escalator · over · the · hill

After what feels like a bajillion years of knitting (in an all-over pattern with hard-to-see black yarn in a teeny tiny sock weight on teeny tiny needles, no less), I am finally finished with Thermal. Whew. Well, finished except for the buttons--unless I can find some suitable ones around the house, I need to buy some. But that's not much left to do, and it's even sort of wearable-looking without them.

I've also made some more progress on the Brandi gloves--I'm up to the thumb-hole on the second one, so pretty soon I should have them both ready for fingers. Then I'll just have the duplicate-stitching and finishing left to go.

I've been watching a lot of The Mary Tyler Moore Show on dvd while I work and stuff. I forgot how much I liked it. Even though it's almost forty years old (I've been watching the first season, from 1970) and the sensibility is a bit dated/different from my own (e.g. how badly Mary and Rhoda want to get married), I find it really relatable. There are moments when it gets into stuff about women's friendships, office weirdness, the difficulty of dealing with unwanted attention from men, and other things I've had my own experiences with in a way that I don't think I've seen represented on any other show. When you think about it, there haven't been that many tv shows about women who have regular jobs and live in one-room apartments and who aren't married and aren't mothers. Plus I think I just relate to it because I'm a somewhat Mary Richards-esque person, though that's not a side of me everybody sees. Anyways, watching the show has been fun and comforting and surprisingly thought-provoking at times. I think one of these days I'm going to have to get my own copy of the first season dvds, if not the later ones, just to have them around.

While I had the dvds out from the store I took some screencaps of the beret Mary wears in the famous hat-throwing scene in the opening credits. I'm thinking about trying to knit one like it or at least something similar. I don't know if anybody would be interested in it but me, but if I do try to reproduce it I think I'll try to write it up into a pattern in case anyone else wants to knit it too.

If you're wondering why I haven't posted lately, it's because I haven't been doing much of anything besides homework. Today I turned in my second final project, leaving one more paper, for Whiteness, due Tuesday. I'm going to need to work on it every day til it's due, but it's a good amount of time to do a good job on the assignment. After that, I'll be done for the year.

So, sorry if I've been being boring. In a few more days, I'll probably have a lot more stuff to post about and more time to do it in.

Last night when the doctor gave Maurice the phenobarbital injection there was a radio nearby playing "Fade Into You" by Mazzy Star. Now it's in my head every single minute.

I think a bit later when I am feeling up to it I will write a longer thing about Maurice. His history, our first meeting, and so on. I think it would help me feel better.

So, I've been thinking about it for a while now and I think I'm going to make it official--I'm locking my journal for a while. I don't relish the idea of blocking it from people I know who don't have journals, or even a few people I don't. The problem with having my journal unlocked isn't with strangers reading it, it's certain people I know, or people who know people I know. To anybody who's been reading who has an account, comment if you'd like to be added. To anyone who doesn't have an account--Bard friends, including J.P., Austin friends, including C.D., or anybody else for that matter--if you think it would be worth spending a few extra seconds when you look at my journal, especially if there are any other livejournals you read, you should really think about setting up an account (you don't actually have to post if you don't want to). If you don't feel comfortable doing that, I'm honestly sorry you won't be able to read this anymore and if there was another way I could lock certain people out and not y'all I would do it.

This might be the only post on my public page for quite a while, so here's a message for posterity: if you want me to add you, the best way to let me know is probably to leave a comment here. Don't be shy, I'm usually pretty open to adding new people.

edited to add: I think I was unclear before--if you're on my friends list now, you're staying. When I said for people with accounts to leave comments, I meant people who I haven't added already. Sorry!

I had a really interesting evening last night. My Theory and Literature professor assigned us a paper where we have to analyze a cultural space, and the space I ended up using was a strip club near campus. I'd been meaning to go for a while and it just hadn't worked out. It turned out that my timing was better than I thought, because I really don't think I'd have had as good an experience at any other time. If the experiences my classmates had are any indication, I think it's true.

