Our House...

Will be dramatically improved tomorrow with the addition of my grandmother's 10 foot bookcase and bedroom set. Here's to a life of hauling around more stuff. Too bad I can't seem to get rid of things with the same ease I demonstrate while acquiring them.

The dawing of the age of Aquarius.

I'm not so into astrology, but I'm ready to chalk up the craziness of the past couple of days to Mercury retrograde . Like I said, I really know nothing about it, but it would be nice to communications would come together a little more easily. I'd love it if I could have an intelligent thought and not feel like I'm spinning out of control. I could really stand to have a good idea one of there days.

With that in mind, I decided to check out my astrological chart. My goodness. A good bit of it is remarkably accure. You should check it out . It's always a great thing to learn something new, especially about yourself.

Boring or not boring?

I've been bored lately. Really bored. I hate feeling that way. Typically I don't think I'm a boring person: I do fun stuff, have friends I think are exciting and take in a social event or two each week. How is it possible that I can feel so boring?

Maybe it's because I've found myself disappointed by lots of things lately. I build things up and expect them to be something that's not possible. Is that it? I got my hair cut this morning and dashed off to artist Quincie Hamby's shop to make a big art acquisition: a beautiful necklace purchased just in time for my friend's wedding this weekend. I was shocked and nearly burst into tears when I saw the grim 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper on the door to the studio announcing the artist's absence. I was disappointed. Too bad I can't just be patient enough to wait for her return - or better yet, have had the good sense to think ahead and checked out her work last week. If I'd only done my background research I probably wouldn't be disappointed. See, being reactive rather than proactive makes for a very boring and disappointed exsistence.

I'm disappointed in myself because I'm not nearly as tech-savvy as I would like to be. Sure, I have a nice new shiny computer and a litle blogitty-blog. But I haven't mastered RSS feeds or used my iPod to near its potential. I've got to get to the point where I'm caught up with technology and put it to work for me, rather than being its slave all of the damned time. Am I boring because I can't get this stuff figured out?

I feel boring and uncreative in what I post on my blog, too. I wish I had lots of fun, clever and witty things to blog about or great musical reviews to give. I saw Wilco last Tuesday and they were amazing. I wish I had clever comments about their killing steel guitar player and their oh-so-funny lead singer Jeff Tweedy who spent most of the concert making fun of a white dude with dreadlocks who was headbanging at the front of the Moon's dance floor.

Then sometimes I think I'm not so boring and uncreative. In how I think about art and music, I guess I feel somewhat unique. Lately I've been really into the creative process, thanks to a panel at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference in NYC in January. I'm looking forward to what I'll discover about the creative process when I check out "Cambodian Stories" this Sunday afternoon at MANCC . Now if I could just pull my thoughts together into some sort of non-boring semi-hip stream of consciousness. That, my friend, would NOT be boring.

Maybe my sense of the boring continuim has been skewed by a month of never-ceasing work for the festival . It could be that it makes a normal day drag and a boring day seem absolutely impossible. Maybe my attitude could use a little tweak. Maybe I just need a little twist of fate to get me feeling less lame.

Maybe the adjustment I've needed just arrived... I just spoke to my brother who's living in New York City. It seems as he was walking to catch his train he ran into another Iowan-turned-New-Yorker who calls his neighborhood home. She recognized him immediately --- even years after our summer musical revue/music dork experience --- and mentioned my name, too. That's fun. And not a bit lame or boring at all.

Have patience, have patience...

Don't be in such a hurry. When you get impatient you only start to worry.

Lousy song, telling me about "hurry up and wait." I don't have a very exciting life and it gets even more boring when I'm waiting for something. (And it always seems like I'm waiting for something, by the way.) My horoscope yesterday suggested that I needed to be patient and then be prepared to act swiftly. Isn't that always the way it goes? You are patient, but nobody is patient in return. I guess that speaks further to the ironies I mentioned in my last blog.

But for now, I guess I'll just hum that song and hope the waiting will end soon.

Sometimes we just drive by.

This weekend I heard a story about a friend who was casually taking his afternoon run and encountered a man running down the street, torn shirt in one hand and wielding a knife in the other. He was screaming for help and approached my friend. Together they set about the find a way to call the police (since my friend doesn't make a habit of jogging with his mobile phone.) They did eventually find a UPS guy who was able to call 911, but not before they saw a police car drive right by. This dude is standing there screaming for help WITH A KNIFE and the police drove right past. It got me thinking - how many things in our daily lives do we overlook?

