Take Two

OK, so I abandoned this blog for, oh three years. I am gonna see if maybe I can post occasionally. So, uh, hope somebody reads it if I do . . .

From Designated Blonde...

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

"And it's conical."
Doglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Happy Festivus (for the rest of us)...

Not much time to post since I'm playing Santa Claus all evening, but here's a happy pic from my September trip to California, and my most sincere wish for you all to have a Joyous Noel, Merry Christmas, Festive Yule, Peaceful Kwanzaa, Happy Chanukkah, and Greivance-Free Festivus!

(Still haven't gotten a decent pic of the One Ring.... hold your horses, it's coming.)

Merry Christmas to all, till I see you some more.......

Warning: Pretentious rambling to follow...

"I'm looking in on the good life I might be doomed never to find,
Without a trust of flaming fields , am I too dumb to refine?
And if youd 'a took to me like
A gull takes to the wind,
well I'd a' jumped from my tree
And I'd a' danced like the king of the eyesores
And the rest of our lives would have fared well..."

-The Shins, New Slang

Ok, so I need to stop with the Garden State Soundtrack already. I'm becoming my own cliche....

There's something about that film and the music the lovely Mr. Braff selected that speaks to me. Perhaps it's that wistful feeling of never really coming home again. I can relate. Actiondale is more of a stopping point on my journeys than anything else these days. "Home" has become something quite relative to me; I don't have much of a sense of place anymore. There are days I wish I could transplant all my beautiful and wonderful friends from across the Eastern Seabord (and, now, West Coast as well) to live in Cincinnati; a town I love dearly but in which I have found it very hard to develop those same bonds of camraderie and friendship that used to come so easily to me.

Alas, other than my smiling face, there's not much incentive for all those beautiful and talented friends of mine to relocate. I can't blame anybody for reluctance to join me in The Queen City. I just wish this town had 1). fewer pretentious hipsters trying to pretend Cincinnati is the next Village, or 2). fewer frigging examples of why progressive, forward-thinking and open minded individuals LEAVE the MidWest (who aren't pretentios hipsters).

I love my life here, but I miss that instant spark of recognition you get from just being around someone (other than your significant other) who truly gets you, who you don't have to explain yourself to.

I also kind of miss MarioKart tournaments.

So here's to making connections, the joy of like minds converging, and Nintendo 64. I fear there are not enough of these ingredients in any of our lives these days.

I love you guys. All three of you who read this. :)

What she seeks is someone fearless....

"Drink up baby down
Hmm, are you in or are you out?
Leave your things behind
'Cause it's all going off without you...

Excuse me, too busy
Writing your tragedy...
These mishaps you bubble-wrap
When you've no idea what you're like.

So let go
So let go
Jump in
Oh, well, what you waiting for?
It's alright
'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown..."

Frou Frou, Let Go, from the Garden State Soundtrack


No comment here, just letting the words speak. Anyone who has been following my comments to "Anonymous" on The Blonde Diaries should follow the thread of my thoughts here. If not, read more closely.

Talk is cheap, boys.

I am not permanent

I wish I could figure out why I'm wired so strangely.

I've got a bad habit of realizing how much someone means to me about three years too late. I just had a friend, who I admit I had a rather tumultuous relationship with in the past, seek me out after about three years only to let me know he was about to leave the country, possibly for good. J and I had something good, but, well, we'll just say we couldn't leave well enough alone. The key to our friendship, before things got weird, was that he's a total shameless ham and I laugh at anything.....It was a good match.

I haven't thought much about J in a very long time; I had him shelved in one of those compartments in my mind I reserve for unresolved issues and uncomfortable situations. Only occasionally would I hear a song (usually Dave Matthews...I'm so lame) or smell someone's cologne and he would pop up in my mind's eye.... only to be promptly relegated back to the depths of my mind so I wouldn't have to think about how our friendship had fizzled so unsatisfactorily. No one I knew had heard from him in ages...
...yet there he was on my IM screen, saying he heard I got engaged and that he was leaving the country...

It took a couple days, but I finally got him on the cell...
...and remembered why we had become friends so quickly in the first place, before the drama. Before the intensity of sudden connection got confused with something more, and we both lost sight of what had brought us together originally.

He was funny, I was funny, and we were honest with each other for the first time in a long time. He made dumb jokes about my fiance (who he hasn't met) and how he is dating his right hand...Classy, as always. I reminded him he had his chance and actually TURNED ME DOWN when I asked him to homecoming senior year.... jerk. :)

It was great...then his phone cut out. And we never made contact again. And now he's in Australia. And I am kicking myself for not seeking him out again before he cashed in on that dual-citizenship.

So, moral of the story, gather ye rosebuds... or whatever. Life passes you by sometimes, and all you get is half a conversation and no goodbye to show for it.

Here's to J.... May you not be mauled by kangaroos, and may you make those Aussie bitches laugh as hard as I do. Much love from this hard-hearted harbinger of haggis. I'll try not to screw it up next time.

"The district sleeps alone tonight after the bars turn out their lights
And send the autos swerving into the loneliest evening
And I am finally seeing
Why I was the one worth leaving..."
----Postal Service, "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight"

By The Way...

Not meaning to just gloss over my good news in that last post, you people should see this ring! I'll post a pic soon.


That boy done good!

The Mix Tape

Having just gotten engaged (sorry if this is news to anyone, you should see my phone bill!), I've been feeling rather emotional and nostalgic lately, and I though I would tell you all a story about the greatest gift I've ever received from a boy (at least, from one to whom I am not surrently engaged).

There was a boy, a very quiet boy, who came to my high school for one year (and I am not even sure he stayed the whole year) my junior year in high school. He almost never spoke, but had that irresistable combination of fragility and the capacity for Deep Thought; a kind of perpetual pensive expression on his face. He wrote poetry and had a meloncholy, Lloyd Dobbler-esque demeanor as he sat two rows up from me every morning. He unsettled me, and intrigued me, because he was so quiet and sad. He was also one of, if not the, only boy in my Honors English class that year, which set up a weird vibe from the very beginning. I kept finding myself making eye contact with him, which he would hold a moment past the confort level, then look away.

But he never spoke!

Until one day, he heard me say I had a Cure song in my head, and he asked if I liked The Cure. Caught off guard, I said I did, very much, but did not own any albums and only knew the songs from the radio (back when radio played stuff like The Cure).

The next day he brought me a hand-made mix tape.
There wasn't even a case for it, and it looked like it had been recorded on about a thousand times before, but he had taken the time to title each side.

Side A was "Just Like Heaven..."
Side B was "Close to You..."

I didn't even listen to it for months, and then one day I realized he didn't go to my school anymore.

Out of curiosity I popped the tape in one quiet night.

It was all his favorite Cure songs, painstakingly recorded on a beat-up cassette, because I had said I loved the Cure.

I never did get to tell him how much I loved it.


To this day, I listen to it whenever I have the house to myself, up as high as it will go, until Robert Smith's melancholic wail shakes the windowpanes.


So, this post goes out to Gus, my quiet poet of the 11th grade. May you find the Cure-loving poetess who will appreciate you for all that you are, and may you always make mix-tapes in spite of the dawn of digital media.

As John Cusack has taught us over and over again, never underestimate the quiet boy who never speaks in class.
He just might tell you he loves you without you ever noticing.