So, I had a couple of drinks with Sara at the Longbranch beforehand, then met up with Marlene and Jacob at the place. The first girl we saw was very jiggly and favored hiphop accompaniment. The next was very thin but did these really complex moves, and danced to some weird hard rock songs that sounded like they were composed specifically for the stripper market because they could never get played on the radio. Towards the end of her time onstage, one of the other girls came by and asked us what kind of music we liked. I wasn't sure what to say that could possibly apply to the setting, but Sara thought fast and said, "80s." So this girl was up next, and she started with Lullaby by the Cure. All the other dancers were wearing fluorescent stuff that glowed under the black lights, but she was all in black except for the skulls and stuff on her kneesocks. She had nice tattoos, too. Anyways, her performance on that first song convinced me and Sara to tip her during the next one, which turned out to be Zombie by the Cranberries. We went up to the spot at the base of the "T" formed by the stage where people went to tip the girls, and Marlene joined us. I think she liked having a bunch of shy girls come up to the stage for her--she gave us a sort of "aw, you guys" smile. I managed to do the expected procedure (the insertion of the money into the g-string), but only on my second try, after fumbling it nervously the first time. Then we sat back down and she did one more dance to Tainted Love.

A few minutes after her set (is that an ok word to use?) our favorite dancer came and sat with us. She started out on my lap and at first she was more on the flirty side (flattering us about how cute we all were and how she'd rather talk to interesting-looking people like us than the usual boring, creepy dudes, complimenting me on my glasses), but pretty soon she pulled up a chair and just started talking to us, and eventually just to me after Sara got up for a while. She said she'd rather hang out and talk with us than do other stuff that would make her money but that she wouldn't enjoy. It's interesting, she talked about having customers that just wanted someone to listen to them talk, but I think she really needed somebody to listen to her that night. It was really interesting getting her perspective on things. It's too bad it's really outside of the purview of my paper to do any sort of interviews, but hearing what she had to say still gave me a lot to think about, and not just for my paper.

The whole thing was pretty eye-opening, actually. I was surprised by some of my reactions. I kept having this impulse to go dance with the strippers. It just seemed wrong that they were up there all by themselves. It was interesting to see how it felt being in a space where unabashedly staring at another person is sanctioned, even encouraged. Sometimes it was sort of enjoyable and other times I found myself avoiding looking in certain ways even though those sorts of looking are supposed to be the whole point of being in that place. Another interesting thing was how seeing the strippers made me think about my self-image issues. I would have thought they would make me feel bad about myself, but actually, they weren't all that different from me. And just the fact of seeing a bunch of scantily clad women in all their diversity of sizes and shapes was kind of neat. Of course, there were icky things too. A creepy guy who ogled Sara and Marlene and I as if our presence in that space meant it was ok to treat us like we were on display. The guy my stripper friend told me about, in the corner behind us, who paid her to spit on him and ash in his beer. The strangely misogynist lyrics of some of the music. But even the weird parts were really interesting.

I'm curious as to whether anybody's reading this who isn't on my friends list. I can think of at least one person who might be (are you there, Justice?) but I don't know if there are any more. I'm asking because I'm thinking about locking my journal for a while, making it viewable by friends only. If you've been reading and you have a livejournal account but we aren't "friends," I could totally add you. If you don't have an account, you could always set one up just to look at stuff and not post yourself. But if there were enough people reading this who don't have accounts and don't want to bother with getting them, I might reconsider the locking thing.

Plus, it's just nice to know who's reading. So even if you don't care if I lock my journal, if you've been reading up to this point I'd like to know you're out there.

I had a nice time hanging out with Monk and Cole the other day. When Lainie left in the morning, she jokingly said that all three of us should be on our best behavior. Later on, Cole put a blanket over both of our heads. Monk said, "Are you guys making out in there? Susan, I thought Mom told you to be on your best behavior." I told Cole that I only like him as a friend. He took it pretty well.

