ofsilvergreen

08:15 am: drive-by update
Hey y'all, long time no post, eh?

So, today I officially start PhD classes. Woot woot!
Tomorrow I have a blind date! Woot woot woot!
In two weeks I turn 30! Whoa...

12:12 am: the medicinal properties of whiskey

Mix together some honey and lemon juice, warm it up in the microwave, add a shot or two of your favorite whiskey, and then thin it with boiling water.

Drink it as hot as you can without burning yourself, as quickly as you can.

Aahhhhhhhhh!

Good for sore throats, colds, and temporary relief of mild redhead-related depression. =)

06:00 pm: Reasons why I don't exercise (Top 3)

3. I can't afford a membership anywhere that has a pool with decent lap swimming hours.
2. I can't afford a membership anywhere that has that plus a cardio and weight room.
1. I'm lazy!

Not trying to mock jambery, honest, but her post got me thinking about why I don't exercise. Since I do in fact enjoy the antidepressant effects of exercise, and do in fact struggle with depression, it would seem like a good idea for me to exercise. Yet, I really don't exercise. And now, we all know the major reasons why!

03:48 pm: harumph.

I hate looking for work. For lots of reasons.

The one that's pissing me off most right now is the waiting game. Applying takes time, even if it's just submitting a cover letter and resume. But applying doesn't take nearly as long as waiting for the employer to respond.

For some reason, I find myself feeling like I owe every employer a fair chance before moving on to other positions.

And now that I find that to be the case, I'm curious where I ever got such an odd notion. They no doubt post lots of job announcements and then wait for applications to come in. They couldn't bother worrying about giving me a fair chance even if they wanted to...which somehow I doubt.

So, conversely, I shouldn't bother worrying about giving them a fair chance, even if I want to...which I shouldn't. I really ought to be an equal opportunity job seeker, applying for everything that seems suitable until I find an employer that can get around to hiring me in a timely fashion.

10:36 pm: 'oo-rah!

McCain lost! Yay!
That means Obama won. YAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!
It wasn't even close (over 4.5 million popular vote margin)! Yay!
Rossi lost...probably... Yay?
Dems gain at least 5 seats in the Senate! Yay!
Something like 15 seats in the House! Yay!
Mass transit proposition passing! Yay!
Personal caregiver certification standards passing! Yay, probably.
Tim Ayman's retarded transportation initiative failing! Yay fo' sho'!

Euthanize depressed sick people instead of treating them proposition passing. BOOO!
Prop 8 leading? BOOO! Retarded christians suck.

10:15 am: musings political

Watching a rerun of the Daily Show, and a comment from a clip of a crazy person on Fox News got me thinking.

The comment, with typical Fox News complete lack of justification, went something along the lines of: "None of our enemies fear Barack Obama. Why would they? But all of our enemies fear John McCain."

First of all, it should go without saying that the guy saying that is a complete tool, but just in case any Fox News fans happen to read this, they probably don't realize that guy is a complete tool.

But my main musing in response to Mr. Tool, is this:

Obviously, we've got no clue what our enemies do or do not fear, otherwise we'd have chased the Taliban all the way to Antarctica, Al Qaeda in Iraq would never have come into Iraq in the first place, and Hussein would have voluntarily resigned from office prior to the 2003 invasion.

And really, which candidate our enemies fear the most doesn't really have much of anything to do with our capacity to deal with them. If anything, we want them to have no fear of us, so that they get cocky and come out of hiding en masse to challenge us. They'll be really easy to wipe out that way. The fact that they're afraid of us actually makes it harder to find them.

Meanwhile, Mr. Tool and his cohort seem to have totally missed a far more concerning issue about which candidates are most feared. Which candidate do our friends fear the most? Hands down, that candidate is John McCain. If you need proof, just look at any of the various World Electoral College websites out there. The entire world is afraid of what will happen to them if John McCain is elected. If that doesn't make you nervous, then you're having a problem with your brain being missing.

06:19 pm: Posty post post!

I made chicken tacos on a spontaneous, let's-see-how-this-goes basis. Thawed chicken breast, no pre-packaged seasoning mix, no recipe off the internet; just me and what was in the kitchen already. Take cover!!!

Set the chicken in some olive oil over low heat, sprinkled cayenne pepper, chili powder and paprika, then left it covered to saute on low while I prepared the other fixings. After it had cooked on the outsides, I added in diced onion and garlic, stirred it up, and turned the heat up. Let it cook for a while.

