Three Words Back...

This and That

Yay for having internet at my apartment!  No more justifying daily trips to Panera Bread (thanks for the free wi-fi, PB!)

After a year and a half of traveling all the time, I can't tell you how nice it is to have an apartment I really like to come home to every day.  It's also nice that my commute to work can easily be measured in yards, or tenths of a mile at the most.  I am a stone's throw from the parking lot adjacent to my branch.  Ergo, I get to sleep in later.  So very nice.

But back to the apartment.  It's 78% put together.  Still missing an entertainment center and a tv to go with it.  And the walls might not have anything on them yet (part of my next paycheck is already devoted to framing some prints).  But all in due time, because I'm still admiring my long missed but not forgotten bookshelves!  Complete with books, packed like sardines and wedged tightly from end to end, all fighting for space with all the knick knacks I've picked up over the years.  And believe me, I've picked up some knick knacks along the way.  And I'm sure my boy-crazy, er, I mean book-crazy friend Bethe will agree with me when I say that deciding how to arrange a library worth of books is a fun-filled way to spend many a free hour (if you don't get just decide to pick one off the shelf and spend the next hour curled up on the couch, that is).

Oh, and I set up my own DJ booth over at blip.fm.  Because I don't spend enough time thinking about music.  I also picked up a few downloads for free (and legally!) over at noisetrade.  It's been a productive Sunday, fo sho.

The Next 364 Days

I know, I know.  You've already seen everyone else's blogs about their goals and / or resolutions for next year.  And that's fine.  I'm mostly posting this so I can make fun of it when December 2009 gets here (in just 335 short days).  So without further adieu...

Stuff I Would Like to See Happen In 2009:

• Run a half marathon (scheduled for February 15 in Austin).
• Catch a show (and some great food!) at Stubbs Bar-B-Que in Austin.
• Attend at least one music festival.
• Not sell my third week of vacation back to the bank like I stupidly did in 2008.
• Take a real vacation (California? New York City? Vegas? Europe?  We'll see...)
• Check out the Houston area museum scene.
• Read at least 12 books.
• Actually use the photo scanner I bought on sale in 2007 (because that's what this blog, nay, the entirety of the internets has been missing - photos of me from junior high and high school).
• Go to a baseball game, since I somehow missed out on all of the 2008 season.

I'm sure I'll think of others, but I'm hanging with friends tonight.  And spending more quality time with friends that go back 10+ years is always on my to do list, so I'm wrapping this up.  (Also, if I finish this I might prevent Nic or Justin from picking a stupid movie to watch tonight).

Meditations In An Emergency

Tonight was the premiere of the second season of AMC's Mad Men (great show), and one short scene led me to a pretty cool poem.  One of the central characters is eating lunch in a bar and strikes up a conversation with the barfly to his right, who's intently reading Meditations In An Emergency by Frank O'Hara.  The show, set in the early 1960's, is great about little details of the era, so I decided to google the book.  Turns out it's a book of selected poetry, and the following is a short part of the poem by the same name:

My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time;
they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and
disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away.
Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me
restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them
still. If only i had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I
would stay at home and do something. It's not that I'm
curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it's my duty to be
attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the
earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can
spare myself little sleep.

Thank you once again, internet, for putting the world at our fingertips.

Lists Re: 2007

Alicia is one of those people that, under normal circumstances, one would be naturally inclined to dislike. If for no other reason than that she appears to consistently have more than her fair share of great ideas. Not just good ideas, but great ideas. And once one notices that, the next logical assumption is that she's stealing YOUR great ideas, before you were given a fair chance to get around to having them yourself. At a glance she's nothing more than an intellectual cattle rustler. But on further review she's just so darn nice about it all. The having of the great ideas and then sharing them and so forth and so on. So I choose not to dislike her, if for nothing else than the off-chance that maybe some of her good idea-having germs will decide to jump ship and see if the grass is greener on my side of the internet.

So while I was typing another "David leaves town again" blogs, Alicia was telling me about her upcoming Best of / Worst of 2007 blog entries (found right here), but with fun categories. So I'm taking the great idea that I was going to have on my own sooner or later back from her now, and post some of my own Lists Re: 2007.