I watched Red River for my Alternative Poetics class today. That's where my post title comes from--the cook on the big cattle drive tells this one guy that his "sugar tooth" was as bad as a "whiskey tongue." And it turned out to be true--the guy kept sneaking sugar from the chuck wagon and one night he accidentally knocked all the pots over and it made so much noise that the cattle stampeded and one of the guys died. So John Wayne shot Sugartooth in the shoulder. It was kind of a weird movie.

I went to see The Spirit of the Beehive tonight. When Eliot reminded me about the screening he was thinking that I had told him it was a favorite movie of mine, but I had never seen it before. The funny thing is, I think it might really end up being one of my favorite films, though I feel like I'd need to see it again to really be sure. I'm not very good at describing movies right after I've seen them, it makes me feel weird. But the Guardian article gives a really good description of what's special about it.

Last night I stayed up later than I should have watching something very different. Masterpiece Theater was being re-run at 3 a.m. and I got sucked into it because this week's show was based on a Philip Pullman book (The Ruby in the Smoke) and starred Billie Piper from Doctor Who. (Mary Jessica, if it had not been three in the morning I would have called you to make sure you knew it was on TV.) Anyways, it wasn't a new favorite thing like the movie I saw tonight, but it was worth staying up way too late for. It's amazing I made it through, really, after getting very little sleep the night of Brandi and Toto's party.

It was an interesting weekend. The aforementioned party was good. I brought some cupcakes and some bourbon. There were nice encounters with lots of different people, including some I hadn't seen in a while. By the end of the evening we were considering starting a game of "Strip Cranium" but that never actually happened, which is probably for the best. it's probably more fun in my imagination than it would have been in reality.

I also finally played Capture the Flag, but not for long, since before the first round was over somebody got a serious injury for the second time in recent Capture the Flag history--Clarke collided with Dave and broke his nose. Luckily he seemed to be doing ok when we saw him later than evening and his prognosis sounded good. Personally, even during the partial round I played, I took a pretty serious spill. I didn't hurt myself too bad, though, I just ended up with grass-burn on my palms, a grass stain on my pants, and some leg-bruises. But it was worth it to feel all tough and sporty, two qualities I don't often see in myself.

On that note, I'm going to go eat a pot pie.

For the first time in a long time, I'm going to post about knitting. Here goes nothin'.

The current situation: I'm working on Kelly's gloves again (since I finally got the needles I needed after repeatedly losing one after another of my old dpns). I've started on the ring finger of the second glove; when it's done I'll just have to do the pinkie. I'm also fixing to start knitting an Interlocking Balloons scarf for Karen. I knitted one before for my friend J, which you can see on Karen's flickr here. I'm looking forward to it--it's a really fun pattern. I also still need to finish Salina. I found the pattern really confusing when it came time to split the front into two sides, but I think if I sit down with the instructions and chart out where everything goes on some graph paper I can make it work. Once I do that I should be able to finish it pretty quickly.

Even though I have two projects on the needles that I've been plugging away on for months and another I'm getting ready to start, I'm thinking about what to knit next. Maybe it's just the weather, I don't know, but I'm feeling like getting back into knitting in earnest. It usually doesn't take me very long at all to make stuff, it's just that I get sidetracked and get out of the habit of knitting. Well, and sometimes I don't have any discretionary income for yarn purchases. Now is one of those times, actually. But I might as well think about what I might do when that changes. So, here's some stuff I've been thinking about.

I've been thinking for a while about knitting this shawl, despite its dopey name. Adrian from Hello Yarn did a nice version of it a while back. I'd like to make it out of Morehouse Merino, one of the naturally brown colors (from brown sheep). But I wonder about the whole shawl concept. Would I actually wear such a thing? As nice as it is, any shawl knitted in worsted weight yarn is going to be kind of like a wearable blanket. Which sounds kind of appealing, but maybe it's just appealing to my frumpy tendences in a way I should avoid.

