mom.

she's coming in 12 hours!

i can't wait to show her my new place and my new classroom.

my mom is very good at giving highly emotive, effusive praise.

i know all moms are, but i think mine has a special knack for it.

plus, the woman likes to shop.

this is...

outside el moderno mexico. it was very late.

ok, chicago. i, like, get it.

i subscribed to wbez yesterday. i believe in public radio. i support it. however, would someone PLEASE tell them to lay off the jazz/blues? i like jazz, don't get me wrong. i get that chicago is home to great blues and jazz. i promise i get it.

but couldn't there be a station that does that and wbez could then do more, i don't know, talking? i like talking.

for example,
every weeknight 12 am-4 am: jazz
saturday 12 am-5am: blues before sunrise
sunday 11 am-12 pm: piano jazz
sunday 12 pm -3pm: jazz with dick buckley
sunday 12 am-1am: world jazz

now i know what you are going to counter with
1) julie, you are a brat, shut up
2) most of those shows are in the middle of the night, shut up
3) you are clearly too dumb to appreciate the subtle nuances of jazz. so, shut up.

my replies:
1) perhaps i am spoiled. i donated. piss off
2) i like to listen to voices while falling asleep. kpcc in LA has the bbc from 11 on. god, i loved that. it's why i subscribed to them and not the much hipper kcrw.
3) i am a total jazz idiot. perhaps they are hoping that the rote drill work of constant, endless, mind-numbing jazz/blues will train me?

i'm sure this is sacrilege and i will burn in jazz hell with that whisk thing beating at a cymbal over my head for freaking eternity, but that's what my sunday afternoons feel like anyway. really...two jazz shows in a row? even john coltrane would start turning the dials looking for reggaeton.

i think i'm losing it a little bit

total paralysis set in whilst i stood in front of the air freshener section at target. i wanted to get something to keep my closet from smelling like running shoes and wool.

but what did having my closet smell like "linen" vs "vanilla" vs "brown sugar & spice" say about me? what assumptions would people make regarding me if my sweatshirts had a hint of brown sugar rather than vanilla? i had to walk away, do a lap through towels and tupperware before i could go back.

this led to three revelations.

i still have failed to totally leave adolescence behind me, i've been wholly absorbed into consumer culture, and i clearly need to go back into therapy.

by the by, i went with monterey vanilla.

my holy trinity

last night i went to a fundraising event for an organization that runs tutoring and writing and cool programs for kids. 826valencia was started by dave eggers in san francisco and now there are 826LA and 826seattle and lucky for me 826chicago in wicker park. each 826 is fronted by a "store." in sf it is a pirate supply co, in brooklyn a super hero supply, seattle has a space travel gear store. they want to front chicago's with a spy store. so, fundraiser.

dave eggers was there. as was ira glass. ira got tipsy and began to ramble and giggle about how weird showtime (the network this american life will air as a tv show on) is and his show can kick the l word's ass.

then, an hour long acoustic set by ben gibbard which didn't start until midnight.

at the end of the evening people were frenzied and tired but not quite ready to go home. so ben gibbard and another fabulously talented and articulate guitarist named john roderick, who plays with the long winters, rewarded the audience by playing what they deemed the worst song ever written.

and thus began a raucous cover of neil diamond's porcupine pie.

so, if i were assigning the father, son and holy spirit of my choice that would go to dave, ira, and ben (not sure who gets what yet). i bet i ignored guys like them in high school and now i know they were always too cool for me.

a note to young girls...date the quiet shy geeky guys. they wind up being total bad asses.

i'm going to try to upload a horribly grainy video of the song...

for serious?

i have no intentions, aspirations, or delusions of becoming a politblogger. i get too mad and know too little to be good at it.

and, seeing as i left the land of schwarzenegger for a state that will either have the wonkily named rod blagojevich or the slightly peppier judy baar topinka as the governor come fall, i really can't do it without giggling. yes i will vote, but i might snicker as i do it. seeing as my last name brought bad puns most of my life (and my chosen profession means i get called by my last name all day long) i feel ok about it.

