the morning from now on. And also to look for a new job the location of which is not so susceptible to rush hour traffic and weather.

An apology to those who s-tumbled upon this blog OR Will the true Rocktastica Blogmaster please stand up?

So this blog is called Rocktastica. What it ought to be is some genre-specific zealously-full-of-info-and-rumours rock music blog. Probably it should be for women punk rockers. OR it should be a tongue-in-cheek quiet and sedate indie slow-core site. But it's not. It's the site of one more total slacker blogger who forgets to post when the most interesting things happen and thus it is full of leftovers from one more person's existence. Now realize I really like my existence and I would never put it down. I have a kick awesome husband and a nice collection of musical instruments in my living room. I could elaborate, but already it sounds pretty excellent, right? But life being great does not make for the most exciting posts, especially when you are a slacker, and I realize that. So here's what I'm going to do: If you stumble upon this blog and you have the wherewithal and the stamina to make something really wonderful out of it--it's yours. I bequeath it thee. Rocktastica. The Rock Angels sing its name. Just leave a comment explaining your vision right here on this ol' post.

But, until you come along, person with a beautiful vision and a willpower to see it through, I will babysit your blog. And sometimes I will talk about stuff.

But Levin did not shoot himself or hang himself and went on living.

As most extradordinary classic literature, Anna Karenina is a study in light and dark. It doesn't seem as starkly good vs. evil as some novels do; more like the good vs. the hateful. And faith vs. fear. And purposeful vs. purposeless. I finally finished reading it today as I was eating my sandwich in the Subway(TM). I basically started crying so I would say that yes it is a good book.

Fruitless Toil

Gah. This image is destroying my brain. Is it the blue cog or the yellow cog? In the meantime, and if you're in the mood for a physics lesson, the source of this image is pretty interesting.

I was so set for today as my first day of teaching this night English Comp class. This morning, the force was with me. The bus and metro linked up perfectly to get me to the vicinity of my workplace nearly twenty minutes before I had to be there. Thus, I was able to stop by Kinkos and make copies of my syllabus, a literary terms list, and this passage from Anna Karenina that we were going to talk about tonight. Now, my opening night that I've been planning for the last two weeks, boring my adorable husband to tears, is nevah gonna happen. I was vaguely planning some over-the-top enthusiastic impassioned speech about literature and writing, so it might be that I deserve it.

It's a snow day. Some co-workers and I had this discussion today: Remember when snow days were a cause for rejoicing? Now there's always some kind of lame inconvenience or worse that comes with it. How I miss the days of delirious happiness over the simple fact that I got to sleep in. Back in the day before the MAN said, "well you're definitely not getting paid for this." So anyway . . . my intense preparation. Maybe fruitless toil is good for me. I'm in such a Russian mood. Maybe fruitless toil will save my philosophical soul (I'm not that philosophical--I was just channeling Roskolnikov).

baby steps (no i'm not pregnant yet)

i have a goal. well i have many many goals this year. lcd put all our goals in an excel spreadsheet. his job teaches him all this accountability stuff and so (hey why not) we are going to be tracking our progress. but the goal i'm talking about is the one where i depart from the corporate/contractor world within the next two years, quite possibly never to return. i ordered this book from amazon:



i ordered another one too. the thing about this goal is it is not allowed to fail. i really will need a way to make an income on a flexible schedule. in the meantime, i am teaching my first class for the semester next Thursday night, so another goal is to a) be a good teacher and b) not go insane. i'm also trying to think about politics a little. but not a lot. i do not have the space in my brain for a lot.

married life

is pretty cool.

The drugs don't work; they just make you worse.

First of all, I am not working today and I am sooo excited. I think I've taken a total of maybe four days off all year just for long weekends and stuff but now starts my seven days in a row vacation. Of course by vacation, I do mean frantic preparations for my wedding for the next couple days. I should've been blogging about this whole wedding planning process but I've been too busy. It is a pain in the butt. I am a bargain shopper but it is nearly impossible to get a bargain when you are planning for a wedding. Also I have been disillusioned sooo many times. In my mind I had an idea of how much everything should cost. The only thing I was right about was the honeymoon to Florida which is actually a good deal. Everything else is about three times as expensive (for the low end) as I thought it was. I'll just give you an example: the going rate for good bakery wedding cakes with absolutely no frills is $4 a person in this area. If you are planning on over two-hundred guests, it starts to add up. Anyway, after some soul searching I have come to terms with most of that and learned much gratitude for my parents who are paying for A LOT of stuff.