Cardigans are a lot more unequivocally useful. Poking around the knitting blogs for the first time in forever, I came across lucy in the sky, by Laura who does the Cosmicpluto blog. Karen pointed me toward Forecast by Stefanie Japel. I'd use different yarn and make the sleeves less blowsy and probably shrink down the bobbles, but I've seen some really nice versions of this sweater on blogs and on flickr.

But the most practical thing would probably be to make myself some little things for when it gets cold. I have a nice cabled hat I made out of my own handspun last year, but I could use another hat if I found a pattern I really liked. Lately I've been seeing a lot of nice fair isle hats. I'd like to knit myself a scarf but I haven't seen a pattern that really grabbed me more than lots of others. Maybe I should just resign myself to making a few different ones and rotating them around. Or I could just keep my neck warm with something else. Somewhere buried in my papers there's a pattern for a neckwarmery thing called a Flared Lace Smoke Ring--you can see a lovely version by Cassie here. The notion of a lace neckwarmer sounds dumb to me in the abstract, but in practice I think it looks really nice and it could be less of a hassle than a big scarf but just about as warm. And making Kelly's gloves makes me want to make gloves for myself, though given the Texas weather I'd probably cut off the fingers around the first knuckle so I could still use my hands.

I could also use a new pullover, especially if Salina doesn't work out too well. Most of my sweaters are old and full of holes. One thing I've been thinking about is making something out of a nice self-striping Noro yarn like Kureyon, like Alison Brainylady's version Interweave's Retro Prep pattern. I'm also thinking about knitting a top-down raglan out of all the interesting scraps of yarn I've accumulated since I started knitting. There used to be a few nice scrap sweaters you could look at online, but the ones I used to look at have all been taken down for one reason or another. Suffice it to say that even though a scrap sweater sounds like it would look totally insane, the ones I've seen were actually really wearable.

But I have another idea for a pullover that is totally impractical. I was watching The Science of Sleep back when it was in the theaters. There's this scene, one of the dream ones, where the main character is using this instrument that has piano keys but stuff rolls out of it like pages from a typewriter. But the stuff that comes out is knitted--it's a knitted landscape. It reminded me of something in a book I have. It's a compendium of stuff on various needlecrafts--sewing, knitting, embroidery, pretty much anything involving a needle. It's from 1978 so the design sensibility is a little dated, but in an interesting way. There's a project in there called a "picture sweater." It's not a pattern per se, more a set of instructions on how to design something using an existing pattern. It's a pullover with a landscape across the front. I should try to scan the photo and post it--it's really strange yet oddly compelling. Anyways, ever since Michel Gondry reminded me about that landscape sweater I've been thinking about knitting one myself. I just don't have any good ideas about what sort of landscape it would be. Maybe watching the movie again would help--it's coming out on dvd soon.

So that's what I'm thinking about right now, knitting-wise. It might be another six months or whatever until I post on the subject again, but I hope I'll have something to report sooner than that.

eta: Of course as soon as I post this some new Knitty patterns are released and I actually end up liking one of them. Bonus: it would be my excuse to try to do a three-needle bind-off for the first time.

What's your policy when it comes to getting music recommendations from friends? Do you avoid them, take them when they come, or seek them out? How effective do you think friendly recommendations are for finding stuff you're really going to like? Do you ever feel self-conscious about getting into stuff because other people introduce you to it, instead of finding out about it some other way? Oh, and on a related note, what do you think about getting to know new music because of a significant other?

Personally, I solicit recommendations from people a lot and sometimes I find it really helpful. Maybe it's just me, but I think I'm more prone to asking for music advice than most people. When I think about the music I like, it seems like at least half of it is stuff I found out about from a friend. But at times I've gotten a bit of a 'tude from people who think it's dorky to admit you don't already know everything there is to know or that you didn't spring fully formed as an adult with strictly defined tastes. Most of the time I shrug it off. But I do feel a little defensive about getting into music because of someone I've dated. Anyways, I'm just wondering about other people's experiences with this.

