18% miscellaneous

New albums out for spring/summer

4.20.04 - prince "musicology", patty griffin
4.27.04 - patti smith "trampin" , jolie holland
5.4.04- the magnetic fields
5.31.04 - pj harvey "uh hu her"
6.08.04-wilco
6.14.04 - new beastie boys album
6.29.04 - the roots "the tipping point"
7.07.04 - sonic youth "nurse"

Phenomenal Tour

Musical heavyweights Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings will join one another for a unique tour

these are my only hopes:

August 22 Burlington, VT Green at Shelbourne Museum
August 24 Philadelphia, PA Mann Center

Unchecked fact

I read online somewhere that 40% of the world's newspapers were made from Canada's forests. That cuts out canada as a place to live. I also read about how polluted San Diego's beaches are. I know that most beaches are, but some people think SD's are worse than most. And in USA today, ithaca was named #1 emerging city. With bend oregon at #2 and anacortes,WA at #4. So I'm thinking if Washington doesn't work out as a future place to live, then it may have to be australia/new zealand.

How Exciting is this!?!?

We have lamprey eels in the creek near our house.

New Reviews

Check out the sidebar. I enjoyed Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. I wanted to boycott the Da Vinci Code since it has dominated the best sellar list for so long. But this prequel was impressive with the amount of research that went into it, and there was so much detail that I couldn't really skim through it. I recommend it if you like reading mysteries about secret societies with religious themes.

New Arrival

Sam has a new baby cousin, named Shannon Joy, born March 23. Hooray! His family needed more girls.

More Netflix Woes

Well, now I can't blame my stolen videos on my neighbors because this last time I used a drop box and mailed back all 3 movies at the same time. How could they not receive 1? We are for sure getting cancelled on by netflix. I'll give it 1 more day. I just want to rent from them but now, I am realizing that I won't invest in them because not only is Ithaca corrupt, but all of New York must be in conspiracy to put them out of business. Why does this happen?

Actor crushes

Okay, I thought this might be fun to reveal. If anyone is brave enough to add theirs, please do. My favorites right now are Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo. Purely for their acting talent and electricity. Sam makes no secret of his crush on Sarah Michelle Gellar. I've tried to get him to get over Julia Stiles. Anyone else? I have a lot more but they only pique at certain times. I know, this is a really silly entry.

wedding songs

Do any of you have any favorites that you can suggest? I'm looking for something that is a bit unique for our first dance, but I need a lot of songs to play during the reception as well. I spent a lot of time looking for a jimmy cliff love song because that was the first musician we liked in common, but nothing fits. But I really want everyone to have input about what they love to dance to also!

Rotten Tomatoes

It has been a bad week for movie rentals, as you can see on the sidebar. I'm hoping that my next installment from Netflix will be better.

An Excellent New Writer

Andrew Sean Greer won't disappoint you for good fiction. His new novel is supposed to be a breakthrough masterpiece and has gotten so many great reviews - people think its the best thing to come out of 2004. Of course Ithaca Library doesn't have that book yet, but they did have his 2001 novel, The Path of Minor Planets, and I loved that. So now I am so anxious to read The Confessions of Max Tivoli. People need to know about this author and I'm excited for the future, once again.

A Week's Worth of Mischief

My love has gone! to california that is. Now I am left alone in this spacious apartment with menacing weather outside trying to figure out what to do with all my spare time. If you have any ideas of what kind of trouble I can get into, please comment.

New Reviews

I'm going to add the movies that I'm watching on Netflix (or occasionally at the theater) on the sidebar. I will use the same system as for my book reviews: Green for a go and Red for a no.

Blessed is this day!

We now have a dishwasher installed. Life will now be all sh*ts and giggles once again!

Netflix backlash

I'm afraid we live in too corrupt of a neighborhood to get netflix. Our first video we watched was stolen out of our mailbox on the return. Today, our 4th video was opened by our neighbor. She gave it back to us, after she looked over what we were watching and gave us her comments on that movie, written all over the envelope. We are doomed.

Happy St. Paddy's Day

I didn't wear green but you're all too far away to pinch me. haha.

Now you can write like a 12 yr old on IM.

I got a kick out of this and wrote many paragraphs for pure pleasure.

Visit postponed

I had to turn away my good friend Lisbeth from visiting. The weather was just not conducive to us doing anything outdoors this weekend. Luckily, she had another weekend in May that she can visit us. Now I'm really going to miss her this weekend. And next week, all week long, 8 days, practically an eternity, my honey is off to California. I'm glad he can visit his parents though.

Brrr

WHAT HAPPENED to the weather here? We are supposed to get 10 inches of snow in 1 day. I thought it was time to put away the snowboards since Spring officially begins on Saturday. Oh well, I can handle this, and Alaska for that matter. Its just harder when all your friends are wearing shorts in California right now.

Drop City

TC Boyle is an interesting author (even judging by his looks). Every book of his I've read has concerned the environment in some manner. Besides Friend of the Earth, which I found too depressing, I quite like his books. This new one is really interesting to me because it starts out in northern california (no, not SF, but north of that!) and it has to do with homesteading. The characters really entertain me because they are powerful but flawed and I want to see how that plays out. Stegner's book on writing fiction taught me that the characters are the focal point of fiction and ideas cannot flow without them. And here is one author that manages to incorporate both quite well which is a rarity.

What to say

I haven't felt like posting anything for a while. I'm enjoying the warmer weather here until I talk to someone from California and they tell me how perfect it is there (Meagan, Cheryl, Gretchen, Ana & Shalom!) A lot of the past weeks have been absorbed with questions of whether we should move to a new apartment or not, but we are finally deciding to stay here since our landlord (x my fingers) says he'll put in a dishwasher soon. That only solves one of our problems, but we enjoy living in a house and not a complex and this is home now.

We've Succombed

We have decided to join Netflix. We just have to watch 5 movies a month to make it cheaper than going to Hollywood video. And for us, without a car, hollywood is a bit of a trek. Also, I realized that watching my favorite genre -mystery/thrillers- is better at home because I have a new trick for getting through those spine-tingling moments. It is called Fast Forward. Plus, DVD's are better than movies in the sense that you can find out more information about a movie directly after watching it by looking at the bonus features. AND...having a queue on netflix helps you to not waste any time meandering around a video store and any of your memory capacity. Not to mention that they have many more movies (especially foreign) in their store. Hurray for Netflix.

My Second Cousin

This is who we babysat last weekend. He was really cute.

Month of March

I read today a webpage about what is celebrated in March:

March 1 - Peanut Butter Lover's Day
March 8 - International Women's Day
March 12- Alfred Hitchcock Day
March 16 - Bock Beer Day (???)
March 20- First Day of Spring
March 22- National Goof-off Day
March 25 - Waffle Day

Book Reviews

Even if I like a book, it doesn't get a mention here unless I find it original or informative or immensely enjoyable. The last 2 books I read have fit the last 2 categories. When the Emperor Was Divine was a fictional account of one family's experiences in the Japanese Internment Camps. Having read nothing personal about this event, I enjoyed this well written yarn. Any Human Heart was extremely fun-reading about one man's journey though the modern ages and his encounters with famous people and the historical events he survived. The writing is witty and though it is a fiction, it was so true.

The Facilitator

My website has become a touchstone. No one seems to really note what I'm saying, but what comments are generated from what I say. For example: my dad wrote down Sam's mom's movie recommendation-not any of mine. And Sam's mom wanted my dad's recipe- none of mine. This isn't a pity party, just an observation.