Meanwhile, I had a bit of tomato, some green bell pepper, and some romaine lettuce, so I chopped/shredded that, then a bit of Tillamook cheddar. My tortillas were kind of stiff, so I put one between two wet paper towels and nuked it for about 30 seconds.

Tested a chunk of the chicken for doneness. It was done, but it wasn't dry. And the spices were just a notch above mildly spicy. I put all the stuffings on the tortilla, added some picante sauce, and rolled it up. The rolling part was a bit clumsy.

I crossed my fingers, said grace, and braced myself for a mediocre taco.

I was very nicely surprised when it was de-freakin'-licious! Maybe I should try cooking without a recipe more often!

Mmm...happy monkey!

11:27 pm: going rockstar

Hey look, I'm posting, I'm posting!

So a portion of my church music group has semi-officially formed a subgroup, currently referred to as "The Vine," and we've got our third gig tomorrow. The first one was in the courtyard of the church for an outdoor charity benefit concert a few weeks ago. The second one was tonight for the church's annual appreciation dinner. Tomorrow we take it up a notch or two: we're the opening act for Pagdiriwong, a Filipino cultural festival being held at the Seattle center. Our set is an eclectic mix including an arrangement of "In a Manner of Speaking" as remixed by Nouvelle Vogue and an instrumental jam session on Coldplay's hit single "Viva la Vida (or Death and All His Friends)."

Yours truly is playing the keyboard for the whole set. Other members include a guitar/vocalist, our lead singer (she'll also be debuting on bass guitar), a guitar/bass player, a saxophonist, a violinist, and our drummer (also featured vocalist for "Say What You Need to Say").

I'm curious why I never wanted to be a performer when I was studying music seriously, but now that I'm doing it on the side for pure enjoyment, it sounds like a great idea...

Anyway, hope everyone is in a good place. I've got 7.5 school days left, and then I'll be done with that whole fiasco, and have ten weeks to figure out what to do next before the paychecks stop coming.

10:41 pm: post-and-run
Hey everyone, sorry I'm still incommunicado...I'd love to say that I'll be changing that soon, but I don't know if that's the truth. But my music ministry's fearless leader just posted video footage on YouTube of the benefit concert we did back in October, and I wanted to share a link with you. It's mostly Christian music (consider yerself warned!), with at least one secular number courtesy of the GooGoo Dolls. Not everyone's cup of tea, I realize, but it was a huge undertaking, and an amazing success; we raised just shy of $13K for kids living next to the Guatemala City garbage dump so they can have their own textbooks and workbooks in the nearby school. Check us out!

Clicky clicky!

10:31 pm: a thought

Ignoring the bad things in your life doesn't make them go away, but ignoring the good things in your life will make the bad things seem worse than they are.

01:36 pm: update: nothing new!

Well, I've been doing the 8-5 thing for two weeks now. The commute still sucks, but work is alright. I've got a couple of leads on a way to cut down on the commuting headache; I can get a free bus pass through the State of Washington, since I'm an employee, which will allow me to catch a bus from a park & ride that will allow me to cut way down on the number of miles I have to drive each week. The question is whether I'll be able to adjust my work hours to keep from having to leave the house an hour earlier each day.

In other news, I have waaayyy too much stuff. I need to get rid of it.

No news on the job front, except that it's slow going. Each job application takes a couple hours, and each school district wants exactly the same information, but it has to be on their unique application form, so I can only get one application done per day at most. Annoying, but unavoidable.

09:53 pm: ......

It finally hit home on my way to church tonight that the goodbye phase of graduating and moving home was about to begin. Somehow I made it through Mass and dinner without breaking down. But I'm not going to make it through the week night in like fashion.

09:29 pm: metaphornication

This is an entry about resonance. Kind of.

As I was singing one of the songs at church tonight, I was practicing trying to engage my "head voice," to see if it changed the tone and volume of my singing at all. I was reminded of something one of my (former) band students had said the other day about his previous voice lesson, in which everything was working right and his whole body was resonating, and his voice was clear and full and big, and how wonderful it had felt.

Then, as I'm wont to do, I slipped into philosopher mode and asked myself "what is resonance?"

I immediately got a mental image of a bell, still ringing after it had been struck. The potential for resonance is an inherent property of the bell, but the bell doesn't resonate of its own accord; it resonates in response to very specifically directed external forces. In the case of a sympathetically pitched vibration, the bell will resonate as long as the sympathetic vibration continues. On the other hand, the resonance can also be stifled by external forces which interfere with the bell's resonant properties.

I realized then that I was trying too hard for my head voice to be able to work. Rather than giving it the vibration and letting it resonate for itself, I was trying to force it to work, and in so doing I was actually stifling the vibrations. Just as soon as I realized this, I was able to adjust my efforts, and my head started to resonate.