In the meantime I noticed my vertigo has been coming back mostly at night as I toss and turn in bed with a little bit of left over in the morning and eventually disappearing through the day. Then I looked at my prescription bottle for the antihistamine drug I take only at night (so I don't fall asleep at work and stuff). The last side effect says "May Cause Dizziness." That's right. An anti-dizziness medication that might actually cause dizziness. The pharmacist said that doesn't make sense (only 2%, she said, experience this symptom). The nurse also said that doesn't make sense because it's supposed to cure dizziness. Um yeah; don't I know it. Anyway, there's still the possibility that there's no connection so the only thing I can do is not take the drug tonight and see what happens. I wanted to tell the nurse but I'm getting married! The reception is Friday! I don't want to try a little experiment; I just want to know!

In other evening-out-the-universe news, my car got towed last night. From the parking lot where I live (technically only Chris lives there now, but I did sign the lease and I do have a parking pass). My parking pass is a "guest" pass but all the guest spots were full and we were only going in for a little while so I parked in the regular lot which ALWAYS has open spaces. The little mercenaries charged me $150 and most of my dignity. (The "but I'm getting married!" phrase came to mind, but I know towing companies have no soul so I didn't even bother.) In the end, better me than one of our guests. Now we know--do NOT park in our lot when you come to visit us!!!

vertigo

uggh. i really can not look at this picture right now. i woke up in the middle of the night last night and this is truly how everything looked. one of my co-workers called it psychosomatic because i'm freaked out about the wedding. but actually this is the least freaked out i've been. i feel really pretty good about the wedding. except for some little details, all the crappity-crap that is not my forte is taken care of (as long as everyone and thing shows up that needs to). and i am really in love. i do, though, for reals have some vertigo. i was worried enough about falling over as i walked down the street to my office that i decided to work from home. i like to say it with an accent on the 'i' though. like the game stratego. ver-TI-go...

Human Amusements at Hourly Rates

Yesterday i was really bored at work and i typed ireallydontcare.com into my browser. It was amusing. In the meantime the wedding planning has turned a corner and it's not so awfully stressful now. Also, my future husband is moving into our new place today--right now, actually. I think I might run by after work to stock the place with essentials like two-ply toilet paper. There are some things you just have to splurge on.

Becoming a Mrs.

Yes I am getting married. My one-man-band days are over, as Belle and Sebastian say. I don't want to get too personal in this forum, but I will say the man I am marrying is more wonderful than I ever expected and I am happy to take this step and start our life together.


On the lighter side of things I have been thinking about becoming a "Mrs."--just the title. I am so completely comfortable with the title "Ms." It feels as right as the skin I wear. "Miss" has been uncomfortable for years. I still have the knee-jerk reaction that I must be in trouble. Unless it is in front of my first name. Then I just know I'm in the South. But "Ms." means I might actually mean business. I can be anybody I want if I'm a "Ms." In fact I thank Gloria Steinem et al for coming up with it. I'm not a hardcore feminist but I appreciate the simple utility.

"Mrs." though, just makes me think of baking cookies. Not that there's anything wrong with that--in fact I like baking cookies. And I'm fine with changing my last name though I may use both for a while to help people (like me) transition. But I've thought about what it's going to be like when I teach a night class next semester at the community college and I've been married for a month. Should I tell them to call me Mrs.? Does that immediately make me this mother figure in an apron instead of their Composition intructor? And does it turn them into little children? I think I might give a lot of blank stares while I'm getting used to these people that have never met me calling me by the only name they know for me. I'm sure I will eventually feel at home and maybe even powerful as a Mrs. but for starters I think I'll just feel happy for the reason I am a Mrs.--because I sure do want to marry him.

Rock * News

So I have almost a copy of my ep--sans drum tracks. It is being "shopped around" to drummers, which means I am trying to find someone I know who will record my drum tracks for free. Someone with really excellent rhythm. I've discovered recently that not everyone that plays the drums has really excellent rhythm and i need really excellent rhythm since . . . well . . . MY rhythm is not always excellent. There, I admitted it.

All the other parts are on there: rhythm guitar, vocals, backing vocals, lead guitar, sometimes more filler guitar, keyboards, bells, harmonica, etc. They just need to be mixed a little better. Another thing I have noticed for you novice recording engineers: The same song can sound completely different on a different stereo. So, though most of my songs seem pretty well-mixed on the "studio" speakers that is not the case elsewhere.

In fact, it is crazy all the stuff you have to do to make a recording sound good. Every one of the following makes a huge difference: the type of equipment, how/where it is miked, how well everything is tuned (duh), how much the level varies during the performance (less is more, I've learned), the settings for "tone," reverb, effects, etc. on the instrument and/or primary equipment like amps, the effects on the recording device including compression (this is to keep the volume or level from varying so much) and a whole myriad of other things that mess with the EQ, then the mixing of the tracks after they are recorded including overall volume, overall bass and treble and mid-range, and effects like echo or reverb or what-ever, then the mastering which is like the detail work of bringing sounds into the foreground and background and I don't even know what else.