It seems impossible to overlook a guy with a knife screaming for help. Similarily, it seems impossible to overlook lots of things in our lives, but over and over we do. We overlook the poorest members of our society, animals in need for adopting or saving, even loved ones in our presence. In the work place, we often feel overlooked often because of age, social status or the inability to stand up for ourselves. I often overlook many things in life, instead opting for an "ignorance is bliss" mentality.

What we do notice can be ironic: like today's Bradley vs. Pittsburgh NCAA basketball tournament game where the score ticker at the bottom of my tv screen read "BRAD PITT." I guess maybe there's irony in what we overlook, too.

It's Hard Out Here...

A fine quote from one of my favorite music critics on the Academy's choice for Musical Achievement:

yeah the pimp tune is sure memorable. i
was ashamed only from a musical standpoint, i hadn't
even considered how ridiculous the whole thing was in
its treatment of women and the rest of society that
has a functioning brain.

session is in.

i follow politics. i enjoy being a knowledgeable and informed citizen. accordingly, i take great pride in knowing what's going on in the florida legislature. i find topics like the class size amendment, school voucher consitutionality, citizens insurance issues in florida and the new gift ban a little bit fascinating. and a little bit lame, too, but that's another story. so, with session starting today, i'm reflecting on policitics.

not the american governmental process, necessarily, but politics. today especially, with the florida capital building as a reminder, i am aware of politics. we're not just talking about the establishment of the american political process. we're talking about the politics of everyday life.

somehow there are politics built in all around us. the politics of the office. the politics of school days past. the politics of friendship. though it is largely absent, there's some politicking involved in my most intimate relationship: my marriage.

politics at the oscars. how can the critics suggest that 'crash' wasn't about politics? how about the politics of racial proflining in america? how about the politics of 'hard out here bein' a pimp'? certainly politics are working diligently there. and absolutely in place in the business of arts and entertainment. my position as an arts presenter (allbeit not a very long career so far) has revealed that politics are at the center of many, many, many artforms. of course they are! isn't that the nature of art? so goes this political dialogue in my own head.

politics, i say. politics. i guess i'll just be aware that they are there. i didn't invent the system. i just have to live in it.

the early bird

i love mornings. according to my mom, i always have loved them. for as long as i can remember (even in elementary school) i've taken great joy in waking up early while it's still dark outside and reading the newspaper. this morning was no different - i woke up just before the sun came up and watched the sun rise over our neighbor's house across the street. i read the paper, cruised through the classified ads, read the real estate listings and dreamed of the future. it's so fitting that i should feel hopeful in the morning.

the morning is so promising. the entire day is ahead of you. morning is so new and so fresh. it's too early for anything to have gone wrong. and when i wake up early and get something done, i get the feeling that i know a special secret that no one else knows. it's not really a secret so much as a feeling of achievement having made my meal plan, grocery list, fed the pets and contemplated life's great issues while most people still have the covers pulled over their heads.

there are some special mornings i remember very clearly: the day of my wedding, the day pete & i moved to florida, the day of the great spinal tap of '06, the first day of my summer state-fair-singer-and-jazz-band days, the day my brother and i went to jazz camp ten whole summers ago. then again, every morning is special.

yesterday morning i cleaned up after a party. while schlepping the beer bottles and scraping the crusty barbeque sauce into the garbage can i wondered about strange mornings. how can day-old barbeque sauce be the beginning of a special day? i guess maybe i'm eccentric, but even cleaning up after an evening of fun in the morning lends itself to the promise of a new day. a sort of strange reminder that the previous day was once new and fresh, unlike that nasty barbeque sauce.

even as i blog, the hope of the morning has dissolved into the vacuum of time between 1030am and noon. the promise begins to fade into the reality of lunch preparations and housecleaning. at least that morning hope i speak of leaves me with a smile. that's because i know it will happen again tomorrow. then i'll have that special morning secret feeling all over again.

ahhh, a true weekend.

since february started, i haven't had a real weekend. i had a spinal tap superbowl sunday weekend, two weekends of parents visiting and one final weekend of arts festival. thank heavens for a return to real weekend life. here's to parties, to drinking, to pals, to shopping... to playing with the pup, to cooking good food, to a nice clean house... to catching up with loved ones, to planning, to sleeping... there's just so much to love about a real weekend.

maybe now i'll have the chance to reflect on meeting pat metheny, christian mcbride, antonio sanchez, joan myers brown, momix, garrison keillor, from the top, arlo guthrie, stephen king and willie nelson. i think it's actually cooler than i've given it credit for. yes indeedie, here's to a weekend in the truest sense.

now if only those pesky bills would pay themselves.