So where's the metaphor that vindicates my subject line?

Well, being that I was at church, I was also very much occupied contemplating my relationship with God. One of the central themes of the pastor's homily was God's unconditional love, and how even though it was possible to disappoint God, His love was forever. Another thing on my mind was the idea of being open to God, of allowing Him into my heart.

I began to think of myself as a bell, with God's love being an ever-present sympathetic vibration. If I am open to it, my entire being will resonate in harmony with it. If I stifle it, my being will be dull and mute.

There are many ways for me to be open to it, but one of the ways which comes naturally to me, when I let it, is in music. Once I realized that my body could resonate just as any bell, I could feel different parts of me vibrate in response to the sounds of the piano and the bass and the drums.

So often I go through the days making an extraneous effort to keep from resonating in response to what I encounter, when it should be so much easier to let go of that waste of energy and just allow it to happen.

I know that it's fear which keeps me from doing that. What I don't know is, what am I afraid of?

08:38 pm: fun food factoid...and other stuff

When making mashed potatoes, the kind of potato one uses makes a difference. According to the uptown Fairway produce guide, Yukon Golds make the best mashed potatoes. I don't have enough information to confirm or deny that, but they definitely make very good mashed potatoes. The sour cream trick I picked up from Juliana over Thanksgiving helps too. In other words: Yumm...

I have laundry to do. It's just a load of whites, so I should do it. But I don't wanna...

I'm fiddling with ideas in my head about how to shake up a 90-piece 7th/8th grade concert band a little bit. Not to fluster them per se, just to break up their habitual routine enough to get their attention, and maybe get them to stop yammering for five seconds and think.

09:36 pm: job hunting

Job hunting sucks. At least, looking for a music teaching job in a specific geographic area sucks. So many schools, so few listings. I was really hoping to be able to line up some interviews for the week that I'm home in April, but for that to happen there are going to have to be some new listings, soon. Maybe I should take some math classes over the summer and get a math teaching endorsement...there's no shortage of job openings in that area.

04:58 pm: d'oh!

I generally get along very well with my roommates. Our schedules are different enough that we rarely need to be using the bathroom or the kitchen at the same time. And, considering that I live with two women, they don't really tie up the bathroom for that long when they are using it, for the most part.

Of course, today when I really really have to go is when my roommate decides that a 45-minute (and counting) shower sounds like just the thing. I know it's not anything she's doing to deliberately inconvenience me...but c'mon, dude, I really gotta go!!!

(Oh thank God, the water just shut off!)

11:45 am: Hooray for southern racism!

I'm too lazy to post a link, but I just read an interesting bit on Google news. Seems that the Nashville, TN city council passed a city ordinance declaring that English is the official language of Nashville. Thank God, the mayor vetoed it. Of course, the right wingers in the town were all over the message boards for the local paper, howling about how those damn fool liberals have only one goal, which is to undermine everything America stands for.

Can we PLEASE ship these fucktards to someplace where they'll piss me off less? I understand that it's impossible to tell what percentage of people still hold those views by internet message boards, but the fact that they have internet access means that it has to be a significant portion of the population. And they have to be at least prominent enough to form a majority on the city council of a major metropolis.

A lunatic fringe is always going to be lurking around, well, the fringe, but this is a lunatic movement, which is worrisome. It's one thing to have concerns about the economic and social repercussions of illegal immigration and imported low-wage labor. It's another thing to go psycho when people don't magically adopt English as their native tongue as soon as they arrive in the US. What difference does it make whether your landscapers speak English or Spanish in between hacking your shrubs to bits and getting stoned? At least if they're speaking Spanish I can't understand them well enough to want to kick the crap out of them.

08:22 pm: ugh. tired.

What I wouldn't give for a nice soothing backrub from my kind, loving, beautiful girlfriend right about now...hell, I'd even take a nice soothing backrub from some other source, seeing as how there's no such girlfriend to be spoken of.

12:48 am: prosaic play

I got a story idea as I was walking home tonight, and decided to sit down and write while the idea was fresh in mind.

Two hours later, I've got three and a half pages of completely original biographical pseudo-fiction. It's been a few years since anything like that has happened...

11:58 pm: stuff about teaching (warning, long!)

Fair warning, this actually changes subjects a bit about halfway through. Once I start babbling about TC stuff, it might not make sense to anyone but julianacathern. But you're welcome to keep reading even if it doesn't make sense. Also, since it's rather long, you can find the rest of it ( behind this handy-dandy cut... )