Spinster

I'm Losing My Mind

A couple weeks ago I took some money out of the ATM.  And left my debit Visa in it.  I've never done that before.  Ever.  I just took the money, put it in my wallet, put the car in gear and drove away.  I realized what I'd done within 15 minutes, but still.  Airhead!

Last week I put a Netflix dvd in the mailer without the sleeve.  They got it back but can't know it came from me.  (Though, I can't imagine a lot of people were watching "Ab-normal Beauty", a Hong Kong pseudo-horror flick.) 

Yesterday morning I took a dvd out of the player and put it in the sleeve for "Zatoichi and the Festival of Fire" and sent it off.   When I got home last night I pushed play, expecting to see the next episode in an old Japanese show I got on eBay, which a fansub group had done, "You're Under Arrest".  It said "Insert Disk."  F*ck.  I'd put the dvd, which is one of those blank writable dvds, with "You're Under Arrest Ep. 1-6" written on it, in the Zatoichi envelope.  Sure enough, there was Shintaro Katsu looking up at me, though blindly, from the coffee table.  Damn!!!  How am I going to get that back?

It gets worse.  This morning I got on the elevator with the president of my company.  I pushed the buttons for my floor (3) and for his (5), and another girl pushed the button she needed (4).  I made pleasant small talk, and when the elevator reached 3, we all stood there.  I looked at her.  She looked at me.  "Oh!  Sorry, this is me," I said as I scurried off.  Yeah, that's me you pay every two weeks and is an absolute moron.  Good thing I'm a peon and he's an elitist so he would never know my name.

What is going on with me?????  I may not be the sharpest person in the world, but I'm usually considered bright.  I'm not 40 yet - won't be for a couple years.  As far as I know I don't have some incurable mental disease that is slowly atrophying every synapse in my head.  What the f*ck!  I want my brain back!

What do Rednecks and Gays have in Common?

Pride '06 was this weekend.  I go every year to shoot the parade for a series of photo-essays I'm working on.  Here are a few of my favorites:

"Jesus" was walking the parade route.  When he was reminded that the bible also says something about raping daughters, he quickly retreated.  Gotta love those who truly know their bible.

There's something so sweet about couples that dress alike.

Mmmm.  Biker chicks.  Love the t-shirt too.  But about that guy in the background?  I'm thinking he's not even gay.  A gay guy would know better.

Furries.  Someone explained it to me last year, but I still don't get it.  But I don't have to, either.  I did see the same couple I saw last year...I think.  I'm guessing it was the same guy in the suit, but who could tell? 

And I'm thinking that the flags mean something, the colors and all, but I don't know what.  Can anyone tell me?

Bruce Karmanzin gets this Spinster's award for "Most Attractive Gay Man" in the parade.  He had a really great smile, among other things.  I had a "Most Attractive Female" too, but I was so entranced looking at her I forgot to take her picture.  Yes, I'm sure it was a her.  Shut up.  Yes it was.  She wasn't in a car, wearing a tiara, or sporting an evening gown at noon.  She was just a girl.  A really cute one, walking along with a group, carrying a sign for something.  Naral maybe?  Slightly Asian, hot bod, she won is all I'm saying.

Which brings us to the annual "Top Cattiest Comments" heard at Pride '06.

Number 3: "I saw this guy in Spandex yesterday.  Honey, his spare tire was so big you could have put him on the back of an SUV."

Number 2: As the Starbucks contingent walked by, "They're all dykes!"  "No, there's one...and there...and that little dark-haired one back there, and he's in your age group!" "What about that one."  "No, sweetie, that's a lesbian."

and not so catty, but my favorite, as the Gay rodeo was passing,

Number 1: "I knew there's be some Brokeback.  C'mon cowboys!" "If there's a blonde one...Mark, you're gonna have to get Tom out of jail."

Happy Pride, St. Louis, and hopefully all those politicians throwing sweet tarts and trying to get "the gay vote" will remember you when it counts.

Oh, what do Rednecks and Gays have in common?  They smoke too much.  After a night at Riverport and standing through the parade, I feel like I smoked a pack myself.  Yuck.

