Saturday evening I tagged along for a pub crawl with the LYM and his friends. During the course of the evening we stopped into Pianos. (My first time there.) Strangely, four different men commented on that fact that I yawned. Is this the new Indie Rock pick up line?
We arrived right in between sets and sat around waiting for the band. Lucky for us, the next act was Wolff, a man with a tuba.
In his own words:
"The concept I'm working with is that all the sounds are generated by, with, and through the tuba itself with the help of numerous guitar pedals and other sundry looping devices. Singing is through the tuba. Percussion is banging on the tuba. I play the tuba and beat box through it as well."
- Brian Wolff
The drummer was closing his shift at a nearby bar so while we were there it was just Brian Wolff with Tuba and effects playing while David Attenborough's "Planet Earth" played silently in the background. It was trippy. The sound in the room was really loud but not so clean, so it was also a little soupy. But I think part of that bleedy watery-ness might have come from the tuba itself.
His myspace.
Official band website.
We left after a few songs. I really would have liked to stay for his set but when you are not the head of the pub crawl, you don't call those shots. If it was my friends I would have offered to catch up to them later. But as it was, I put money in the tip jar and left with the pack.
I am going to plan an outing dedicated to one of his shows.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Vitamins in the morning
I was looking for a cartoon this morning. In this cartoon a little baby chick in a sailor suit keeps showing up in situations and singing "Good Morning to You" to the tune of "Happy Birthday" which is so annoying and yet perhaps in keeping with the original lyrics to the song, at least, according to Wikipedia.
Instead, I found this blast from the past.
Much better.
I remember the first time I saw this as a kid.
The part where Daffy Duck sings, "and on this farm he had an igloo ..." was so unexpected. His reaction is priceless. I laughed so hard as a kid I about pee'd my pants.
Fortunately, this morning I am home where I have a change of clothes.
Instead, I found this blast from the past.
Much better.
I remember the first time I saw this as a kid.
The part where Daffy Duck sings, "and on this farm he had an igloo ..." was so unexpected. His reaction is priceless. I laughed so hard as a kid I about pee'd my pants.
Fortunately, this morning I am home where I have a change of clothes.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
It's in the transitions
I woke up this morning and thought to myself, "I'd really like to take a yoga class. It's been forever. I wonder if A. is still teaching at Laughing Lotus."
A. is my favorite teacher in NYC. To be fair, I've only interacted with about 11 teachers since moving here. He has great taste in music. He gives great talks and puts together graceful, dancerly, butt kicking, mind boggling, sweat drenching yoga practices. And he has a beautiful holy essence.
I checked the Laughing Lotus site and he is there no more.
Life moves fast, my friends. In New York, especially. When you encounter a magical moment, stop and savor it completely. Because there is no way to know how long you will be there or whether you will encounter it again. If you do, it probably won't be the same. At the very least, you won't be the same.
Ariel Karass, Namaste. Thank you.
A. is my favorite teacher in NYC. To be fair, I've only interacted with about 11 teachers since moving here. He has great taste in music. He gives great talks and puts together graceful, dancerly, butt kicking, mind boggling, sweat drenching yoga practices. And he has a beautiful holy essence.
I checked the Laughing Lotus site and he is there no more.
Life moves fast, my friends. In New York, especially. When you encounter a magical moment, stop and savor it completely. Because there is no way to know how long you will be there or whether you will encounter it again. If you do, it probably won't be the same. At the very least, you won't be the same.
Ariel Karass, Namaste. Thank you.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Lyric for the day
"And I'm reading more into your words than you have put into them
and that's my problem, but you tied these knots,
now you undo them, you undo them."
- Everything But the Girl, "Troubled Mind"
Apropos of nothing ....
and that's my problem, but you tied these knots,
now you undo them, you undo them."
- Everything But the Girl, "Troubled Mind"
Apropos of nothing ....
Sunday, August 17, 2008
travel by donkey
This is my two wedding weekend. I got up early greeted by CK in a cab from Manhattan then bound for the first in Brooklyn. After the ceremony I had to scurry off, walking several blocks to find a car to take me to the airport to catch a plane to Toronto for the second. I am waiting on a shuttle to take me from the hotel to the airport where I can catch a bus to a subway to downtown Toronto to a rental car place for a car which I will then drive up to the banquet hall.
Good times.
Good times.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
I think the Universe is trying to tell me something
It is a natural tendency to think that the Universe makes sense, that there is an order to it and that things happen for a reason. While some might argue that this is the natural inclination of the religious, it is also a firmly held conviction in science too. The answers to the question: why and how and who might be very different but the underlying belief, that sense can be made of the world around us, is shared.
