amplified to rock
Two things: the
Hideout Block Party sounds fun, and I'll be home this weekend, so it looks like I'll be there. Also, the new (as-yet-unreleased) Wilco album is available via streaming audio on the
Wilco website. I listened to a few of the songs last night, and I would describe it as "good." Now you know why I don't write album reviews.
Oh, and I'm in the midst of updating my links. If you find anything that doesn't work, let me know.
People seem absolutely determined to remind me what I was doing at this time in the past. Today, I got an e-mail from
Ray with the subject line "Happy Anniversary." No, he wasn't reminding me of the anniversary of the day we met, or the day we first emailed each other--he was reminding me of the anniversary of the day I broke up with him, which would be approximately a year ago yesterday.
Admittedly, it was sort of in the back of my mind that it was coming up on a year. One year since the beginning of the most massive life change I'll ever go through. I can slap myself around and say "god damn, that was really fucking stupid of me, why did I ever believe that, why did I get so swept up in everything, what on earth was I thinking?" but then I remember that if it hadn't happened, the chain of events that led to me sitting here in this chair, in this apartment, in this city would have never happened. I would have still been in stasis at the world's shittiest job, sitting in an awful cubicle listening to my dipshit boss give me a half-assed lecture about the importance of teamwork and how I should try to be "more approachable" to my co-workers. I would have still been sitting there daydreaming about getting the hell out of there rather than doing something about it. Yeah, I got my feelings hurt pretty badly, and I hurt some feelings pretty badly in return, but I think it gave me the kick I needed to get on with my life and do something real.
My only regret: I wish I had been nicer to Ray--that's the only thing I would change. The rest of that fiasco, well, I'm fine now. Lessons learned and all that.
Then, tonight, I got an IM from Zach, who I dated in the summer/fall of 1998. It was just a "hi, how are you" sort of thing--we haven't talked on AIM since, well, 1998, so it was kind of strange, but nice. Then he reminded me that it was three years ago this week (or within the last week) that I was visiting him in Raleigh-Durham, and we went to see Massive Attack. Three years. Shit. It seems like I was so much younger then--a lot more than three years younger. If I can age that much in three years, where will I be in three more?
I'm going to stop thinking about this stuff and go to sleep. Good night.
It's late, and I'm so bored that I'm reading old AIM chat logs. I used to spend heaps of time on AIM last winter, mostly because that is what happens when you are unemployed and in a long-distance relationship. Here is some fun business from the depths of my AIM chat logs.
Amanda: I miss the guy who married his donkey.
Jody: im gonna kick weather's ass
Matty: i just sent mattcjohn into a fit of confusion by informing him that liquid indian wants to see that thong (by way of introduction)
Quinn: As a successful businessman who is only concerned with power lunches, synergy, multitasking, and Turkish bath houses, I don't have time for your petty concerns. Please go away.
nanetteamplified: you are concerned with listening to MY complaints when i call your trifling complaint line.
Seb: What exactly are you amplified with?
nanetteamplified: chocolatey goodness.
Seb: I was thinking like a 200 Watt Guitar amp or something.
nanetteamplified: oh no. just chocolatey goodness. that's all.
Seb: Hm.
I just got finished hanging the jumbo thermometer that my brother bought for me. I have a wooden gate around my patio, and he thought it would be a nice addition. The numbers are big enough that I can tell what the temperature is without having to go outside and look. Nice.
Anyhow, I dropped one of the screws in the little dirt-and-wood chips patch that passes for a "garden," and when I was rooting around trying to find it (I don't know why finding a gold screw in brown dirt and wood chips was so difficult) I was amazed at the Wild Kingdom that seems to exist down there. Seriously. It's like Bug City. We also have a healthy squirrel population--one of them was looking through my screen door into my apartment the other day. Just sitting there staring...it was a little freaky. The squirrels also have a habit of digging little tiny holes in the dirt patch. The first couple of weeks I lived here, I thought it was some kind of weird burrowing insect. Then I saw a squirrel in the process of digging, and I felt a little better.