BUT.

this morning baar topinka (which i have to hit backspace on 20 times because i just can't get it right) announced her new economic plan. it's to build a casino in chicago. i suck at card games and find slot machines slightly seizure-inducing, so even if built i won't frequent it.

my problem with the whole thing is the economic commentator who came on after the soundbite. he said something to the effect that it's either A)raise taxes or B)build a casino. he said fixing illinois's (is that right?) economic woes was an either/or. no other possible solutions.

did i miss something? is the only path to economic health higher taxes OR gambling?

tornado warning #2

it's for northern indiana, but it sure scares the bejeezus out of me. and i don't know how far away northern indiana is yet.

when i was little in georgia we used to have drills at school during which we'd line up in the hall and squat down covering our heads with our hands. that's where memory and story start to mix. in my head, i totally remember a tornado coming near the school. the memory/story continues with my mom, who worked as a parapro (some term similar to a teacher's aide) and a school nurse (not at the same time), grabbing my sister and me and the tornado alarms going off. but i might have made it up.

i do know that i was terrified of tornadoes and my parents told me that they only really happened in cobb county (we lived in gwinnett) and that tornadoes couldn't form once it started raining. so i was calmer except when we drove into cobb county, at which point the anxiety, which would prove a defining trait later in life, would kick in.

i also know that once when there was a total eclipse we all got to run to the gym shielding our eyes and then peek at it with magic pin-hole glasses. i was worried i'd get the jacked up glasses and go blind.

my college therapist (shut up) once said i'd be a good candidate for memory recovery hypnosis. i still don't know how i feel about that. for now i guess i'll get out an atlas and figure out where the hell i live.

I wouldn't sell my bike for all the money in the world. Not for a hundred million, billion, trillion dollars!

Pee Wee and I are in complete agreement.

My bike is here! It's ready to ride! It has an adorable silver basket. Wa-hoo!

The guy at Cycle Smithy said a fine British bike (he might have used another word for fine, like odd, but whatever) deserves a fine British name.

Penny?
Nigel?
Lord Keith of Kinkel?
Sir Humphrey Fraser of Tullybelton?

Thoughts?

this is...

one of the views from lexi's roof. i say "one of" because everywhichway is a view.

these vs the

there was a debate (if i remember my history correctly) during the infancy/toddler years of the nation over whether twas best to refer to it as these united states (plur), implying a looser confederation or the united states (sing), which carried the idea that it was a unified federation. while not an actual, live, douglas vs lincoln kind of thing, it was spirited (or at least academicians say it was now) and was only gradually settled by the time reconstruction had ended. we were "the united states."

i butted up against that first, looser notion at bank of america on tuesday. the very name implies it is the bank of the whole nation, which while not as whimsical as wamu, gave me as a banker some comfort. move cross country? no problem! you are banking at the bank of america.

turns out there are four states, the lovely, wild california included, that have some arcane banking law which doesn't allow banks in state to share information the same way with banks out of state (or as it turns out, with northern/southern california banks). this means that although being a member since 2001, i had to get all new debit cards and account numbers and start a new "relationship" with the illinois bank of america. new relationship? so there's a hold on my checks, i have to memorize a new account number, and i have a vague recollection that opening a new account screws with your credit rating.

not quite a war between the states, but a pain in the ass for this citizen.

ps: i am sure wamu is a great bank but i can't get over the name or that commercial in which the woman mimes "no hidden fees."

now that we're here

i'll admit i'm at a bit of a loss.

so, let's turn to tim o'brien. i reread "the things they carried" this weekend. here's what he says on the importance of storytelling:

"that's what stories are for. stories are for joining the past to the future. stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story."

"by telling stories, you objectify your own experience. you separate it from yourself. you pin down certain truths. you make up others. you start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain."

"what you have to do, sanders said, is trust your own story. get the hell out of the way and let it tell itself."

i'm in the mood to read some more. it's a bit rainy here in my new town and i've got a whole container of chocolate chip meringues. but really, what could you possibly pick up after that book?