After many months of resisting, I've finally upgraded my version of AOL. I didn't want to do it because I fear it taking over my entire computer, like a cat in the middle of your bed. So I trashed the free programs that come packaged with it. Why this sudden conversion? Well, I discovered that AOL was filtering my mail for spam. Seems harmless enough, but I wasn't getting emails from people I knew or my listservs and didn't know it. In the version that I was running before, the spam folder was buried very deep in a set of menus. I am very wary of anyone deciding what I can and cannot read (draw your own parallel with the gov't decision to axe many popular shows from their captioning grant program). I'm also wary of anyone who wants to be my only content provider.

I feel a Luddite like itch. The light bulb in my bedroom burned out several days ago and I've yet to remember to change it while I can still see to do so. Yesterday, I found myself standing next to the useless light switch, shaking my fist in the air, saying "Damn you, Thomas Edison!". On the other hand, would I want to go back to cutting tape with a razor blade instead of digital editing? Hell no! You just have to remember, technology is great as long as it works. Then it doesn't and it really sucks.

My cousin the navy boy is back in town on leave, in is shiny new car. I really enjoy having a cousin who is more or less a contemporary. For many years, when we were growing up, the age difference between us was too large. So now I get to discover this cool adult cousin who drives a Volkswagen, listens to an ipod, and watches SATC. Who knew?!

My mom and I went on a yarn expedition today, with varying results. I wanted to find yarn with which to make a pair of birthday socks for my beloved grandfather. I keep setting the bar higher and higher for myself. If I keep it up, I'll have to make a pair from golden fleece.... I ended up getting beautiful blue and purple variegated CTH sock yarn, a colorway called River Run, and two skeins of Takhi Donegal Tweed fished out of the sale bin. I hope to make a felted hat out of it, along the same lines as my Yoko Ono hat. To that end, I purchased a pattern online, but everything got so fouled up with my email that the seller just refunded my money. Huh. Maybe we can handle the transaction the old-fashioned way. I'll give her a $5 bill, and she can give me a mimeographed sheet of instructions. Relax, that's a joke.

I'm working on my noodled out colorblock sweater again. It turned out that the variation within the dyelot is obvious (sigh), so I have to work alternate rows from two balls. This sounds more complicated that it is, but mainly means that this project doesn't travel. Luckily, I have some socks in the works for that. I'm making myself a pair of fine gauge hand-dyed socks. The yarn is Anne from Schaefer, which I previously used in a pair of socks for my paternal grandmother, in a wildly different colorway. The one I am using now reminds me of a garden in the spring; it has yellows and greens and lavender, in a subtly striped pattern. It is working up at an astonishing eleven stitches to the inch. Had I known it to be so fine before beginning, I doubt that I would have.

I finished all of the books on my list in the sidebar. Whatever will I do with myself now?! Any book recommendations would be appreciated. Maybe I'll re-read Anna Karenina.

Long time, no blog. Who would have guessed that my first blog of the new year would fall in February? Anyone who knows me, I guess. I've been in a bit of a funk lately, so I haven't kept up with this page. Now, I'm feeling a bit better, so I'm putting it in script.
So, hmmm...what's happened lately?
* The red tape in my unemployment claim, which seemed long enough to stretch to the moon, has finally been cut through. It only involved lots of long-distance phone calls in the middle of the afternoon. I got my first check only TWO months after I lost my job. That's our tax dollars at work, folks.
* One of my friends was in a train wreck. I know that I sound oddly ebullient about that. He's fine. It's his current tale of woe. He said to me, "How many people can say they were in a train wreck?". to which I replied, "I was". That took a bit of the wind out of his sails. Mine was a minor train/car challenge somewhere in small town Mississippi. Not terribly exciting, but Amtrack usually isn't. This is only one of many complaints my friend has about the CTA.
* My dad gave me a tablet PC, which was a state of the art PDA back in the late 1990s. I hesitate to call it a handheld, because it requires both hands, or at least an assist from a knee. It has a big bright screen, a mic jack, and a little speaker--AV bliss! Now, I've only to figure out how to get it to sync with my mail.
* My dreaded trip to the dentist went off without a hitch. I've gotten a reprieve from the drill, and a jolly visit from the dentist. The hygenist was another matter.... I bled so much from the cleaning that I felt light-headed while lying down! Just proves that I should go more often, I guess. My grandmother fed me a couple of cups of strong Australian tea afterwards.
* I've finally pulled the plug on my other blog, as the person who was supposed to collaborate on it never did. That was the whole concept of the project, and I tired of waiting. She's busy, I know. Maybe it will be reborn, like the phoenix, in some other form. But don't hold your breath.
* I am asterisk crazy!
* Now is the time that tries techies souls---summer stock hiring season. I'm spreading my resumes around like counterfeit cash, though I only apply to places that I'd actually like to work. Anything else seems like a waste of time for all parties involved. I'd heard that my last stock company wasn't doing much hiring this year, from a very good source, but they have two listings in ArtSearch. I don't know what their deal is, but I doubt that they'll be at it much longer.