In the case of religion perhaps, there is a desire to see the Universe as displaying a level of intention, of consciousness. A desire for the Universe to, like each of us, have an identity and a personality. Where in science, there is, perhaps, less of this.
(Although speaking with people in ecology and evolution is fascinating. For some of them, any and all observations, immediately merit speculation as to why and sweeping generalizations about the nature of the nature of life. Large conceptual jumps are made to the point where the conclusions are like "Just So" stories, origin myths, or creation myths. This seems to happen to a much greater extent than their colleagues in more reductionist branches of Biology who are bound by the demands of controlled reproducibility.)
Mind you, I have little success at making sense of it, myself. But I do feel the yearning for some understanding of the world around me and my place in it, a desire for a purpose and a sense of belonging. As a self-confessed superstitious person, I look for signs.
When I stand at the train platform, I think to myself that at that moment the City is either working with me or not. In moments when the subway doors open right in front of me, it is confirmation that the City is working with me. And in moments that it doesn't, clearly, the City is not.
Of course, it is more likely that the City is always uncooperative. Added to that, in actuality the positions along the platform where the subway doors open are pretty consistent. They have to do with the length of each car and the relative position of each door on the car and so on. Fate and the mysterious hand of the Universe have nothing to do with it.
I could figure out exactly where the doors will open for each car of a subway just by lining them up to key landmarks at each stop. And then the City would always appear to be working with me. Or more precisely, I would be working with it.
It is only a sign because I am looking for signs and am too lazy to approximate subway door positions relative to subway platform landmarks at the stops that I frequent.
But I digress. Yesterday, while walking home, I started to think about all my stuff. In particular about things that I have lost, tossed or left behind.
I lose things all the time. Clothes, books, CD's, money, time, boyfriends, friends, memories, documents, umbrellas. I used to lose my keys all the time (knock on wood). Sometimes they are misplaced. Sometimes they are left behind. Sometimes they grow legs and walk away.
In moving away from CU, I got rid of many things. I sold them or just threw them away. There was no time, I had no space. It was what had to happen. It was just heartbreaking.
In moving to New York, I brought two suitcases and a backpack. My parents drove out a few times and brought me things. A winter coat. A TV. Ten boxes of chicken flavored ramen. Twenty cans of creamed corn. And in living here I have accumulated some things - books, skincare products, socks, a CD here and there. There are days, though, that I miss my stuff. I forget the days that I spent in my overstuffed super cluttered place feeling oppressed by all the things that had no place, and me with no time to use them. They all sat around and reminded me of the things that I wasn't doing and the life that I wasn't living. Physical souvenirs of longing and regret. But oh, what a glorious life it would have been.
The other day, I discovered the loss of an entire email account containing ten years of emails from Grad School.
Before that, I had my computer hard drive at work catastrophically crash. Nothing was recovered. And my machine's contents were not backed up anywhere. Over a year of information and templates and archived documents and emails - gone. They were files that represented what I had done and learned in my first year in the corporate world. And the entire email correspondence between me and The South which I am sad to have lost.
I let the LYM use my phone with his SIM card which wiped some aspects of the memory of my phone. So I lost cute text messages from friends and my call record.
The desire to keep everything is combination of a poor memory and sentimentality and while I am loathe to admit it, perhaps a little stinginess too.
I think the Universe is trying to shove me out of dwelling on the past and into moving forward. Out of potential and into action.
What matters in the end is not what you have or how much of it you have. What matters is having what you need and having enough of what you need. The root of that is figuring out what you need, how much is enough, and how to go about getting it.
In the case of religion perhaps, there is a desire to see the Universe as displaying a level of intention, of consciousness. A desire for the Universe to, like each of us, have an identity and a personality. Where in science, there is, perhaps, less of this.
(Although speaking with people in ecology and evolution is fascinating. For some of them, any and all observations, immediately merit speculation as to why and sweeping generalizations about the nature of the nature of life. Large conceptual jumps are made to the point where the conclusions are like "Just So" stories, origin myths, or creation myths. This seems to happen to a much greater extent than their colleagues in more reductionist branches of Biology who are bound by the demands of controlled reproducibility.)
Mind you, I have little success at making sense of it, myself. But I do feel the yearning for some understanding of the world around me and my place in it, a desire for a purpose and a sense of belonging. As a self-confessed superstitious person, I look for signs.