Wednesday is my big "school day"--I have two classes. In the morning, I go to my Reference Sources and Services class, which is taught by a reference librarian from the Urbana Free Library. I was not expecting to like this class, and I did not want to take it, but I find myself enjoying it an awful lot. I think a lot of it has to do with the professor. He's entertaining, and he makes reference work seem exciting. He usually tells us reference horror stories, which are always fun. Apparently, there's a woman who lives in one of the towns just south of here who calls the local libraries fairly often to find out people's birthdays. Her husband painted 366 squares in their dining room so she can write all her birthdays down on the walls, and she has over 10,000 birthdays so far. As you can imagine, she's covered all the usual bases, so she often calls looking for the birthdays of random people she sees on the news. Her latest request (and they couldn't help her) was for the birthday of a reporter from the New York Times who she saw on the news because "he seemed so nice."
This afternoon, I have my cataloguing and classification class, which I'm also enjoying. There's a ton of rules involved in cataloguing, but I enjoy that kind of stuff for some reason, so I have fun with it. The big difference between this program and the English program I'm in the midst of finishing (damn thesis!) is that this program is practical. Pretty much everything I'm doing here will be useful in my career as a librarian. (The exception to this is my Friday class, which seems kind of scattershot at this point, but I'm still hoping that it will all come together in the end and the lightbulb will go off in my head and I'll say "Eureka! Now I see the point of all this!") The English program was eminently impractical. Knowing about 20th century literary criticism is interesting and all that, but it isn't useful unless you're trying to one-up some snooty intellectual. I like the feeling that the things I'm doing are actually going to apply to Real Life. It makes me feel like I'm not wasting my time.
Even though I'm going to be here until December 2002, I'm already looking at jobs, and I'm trying to figure out what courses I should take based on what I want to do. (What I want to do, this week, is work in a public library, particularly in adult services and/or collection development, with a little bit of tech services work on the side. In other words, I want to pick out books for adult readers and catalog them. Eventually I would like to work with libraries that are new or just starting up, especially smaller libraries.) I'm excited about continuing through this program, and I'm excited about my future after I graduate. Having a plan--a concrete, realistic plan--is a good thing.
I did something I should not have done today.
I bought CDs. I have no income, and I spent money on CDs. I bought them with the caveat that I can only listen to them while working on my thesis. Technically, I'm cheating right now, because the new Superchunk album is playing and I'm updating this weblog. But I've written three pages of my literature review today, and I feel like giving myself an enormous pat on the back for being so industrious. Of course, I don't deserve a pat on the back, because this is work that probably should have been done about a year ago, but I was too busy tooling around on AIM and working at the World's Shittiest Job Ever. Actually, I don't want to think much about what I was doing a year ago when I should have been working on my thesis, because I know what I was doing, and it wasn't worth blowing off the thesis for, I assure you.
My left knee has been bothering me since last Friday. I tried to call the Dial-a-Nurse service at the campus health center, but I was impatient and was not in the mood to be on hold for an hour to have someone tell me to put ice on it and take some aspirin. So I stopped at Osco on the way home from the library and picked up some aspirin, some glucosamine chondritin, and a bottle of Code Red. The Code Red had nothing to do with my knee pain, it was just something I wanted. I don't want this to turn into Nanette's Journal of Chronic Pain, so I'll just say that my knee no longer hurts and I'll quit bitching about it. Yay for aspirin.
My hair is crunchy today. You may observe this phenomenon by checking out the webcam. Ay-yep, it's back up and running again, so you can watch me work on my thesis. Or admire my stunning cowlick, which is enhanced by the crunchifying styling product I used this morning.
A belated welcome-back to Kenoki, who has been gone far too long, and a "nice new URL!" to the ever-awesome Ann. While I'm in the spirit of linking people, here's a gratuitous link to Quinn, who promises a track-by-track commentary on the new Superchunk. I'm waiting, you 7'-8" ball of love.