Now is the time of year that everyone makes lists.
Here are a few from the brains behind Hijinks on Snort:

Quirky Music I have Purchased and Enjoyed in the Past Year:

*Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man, Out of Season. A side project from the singer of Portishead and the bass player of Talk Talk. It's kind of like Portishead, but not.

*Wig In A Box. A tribute album to benefit the group that runs Harvey Milk school in NYC. This is pretty excellent, though the Yoko Ono track made the dog howl.

* Tori Amos, Strange Little Girls. For different reasons, also Scarlet's Walk. It took me a couple of years to get into Tori Amos's cover album, but damn, I'm glad I did! Still, I'm happy that she put out a studio album this year.

* The Sounds, Living in America. A new-New Wave band from Sweden. What else do I have to say?

* Cat Power, You Are Free. Cat Power rocks, even if my pal Janet calls her work ennervating.

* Soundtrack, Princess and the Warrior. This album was made by the same people responsible for Run Lola Run. It's like the chill version of that soundtrack, the kind of music that spins out a party really well.

* Verve's highly successful Remixed albums. And for that matter, their Unmixed companions. I hope that these will generate new interest in jazz, though I suspect that they're just candy for hipsters who've already discovered the sublime nature of Nina Simone and her contemporaries.

* Morelenbaum 2/Sakamoto's Live Album. Their studio album is pretty awesome, but I really love the immediacy of their second album. Also, I love bossa nova, and it's hard to find non-cheesy efforts in that genre.


Other music that's really floated my boat in 2003:

*Coldplay, but who didn't listen to them this year?

*Radiohead.

*Everything But The Girl's rarities and b-side collection. Even though a lot of those tapes could have stayed on the shelf, the remixes are superb.

*Fantastic Plastic Machine. The perfect japanese pop to rock out to on my little minidisc player while taking public transportation.

*Miss Nina Simone.

*Dave Brubeck. I bought both Red Hot and Cool and Time In this year. Wow.

*Liz Phair. Some people say she's sold out, and her single's everywhere. It's still a good album.

*The White Stripes. I'm not really into "The" groups, with the exception of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Sounds, and The White Stripes. I'm not sure if there's any commonality between them, other than the "the". Oh, and they all rock.

Why Schott's Original Miscellany is Possibly the Best Book Ever

that's hyperbole, of course, but it's pretty damn nifty!

I rented this slim tome by Ben Schott from my local bibliotheque. It was the best use of seventy-five cents on my part in a long time. The book, which I suppose falls under the category of non-fiction, contains numerous facts and trivia. Par example: a table of James Bond films, including the actor playing Bond, the villain, Bond girl and actress, as well as the Bond-mobile. A list of nine Q words without Us (very good for scrabble!). A very complex chart listing many facts about US presidents, including their party affiliation, astrological sign, salary, age at which they took office, whether or not they had red hair or won a Nobel Prize (not really an either/or, but so far, there's np cross-over between the groups), et cetera. I'm also enamored of the sampling of final words from the National Spelling Bee. Some of them seem pedestrian, like lyseum and kamikazi, but that's probably why they don't have twenty-somethings in the bee! My grade school had some sort of screening process as clandestine as the election of the popes. Despite being an excellent speller, I was never allowed to participate in the school bee. I digress. The list of Liz Taylor's husbands, in chronological order, is also amusing. I strongly recommend Schott's. It is clearly worth the $14.95 publisher's recommended retail price.

Last week, as I was driving down the Dan Ryan, I saw an amazing sight. There was a 12' aluminum ladder skidding diagonally across the lanes of traffic, with a sheet of angry sparks. The attendant noise of metal scraping concrete was like the hiss of a great angry snake. I swerved and managed to avoid it. I've no idea where the ladder came from, but it cut across my consciousness as boldly as it cut across the six lanes of traffic. It happens that I am afraid of ladders, but this is the first that frightened me in a horizontal position. What could this errant ladder mean?