I'm writing this from Lainie's house, where I'm keeping an eye on the little schmoes. They've been pretty immersed in this video game that takes place in a Star Wars world made of Legos for most of the time I've been here. They call me in when something entertaining happens. Also, I had a snack with Cole and then he ate some Fun Dip and turned his mouth all blue. We talked about different nightmares we had had, such as his dream that Twyla the dog had four tongues. Then he said, "You're a good friend." What a sweetheart. My other interesting quote so far is from when they were playing the video game. Cole suddenly yelled, "Kill the innocents!" So cute, yet so bloodthirsty. He's a complicated man.

In other news, I finally got the third class I wanted. I've got some paperwork to turn in to make my registration official, but unless something unexpected goes wrong with that, my stupid schedule is finally set. For those of you who find this sort of thing interesting, here's what I'm taking: the second part of Theory and Literature (I took the first last semester), a sort of sweeping theory overview with Janet Staiger, a favorite professor of mine; Alternative Poetics with Charles Ramirez-Berg (another favorite from undergrad days), an actual film studies class for once; and a class called Whiteness, about the representation of whiteness in media, with Jennifer Fuller, who I've never studied with before. All in all it looks like a promising semester.

I just found something out that probably won't interest anyone besides me. Since Karen dubbed it for me last year I have been obsessed with a Robert Wyatt song called Experiences no.2. I googled around months ago trying to find out what album it's on. I couldn't figure it out, but I did learn that the words are from an e.e. cummings poem, it is at moments after I have dreamed, though there are some bits that get repeated and couple of lines left off from the end. Today I was listening to it and wanted to look up the poem to see the words, and I accidentally found out why I couldn't find the song on any Robert Wyatt albums I found--it's not strictly a Robert Wyatt song. It's a John Cage composition, from an album called Jan Steele/John Cage: Voices and Instruments. Wyatt is the performer (the sole performer, because there's no instrumentation, just the sung/hummed vocal) but he's not an "author" of the album as it were, so it doesn't show up on discographies of his work or in any anthologies or anything. Of course, from what I can see it's pretty much impossible to find. It's even on a label called "Obscure," which was apparently run by Brian Eno. And it's old, too. From 1976. So the odds of my ever laying eyes on the thing are pretty low. It's too bad. But I'm glad I figured out where the heck that song came from.

eta: See below for a link, courtesy of handwriting...

My copy of the Shivers' Phone Calls finally came in the mail. I like how when I imported it into itunes to put it on my ipod the genre was listed as "unclassifiable."

On a similar note, I like how when my mouse hovers over my own userpic on livejournal, a little thing pops up and says, "this is you."

I had a really good (if taxing) conversation tonight, with somebody I hadn't talked to in a long time. It was way overdue and I think it really helped both of us.

There's so much stressful stuff happening, so many things I need to figure out soon. But for the moment I'm feeling strangely peaceful about everything.

Request #1: Can I get some comics recommendations? Mostly I'm thinking about mainstream-y superhero type stuff. When it comes to that whole mainstream-ish non-superhero kind, like I have a good idea of what I want to check out, and once I check out more of that stuff I hope I'll have an idea of where to go from there. When it comes to indie comics, well, I haven't seen anything new from that quarter that's excited me as much as the old Julie Doucet books I have on my bookshelf or the Chester Brown I read in high school and so forth, or when I have it's been new stuff from someone who's been working since those mid-to-late-90s salad days, but if there's something cool I'm missing, I would definitely like to know. But mostly I have superhero stuff in mind here, because that's an area where I don't have much of a frame of reference.