I myself am such a novice at this but I feel like I am becoming less stupid, slowly but surely. I will be sooo excited when I am done and proud of the finished product.

Jareth

Last night I saw the movie Labyrinth on the "big screen." It was thrilling, for sure, though I don't have quite as much love for the show as most of the people who were in the theater. I feel like it's important to support your boyfriend in his obsessions. It had been a long time since I had seen the film and I was quite a bit younger then such that it had never registered to me just how tight david bowie's tights are in that movie. It's like his pants are a character unto themselves. But let's not dwell on that and instead talk about the acting chops of Mr. Bowie. Though this is clearly his definitive role, he also played some other memorable characters in recent memory. My favorite may be his portrayal of Andy Warhol in the film Basquiat.
He also played a key role in the recent movie "The Prestige." What is your favorite role of David Bowie's?

a paragraph

For someone that walks like a turtle, Mavis is pretty agile when you throw a sweaty sock at her. I did it once, just to wake her up. Mavis is truly a force, though, when she holds a bb-gun. I half expect her to be carrying one when she comes to the door. “Hey Mavis,” I’m shouting as I pound on her door. "Mavis, come open the door. I brought you clean socks."

I finally hear the icy roll of her wheels and the low bump-shuffle as she moves across the wood floor with her walker, cursing me under her breath for making her get up. I can picture the little rose circles she paints on her face to pass as a skin tone and her big pink glasses to match, but then i remember she hasn't had her hair done for months, and when her hair isn't done she can't be bothered with anything more taxing than flipping the channels from "The Price is Right" to "Highway to Heaven" re-runs to any other number of shows that are really viewed best while snoring and half one eye open.

google maps

What's the deal with UPS not being able to find my house? Like i don't have four other roommates that have ordered stuff plenty of times. Like we didn't affix nice bright new numbers to the mailbox. Like any doofus with a computer couldn't view a satellite picture of my house. Those little mischevious fates: discount footwear I ordered does not save me the trip to pick it up after all.

Meanwhile it's lovely when a little annoyance is the only thing standing in your way. I revel in the calm after the storm at work. The calm before the storm is heavy with dread. The calm after the storm is like happy-friday-everything's-gonna-be-alll-riiight time. It reminds me of a song some former cult member friends of mine used to sing:

This whole world is screwed up
And we got no place to go
But I know
It's gonna be all right

Cuz I got my blessed brothers
And I got my beautiful sisters
And everything's
Gonna be all right . . .

Is that even right? Maybe my old friend Buddy is stalking me on the internet and can let me know. That would be kind of delightful in a way.

Arizona, continued

Opportunities abound:

Including the opportunity to see my little brother grow a full moustache and then keep it thoughout the wedding so it would be pictured for the sake of posterity. And of course the chance to see him find a good girl and make a commitment. My sis-in-law is a pretty down-to-earth hip girl. Also, she agrees that an amusing photo opportunity serves as justification for many things. A good match.


These are my nieces, again, as photographed by my older brother, their uncle. They are growing up and will have a little sister in a couple months. It is a cool thing to see my middle brother's family grow and increase. It is also cool to see the photographer of this photo enjoy being an uncle.

We had the chance to view some completely different natural scenes to what we are used to seeing every day in the eastern US. LCD is a big fan of the desert so he was excellent at humoring me when I was trying to identify plants and learn new ones. This photo is from a hike in Sedona among the red rocks. It seems to me that living in Sedona must be like living in a post card. Or a vortex (see post below). It was beautiful indeed.

This may be the real winner as far as natural wonders go. This was from us hiking a mile or so down into the Grand Canyon. It is in-de-scrib-able and it can not be captured in 2-D. But I tried anyway. I thought the foreground rock wall contrasted with the background canyon might give some perspective. If you click on the photo to see the big version you can see the people coming down the switchback, which are my people: My parents, my brother and sweetiepieface raising both arms in exultation. Exultation was called for on this expedition.

Vortex et al

This is my little brother with his new wife as they experience the female energy of a vortex in the spiritual power center that is Sedona, Arizona. As we learned by eavesdropping on the guy giving a tour to one or two people, the female energy in this vortex makes it a place of healing (male vortexes are for strength). I'm not sure whether you can sense anything from just seeing the photo, but according to the guy, your experience in the vortex is determined by how open your heart and mind are.

My batteries were dead on the actual wedding day. My recent trip also afforded all other kinds of great opportunities:

Like this time when my youngest niece began foaming at the mouth after an overfed rabid grand canyon squirrel had been gnawing on her leg.

more to come . . .