and only a week late!

The inevitable new year's blog.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before?
Ummm, owned a cat, worked in a flower shop, ate fish after a 5-year hiatus, lived in three different houses, drove a U-Haul, suspected I had an anxiety disorder.

2. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?
A steady job, enough money, fucking internet access! Friends who I see regularly.

3. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Hmmm, I got back into Civic for a third year. I can't think of much I did, although I'm sure there were some other things, I hope?

4. What was your biggest failure?
I don't really want to go there.

5. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Erica for being a good friend and distracting me with her tales of woe and humor, Tabitha for calming me down when I freak out about things, Jesse and Lauren for sending me jam! Kenny for always making me laugh. Aaron for still using IM.

6. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
my stand partner (put on your damn mute and play the right damn part of the music!), as always the government. Certain significant people who I don't want to name.

7. Where did most of your money go?
food, alcohol, christmas ornaments that have yet to be mailed.

8. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Books, cooking (again, yay!), porch parties at my old place.

9. What song will always remind you of 2007?
A lot of Fiona Apple (as always, I'm roughly a decade behind the times), "Soda Shop" from the Shortbus soundtrack, the "Comfortably Numb" cover from the Scissor Sisters.

10. Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
happier most of the time with pronounced periods of sadder.

ii. thinner or fatter?
The same, I think. Damn it.

iii. richer or poorer?
Poorer, mostly anyway. But I have a savings account!

11. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Talking to other people, reading good books (as opposed to just re-reading things for a while). Been outside.

12. What do you wish you'd done less of?
drinking and having long embarrassing phone conversations

13. What was your favourite TV program?
I really only saw the L Word. And Weeds, which I didn't like anywhere near as much as I had hoped to.

14. What was the best book you read?
On Beauty, The Botany of Desire, many many others. It actually was a good book year, I think.

15. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Fiona Apple, probably.

16. What did you want and get?
A colander. Seriously. And several jobs, based on nothing more than my winning smile as far as I can tell.

17. What did you want and not get?
the Tucson Symphony job.

18. What was your favourite film of this year?
I loved... Stranger than Fiction, Notes on a Scandel (because Judi Dench was so unbelievably creepy), lots of others.

19. What did you do on your birthday?
Had brunch at Tabby's restaurant, went to rehearsal.

20. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
more human contact. Also internet.

21. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007?
I wore a lot of Donna-Reed-esque dresses this summer... Also one that was more Laura Ingalls Wilder.

22. What kept you sane?
Tabitha, Erica, my cats.

23. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Oh, I don't know... I wish I got more crushes.

24. What political issue stirred you the most?
Racism, if that counts.

25. Who did you miss?
Erica, Greta, Aaron, pretty much everybody at some point.

26. Who was the best new person you met?
Kenny, Debra, the boys upstairs, I'm sure there are more...

27. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007.
Animals are infinitely more engaging than I ever realized before.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
"On the roller coaster of all these years..."

41. Where did you ring in 2008?
Chicago, at a giant house party that I felt intimidated by.

42. What was your status by Valentine’s Day?
in a relationship, eating a late night dinner in a hipster cafe.

43. Where did you go on vacation?
Just Arizona. Nebraska, although it wasn't very relaxing...

44. What did you purchase that was over $500?
Nothing I can think of.

45. Did you know anybody who got married?
Emily and Jason, Valerie and Dustin. Maybe others?

46. Did you move anywhere?
Just from house to house within Chicago.

47. What’s the one thing you thought you would never do but did in 2007?
Ate fish.

48. What is one thing you regretted this year?
Mood swings.

49. What’s something you learned about yourself?
I really have no idea what my future will be like.

50. What was your best month?
Probably May. Early summer, late spring.

51. What pop culture event will you remember 2007 by?
?

Jesus H. Christ

Hey, anybody know what the "H." stands for? I'm assuming something boring like "holy" but I'm not sure.
Anyway...
It's been about a week and a half since I checked email, and now I'm feeling overwhelmed with the backlog of messages and blog posts by other, more hooked-up and diligent people. Suffice to say, for the moment, that Christmas and New Years were both decent-to-good, and I got to see friends from Arizona (yay Jason and Emily). And now I'm going to go home and relax for five minutes.
Next time: Ye Olde Traditional Year-End Blog Survey.