Lately I've been reading this Daredevil story, the one that starts with "Underboss." I like it pretty well but it's not grabbing me as much as I had hoped. In between Daredevil books I read the New Mutants "Demon Bear Saga" and I got a bit more into that. I really liked the style of the art on that one, plus I'm a sucker for the whole angsty teenager angle. And this whole effort to get more into this area of comics started in large part because I read the Dark Phoenix cycle and I really enjoyed that. So maybe that's some kind of indication of what I'm likely to go for, though it's not that much to go on. I've read a smattering of other stuff, I just didn't get that into any of it. Anyways, for now I'm thinking about reading some more of the New Mutants stuff from around the Demon Bear period...and I'm always on the hunt for those Wonder Woman issues that Samuel Delany wrote, because I love him...and I'm sort of interested in the whole Secret Wars period in the Marvel universe, but other than that I don't know. Oh, and I've been reading The Astonishing X-Men as an extension of my Joss Whedon obsession, and I'll probably keep doing that even though it has been kind of dumb lately.

Request #2: I'm planning a trip to NYC in March (like from the 9th or the 10th through...I forget the date but the Wednesday that SXSW starts) and I was wondering if any of you New York folks would like to hang out while I'm there. I'll be meeting up with Emma (aka lostpositive), who'll be on a visit from Cardiff, so interested parties can meet her too. I'm mostly just checking to see who'd like to get an overpriced drink, or eat pierogies, or go record-shopping or whatever. But, also, if anybody has room for one or two nice, clean, quiet girls to crash for one or more nights, that would also be helpful. I'm putting out the call to old friends and may not end up being in the market for a place to stay, but putting out some extra feelers never hurt. But if you'd like to hang out but don't know yet if you would invite me into your house, please don't be deterred! I won't be hurt. I'm also interested in hearing about any interesting shows or movie screenings or other doings that might be happening around that time.

I was tagged by the lovable automatic_girl for a meme. Here are the instructions:

each player of this game starts off with 10 weird things/habits/little known facts about yourself. people who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 10 weird habits/things/little known facts as well as state this rule clearly. at the end you need to choose 10 people to be tagged and list their names.

My earliest memory is of watching my mom on TV. She was on Good Morning Baltimore, having her "colors done" by the lady that wrote that book about how everyone has a "season" that determines what looks good on them. I remember that I was at the neighbors' house eating a popsicle and sitting closer to the TV than I was allowed to do at home.

I once won a butt contest with a perfect score of 10.

When I was 17, I went from having waist-length to shoulder-length hair after a bunch of my hair caught fire in a kitchen accident. I put the fire out with my bare hands and was not injured.

I'm allergic to dogs and Paxil.

The house where I lost my virginity is less than a mile from my current home.

I have a really large head that is too big for most hats.

I was the "chairperson" of a feminist student group when I was an undergrad at UT. Some of the group members, dissatisfied with this bland title, used to call me "the grand poo-bah."

A guy I dated years ago recently played a small part on Veronica Mars.

A professor once responded to a friend of mine's short film, in which I appeared briefly, by saying, "You can't just have unexplained shots of Susan B______."

According to a "scientific" test I once took on the internet, the type of man I'm most attracted to is "bears" and the type of woman I'm most attracted to is "Meditteranean beauties."

OK, now for the tagging part. Needless to say, you don't actually have to do this if I tag you. OK, here goes: lostpositive, stephen_cramer, drublood, unicorncandy, hazel_rah, handwriting, 14icedbear, bp1101, boo_kat, and phylomath.

added later: I thought of a fact I probably should have added to my list: In fourth grade I was part of an act in the school talent show. Two friends and I lip-synced and played vegetables as instruments to the tune of "Eat It." I did the carrot guitar solo.

We've had a weird cold front and lots of sleet and freezing rain and stuff, so everybody in Austin is pretty much trapped indoors today. That means no first day of school, among other things. Thankfully I just happened to go on a big grocery trip on Sunday in an effort to do more cooking from scratch at home, so I'm all stocked up with food.