Things I Left Behind / Forgot To Pack Before Leaving Town:
My 60 gig ipod (left on the American Airlines flight from London to Chicago)
Songbook by Nick Hornby (left in Town Number Five, Ohio)
My favorite pair of casual brown shoes (left, I think, in Town Number Two, Ohio)
A 3/4 full bag of hazelnut coffee (left in Town Number Four, Ohio)
My souvenir keychain from London's National Gallery (left, I think, at the branch in Town Number Two, Ohio)

Because 325 Million People Can't Be Wrong

I made a fairly big life decision this weekend.

I'm going to start reading the Harry Potter books.

Have you tried to have a conversation with a Harry Potter fan when they're in the middle of one of those books?  You can't get them to shut up.  It's all wizard talk and nonsensical character names.  They're zealots over this stuff.

So maybe it's time to see what all the fuss is about.

Some Monday Hodge Podge, A Surprisingly Non-Music Related Entry

Remember the hail storm from a few weeks ago that I forgot to mention?  The body of my suv got beat up, but atleast the windshield held strong.  I am now looking for one lucky volunteer to come pick my car up while I'm at work and take it to get it checked out by an insurance weasel claims adjustor.  Applicants must have a valid Driver's License and agree to bring a large vanilla Dr. Pepper back to me.   (Or perhaps some coffee or ice cream instead?  Show some initiative and surprise me.)

Oh, and here's a fun news story a friend passed on to me.  Apparently a British study shows that chocolate gives your brain more of a buzz than kissing does.  The mad scientists proved this by attaching some electrodes to a group of 20 year-olds, hooking them up with chocolate, and then...well...they really hooked them up.  My only question is this:  Where am I when scientists need this kind of guinea pig?  What does the qualifying questionnaire look like for this kind of study?  "Do you like chocolate?  Do you like kissing?  If you answered YES to both questions, we need your help."  Seriously, I want to do my part for science.  All I need is the right opportunity.

I worked 8:30 - 7:30 today.  Then I ran an errand for the branch after work.  Now it's 10:15 and I've still got another fifteen minutes before my clothes are dry.  But what I'm really doing is procrastinating the homework I have for tomorrow morning's area-wide management meeting.  The topic of the homework?  How to most effectively motivate employees.  See, this is why I don't talk about work much on here - no one likes a whiny blog.  And if I wrote about work I would have to do it honestly, and if I did it honestly I'd have to take steps to conceal my identity more, and that cat is pretty much out of the bag, and I don't really want to have the conversation where I'm called on to explain myself for having referred to someone in particular as an as-...well, you get the picture.

Last night I pushed back my bedtime an additional fifteen minutes and pried my eyes open long enough to read the first chapter of Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.  I've read a few articles he's written for ESPN.com and possibly a magazine or two, but mostly I'm coming to this strictly from positive word of mouth.  I'm excited about reading this one...more thoughts later as I get further into it.

Okay, everyone, cross your fingers that the haircut I'm pinning all my hopes of tomorrow on actually takes place.

This Is A Forgettable Post

My shoulder hurts.  It's had a dull ache off and on for a few weeks now.  Maybe I slept on it wrong one night?  Pulled something while getting milk out of the fridge?  I can't remember the last time I did anything more strenuous than make a sandwich, so there's no real reason for any part of me to hurt, or be sore, or to pop when I bend down to pick something up.  If I was a millionaire athlete I'd think about taking a few days off from work, maybe go on the 15 day Disabled List.  But since I'm a banker pulling in the low thousands, I think I'll suck it up and take some Tylenol.  I don't think this is what Michael Stipe meant when he said that everybody hurts.

Before watching that football game that was on today, I finished the "how the internet came to be" book.  It was good, and made the advent of computer networking accessible to us non-techies, but all the same I'm really glad to be moving on to the next book.  I know it sounds cheesy, but I just really like to read.  So when I say that I'm excited about picking out the next book...well, for me it really is fun.