soon they'll have an entry for everything

The Chicago yellow pages has an entry for: Philosophers. And it's a page heading, too. Nice, huh? Also, Chase bank deserves a smack upside the head. That's all for today, sorry I'm such a lame blogger lately.

so i lied

Yes, this is once again mostly about me. But it's sunny today for the first time in a while, so I feel manically happy and excited about little things like making soup and biscuits for dinner. (But doesn't cheesy potato soup sound amazing? I thought so.) However, hopefully I will soon write a theoretical-ish entry about gender and The Crying Game, or something.
Anyway...

a belated update

This is an article about a series of performances I did last month. It was good times, that whole shutting-down thing. Apparently we might tour in New York and California sometime! (This is, by the way, the same opera I did last year where we played slide whistles.)
I spent the weekend in Nebraska earlier this month so that we could go to Tabitha's sister Valerie's wedding. I spent most of my time babysitting for her two nephews, one two-year-old and one three-year-old. It was fun but also terrifying.
My new job is a zillion times better than the last flower shop (at least so far). I have co-workers to talk to, people actually come in to the shop, and the bosses apparently frequently buy us all lunch. It's actually pretty fun, as far as jobs go.
That's all. I feel like I've been navel-gazing a lot lately, so I'll try to think of something more interesting to say for next time. Happy tofu day 2007!

pen and ink

So I read two really great graphic novels lately. (A word of thanks to the Chicago Public Library system for stocking this totally awesome frm of literature in the first place. I almost forgive you for your ridiculous system for processing returned books downtown.)
First was Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel, longtime writer of the Dykes to Watch Out For strips. The novel deals with her relationship to her father, a closeted gay man who raised his family in a small rural town, working as a funeral home director and high school literature teacher while meticulously and ridiculously restoring the family home in his spare time. He either accidentally died or (as the family and certainly Bechdel seem to believe) killed himself when she was twenty, months after she herself came out to her family. Sounds melodramatic and it is, but also kind of beautiful and gorgeously self-reflective. The story cycles; we hear the same parts in different ways in different sections of the novel, but each time a part reappears it has been fleshed out by what happened since you last saw it. Bechdel's relationship with her father is extremely complicated, and she doesn't shy away from admitting that perhaps what she is saying about him is entirely based on what she wants to believe, what fits into the narrative that she has written to explain all of this, and is not necessarily in any way true. The book is also framed in terms of books that her father loved and introduced her to, such as Remembrance of Things Past and especially Ulysses as well as other texts. I loved the structure and the gentle but inflexible tone, and I can see why it was such a popular book last year. Really great :)
The next book I read was the original graphic strip (published in installments and then gather into book form, I believe) of V for Vendetta. I loved the movie and had heard that the strip was significantly different, plus I've always been a stickler for original sources for movies. The book was great, of course, but I wish I had read it before because I was unable to seperate my comparisons to the movie from my reading. The differences are mostly small (if you haven't seen or read it and want to, perhaps you should stop reading here). The book has many more supporting characters and is a little less... sympathetic is not quite the right word, but perhaps just a little harsher with motivations of generally "good" characters like Finch. Also, much of what I remember as being revealed nearer to the end of the movie as a climactic discovery (V's "birth", etc.) are revelaed extremely early on in the book. I got about a third of the way through and felt like the entire movie had already been covered, so what was going to happen now? The movie, on the other hand, didn't cut out much plot (mostly just backstory and minor characters), but the additions they made were some of my favorite parts. I mean, the part that I loved the most (V mailing Guy Fawkes masks to the general populace and fomenting an uprising) is absent from the book. Which is perhaps more realistic, but not quite so... stirring.
Well, running out of time again, hopefully I'll write again soon.

quick!

I saw a schoolbus on my way here this morning that said "Latino Express" on the side. It seemed like a legitimate bus (there were kids getting out to visit the Old Town School of Folk Music), but it seemed like a weird thing to label your bus.
I wasn't a nun, but the party I went to did have a self-made haunted house in the basement, which was awesome. (Not scary, but awesome.) Running out of computer time, so that's all for now.