I went kind of crazy with the cooking, actually. I made curried tempeh and mango salad from the Vegan With a Vengeance book, pumpkin rarebit soup from a Mollie Katzen book, a recipe for olive tapenade from a Deborah Madison book that I've been putting in grilled fontina cheese sandwiches, and fideos (a Mexican noodle dish) from another Deborah Madison recipe. And I'm thinking about making black eyed peas and kale for dinner. So I've been eating well the last few days, but I haven't had any contact with other humans except by phone, and I probably won't until sometime tomorrow. Speaking of phone contact, if anybody feels like calling me tonight it would be welcome.

On the bright side, I finally started burning copies of my very belated mix CD for the swap Karen organized in September. I need to buy some more blanks before I can finish but hopefully they'll be in the mail soon. I'm also thinking about making specific mixes for people to go with the late one, but that may just be the cabin fever talking. Anyways, here's the tracklist. I tried to keep it as a snapshot of stuff I was listening to in September.

the Curtains - Go Lucky
the Weird Weeds - One-Eyed Cloud
Magnetic Fields - Kings
Palaxy Tracks - If I Were a Julie London
Bedhead - Disorder (Joy Division cover)
Chantal Goya - Tu m'as trop menti
Dolly Mixture - Welcome to the Perfect Day
Bear Quartet - All Your Life
the Pastels - Love It's Getting Better
Peter and the Wolf - Gray Seagulls
the Receptionists - Soren Loved Regina
Tracey Thorn - Simply Couldn't Care
the Shivers - Phoning It In 3 (track 3 from a radio broadcast, title unknown)
Funkadelic - Can You Get to That
Let's Active - Counting Down
Josef K - Chance Meeting
Felt - Evergreen Dazed
the Folk Implosion - Had to Find Out
Mellow Candle - The Poet and the Witch
Mahogany - Mantissa

I should also mention that in an unusual freak occurrence, today there is wireless internet in my apartment complex that I can mooch (hence the livejournal posting). Maybe it's just because everyone is online because they can't leave their houses? I wonder. Well, it's good timing, even if it doesn't last long.

All of my lyric quotes got guessed except for #1 and #8. I'm not that surprised about #1, but I would have expected somebody to get #8, it's a classic. And the words are from a James Joyce poem, to boot.

1. All that unfinished wine. Don't measure, it's fine.

Let's Active - Lowdown

2. I'm jumbled up, maybe I'm losing my touch. But you know, I didn't have it anyway.

Echo and the Bunnymen - Rescue

3. Time flies so fast, you miss a lot. It was two years the other night, and I forgot.

Marine Girls - Love to Know

4. That brontosaurus must have stood a thousand miles high.

Built to Spill - Big Dipper

5. Cease to know or to tell or to see or to be your own.

Nico - Afraid

6. You are unbearable. I've seen you up far too close.

Public Imagine Ltd. - Albatross

7. I'm not scared, I swear I'm free. It may collapse the fear that burns to bring the worst from me.

Sebadoh - Total Peace

8. My book is closed, I read no more. Watching the fire dance on the floor.

Syd Barrett - Golden Hair

9. Before the ice was broken, I thought it was only me.

Edith Frost - Falling

10. I think of all the years I've wasted. I think of all the years I've saved.

Magnetic Fields - Lonely Highway

I owe everybody some kind of update and hopefully it'll be forthcoming soon. In the meantime, here's a silly meme by way of handwriting. Lyrics snippets from ten random ipod songs. Guess the band and the title in the comments if you want. Most of these seem pretty easy to me, but that may just be because I'm me.