I was also bitten by a dog this weekend and had an allergy attack during the middle of the matinee (of a one act show). Other than that, I am fine. The bite is a flesh wound. The allergy attack has passed. I quite unwisely chose to get ripped the same evening of the onset of the attack. It was the worst hangover I've had in a long time. Some lessons must be learned through experience. Never put your body through withdrawal when it is already on the offensive.

The allergic reaction was entirely my fault. And I do know better than to eat foods to which I am allergic. I ate at a noodle shop last Saturday and ordered a dish that had a preponderance of carrots heaped atop it. Unexpectedly. As much as I tried to eat around it, I probably had a couple of tablespoons' worth of carrot. Despite all those allergy shots that were inflicted upon me as a child, I cannot eat even that much.

Yesterday was bookended by piss. I awoke to the sound of a dog pissing very near to the bed where I lay and went to bed very shortly after my elderly cat decided to urinate all over one of my merino sweaters. He's very sneaky. He perpetrated this crime while pretending to peer intently into a nearby stack of LPs. Misdirection is key to that little trick, as it is in ventriloquism. There were also all sorts of snafus with the video equipment as I was trying to finish a project.

It was a shitty day, with the exception of an evening spent at the theatre. I went to see Man From Nebraska with the OFW group. It was breathtaking. The director of OFW stars in the show. I'd seen him onstage before, years ago, but was amazed by his skill. I am so glad that I managed to make it, as I had contemplated calling the box office to release my ticket and sleeping instead. There are few things, in my opinion, that are better than sleep, and this was one of them. Then I went home and slept in my own bed. Ah, bliss. Now, if I can train my mother not to pound on my bedroom door like the Chicago Police... She "knocked" on it this morning to awaken me and my entire body jumped from the bed like a startled fish and just hung there for a moment.

I paid a visit to one of my favorite bookstores in Chicago today. I qualify that because my favorite bookstore remains Prairie Lights. They just aren't in walking distance anymore. Just as my favorite record store is a thousand miles away. I went in to pick up a copy of Sense and Sensibility and ended up buying a tribute album to Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It is, as the post-it sign in the store said, amazing. The source material is pretty incredible to begin with, but the covers are fabulously funny and moving. For example, Sleater-Kinney and Fred Schneider (aka the man from the B-52s) performing "Angry Inch" or Steven Colbert's "Ladies and Gentlemen". Yoko Ono's "Exquisite Corpse" made the dog growl, but he's generally cranky. Cranky enough to bite me and wake me up with his pissing. The album is to benefit the Hetrick-Martin Institute, which runs the Harvey Milk school in NYC. I highly recommend it.

Tonight is my first show night without a show call in a long time. It hasn't really sunken in that my show has closed, but as I told one of my friends this afternoon, I suspect that it may this evening. It can be very hard when that evening rolls around, as one gets the itch to go somewhere around call time, that feeling of a forgotten obligation. So, I'm rocking out to Hedwig and waiting for Lewis.

I've done nothing of consequence all week. It's shameful, my ability to sleep all day. Actually, I've managed to finish my xmas shopping and wrap nearly all the gifts. Not too shabby, considering there have been years where people have been in danger of receiving gifts purchased at the 7-11 on the way there. And I've made great progress on the everyday cardigan. Because I knit it everyday. It's at approximately 90% completion. That is to say, the sleeves, back, and right front are finished, and the left front about 75%. That does not include blocking (ugh), assembly, or the dreaded button bands and collar. I've never done button holes before, so this should be an educational experience.
So, I'm beginning to think of the next big thing. I was planning to make the Norwegian turtleneck, but am really not in favor of that neckline at the moment. I'd much rather make it as a v-neck, but cannot even begin to start on the alterations necessary to the pattern. Still, I'd like to make a raglan sleeved colorblock sweater next.
The day that I decided to take advantage of Netflix's free trial offer, I received several coupons from the local video store. Hmm. Am still undecided in this matter. A less that satisfactory search of their site revealed that they don't have An Awfully Big Adventure (one of my top ten backstage films) or A Midwinter's Tale. MT is available on Amazon.com, but Adventure seems elusive. It used to be on Bravo, usually late at night, with some frequency, but that sort of programming has been rejected in favor of all-gay all-the-time. Sigh.