i hate it when i find there are artists i cringe to hear just because of their associations with certain people in my life. i am fortunate to not have many "tainted" artists/songs, but there are a few. i can't bring myself to delete the few tracks i have, but i almost always skip them. here are a few: leonard cohen, cowboy junkies, apollo 440, and anything containing or referring to "you are my sunshine."

so don't ever try to get me into leonard cohen! i know he's good. i just have associations.

who doesn't?

maybe only people who don't get desperately intertwined with recordings and emotions...

listening: soul coughing - sugar free jazz

gosh, i keep thinking of things i forgot to write about. i edited to add the paragraph about cleaning, but jason deserves his own entry, i suppose. not that i haven't already blathered about it to half the people who read this blog.

last night was the mayday show. it's the first concert i've attended on a boat. only jesse came with me, because jesse is also a cool, die-hard webleyite. everyone else had more important things to do (*scoff*), or at least an ex-boyfriend to avoid, which is understandable. i have stopped actively avoiding the one who comes to webley shows of his own volition, and now... well, i just know he's there, and that's fine.

anyway, jason played almost all new songs, including this one that has the chorus, "she said, 'i am not your lover, i am just the map you use to find her,'" which stuck to my ribs like quaker oatmeal on a cold morning, and i hope to fuck it's on the new album. oh, yeah, and the june 1 show i saw listed on the paradox's site? it's a seedy release party. he wouldn't tell us what songs were on the album, and when people began guessing as to the number of tracks, he broke out with the song about the number 12 and its place in history, literature, and mythology and we all did the clockface. i am *really* looking forward to this show now. we have to get there about a million years early, though, because it will be packed, i'm sure. we want to be in the FRONT. no more of this standing behind crazy tall people with hats and dreads shit.

there is a new singalong chorus, too... it's kind of to the tune of "when the saints go marching in" and is kind of a springtime companion to the classic "halloween": "when you hear those spirits calling,/ there ain't no wrong or right./ so if you want to eat tomorrow,/ you better sow your seeds tonight./ you better sow your seeds tonight!" learn it, love it, remember it. i'm sure there will be a quiz.

the concert ended with us following a large asparagus (webleyites are always following handcrafted vegetables) from the boat to the hill in gasworks park. the city was amazing at night. we danced and sang songs and the asparagus was planted atop the hill. someone suggested we burn it, but webley said, "we can burn it, or we can leave it for people to wonder about in the morning." you can tell which appealed to the crowd more. we may enjoy burning things, but we also like the effect of randomness on the general public. i can imagine someone out on their morning jog, noticing the strange, leaning, pole-like presence of the papier maiche asparagus, thinking, "what the...?!" i can only hope it lasted that long.

there are a million other things i could say about the show, but i'll stop. just suffice it to say it was a short, but sweet, webley show. on a boat. and i'm already excited for the seedy release/birthday party.

on a boat! hee.

listening: tool - reflection

8:45 on a thursday night, and what is princess narcissus doing? eating grapes and staring at her reflection in the window, that's what.

happy birthday to my sister! she's 18 now. just don't let it go to your head--you're still under mom and dad's financial thumb. not that she reads this, anyway.

i've felt slightly poetic at random times today. life is busy lately, but good. i am not really sure what to write about

let's see. my test in history went reasonably well, i think, especially considering the hardly bang-up job i did studying for it. i haven't done the reading for tomorrow's section, though, and i suspect if i do get around to it, it'll be skimming tomorrow morning before class. my ta cracked me up, though--before the test, which, mind you, was an essay test in a *history* class involving no math, not even really *dates* were necessary, he wrote on the board, "no calculators." as a joke, of course. but it was funny. maybe i'm just easily amused.

this morning, both jana and i were in a mood. a "our house is a grimy shithole!" mood. this is a bad mood when you are alone--you feel angry at your roommates for being lazy slobs, conveniently forgetting your own prior slovenliness--but fabulous when there are two of you. when there are two, you become a team, united against dirt, rather than dirty roommates. it becomes an "a-ha! i kicked your ass! your move, trebek!" instead of a "you assholes better do your share, grumble grumble." also, i think i enjoy doing dishes sometimes, provided there's a good soundtrack. (the ramones and the avalanches have of late made equally commendable stereo performances while i attended to a sinkload.)