I've been trying to avoid watching too much TV. I just can't see those planes smash in to the World Trade Center again. I had been dreaming about it every night, and I finally stopped on Saturday night because I managed to distract myself sufficiently during the day rather than dwelling on the events. I'm not as scared as I was, but I don't think this is anywhere near over. A friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) said, on the night of the tragedy, that this would "blow over in a couple of weeks." Somehow, I doubt that, but I think it's important to do what we can to get on with our lives. I'm not saying that we should forget what's happened, but I think we need to restore some semblance of normalcy to our daily activities. The victims and the families of the victims are still in my thoughts, and now that I have a credit card, I'm going to make my donation to the Red Cross. I'll probably wait to donate blood--I'll do it in another couple of months, once people aren't so active about donating and supplies are down to their usual critically low levels. I think my contribution would be of more assistance at that time.
You'll all be glad to know that my cynicism has returned. I went to the rememberance ceremony on the quad on Friday, and while I thought that many parts of it were great (in particular, the chancellor's statements and the reading of an e-mail from an NYU student who witnessed the attacks) there were some parts that bordered on just plain awful. There was the "group hug," which reminded me of something right out of the movie Heathers. I understand that the point was to promote unity and caring for each other, but it was just...ick. I don't know. I suspect I'll get some pissy e-mails saying that I'm totally unfeeling and uncaring for saying that, so I'll try to head those off before they happen: you're wrong. I'm not a touchy-feely person, and I'm really not comfortable hugging people I don't know. It's not any sort of xenophobia, it's just a personal space violation thing. When I want to express my desire for unity, I don't do it by hugging random people. I do it through kindness and action. Group hugs are the kind of empty gesture that has good intentions, but are meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
Oh, and there was a folk singer who performed a song she wrote about the incident. She had a nice voice, but there's just something about that kind of thing that makes me go "ugh." The lyrics to the chorus were passed out so people could sing along. Nobody sang along. I was not surprised.
The one thing that really got my goat about the ceremony was this: the statements that were made promoted unity and encouraged the university community not to discriminate or judge people based on appearances, ethnicity, religious beliefs, etc. However, for the end of the ceremony, they brought out a vocal group, and guess what they sang? No, not "America the Beautiful" or "The Star-Spangled Banner" or some other non-secular patriotic or uplifting song. They sang some sort of Christian religious song. I found that tasteless and inappropriate. You want to encourage unity and discourage prejudice? Don't shove Jesus down people's throats. This isn't a school with a homogenous population, which was obvious to anyone who attended. I was raised Catholic, and I don't consider myself anti-Christian or anything, but I found it inappropriate.
Admittedly, there was a tear or two in my eye during the moment(s) of silence for the victims. The sound of the bell in Altgeld Hall ringing was incredibly eerie and sad. It was hard not to be moved. The only person who wasn't silent during the moment of silence was the asshole TV cameraman who was standing about thirty feet away. Apparently, he hadn't shut off his walkie-talkie, and someone was trying to reach him. Ignoring it didn't work, and he couldn't just flip the switch for a minute, so he picked up his walkie-talkie and stage-whispered "We're having a moment of silence right now." Of course, given the silence on the quad, his stage whisper sounded like a shout.
Yeah, numbnuts, we sure were having a moment of silence. Thanks for disturbing it.
Tim was here this weekend, and we drove out to Decatur so I could take him to Millikin and the Old Book Barn. I was surprised at how much Millikin has changed since I graduated--I knew they were building new buildings, but everything is completely different. I think I sounded like one of those crotchety old people who goes on and on about "when I was your age, things were much harder! We didn't have a Quizno's Subs in the student center! We had a crappy deli that only had two types of cheese at any given time! The nearest coffee shop was several miles away at the mall, and there was no TCBY, either!" Tim just humored me. He's good like that.
I'm probably going to be spending a little bit of time in Decatur because I'm doing a case study on the Millikin Library. Maybe this will break my longstanding fear and loathing of D-town. Of course, seeing the wrong people could send me running back to my safe little apartment in Champaign in about two seconds, so we'll see what happens.