My One True Love

Race for the Cure 2006

Ever wonder what 64,000 people looks like?  Well, if you're somewhere in the middle and you're walking down Olive St., something like this:

Mom and I went with my company team for the first time this year.  I'll be going every year now.  One of my fantasy plans of what I'll do when I win the lottery has always been to follow the Black Crowes around for a year, but now I'm revising that to include walking in every Race for the Cure in a year too.

Some of the team costumes were really great.  Here's a sample:

Thank you to the sponsors, especially Yoplait and Saint Louis Bread Company who supplied the breakfast I otherwise wouldn't have had. The bagels in the shape of awareness ribbons were really cool.

The group that got me teary was a family that had attached pictures of their lost loved one to pink balloons and all let them go together before they started walking.  I saw the balloons way up high, drifting along with the walkers, a few minutes later.

But what got me emotional as I was going through my pictures were these two.  I hope these little girls never have to face breast cancer and are healthy and happy all their lives.

So Good Blog #1

Sometimes I'll get caught in the web of webs, the blog web, where I follow a link, then another link, then another link, and I find a blog that is so good that I just start reading, backwards in time, until I decide to stop and start again from the beginning.  And I'm one of those people who always think that I'll remember the name of the blog later (just like song titles and book authors and other things mentioned on NPR, that I never actually remember, and don't even remember that I don't remember) but I don't, so it's lost to me forever. 

So I've decided to highlight some of my favorite blogs here, in the posts, as well as listing them in the "Near and Dear" section.  And this one, just discovered and relished and I know I'm going to lose a chunk of this weekend to reading the whole thing, is the first.

Yeah, but Houdini didn't have these hips

Blogs that really speak to me are written in a tone, a voice, that is so unassuming and honest and bare that I want to know this person.  I know I never will, may in fact lurk forever in the depths of their stories and confessions and rants and view of life through their eyes and their camera lenses.  But, like I've mentioned several times in my own blog, these little glimpses into someone else's existence, this illusion of intimacy, is what I crave in this spinster life of mine.

Page 142

My Finishing 50 project has been really good for me.  I'm reading some great stuff and getting a much-needed sense of accomplishment.  I admit I've been picking up the books I've been reading recently, so I pretty much remember what is going on.  Others I'll probably start over from the beginning.  (The Satanic Verses, for example, I was reading about 11 years ago.  Definitely taking a do-over on that one.)

The book I'm reading now (the main one, anyway) really struck me, though, because when I opened it again I couldn't put what was on the page and how I remembered the story together.  Turns out this is a story that a character is telling another, and not central to the main plot or characters of the book - that I can tell, yet - but it's just so beautiful and well-written that it didn't matter.  I was the The Famous Bar, drinking a Gimlet, and opened the book where the marker was at page 142.  This is what I read:

from the distance, riding alone.  He was a Mongol.  The Mongols use an unusually high saddle, which makes it easy to distinguish them from afar.  Sergeant Hamano snapped up his rifle when he saw the figure approaching, but Yamamoto told him not to shoot.  Hamano slowly lowered his rifle without a word.  The four of us stood there, waiting for the man to draw closer.  He had a Soviet-made rifle strapped to his back and a Mauser at his waist.  Whiskers covered his face, and he wore a hat with earflaps.  His filthy robes were the same kind as the nomads', but you could tell from the way he handled himself that he was a professional soldier.

I read that and it didn't matter that this had nothing to do with a guy whose wife was leaving him and the girl who lived a few houses down and the liquor store and whatever else I could remember from the book.  It was beautiful and intriguing and it was so easy to just go on from there.  That, to me, is what makes great writing.  Each sentence propels you, keeping you interested, forcing you to face forward on the journey you make through the pages.

The book, you ask?  You want to read it, don't you.  I knew you would. It's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.  Yes, Japanese, big surprise.  Translated by Jay Rubin, who should have his name on the cover, too, I think.  Enjoy!

Nihongo ga sukoshi wakarimas

This will be a post about my irrational obsession with Japan.