i have so far spent 15 minutes in the psych lab this week, all of which was this evening. it was spent entering my coding from the duo studies amanda didn't already enter into an spss file. very exciting. i am meeting with jane tomorrow to help her with something else, though, since i told her i wasn't spending nearly the required 9 hours a week there because i didn't have enough to do. by golly, she will *find* me enough to do. i'm sure of it. i have faith in her. :)

we experienced the relaxing effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction in my psych lecture today. my ta gave everyone a hershey's kiss with almond and told us to relax, sit in a position that made us feel "dignified" and comfortable, and allow the chocolate to melt in our mouths, slowly slowly, and then to feel the almond in our mouth, experience it, before chewing and swallowing. to focus on such a small, pleasurable thing in class, while i saw and appreciate the point, had the effect of amusing the crap out of me, and i found i couldn't help tensing my cheek muscles into a grin-trying-to-laugh periodically.

late this afternoon, i overcame my phone phobia--after a lot of babbling and analyzing to chris and #n00n--long enough to make the necessary calls to my half (four of nine) of the list of places listing two-bedroom apartments in the u-district to make sure they were available for june, ask about the rent, and request an appointment to view the place this weekend. only one was appropriate for us to visit on saturday--one made me leave a message, another was too expensive, another has no two-bedrooms available for june. i hope jenny has a little more luck with her numbers tomorrow, but even if she doesn't, there are a number of units available from the one place i called, so i hope at least one of those is acceptable.

lastly, i have been off-and-on working on finding a new job. i hope my current job isn't ending, but there is a distinct possiblity it will, and there are some other jobs i need to apply for *now* (even though they don't start until september) that actually pay *better* and are likely to be great experience for me (as opposed to the merely good and cushy my current job is)... so yeah. i'm working on that. i think there are a good four jobs for which i'll throw my resume in the hat. i think i've tweaked it to be accurate and up-to-date and handy. i need to write a cover letter for one job and answer some essay questions for another. the others just seem to want my resume. whew. not really looking forward to interviewing for a bunch more jobs or anything like that, but i'll do what needs to be done, hey? i have to work. that's just a given. it's good for me, anyway. good the way exercise is good, except i still somehow haven't made that feel like a moral imperative enough to do it regularly and well.

speaking of which, i still have the karate gi that is my stain of failure. bleh.

yoga, anyone?

listening: tool - laterals

i feel like i should say something again. two days of the downer post isn't cool.

i don't really have anything more upbeat to report, though.

i should be studying for a history midterm. it's an essay test. i suspect i will perform as well in this class as i did in my last essay-test class, poli sci 202--that is, a 3.1. not bad, but not great. anyway. i just need to pass it reasonably.

i had my dj interview today. it was short, but sweet, and i felt much less anxious afterwards. relief. i think it went all right. we'll see how they liked me, though.

i also ran some other errands. i'm going to apply for a student adviser position at the undergrad gateway center. i might lose my job due to budget cuts.

my friend jenny (who lived across the hall from me last year) and i decided to look for a place together. i need to call my half of the list soon so we can check places out this weekend and feel secure. no more housing anxiety! thanks!

time to go. i don't know what else to say.

listening: neil young & crazy horse - running dry (requiem for the rockets)

i'm sleepy.

i guess there is stuff to report. i'm feeling fairly upbeat lately, provided i forget a few of life's major details.

olympia was good. i saw becky, ate yummy food, saw my family, etc. they had a bed in a room for me this time--no sleeping on the couch! my back was grateful, but still whiny. it's whiny a lot lately. my sister and i saw the gossip with a couple other bands on saturday night. it was the first time i'd been to the backstage since i was in high school, i think. still felt familiar. craziness. the show was very rockin', too. i like dragging my sister places and having her enjoy them as much as (maybe moreso than, she says) i do.

and then there was the bad news, but that came first. i took my mom to the thai-ger room for a late lunch, since she was so kind as to drive all the way to seattle to pick me up on saturday afternoon (and take me home this morning, and buy me groceries). i was babbling about how i figured out the finishing-in-a-year-and-a-half thing, and what to do about that, blah blah blah. in the middle of our meal, she said she had something to tell me, but she didn't think she could say it. then the tears started welling in her eyes. i knew it was about dad's cancer. she said it was in his brain. she apologized. i don't know why she apologized. i couldn't cry. i didn't know what to say. she told me how they found out, and when, and all that, and how that's, you know, really not good, and then she started talking about mark greene on er and his brain tumor, because everything refers to television. so much for that being an escape, huh? but yeah, so that's how my dad is, and i know some people (moreso in real life than online) are prone to occasionally ask how my dad is. so that's the answer. i don't know what it means. he still seems happy, in some ways. i know he still loves all of us and he hasn't gone insane or anything. and i know that, despite my agnosticism, i find myself more and more apt to believe, not in a god, but in a devil, because that's what cancer is.

so life is ok if i don't think about the devil. if i just focus on the numb and the flavors and the smells of beauty all around me, on the love of those i know and love in return, maybe the devil won't just win. he can't have us so easily. but my fighting reflexes are weak and my mind is selfish, so i focus on everything else... and i can't focus at all.