When I stand at the train platform, I think to myself that at that moment the City is either working with me or not. In moments when the subway doors open right in front of me, it is confirmation that the City is working with me. And in moments that it doesn't, clearly, the City is not.
Of course, it is more likely that the City is always uncooperative. Added to that, in actuality the positions along the platform where the subway doors open are pretty consistent. They have to do with the length of each car and the relative position of each door on the car and so on. Fate and the mysterious hand of the Universe have nothing to do with it.
I could figure out exactly where the doors will open for each car of a subway just by lining them up to key landmarks at each stop. And then the City would always appear to be working with me. Or more precisely, I would be working with it.
It is only a sign because I am looking for signs and am too lazy to approximate subway door positions relative to subway platform landmarks at the stops that I frequent.
But I digress. Yesterday, while walking home, I started to think about all my stuff. In particular about things that I have lost, tossed or left behind.
I lose things all the time. Clothes, books, CD's, money, time, boyfriends, friends, memories, documents, umbrellas. I used to lose my keys all the time (knock on wood). Sometimes they are misplaced. Sometimes they are left behind. Sometimes they grow legs and walk away.
In moving away from CU, I got rid of many things. I sold them or just threw them away. There was no time, I had no space. It was what had to happen. It was just heartbreaking.
In moving to New York, I brought two suitcases and a backpack. My parents drove out a few times and brought me things. A winter coat. A TV. Ten boxes of chicken flavored ramen. Twenty cans of creamed corn. And in living here I have accumulated some things - books, skincare products, socks, a CD here and there. There are days, though, that I miss my stuff. I forget the days that I spent in my overstuffed super cluttered place feeling oppressed by all the things that had no place, and me with no time to use them. They all sat around and reminded me of the things that I wasn't doing and the life that I wasn't living. Physical souvenirs of longing and regret. But oh, what a glorious life it would have been.
The other day, I discovered the loss of an entire email account containing ten years of emails from Grad School.
Before that, I had my computer hard drive at work catastrophically crash. Nothing was recovered. And my machine's contents were not backed up anywhere. Over a year of information and templates and archived documents and emails - gone. They were files that represented what I had done and learned in my first year in the corporate world. And the entire email correspondence between me and The South which I am sad to have lost.
I let the LYM use my phone with his SIM card which wiped some aspects of the memory of my phone. So I lost cute text messages from friends and my call record.
The desire to keep everything is combination of a poor memory and sentimentality and while I am loathe to admit it, perhaps a little stinginess too.
I think the Universe is trying to shove me out of dwelling on the past and into moving forward. Out of potential and into action.
What matters in the end is not what you have or how much of it you have. What matters is having what you need and having enough of what you need. The root of that is figuring out what you need, how much is enough, and how to go about getting it.
Monday, August 04, 2008
Not quite what the doctor ordered
I'm feeling a little stressed, a little rushed, a little harried today. It's probably a case of the Mondays or caffeine overload.
I decided that the best thing for stress is, of course, pictures of kittens. I went to Google and typed: "pictures of kittens" and got this:
Yeah, so, I still feel a little stressed but take comfort in knowing that I am not alone.
I decided that the best thing for stress is, of course, pictures of kittens. I went to Google and typed: "pictures of kittens" and got this:
Yeah, so, I still feel a little stressed but take comfort in knowing that I am not alone.
Friday, August 01, 2008
Yahoo Mail is not data storage
When I left CU, there were emails that I wanted to keep. I couldn't find a way to download them onto my computer and burn to a CD or transfer to an external drive, so I opened a yahoo email account and forwarded all of those emails over.
Do not do this.
If you do not log in to your yahoo email account for 4 months, they inactivate it. They delete everything. Everything. And they bounce any incoming emails.
So 10 years of email in my life are gone. Because while I thought I had read the fine print, apparently I didn't.
I suppose it's all for the best. Did I really want to look back on anything that happened during that time in my life?
That was 10 years of my life. Actually yes. Now I need to look into better data storage methods. Methods better than Yahoo Mail.
Do not do this.
If you do not log in to your yahoo email account for 4 months, they inactivate it. They delete everything. Everything. And they bounce any incoming emails.
So 10 years of email in my life are gone. Because while I thought I had read the fine print, apparently I didn't.
I suppose it's all for the best. Did I really want to look back on anything that happened during that time in my life?
That was 10 years of my life. Actually yes. Now I need to look into better data storage methods. Methods better than Yahoo Mail.
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