If I felt any better, I'd get cranky about the state of this year's Super Bowl commercials, Prince's "halftime performance", and how I never want to hear Jim Nantz and Phil Simms call a sporting event ever again.  But tonight the oomph just isn't there, so I'll leave it to the rest of the internet to pick up my slack.  It's not like there's a shortage of people using their internet connection to gripe or complain about something, so I'll end this post with the small thing that made my day today:  I was halfway to the Super Bowl party and stopped at QuikTrip to get a three liter of Dr. Pepper...only to find that I had left the house without my wallet.  After counting out $1.47 in change I found a $5 bill in the console below my radio.  Grace comes in all shapes and sizes, doesn't it?

I Finally Got Back In

Again with the week's lag time between posts.  Sorry 'bout that.  I've been in mourning over the death of Barbaro.        Ok, not really.  I couldn't even type that with a straight face.  But what was with all the media saturation of that story?  Did the press beat that horse to death or what?  (Heh.  I might regret that one when I start getting hatemail from the PETA folks.  Maybe.)

So with a week off from blogging you'd think I would have lived a more exciting kind of life.  Well, you might think that if you didn't know me that well.  When I wasn't arguing with Typepad re: wholly uninteresting technical matters (billing address this and server updates that), I was really living it up.  More often than not that included being stretched out on the couch with a book in my hands. 
But hey, at least I finally got through that Dylan bio.  And I raced through Love Is A Mixed Tape in one sitting.  Great books in their own ways.  I also enjoyed photographer Peter Ellenby's Everyday Is Saturday.  Who wouldn't include Band Photographer on their list of Top 5 Dream Jobs?  As good as the photos were though, I think I'll end up sending it to Michael as a barter payment "thank you" for giving me the rockstar treatment with his own camera.  But he doesn't know that yet, so let's try to keep that on the downlow.  Plus it might take me a week to get it from my apartment to the post office.

Speaking of uber-talented photographers that I went to college with, my friend (and Guitar Hero II enthusiast) Amy just started a photoblog.  Hopefully she won't get mad at me for pimping her site without asking permission first.

The last of my Christmas gift card money went back into the economy with a trip to Best Buy last weekend.  I got an old classic (Good Will Hunting), a new classic (Little Miss Sunshine), an I-think-I'm-the-only-person-that-liked-this (Elizabethtown), a haven't-seen-it-but-it's-from-Scorsese-and-only-$10 (The Aviator), and Season Two of the best drama currently airing on TV (HBO's The Wire). 

Speaking of tv dramas, are you guys watching 24 this season?  I haven't seen the most recent episode yet, but so far this season is stretching my suspension of disbelief to its outermost limits.  Even by 24's own standards, this year's twist-a-minute plot is getting a bit far-fetched.  However, it's still very entertaining.  And if you can get past some clunky dialog, the show consistently raises some great questions re: national security and civil liberties.

Lastly, here's a little mix in honor of our dear departed Barbaro:

• Another Horsedreamer's Blues by Counting Crows
• Margery Dreams of Horses by Counting Crows
• Black Horse and the Cherry Tree by KT Tunstall
• All the Wild Horses by Ray LaMontagne
• Wild Horses by The Rolling Stones
• Slow Pony Home by The Weepies
• 4 White Stallions by Counting Crows
• Stable Song by Death Cab for Cutie
• anything off the 90's Wallflowers classic Bringing Down the Horse
• (and perhaps most fittingly,) Sick of Goodbyes by Sparklehorse

Put A Book In My Hands, And I'll Be Ok

(Note: This is a modified version of the post I spent an hour and a half writing, only to have typepad eat it.  Apparently they don't like it when you forget to update your debit card billing address.  Keep your fingers crossed that the unabridged version somehow rises from its digital ashes.)

After last night's three hour stint on the couch, I've finally made some headway into that Bob Dylan biography pictured somewhere on the left side of your screen.  I'm now into the mid 1970's, and something like halfway through the book as a whole.  I'm being Captain Obvious here, but he's had an incredible life.