All Things Pink

In this post, that I'm working on, I will tell you about how I've suddenly turned into a 6-year old girl (rather than the 10-year old boy I usually am.)

Gadget Girl

Well, it's been another month and I really haven't been posting much.  (OK, it's been two, for those of you who actually check in and know that I've backdated this and it's actually the end of March.  Shhhh.  I didn't want a month missing in the archives.)  I've been a little busy with my new gadgets.  This month I splurged on an ipod video.  And a razr phone.  And probably some other stuff - I don't remember at this point.  Oh, yeah - the bluetooth headset for the phone.  I'll do another post eventually about how podcasts have made life worth living (or at least, worth getting out of bed for) so just trust me when I say I am a happy, happy geek.  Work also shelled out for a blackberry for me (which I refer to as my leash), so my title in the family is now "gadget girl."  They laugh, they mock, they sneer, but when Mom, Sis and I took a cake decorating class and I whipped out my phone to take a few pics of my frosting roses, who asked me to take some snaps of theirs as well?  Uh huh.  Same folks.  I mean, when there's a discussion at a family brunch about techno stuff and the current (then current) blackberry "crisis" and someone asks, "What in the hell is a blackberry, anyway?"  isn't it nice that someone would just happen to have one in her purse to pass around?  I am afraid, though, that Mom isn't nearly so enamored with the hardcover book - sized portable dvd player I got them for xmas after she saw the ipod video.  Ah, well.  They don't have a working computer for downloading anything, anyway, (she tells herself, wondering if she can save up enough by Mothers' Day....) 

Hmmm, what else.  Oh, yeah, I'm a big fat cow.  I stepped on the scale the other day when a shirt felt a little tight and saw the biggest number I've ever seen under my feet - EVER.  The diet boomerang isn't a myth, evidently.  I lost a fair amount in January, but when I added carbs back in it all came back and more.  From now on it's just gotta be about exercise. 

Work sucks.  What does it feel like when you're starting to get an ulcer?  How about one of those chronic exhaustion diseases?  All I know is I've used a lot of sick days and the year has barely started.  I just really hate going there.  I'm a project manager with 12 projects.  Yeah.  Hear me roar.  More like whimper.

Valentines Day, you ask?  Yeah, it's in February, isn't it.  Hmm.  I got a card from my parents.  How pathetic am I?

Still reading books.  I admit I did buy a few new ones, but I'm trying to stick to my list.  There's no way that I'm going to get through it all this year, but I'm happy with the progress I'm making.

Yeah, my life is boring.  So do you see why I haven't been posting?

Finishing 50

There's a trend on the internet to challenge yourself to read 50 books in a year.  I have been thinking lately about how I knit so much that I hardly read anymore, and that I start so many books and rarely finish them, and how I should fix this.  I'm not jumping on the bandwagon, really - it's more of another aspect of the whole "cleaning up the mess that is my life, tying up loose ends, being the person I think I can be" kind of thing.  So I was looking at the shelves and shelves of books in my bedroom the other night and saw just how many books I've started and not finished - not because I didn't like them, but because another book got my attention on a particular day and... you know.

So, sitting here at my desk at work, I made the following list.  These are the books that I've started and want to finish that I can think of off the top of my head.  This is so sad.  It's not 50, but half way there.  Geez.

The Amulet of Samarkand
Einstein's Dreams
The Historian
Missing Links
The People of Sparks
The Satanic Verses
Seven Types of Ambiguity
Learning to Bow
Land of the Brokenhearted
Towing Jehovah
Talking to High Monks in the Snow
Eight Million Gods and Demons
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
The Eyre Affair
Cold Sassy Tree
The Quinquox
Shingon
Anaiis Nin Diary Vol 1
Tropic of Cancer
Quicksilver
The Golden Compass
American Gods
Amazon
Body of Knowledge
The Big Snow
The Circus in Winter
Angels and Demons
I Capture the Castle
The Winter Queen
The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I'm keeping the list in the sidebar too.  That's the one I'll update.  Hopefully.