1. All that unfinished wine. Don't measure, it's fine.

2. I'm jumbled up, maybe I'm losing my touch. But you know, I didn't have it anyway.

3. Time flies so fast, you miss a lot. It was two years the other night, and I forgot.

4. That brontosaurus must have stood a thousand miles high.

5. Cease to know or to tell or to see or to be your own.

6. You are unbearable. I've seen you up far too close.

7. I'm not scared, I swear I'm free. It may collapse the fear that burns to bring the worst from me.

8. My book is closed, I read no more. Watching the fire dance on the floor.

9. Before the ice was broken, I thought it was only me.

10. I think of all the years I've wasted. I think of all the years I've saved.

It might be a little early for this since there are still ten more days left in 2006, but I'm doing some thinking about the last year and about how I want to start off the next one, so I figure I might as well do the requisite entry on the subject.

Ten things I learned this year:

If you're itchy all over, you might be allergic to that new kind of soap.

When you sprain something, remember the acronym R.I.C.E. for rest, ice, compress, and elevate.

I have a tendency, which I need to work on, to gravitate towards emotionally unavailable, self-absorbed people, and to try to have non-superficial relatinships with them. Part of this is getting it through my skull that no amount of correct behavior on my part is going to make a big narcissist suddenly become open and emotionally present and stuff.

Hammer-ons are a lot easier than pull-offs.

Sometimes the hardest thing isn't getting the support, approval, love, etc. of others that you wanted; sometimes it's accepting it when they offer it, and trusting that it's real.

Getting upset about things that you hear about people second-hand, especially things they've supposedly said about you, is really pointless and dumb. Though it's hard sometimes when someone is offering you gossip, it's really best to just go on your actual first-hand experiences of people and leave it at that. If you're tempted to engage in that kind of talk, just think about all the dumb things people might have said about you before and shut your ears and/or pie-hole.

On a related note, if somebody's favorite thing to do with you is to talk smack about other people, it's entirely possible they could end up talking smack about you before too long. And even if they don't, they aren't a very good friend.

Graduate school is hard. Procrastinating in that context can really get you into a pickle.

The donuts at Ken's are the best at 1 or 2 in the morning, when they're really fresh. This is particularly good to know if it's late at night and you went out to a show or something by yourself and are feeling lonely and weird and in need of some kind of tasty snack to cheer you up.

People who walk a lot (like me) should invest in good shoes and get rid of them when they have holes on the bottom.

Ten things I'd like to get out of the next year:

Some kind of progress on the whole learning-to-drive thing.

A lot more finished knitting projects than I managed this year. Preferably, at least one completed item for myself and at least one thing designed by me.

Getting back my guitar callouses.

Better work habits at school.

Learning to Navajo ply.

Being less hard on myself.

Doing better about staying in touch with people and initiating plans with my Austin friends.

Less boy-related drama.

A new friend or two, hopefully the kind that will still be around next year.

More cooking at home, less eating frozen crap.

The semester's finally over, praise Jeebus. I'm at my mom's in Georgia with nothing I have to get done immediately other than getting a full night's sleep for the first time in weeks and eat three-ish square meals a day. I've still got worries. Stuff I need to take care of in the next few weeks, things to mull over. And the fever-pitch anxiety from the last few weeks hasn't worn off that much considering that it's all over. I just never had any sort of sense of release or catharsis or whatever. I guess it's not going to work that way. Maybe I'll just feel a little more relaxed a little bit at a time. Still, it's not just the stress. Sad things have been happening. One of my best friends moving away. Lots of people I care about struggling with difficult situations. And with the year ending I'm just thinking a lot about all the other tough times I've had to work through in 2006.

But it's good to see my mom, and to have a change of scenery for a while. Starting in just a minute here I am going to do a whole lot of sleeping. I'm going to do my best to relax while I'm here. And when I get back to Austin I'm hoping to catch up on spending time with people I didn't see enough of during the semester. Just thinking about getting some rest and seeing my friends makes all this other crap seem a lot more bearable.

I'll probably be back on here in the next day or two with some sappy thoughts about the end of the year and stuff. So if that kind of stuff makes you want to barf you should start bracing yourself now.