wordle!

so i'm looking for a white file cabinet. i got a little disappointed when one of the first hits was from a blog about how they couldn't find a white file cabinet and painted theirs instead. but then i got into this blog, and doesn't it kind of sound like me? [i also write about how my blog is risque.]

okay, THIS SITE IS SO AWESOME. here's a wordle of my blog, guys. note that the most popular words are the biggest - haha, oops. i can't believe they let me be a teacher.

go ahead, make your own.

the move crushed the little fake diamond in my "diamond strength" nail polish. not a great sign.

it's like i'm unpacking... myself.

so, in the new apartment, i decided to alphabetize my books. nerdy, right? but also USEFUL.

i discovered that i have two copies of the a lot of books. por ejemplo - great expectations, the horse and his boy, prince caspian, the secret garden, narrative of the life of frederick douglass, catch-22 [which, annoyingly, i just bought because i didn't think i had it], little men, the chosen, orlando, the fledgling, and, weirdly, selected shorter writings of mark twain. i mean, who has two copies of selected shorter writings of mark twain?

along with, of course, three copies each of a separate peace, the scarlet letter, and huck finn. because why not.

and i'm keeping some of them. i mean, they were gifts, or the original is falling apart, or one's  a critical edition, or they both have VERY USEFUL notes in them. very useful. 

here's the thing i've been realizing lately - being a pack rat gets really annoying when you can't find something. like, i have multiple copies of the aforementioned books, but i can't find my copy of plato's symposium from sophomore year of college. now, if i were breezy and low-key, i could be like, "eh! i read that sophomore year, but of course i don't have it now!" but instead, i'm all, "dammit, why do i have EVERYTHING if i can't find the ONE THING I NEED?"

okay, if you haven't read the fledgling, you should know that it's one of my favorite books ever. i wrote my college application essay on it. it's about this girl who learns how to fly from a goose. and the goose can teach her, see, because she's so small for her age. [it's really more like gliding.] it takes place near the town where i grew up [i think that's why i got it as a gift], and between the rationalization of why she can fly and the realistic location, i remember thinking a lot about how it was possible to write something that seemed true but wasn't actually true. heyyy, fiction writing. and if you're thinking this all sounds really cheesy, well, do you remember college application essays?

i love that i get to have this kind of conversation with friends who work in DC.

b: how are ya?

k: doin ok

k: like, SO ready for recess

i still laugh at recess every time.

faith.randomthingsthathappentome.thecta

things i did for the first time this week:

1. gave a stranger a pen. he was on the phone like, "shoot, i don't have anything to write this down..." and i secretly looked through my purse and found a pen to give to him. he liked it. and, you know, i didn't realize until later that it was one of my favorite lasalle bank clicky pens. i hope he's enjoying it, because that's a great pen.

2. sent food back at a restaurant. but my burger wasn't really cooked so much. certainly not medium well, ahem. and i didn't want to eat it like that. i felt really weird about it, though.

3. drove in chicago. a lot. i miss the cta, but i certainly have a lot more time.

4. hired movers. so worth it.

so, you know. new experiences.

in baseball news i care about, ken griffey is moving here to be with me. or, as he says, to have "a chance to win." um, OUCH, ken. i thought we had something. no wonder you didn't really work out in the nati [as i've reported here and here], despite everything. [and, in a shoutout to my brother: "ever heard the song 'won't get fooled again'? ozzie guillen hasn't..."]

i joked today that i don't really talk about baseball much anymore, and an old friend said, "yeah, you don't really talk about reason, either."

and to that, i say - BOGUS.

this is the kind of thing i blog about...

... especially when i'm still moving and haven't read anything else.

got this from a friend today. and, oh fine. it's totally true.

:)

most of my quirks are getting the backseat this week, however, in the face of my MILLIONS OF BOXES OF STUFF. i've made this reference many times, but last year, the boxes of books made my brother ask if i've ever heard of the internet.

6-year-old on the phone: "grandma! you know how rich people have those signs that say no trespassing? i got one! and it says BEWARE OF DOG!"

i, too, went to the hardware store this week. i love the hardware store. everything there is so awesome.

thoughts on traveling to go to the wedding of two people i really love.

my hair, like everything else, is bigger in texas.

dallas love airport has three security lanes - casual traveler, with a silhouette of a cowboy riding a horse, but all slow-like; expert traveler, with a cowboy with a lasso; and families and passengers needing assistance, with a stagecoach. oh, texas. i tried really hard to look casual, like the casual traveler i am.

then, as you walk through security, there's a world map in the floor tile. JUST like in carmen sandiego. remember how hard that game was? i feel like that part was really difficult to win.

"mom! it said to put on my mask first!"

- 4-year-old kid on the plane, who is a good listener.

"how do you expect me to grow if you won't let me blow?"

- rachel, in "the one where eddie won't leave." i LOVE this episode, where the girls feel all empowered by the book about being your own windkeeper. then they fight.

h: What are you up to?

b: well, moving today!

h: OH my god. That sounds horrible. What are you doing online then?

b: um, well...

okay, fine. here are the articles that the guy ahead of me and across the aisle was reading. i didn't think it was okay to ask him for his magazine, so i'll be reading them when i have time and internet again.

the pursuit of teen girl purity, about those purity balls.

subsidized in the city, about people who still take money from their parents.

this almost makes me miss writing my thesis.

two reasons i love virginia woolf.

May I conclude, as I began, by thanking your reviewer for his very courteous and interesting review, but may I tell him that though he did not, for reasons best known to himself, call me a highbrow, there is no name in the world that I prefer? I ask nothing better than that all reviewers, for ever, and everywhere, should call me a highbrow. I will do my best to oblige them. If they like to add Bloomsbury, W.C.1, that is the correct postal address, and my telephone number is in the Directory. But if your reviewer, or any other reviewer, dares hint that I live in South Kensington, I will sue him for libel. If any human being, man, woman, dog, cat or half–crushed worm dares call me “middlebrow” I will take my pen and stab him, dead. Yours etc.,

Virginia Woolf.

from "middlebrow." man, i love that comma. "i will take my pen and stab him, dead." now THAT is scorn.

The writer seems constrained, not by his own free will but by some powerful and unscrupulous tyrant who has him in thrall, to provide a plot, to provide comedy, tragedy, love interest, and an air of probability embalming the whole so impeccable that if all his figures were to come to life they would find themselves dressed down to the last button of their coats in the fashion of the hour. The tyrant is obeyed; the novel is done to a turn. But sometimes, more and more often as time goes by, we suspect a momentary doubt, a spasm of rebellion, as the pages fill themselves in the customary way. Is life like this? Must novels be like this?

Look within and life, it seems, is very far from being “like this”. Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions—trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

from "modern fiction."

sorry, i don't know what is WITH my formatting, but i don't know how to change it. it's harder than you might think. and i don't write html, guys.

today's activities.

let's analyze everyone's facebook pictures. 

then let's drink some cheap wine.

sound good?