Last weekend's trip to Austin only served to add to the list of books waiting to be read.  Here's a short list of what's coming up next:

• Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon.  The index lists Al Gore as being mentioned just once, on page 260.  Wha-huh?
• Love Is A Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield.  Like I'd pass up the story of a long-term marriage retold through the songs of their many, many mix tapes.  Oh, and it's from a writer for some music magazine called Rolling Stone.
• Mortified by David Nadelberg.  A Christmas gift from Alicia.  Looking forward to squirming my way through this one.
• iCon by Jeffrey Young and William Simon.  Biography of Apple's Steve Jobs.
• The Beatles by Bob Spitz.  Started this one a few months ago, but barely made a dent in it.
• Every Day Is Saturday by Peter Ellenby.  Taylor-made for a music-lover's coffee table.  It's a collection of Ellenby's photographs of bands from the indie scene, the most famous of which is probably Death Cab For Cutie.
• Postsecret by Frank Warren.  If you haven't heard of the Postsecret project, link on over there post-haste.  Heh...see what I did there with the post thing?  Ok, just checking.

That's a lot of non-fiction to wade through.  There's still a ton of fiction stuff, too.  From legal thrillers (D.W. Buffa) to WW II espionage (Alan Furst) to allegorical fantasy (C.S. Lewis) to modern classics both British (Graham Greene) and American (John Steinbeck) to titles I saw on my way out of Barnes and Noble and figured "what the heck?" (Elliot Perlman, Seven Types of Ambiguity)...maybe it's a good thing that my low-def tv's picture tube went out yesterday.

Readers, care to share what you're currently reading?

A Novel, A Quote, Some Shows, and the National Pastime

Time to empty out my head again...

1.  November is National Novel Writing Month.  This appeals greatly to my affinity for biting off three times more than I could ever hope to chew, so of course I signed up to pen my first novel at the official site.  The spirit of this venture is best summed up by this q&a from the NaNoWriMo Rules:

Can anyone participate in NaNoWriMo?
No.  People who take their writing (and themselves) very seriously should probably go elsewhere.  Everyone else, though, is warmly welcomed.

It's a collective encouragement and challenge to any and all procrastinating amateurs who have ever dreamed (even if only in vague terms to themselves) of "someday" writing that novel.  And there is no competition because there are no awards.  One goal, and one goal only - a minimum of 50,000 words to be produced, assembled, and put in order between November 1st and November 30th.  One month to celebrate quantity over quality...to set off on a mad dash and sprint from here to there just to say that you did.  And of course, to later brag about it at parties and spin tall tales about the process to impress the (pretty) girls and make your (less-accomplished) friends a little jealous in the process.  I'm all in.  Now all I need are some characters, a plot, and a more judicious approach to the usage of commas.

2.  A few weeks ago at my mom's garage sale I was thumbing through a well-worn copy of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.  It's older than I am, and she was trying to sell it off for twenty-five cents.  During the lulls in scavenger traffic I would flip through the pages, and I came across this Agatha Christie entry pulled from The Murder of Roger Ackroyd:

It is completely unimportant.  That is why it is so interesting.

I found other great quotes, most of which were from people I had never heard of.  Needless to say, I stole the book from my mom and brought it home with me.  Your quarter is in the mail, mom.  And in Roger Ackroyd I now have a new #1 on my books-to-buy list.

3.  Lots of opportunities to hear some of my favorite new (or at least new to me) artists live and in person over the coming weeks.  The Gypsy Tea Room in Dallas is playing host to the likes of Matt Nathanson / Brett Dennen (11/7), Rachel Yamagata / Cary Brothers / Tristan Prettyman / Joshua Radin (11/10), Straylight Run / Kevin Devine (11/25), and Amos Lee (12/19).  If you're local (or want to fly in for some shows) drop me a line and we'll hang out.  I promise that there's a bare minimum 80% chance that I won't flake out at the last minute.

4.  Another World Series is in the books.  Cardinal fans are celebrating while Tiger fans  are scratching their heads and wondering what happened.  For such an easy game, baseball doesn't make any sense sometimes.  It's maddening and addicting all at once - this business of you trying to throw the ball past me, me trying to hit it over your head, and the other guys trying to catch it.

Thankfully there's only about five months until pitchers and catchers report to early training camp.  Then we'll do it all over again.